The Gates of Heaven Will Never be Closed: The World of the 1538 Sanhedrin

[dcguy3]

Wonderful work as always

 

[jacob ningen]

INNOCENTS ABROAD
VI: TIBERIAS, APRIL 1878​

Tiberias by night, in the few hours Grant had spent there on his way to Tzfat, had been ghostly. Tiberias by day was impressive. It wasn’t as big as Nablus or even as Tzfat, but it was almost visibly growing. The new city spilled beyond the walls to the north and south and up the hillside to the west. Buildings were rising everywhere in between the foundations still being laid, and sometimes the ancient synagogues and churches that had been unearthed during the digging of those foundations.

The old city, the city within the walls, was of black basalt. It had been quarried locally for thousands of years, and it was everywhere: the looming Crusader seawall and tower, the fortress that Joseph Nasi had built and Zahir al-Umar had expanded; workshops and apartment houses; places of commerce and places of worship. The serai to which Avram and Rahel led the Grants as the sun was beginning to descend toward the hill was of austere black stone; the mosque next to it was of the same but polished almost to the point of appearing obsidian.

The streets were still busy despite the imminent beginning of Passover, and the sounds of hasty cleaning mixed with the conversation behind the windows. “Everything is in haste this year,” said Avram. “No one cleans out hametz” – leaven – “when there is a war. There will be crumbs of bread in the cupboards. The Name will understand.”

true.

“The Seder where we’re going – will that be hasty too?”

“A Seder is never hurried.”

until the next century but its several hours long.

“Not even during a war?”

“No,” said Avram as they cut through an alley and emerged in front of a public park where palms and an artificial pond had made volcanic outcroppings into a rock garden. “Especially not during a war.”

Avram stopped in front of a house across from the park and waited while everyone gathered. Julia, next to Grant, suddenly seemed anxious; Grant had no idea why this should be so, but Rahel instantly understood. “There will be nothing here against your faith,” she said, and Grant realized that Julia had never before been a participant in a non-Christian ritual – and neither had he.

in fact much in it. Ive viewed Judas in Luke as an afikomen if the practice is old enough.

“I grew up in a Karaite family, and we celebrated differently, but the story that will be told tonight is one we all believe. I will make sure that you are at home here.”

And when they were invited in, there was one more touch of home: their hosts were American.

“I found you the only Americans in Tiberias,” Avram said, but it was clear from their greetings that he’d known them a long time. It took only a moment to reveal why; the white-robed husband, Leo Adler, managed the archaeological diggings north of the city, and his wife Emma taught in the girls’ primary schools that the nagidah had established and recommended some of the promising ones for medical study in Cairo. Their son Felix, twenty-two and home safe from the war, was already at the table, and the members of a neighboring family rounded out the assembly.

“We’ll do the Seder in English this year,” said Leo. “Everyone here speaks it. They say in Acre that every language is holy – and all the more so if it is one our honored guests understand.”

true you should understand

It didn’t take long to begin – the blessing over the wine, washing of hands, eating greens dipped in salt water, breaking the middle matzah in memory of all that was shattered during slavery. And then the question: why is this night different from all other nights?

isnt the four questions before Karpas. and all five questions. Who says it as traditionally its the youngest?

The answer was long in telling. “The more one tells of the departure from Egypt,” read Leo, “the more is he to be praised;” Avram winked at Grant, who finally understood the joke that had been made in Cairo weeks before. He also soon realized that “more” referred not only to telling the story more times but to telling it in more ways; the service wove stories within stories, went from broad to detailed view and back again, dwelled on commentaries and customs, and different points of view.

true

The telling also varied from solemnity to laughter, sometimes both at once. Early on, Avram was called on to recite the parable of the four sons, and when the contrary son was mentioned, everyone pointed at him. Who could be more contrary than a man who’d been expelled from rabbinical school and then gone on to search as deeply into the history of the Jews as the rabbis ever did? But in back of the joke, there was something worth thinking on; the contrary son was portrayed as wicked, but might contrariness not have a worth of its own? Where would either this land or Grant’s own country be if so many of their people hadn’t been contrary?

theres an interpretation that everyone is all four sons.

“In every generation,” Felix read much later, “one must see himself as if he personally had come out of Egypt.” Grant nodded at Avram, who’d come and gone from Egypt more times than he could count. But Avram stood suddenly and raised Grant’s arm with his right hand.

“This man came out of Egypt! He fought to free the slaves in his country, and this year, he came forth from Egypt and stood with us when we defended our own freedom!”

It was some time before they began telling the story again, and when they did, even Grant could pick up the allusions to the battlefields of the Galilee, in this war and wars past, and to the Underground Railroad and the American civil war. “Why is this year different from all other years?” mused Clemens without his usual jesting manner, and when the story continued into the festive meal, it was even clearer that this, more than most, was a year when freedom was sacred.

It was close to midnight by the time the ritual wound down – grace, Elijah’s cup, the Hallel, the singing of songs. “Next year in Jerusalem!” everyone said finally, and though Jerusalem was a few hours away on the train, Grant thought that in a year like this one, that might also mean something more.

Is mi yodeah or Chad Gadya popular in the Yishuv and Rahel might dispute 6.

_______​

They dined with the Adlers the next night too, and the morning after that, the ladies went to the hot springs. “The rabbanim say that the sun heats them at night when it passes under the earth,” said Rahel; as a Karaite, she was endlessly amused at rabbis’ whimsy. “All except Rabbi Yose, who said the springs were hot because they passed directly over the entrance to hell.”

he was right

Julia wasn’t sure she cared for the latter explanation, but after months of travel and the disquiet of war, she was more than ready for a day at the spa.

“Near two thousand years of people have gone before you,” said Avram – “not Jesus, but Caesars and Caliphs have bathed there.” He, and the rest of the Grant party, accompanied them most of the way; he insisted on showing Grant the Roman amphitheater and the synagogues, one with Greek mosaics on the floor, that had been unearthed near the springs. The Sanhedrin – the original one – had met here too in Roman times, although no one knew exactly where.

Afterward, leaving the women to their relaxation, the men turned back to the city, which was starting its day’s work. “In other countries – even in Cairo – this wouldn’t be a working day,” Avram said. “Passover there is eight days, and on the first two and the last two, no work is done. But in the Land of Israel, it is only seven days, and only the first and last are to be kept holy.”

true and for all holidays except rosh hashanah which even in Israel is two days traditionally due to only Jerusalem knowing the new moon on the proper day.

Tiberias was certainly a working city, Grant reflected, and not always in a good way. When the wind was wrong, the air smelled of factory smoke, and the roofs gathered soot if they weren’t cleaned. There was more of a gap between rich and poor than he’d seen in Tzfat or in the villages – more like Nablus, where the mansions on the hillside contrasted with the row houses and tenement blocks in the new city. No one starved - the poor of Tiberias, like those Grant had seen in the countryside, had enough – but they had little more than enough.

There were placards on the synagogues and mosques in these neighborhoods – Avram made a running translation. Denunciations of the men who’d built and financed the factories – the Rothschilds and Montefiores, the Sassoons and Kedouries, and others more local who’d followed in their wake. Calls for a councilman known for his broad interpretation of the Islamic labor code to be appointed a city qadi. A union meeting, to be held in the synagogue study room.

at least this time the rothschilds are actually to blame unlike conspiracy theorists.

“Tiberias has always been a place of study,” said Avram. “Tzfat is the mystic city. Tiberias is the practical one.” And he pointed to another notice, posted on the day the war ended: “the fight has only begun.”

This year was different from all other years.

But there was another side to working-class Tiberias. There were parks and allotment gardens; there were coffee-houses where old men sat all day and talked in three languages at a time. And there were mosaics. They’d become common in Tiberias since the ancient mosaic-floored synagogues had been found; they were on public buildings and squares all over the new city, and nowhere more so than the Bukharan and Ethiopian neighborhoods.

The Bukharan mosaics were in the Persian style with stunning shades of blue, some of them abstract designs centered on Hebrew calligraphy and others depictions of folktales running along walls. The Ethiopian ones were in that part Greek, part African style Grant remembered from the Mount Tabor monastery; they were Bible stories, most of them, but some were from books that Grant couldn’t recognize and even Avram couldn’t identify for certain. There were coffee-houses here too – of course there were, the Ethiopians had been first of all humanity to recognize the coffee bean for what it was – and the old men in them spoke Ge’ez; Grant wondered what their priests taught them that even the rabbis of the Sanhedrin had never heard.

Later, over chilled wine and grilled fish at the Abulafia taverna on the lakeside, Grant wondered about another thing: were there other undiscovered books in the scrolls they’d found at Qumran, and were scholars even now deciphering them?

He’d come to this country in a year unlike other years, and maybe everything was changing.

_______​

The next day was the Sabbath, a day of rest and contemplation – not in such faith as Grant had, and certainly not in Julia’s, but in the rhythm of the country to which they’d become accustomed. Grant and Julia took a long walk along the shore, letting the war recede one day further in memory. Clemens and Young stayed at the serai with Avram, working on their battlefield dispatches and comparing notes on a novel that none of them would explain any further.

The day after that was for Capernaum and the site of the Galilean miracles.

There were many boatmen at the Tiberias waterfront who could be hired for trips to the north shore, but the men at the Ethiopian coffee-house had told Grant not to go to them. “Go to Beit Mina and ask for the mukhtar – he’ll fix you up much cheaper.” And when they did go to Beit Mina, six miles north by donkey-cart, they indeed got a lower price.

The mukhtar, Ageze Molla, was a vigorous sixty such as Grant hoped soon to be. He was, so the coffee-house men had said, the first Ethiopian Jew to settle in the Galilee; he’d married into a rabbinic family and Grant gathered that he had his disagreements with Abba Mehari, but as the first to arrive and with his civil rank as mukhtar and district judge, he was still something of a patron to his compatriots in the city. He knew instantly why the Grant party had come; he sat them at a table in the garden with goat cheese and a pitcher of juice from his orange trees while he called for a grandson to get a boar ready.

“Yossi worked at the Capernaum diggings last year – he likes history,” Ageze said, shaking his head but looking at his grandson with obvious pride. “He can guide you, show you some of what he found.”

It took most of an hour to prepare the boat, and Grant got up after a while and wandered around the village. There was a small cemetery where the goat pasture began, and Grant noticed, curious in spite of himself, that one of the graves was in French as well as Hebrew. “Lucien Boyer,” it said. “Soldier of Napoleon, fisherman of the inland sea, mukhtar of Beit Mina, deputy to the Va’ad ha-Aretz; the Name reveals not His plans.” And beneath that, two dates: “Born Carry-le-Rouet, 11 March 1771; Died Beit Mina, 24 Tammuz 5605.”

“That’s one way to say ‘born a Christian, died a Jew,’” murmured Clemens, who’d come up behind. Grant, for his part, was bemused at the idea that Lucien might have lived thirty-eight hundred years, but he’d already worked it out to seventy-four – even if it didn’t beat Methuselah, that wasn’t a bad run. And maybe, in some mystic way beyond his understanding, it was all part of the thousands of years that the nagidah had talked about.

Then he heard Ageze’s voice calling, breaking the spell; the boat was ready, and it took them back in time.

They went first to Tabgha, the place of the miracle of loaves and fishes. Fewer pilgrims came here than to the sites of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, but enough did that the villagers were ready. They came out with grilled fish for sale – no loaves at Passover, of course, though they would have offered them the rest of the year – and carvings of the miracle. For another ten piasters, they showed the party the springs where the miracle occurred, which were now nothing more than a well-watered field with the ruin of a Byzantine church wall in the distance.

matzah

But at Capernaum, a mile and a half to the east, no one sold anything, and there were neither villagers nor a village.

“No one lived here for hundreds of years,” Yossi said, “until Robinson ustaz found ruins. And every year since then, we’ve found more.”

By now, they’d found enough to show that there had been a village here. All around were the ruined walls and columns of synagogues and public buildings; blocks of houses of which only the doorways and two or three feet of stone wall remained; cobblestones overgrown with weeds. “They think this was all from Jesus’s time,” said Yossi, pointing to the two men supervising the diggings at one end of the ruin. “The men from Acre and the Or Tamid think so too. The synagogue may be later, but the houses and granaries – they were there.”

To Grant’s surprise, the ruins affected Julia far more than the springs at Tabgha had – almost as much as the Via Dolorosa and even Calvary. “Those places have been changed – built over again and again,” she said, “but this place is as it was. Jesus walked and preached not only on this land but on these very stones. The ovens in these houses baked Him bread.”

And Grant, skeptic as he was, understood. This was another part of the nagidah’s thousands of years. For a moment, he saw the busy town this had been in Jesus’s time, smelled the baking bread, heard the cries of carters and fish-sellers, listened to Jesus preaching in the marketplace. He looked up to the Mount of Beatitudes where it stood to the north and imagined how the sermon might have echoed down here, how the people in the public square would have listened.

And later, when Yossi showed them the find he’d made – the ruins of a house and courtyard that the archaeologists believed may have been a house church from the earliest days – there were other things to imagine. Grant saw himself in the place of the Christians who gathered here in secret lest the Romans take them to be thrown to the lions. He saw himself in other cellars and caves where persecuted people had hidden – Jews, Samaritans, perhaps the authors of the scrolls. He saw, again, the Underground Railroad.

There was a path that led through all those places, through those thousands of years, and maybe the events of the past days had been another step on that path. Thousands of years, every one of them changing, every one of them unlike all others.

They climbed the Mount of Beatitudes that evening and spent the night there, sleeping under the stars. They returned to Beit Mina the next day, the fifth day of Passover, and from there to Tiberias.

One more change awaited them on the Day of Bread.

_______​

The Day of Bread, Yom ha-Lechem, was the eighth day – the day when the prohibitions of Passover were finished and when leavened bread could once again be eaten. This was a celebration among enough of the people who made up the Yishuv that it had become a celebration of all of them, and as dusk fell, it spilled out of the houses and onto the streets.

yay Mimouna from back when it was Mimouna which is a good way to build ecumunical bonds.

There were tables everywhere in the old city, and people weaved and danced around them. The Moroccans laid their tables with pastries, fruits and almonds in groups of five and surrounded by sprigs of mint and gold hamsa pendants. The Ethiopians and Sudanese set theirs with whole roasted lamb stuffed with herbs and with the fermented bread they both made, in a circle of carved figurines and painted stones. And there were other tables – the Jewish freedmen from Paramaribo had laid them first, Avram said – which were heavy with rum-cake and Dutch fried dough, all cut to look like the hardwood masks set beside them.

They ate – everyone ate – and they drank of the Galilean wine that seemed to be given away at every park and street-corner. After a moment’s resistance, even Grant drank the wine. It seemed necessary this evening, as they moved through alleys and courtyards where the whole city seemed to be singing and dancing to the music of talking-drums and flutes.

The Galileans were a sober people, or so Grant had judged in the weeks he’d been among them, but this year, they celebrated with abandon such as he hadn’t seen even at Purim in Jerusalem. Some of that was the relief of being home safe from the war, but beneath that, there was the release of mourning the dead.

There were songs of the dead everywhere; musicians sang the words and the people in that street or court sang them back, as was also a tradition of the Paramaribo freedmen. Some were for the nagidah, and those weren’t mournful – they were more of a celebration, songs not of a funeral but of a wake. But others were for the soldiers. “Etmol hu hayah b’chaim,” one began, “yesterday, he was alive,” before taking the dead soldier through all his tomorrows – “in a day he would have married, he would have tended his olive trees, he would have grown as old and gnarled as they are…” And all around, sober people were on the verge of tears.

But then, just as it all seemed unbearable, fireworks burst above the city. The musicians fell silent, and everyone looked toward the crossettes and Roman candles that filled the sky by the lakeshore.

“Galil!” someone shouted suddenly. A second later, another person took up the cry, then ten, then thousands. “Galil!” they shouted again – some said “Jalil!” in Arabic, but amid the fireworks, it all sounded as one – and the name of the country became a chant. “Galil! Galil! Galil!” The talking drums spoke again. “Galil! Galil!”

“Does this always happen?” Grant asked. He wasn’t sure anyone could hear, but Avram did, and he answered.

“No,” he said. “This has never happened.”

 

[Yeiro]

Great chapter always intersting to see about archaeology and the festivities

Also I think Grant may inspire an archetype in the galilean literatura, the previos ruler from a far away country who helps the people in a time of troubles, Avram probably would have it's part in it

 

[saman bey]

every language is holy

You know that feeling soppy hearted teenagers(not me, i'd never) have when they read a good, soppy poetry book? As if the author was walking behind them for months, and writing about them?

The quoted phrase (i listened to a very similar phrase in Tiberias) is where I start feeling that in the chapter, and it keeps going until the end.
I love your writing, it touches a vein, it really does.

 

[St. Just]

It's nice to see Ageze Molla one last time (and Lucien, for that matter) as well as get a glimpse of Pesach in the Galilee and what seems to be the nascent bonds of a Galillean identity.

 

[SpaceRome]

Unless the Shami breakaway from Egypt will be quite turbulant, this time of April is quickly shaping up to be the leading candidate for Galilean independence day/national day, replete with festivities (although it won't coincide with Passover every year), and fireworks.

And speaking of the Egyptian Levant, where exactly does the Egyptian/Ottoman border pass? Anything similar to OTL Syria? South of it? North of it?

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

isnt the four questions before Karpas. and all five questions. Who says it as traditionally its the youngest?

They're asked right at the beginning of Magid. In this case, I'd imagine Felix would ask them, unless the neighbor family has a younger son (1878 is too early for a daughter to do so).

theres an interpretation that everyone is all four sons.

I've seen the four sons interpreted generationally too, but I like the idea that all of us are all of them at times. Pointing at the contrary son at the seder is something my family always did to me, BTW - sometimes they still do.

Is mi yodeah or Chad Gadya popular in the Yishuv and Rahel might dispute 6.

I'm assuming they are - Ehad Mi Yodea predates the POD, Had Gadya is soon enough after it to be within the butterfly net, and there's been enough Ashkenazi influence in the Yishuv that these songs would have carried over. There might even have been the same incident (18th century, I believe) in which a Seder guest in the diaspora IOTL spontaneously excommunicated another guest for mocking Had Gadya as a mere nursery rhyme, although in the Yishuv itself, the Sanhedrin wouldn't allow that kind of freelancing.

Rahel would sing "six are the days of labor," or maybe "six was the day of the creation of man."

at least this time the rothschilds are actually to blame unlike conspiracy theorists.

As I mentioned earlier, the wealthy European and American Jews who were protectors and diplomats for the 19th-century Yishuv IOTL are investors ITTL, and investor is a relationship that can turn adversarial. Rothschild and other financiers see themselves as helping to build and develop the Yishuv and to make it strong - and to some extent that view is truthful, because direct investment is a big boost to a developing economy. But working conditions in even a relatively enlightened 19th-century factory - even one where the Sanhedrin is doing its best Law of the Parapet expansion - ensure that the workers in Tiberias and Nablus and Acre have a less sanguine view of things.

A shtadlan relationship can become adversarial too, of course, but IOTL, the Yishuv was too impoverished and powerless to push back in any meaningful way. ITTL that isn't true.

matzah

That probably wouldn't sell well to Christian pilgrims. It's hard enough to get Jews to eat it. (I like the stuff, but I recognize that I'm in the minority.)

yay Mimouna from back when it was Mimouna which is a good way to build ecumunical bonds.

I mean, how can anyone not like Mimouna? And if two other diaspora cultures supercharge it, how can anyone not like that? More seriously, Grand Unified Mimouna is one of the things bringing the Ethiopians into the social, albeit not religious, mainstream.

Also I think Grant may inspire an archetype in the galilean literatura, the previos ruler from a far away country who helps the people in a time of troubles, Avram probably would have it's part in it

I'm probably not giving anything away by saying that Avram will write a novel featuring Grant (if I do 1905, we may see some excerpts of it), and it's pretty obvious that he'll become a folk hero. I'm not as sure he'll become an archetype, though - Jewish mythology doesn't really have a King Arthur slot to fill, and there are figures from further in the past who'd be more likely to fill it. Grant will be remembered more in idiom and folk sayings.

The quoted phrase (i listened to a very similar phrase in Tiberias) is where I start feeling that in the chapter, and it keeps going until the end.
I love your writing, it touches a vein, it really does.

Thank you for the kind words. And unless you're going to go full Kemalist and mold the Yishuv into a new society as Ben Gurion tried and mostly failed to do IOTL, "all languages are holy" is really the only way to handle an ingathering of the diaspora. Hebrew will always have a special place as the language of the Tanakh, but the diaspora has scattered so far and picked up so many languages and traditions that a society that draws from all of it can't (and organically won't) be confined to any one.

That's also the kind of mysticism that would appeal to Acre ITTL - not Jerusalem, and not Tzfat at first, but Acre - and it's one of the ideas of the kollel katan that's attractive enough to the mainstream that by now most of the Galilee believes it too.

It's nice to see Ageze Molla one last time (and Lucien, for that matter) as well as get a glimpse of Pesach in the Galilee and what seems to be the nascent bonds of a Galillean identity.

Unless the Shami breakaway from Egypt will be quite turbulant, this time of April is quickly shaping up to be the leading candidate for Galilean independence day/national day, replete with festivities (although it won't coincide with Passover every year), and fireworks.

Yes, the events of 1878 are a key part of forging the collective Galilean identity - the roots were already there, and past events also played a part, but the nagidah's death and the civil war were catalysts.

And it's "this time of Nisan," so it will always happen close to Passover - the day of the battle of Maghar, one day before the first seder, may be the most likely candidate. 20th-century Passover in the Yishuv ITTL might be bookended by Independence Day at the beginning and Mimouna/Yom ha-Lechem at the end. Unless, of course, another day - the day the formal peace is made, for instance - becomes the national day instead.

And speaking of the Egyptian Levant, where exactly does the Egyptian/Ottoman border pass? Anything similar to OTL Syria? South of it? North of it?

On this map, the Egyptian alliance goes as far north as the Mutasarrifate of Lebanon and the southern two-thirds of what is labeled as the Levant Sanjak (I'm not sure why the mapmaker would call the Sanjak of Damascus that). All the Hejazi, Habeshi and Sudanese territories marked as Ottoman on the map are also Egyptian ITTL, and Libya is contested with Egypt having an under-the-table alliance with the Senussi state.

 

[jacob ningen]

They're asked right at the beginning of Magid. In this case, I'd imagine Felix would ask them, unless the neighbor family has a younger son (1878 is too early for a daughter to do so).

I've seen the four sons interpreted generationally too, but I like the idea that all of us are all of them at times. Pointing at the contrary son at the seder is something my family always did to me, BTW - sometimes they still do.

I'm assuming they are - Ehad Mi Yodea predates the POD, Had Gadya is soon enough after it to be within the butterfly net, and there's been enough Ashkenazi influence in the Yishuv that these songs would have carried over. There might even have been the same incident (18th century, I believe) in which a Seder guest in the diaspora IOTL spontaneously excommunicated another guest for mocking Had Gadya as a mere nursery rhyme, although in the Yishuv itself, the Sanhedrin wouldn't allow that kind of freelancing.

Because such freelancing weakens the authority of thr court?

Rahel would sing "six are the days of labor," or maybe "six was the day of the creation of man."

That would work

As I mentioned earlier, the wealthy European and American Jews who were protectors and diplomats for the 19th-century Yishuv IOTL are investors ITTL, and investor is a relationship that can turn adversarial. Rothschild and other financiers see themselves as helping to build and develop the Yishuv and to make it stroug - and to some extent that view is truthful, because direct investment is a big boost to a developing economy. But working conditions in even a relatively enlightened 19th-century factory - even one where the Sanhedrin is doing its best Law of the Parapet expansion - ensure that the workers in Tiberias and Nablus and Acre have a less sanguine view of things.

True

A shtadlan relationship can become adversarial too, of course, but IOTL, the Yishuv was too impoverished and powerless to push back in any meaningful way. ITTL that isn't true.

That probably wouldn't sell well to Christian pilgrims. It's hard enough to get Jews to eat it. (I like the stuff, but I recognize that I'm in the minority.)

True unless you make it brei or matzah ball soup. But plain sheets are a hard sell

I mean, how can anyone not like Mimouna?

i dont know

And if two other diaspora cultures supercharge it, how can anyone not like that? More seriously, Grand Unified Mimouna is one of the things bringing the Ethiopians into the social, albeit not religious, mainstream.

I'm probably not giving anything away by saying that Avram will write a novel featuring Grant (if I do 1905, we may see some excerpts of it), and it's pretty obvious that he'll become a folk hero. I'm not as sure he'll become an archetype, though - Jewish mythology doesn't really have a King Arthur slot to fill, and there are figures from further in the past who'd be more likely to fill it. Grant will be rememebered more in idiom and folk sayings.

we knew it from the rest of this.

Thank you for the kind words. And unless you're going to go full Kemalist and mold the Yishuv into a new society as Ben Gurion tried and mostly failed to do IOTL, "all languages are holy" is really the only way to handle an ingathering of the diaspora. Hebrew will always have a special place as the language of the Tanakh, but the diaspora has scattered so far and picked up so many languages and traditions that a society that draws from all of it can't (and organically won't) be confined to any one.

That's also the kind of mysticism that would appeal to Acre ITTL - not Jerusalem, and not Tzfat at first, but Acre - and it's one of the ideas of the kollel katan that's attractive enough to the mainstream tbat by now most of the Galilee believes it too.

And fits with the rambam a d pirkei avot learn from everywhere as long as its right dont eorry that aristotle wasnt jewish worry about gravity and womens teeth.

Yes, the events of 1878 are a key part of forging the collectuve Galilean identity - the roots were already there, and past events also played a part, but the nagidah's death and the civil war were catalysts.

And it's "this time of Nisan," so it will always happen close to Passover - the day of the battle of Maghar, one day before the first seder, may be the most likely candidate. 20th-century Passover in the Yishuv ITTL might beookended by Independence Day at the beginning and Mimouna/Yom ha-Lechem at the end. Unless, of course, another day - the day the formal peace is made, for instance - becomes the national day instead.

On this map, the Egyptian alliance goes as far north as the Mutasarrifate of Lebanon and the southern two-thirds of what is labeled as the Levant Sanjak (I'm not sure why the mapmaker would call the Sanjak of Damascus that). All the Hejazi, Habeshi and Sudanese territories marked as Ottoman on the map are also Egyptian ITTL, and Libya is contested with Egypt having an under-the-table alliance with the Senussi state.

 

[saman bey]

Yes, the events of 1878 are a key part of forging the collectuve Galilean identity - the roots were already there, and past events also played a part, but the nagidah's death and the civil war were catalysts.

Fun to see a spontaneous outburst of nationalism
No need for bad romantic poetry or folklorism here!

 

[jacob ningen]

Fun to see a spontaneous outburst of nationalism
No need for bad romantic poetry or folklorism here!

Hey! i happen to like the jena romantics. But yeah its spontaneous and not planned like Grimmian-schlegellian.

 

[FriendlyGhost]

ancient mosaic-floored synagogues

I remember visiting a site in Jordan where a 1st or 2nd century AD synagogue had recently been discovered (this was twenty years ago). The mosaics on the floor were beautiful, even though they'd mostly been lost to time.

“Lucien Boyer,” it said. “Soldier of Napoleon, fisherman of the inland sea, mukhtar of Beit Mina, deputy to the Va’ad ha-Aretz; the Name reveals not His plans.” And beneath that, two dates: “Born Carry-le-Rouet, 11 March 1771; Died Beit Mina, 24 Tammuz 5605.”

That's a great link back to earlier in the story - and then Grant's related musing about the nagidah's thousands of years makes it all part of a greater whole - wonderfully evocative writing.

matzah

That probably wouldn't sell well to Christian pilgrims. It's hard enough to get Jews to eat it. (I like the stuff, but I recognize that I'm in the minority.)

My wife makes unleavened bread for our Easter meal which I think would qualify as matzah (it's just flour and water). I actually quite like it (it's softer, not crispy).

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Because such freelancing weakens the authority of thr court?

Yes. Can't have random seder guests going around doing the Sanhedrin's job. Especially without due process.

True unless you make it brei or matzah ball soup. But plain sheets are a hard sell

Well, matzah balls do go back to at least the 1840s (yes, I did just look up matzah ball history), so you could potentially have matzah ball soup with St. Peter's fish and there's your loaves and fishes right there. Without modern cooking tools, though, soups take a long time, so that still probably wouldn't work for an impromptu pilgrims' market.

And fits with the rambam a d pirkei avot learn from everywhere as long as its right dont eorry that aristotle wasnt jewish worry about gravity and womens teeth.

Probably goes back to Philo of Alexandria if you cast a broad enough net.

Fun to see a spontaneous outburst of nationalism
No need for bad romantic poetry or folklorism here!

The bad romantic poetry comes later. This is what will get romanticized if and when things go sour. I suspect, also, that the 17th-century Galilean theocracy will also be better in folk memory than it was in fact.

I remember visiting a site in Jordan where a 1st or 2nd century AD synagogue had recently been discovered (this was twenty years ago). The mosaics on the floor were beautiful, even though they'd mostly been lost to time.

And one difference ITTL is that these things are being unearthed at a time when they can affect the aesthetics of an emerging nation.

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

INNOCENTS ABROAD
VII: THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS
APRIL-MAY 1878​

The telegram was three days old. It had arrived in Tzfat just before the office closed for the last day of Passover, and when it reopened after the Day of Bread, it took another day to learn the serai where Grant was staying and send a messenger to Tiberias by train. And then it took the messenger two more hours of asking and searching the street before he found the general at the coffee-house where his party had taken refuge.

“From Washington?” Grant said, taking the envelope from the messenger’s hand. Surprise warred with curiosity, but it only took a moment for the latter to win, and he ripped the cover open and held the telegram at arm’s length for his aging eyes to read.

OBSERVE PEACE TALKS DAMASCUS STOP​

REPORT ANY MATTER TOUCHING U.S. INTERESTS STOP​

IF YOUR TRAVELS INTERRUPTED SERVES YOU RIGHT STOP​

HAYES​

“Someone’s been reading your newspaper copy, I see,” said Clemens, looking not at all sorry for being guilty of writing that copy. Young, who’d written some copy of his own, at least had the grace to look sheepish.

Grant, for his part, was more impressed than anything else – Hayes, it seemed, knew where the peace talks would be before anyone here did. “The poor honorary consuls,” he murmured – the United States’ men in Acre and Nablus had probably fielded more urgent telegrams in the past two weeks than in two ordinary years.

“We did want to visit Damascus anyway,” said Julia.

“But not so we could walk in the footsteps of Hayes.” Grant sighed. “Still and all, having answered another country’s call, I can hardly refuse my own.” He laid the telegram face-down on the table and called for a pen to make notes. “We’ll need someone who can interpret in diplomatic matters. And we should think on what about these talks America might want to know…”

_______​

In the days when Zahir al-Umar had led caravans to Damascus, the trip from the Galilee was a five-day journey. It still took two. The roads were much better than they’d been a hundred and fifty years before, but the railroad extension, though planned for two decades, hadn’t been built.

Still, the final hour of the journey made those two days worthwhile. The coach came over the crest of a hill, and there was the city, a forest of domes and minarets set alight by the late-afternoon sun and surrounded by a veritable garden of orange and pomegranate trees. Damascus was said to have as many mosques as Tzfat had synagogues or Nazareth churches, and it seemed to Grant that he could see every one of them.

“I know a better place than the caravanserai,” said Avram when the coach pulled up an hour later. He’d agreed to be Grant’s interpreter – it was past time to visit Damascus again, he said, and besides, Rahel had a year-old invitation from the city divan to consult on the establishment of a hakimas’ school. And though the eight-domed courtyard of the caravanserai was spectacular, Grant was willing to listen; the prices the touts were crying were expensive even by Cairo standards, and he could already tell that the roistering in the ground-floor restaurants would go on all night.

Avram led them to the other side of the souk and up the Straight Street to the Jaqmaq, a smaller hostel four hundred years old with a courtyard of tiles and fruit trees typical of the time. Grant remembered the name of the street, curiously enough, from the Bible; it was there, in a city ancient even then, that Ananias had been sent to the house of Judas to restore Saul of Tarsus’s sight. A number of buildings, including this one, claimed to be on the site of that very house.

“Many have walked in the footsteps of Jesus,” whispered Clemens when he was sure Julia couldn’t hear, “but it is given to few to share Judas’s mailing address.”

“A different Judas, I think,” said Avram.

“A complaint of the post office even in those days, I have no doubt.”

In Cairo, Avram had claimed the victory, but this time he had to confess himself beaten, and he took them to find a late cup of ayran downstairs.

_______​

The peace talks were taking place in the old Turkish citadel, near to the Omayyad mosque where – so the story said – the head of John the Baptist lay entombed. A soldier led the Grant party into a room that had been a Janissary dining hall in Zahir’s day, in which tables – maybe the same ones that the Janissaries had used as barricades in the siege that followed the Auspicious Incident – were arranged in a long U-shape.

The Emir of Damascus, Ibrahim al-Shuwayki, presided from the central table. He was from an old ashraf family noted for its scholars, and was himself a mufti of no mean repute; to Grant, his manner instantly suggested that of a university professor rather than a monarch. Learned as he was, though, he couldn’t resist his curiosity about the famous General Grant, and a place was soon found near his side.

That vantage point was an ideal one for surveying the assembly. Nearest to Grant were the emir and his council – an assortment of ulama, army officers, wealthy merchants, and the leading men of the Christian, Druze and Jewish communities. “The most important Damascene Jew is really over there, though,” whispered Avram, pointing to the next tables where the Galilean, Zaydani and Nabulsi delegations sat, and particularly to a clean-shaven man in a black cloak and fez who was seated next to the Emir of Nablus. “That’s Nissim Farhi – his family moved to Nablus eighty years ago, but they still know everything that goes on in this city. If the Galileans want something, they won’t go to any of the rabbis or bazaar merchants – they’ll go to him.”

Grant noted the man, and followed Avram’s gaze to the still more distant tables which held observers from farther away. Avram pointed out the younger brother of Prince Bashir of Jebel Lubnan seated amid a small entourage, a group of notables from the Jebel Druze, and a brace of British and French diplomats. Grant was mildly surprised not to see any Russians, but on second thought, Russia’s interests were mainly in Jerusalem while Britain and France had historic relationships in Syria to protect. He wondered again what American interests might be at stake here – and for that matter, what the Shihabs thought they might get out of this. But that would presumably reveal itself, or not, later.

For now, it became clear that this wasn’t the first day of negotiations and that much had already been decided. Between Emir Ibrahim’s questions about the Civil War and about religion in America – the proceedings were slow enough to allow many such digressions – Grant learned that the State of Galilee, as it would now be called, would remain part of the Zaydani emirate in name but that the emir would give up all his rights of appointment and that its laws and customs would be inviolate. Its rulers henceforward would be chosen solely by the Va’ad and the council of seven; its fundamental laws would have the force of a constitution. This had been the arrangement for some time in practical terms, but it would now be enshrined in solemn treaty.

There were details still being worked out – demarcating the borders that had been largely customary up to now, co-opting the Galilee into the customs union that it had hitherto been part of through the Zaydani state, setting rules for extradition, parceling out responsibility for maintaining the railroad and telegraph lines. These matters would occupy the day, and possibly the morrow. They were no doubt of great significance to the parties involved, but Grant was still grateful when, two hours after noon, the session adjourned.

In the afternoon, they wandered the city. Most of the buildings were plain on the outside, with filigree on the doors and upper-story windows but otherwise unadorned – but on the inside, both their furnishings and their ornamentation were lavish. The Omayyad mosque, the oldest and largest Grant had ever seen, dominated the Muslim quarter with its arched courtyard holding thousands, although John the Baptist’s head, if it were truly there, wasn’t on display. The emir’s palace gardens had fountains and shaded pools, tiled mosaics, intricate carvings that seemed to blend with the fruit trees. And then there were the bazaars.

The Grants had seen markets aplenty in Egypt and the Holy Land, but Damascus proved they still had the capacity for surprise. The bazaars were as large as any in Nablus or Tzfat – one devoted solely to goldsmiths, one to silk, one to weavers, one to weaponsmiths – and they were as cosmopolitan, but in a different way – they looked to Persia and Mesopotamia as well as the lands to the west and south, and their crafts were as ornamental and traditional as Nabulsi crafts might have been fifty years before. Here, too, Grant was recognized – one gunsmith, from a family that had made weapons since the days of Damascus steel, presented the famous general with a pair of elaborately chased pistols, and only after much insistence agreed to accept payment for them.

But the day ended once again on Straight Street. It was there, toward nightfall, that Rahel met with the city council and several of the leading Damascene doctors. The meeting-place had once been one of several Sabbatean synagogues at the edges of the Jewish quarter, but most Sabbateans had left for Aleppo or Turkey after the war forty years past; only two now remained in service, and the congregants of this one had granted it to the city to use as a hospital. Rahel, and Julia with her, found it impressive; it was old-fashioned but the doctors knew their business, and it was kept scrupulously clean to a standard that hospitals in America and Europe often failed to meet.

“You will have the same problem we started with in Egypt,” Rahel said – “the more wealthy and learned the family, the less they will want to send their daughters out into the world. But Damascus is a smaller city than Cairo or Alexandria, and there are many hakimas now who are qualified to teach. They can arrange classes for girls in private homes, and hold anatomy lessons and viewing of female patients in privacy.” Left unspoken was that there was likely to be less resistance among Jewish families; like the Jews of Egypt, they would see the women the nagidah had sponsored to study medicine and would come to their own conclusions about how respectable such study was.

“I’ll have to make sure the nagid – it seems so strange to say it that way – sends Muslim and Christian women – Druze women too – to teach here,” she said much later over lamb and rice and labneh in the courtyard of their hostel.

“Here is your American interest,” Julia added. “We should help these schools – and learn from them.”

Grant couldn’t find it in himself to disagree. And he thought he could convince Hayes, at least of the first part.

_______​

The next morning, as Grant predicted, was indeed spent haggling over more details of the new order, and the afternoon again was at the hospital. In the evening, they went to a concert-hall – an innovation of the previous Shuwayki emir, and still controversial among the ulama – where the national orchestra played classical Arab symphonies on the oud, rababa, darbouka and flutes.

The next morning – which, it soon became apparent, would be the final day of the conference – the negotiations took a different turn.

“This peace is not only between the Galilee, the Banu Zaydan, and Nablus,” said Emir Ibrahim, still sounding most professorial even though he’d risen from his chair and made his voice carry. “We are here to make a peace that will prevail throughout these lands, and for that, there must be a forum where we can learn what our differences are and work to resolve them. I propose that we establish a council of the Levant – that the rulers of each state meet once a year for three days in a city of their choosing, and that in time of crisis, any one of those rulers may call a special meeting. And I propose that from the moment a meeting is called until it ends, there will be a truce throughout the land that may not be violated.”

Cheers rang throughout the hall – it was obvious that this, too, had already been discussed. There were speeches and motions, but in the end, the proposal passed by acclamation. The council, so far as Grant could tell, would have no power other than to talk – but it would provide the forum that the emir envisioned, and might forestall future wars at least for a few days. Had such a council been in place after the nagidah died, hundreds who were dead might still be alive.

“Now I see why Mount Lebanon and the Jebel Druze are here…” he murmured.

“And do you see,” said Avram, “why this peace was made in Damascus and not in Cairo?”

Grant didn’t, but then suddenly he did. It would have been logical for Cairo, the seat of the Egyptian alliance, to be the place where the peace was negotiated, but by meeting in Damascus and establishing their own council, the Levantine states were taking charge of their own affairs. This wasn’t a declaration of independence – far from it – but the American colonies, too, had begun making arrangements among themselves long before the Revolution.

And if new relationships here were being made, the United States could play a part in them.

Yes, he thought, Hayes should know about this.

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Notes to part 7:

As Young tells it, the Grant party IOTL was charmed by Damascus – its ancient heritage, its beauty of the city as seen from the hills to the west, the cosmopolitan bazaar, the hospitality of its residents, and the grand mosque with minarets that were “miracles of graceful orientalism” (this is also a fair description of Young’s writing). They found the city to have “more life at times than in either Constantinople or Cairo” and, although they had “been in the East some time, Damascus [was] so vividly Oriental” to hold their interest.

ITTL, the Grants have seen quite a bit of cosmopolitanism in the Levant, in contrast to the impoverished and underpopulated region they saw IOTL. On the other hand, Damascus is still the most ancient city they’ve seen – going back, as Young says, not only to Jesus’s or King David’s time but to Abraham’s time and even before – and as the newest part of the Levant to be incorporated into the Egyptian alliance, it’s more traditional than the other cities they’ve recently visited. The railroad hasn’t reached Damascus yet – it’s planned, but not yet built – and its politics and social mores are much less changed from the 18th century.

Damascus ITTL is also a somewhat happier (or at least less unhappy) city than Young found it. He remarked on the fanaticism of the Muslim population and the sullenness of the Christians and Jews leading to bad blood between these communities, which IOTL was an aftereffect of the Tanzimat and the 1840 Damascus affair. ITTL, there has been no Damascus affair to stir up acute tension, and the Shuwayki emirs, following the Zaydani and Galilean examples (their family has a historic connection to Zahir al-Umar) have kept a lid on tensions by including Jewish, Christian and Druze members in the city and regional councils. This hasn’t been a panacea – the more conservative members of the ulama want to preserve the traditional hierarchy, the Christians are as IOTL resentful of their loss of relative privilege as compared to other non-Muslims, and the conflicts between the Christian and Druze populations in Lebanon have their echoes in Syria, so there have been occasional riots – but the leaders most likely to cause trouble have been bought off. The independence of the Jebel Druze also serves as compensation to the Druze for the growing Maronite dominance of Lebanon.

The bottom line is that the city the Grants are visiting ITTL is a prosperous marketplace and center of Islamic scholarship which isn’t as developed as the emirates to the south but is slowly taking care of its unfinished business. Whether they find it as charming as IOTL is an exercise for the reader.

2. Straight Street in Damascus isn’t quite the oldest street still in use – parts of the Appian Way and the Canopic Way of Alexandria are older – or even the oldest street that hasn’t been renamed, which appears to be Tripodon Street in Athens. But it’s still one of a very few streets that someone with a map from biblical times would be able to find. This OTL map from the 1880s is mostly accurate ITTL too, for those who want to get the lay of the land.

3. The Omayyad Mosque of Damascus is one of several claimants to the head of John the Baptist, and Young gave credence to the claim during the Grant’s OTL visit.

4. As seen in previous stories, most recently The Feast of Atonement from 1840, the Sabbateans were strong in Damascus at one time but most of them decamped to Constantinople, Anatolia and northern Syria following the Zaydani-Egyptian conquest. The Jewish population has also lost leadership due to the Farhi family moving to Nablus, and is now led by a coalition of rabbis, wealthy merchants and other notables.

5. As Grant correctly guesses by the end, Damascus was chosen as the site for the peace negotiations for two reasons: it’s neutral ground, and it isn’t Cairo. The peace is as much about the Levantine states asserting the right to settle their own affairs as about determining the Galilee’s relationship with the Zaydani and Nabulsi emirates.

 

[jacob ningen]

INNOCENTS ABROAD
VII: THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS
APRIL-MAY 1878​

The telegram was three days old. It had arrived in Tzfat just before the office closed for the last day of Passover, and when it reopened after the Day of Bread, it took another day to learn the serai where Grant was staying and send a messenger to Tiberias by train. And then it took the messenger two more hours of asking and searching the street before he found the general at the coffee-house where his party had taken refuge.

“From Washington?” Grant said, taking the envelope from the messenger’s hand. Surprise warred with curiosity, but it only took a moment for the latter to win, and he ripped the cover open and held the telegram at arm’s length for his aging eyes to read.

OBSERVE PEACE TALKS DAMASCUS STOP​

REPORT ANY MATTER TOUCHING U.S. INTERESTS STOP​

IF YOUR TRAVELS INTERRUPTED SERVES YOU RIGHT STOP​

HAYES​

you played the diplomat now dont desert your post is what hes saying.

“Someone’s been reading your newspaper copy, I see,” said Clemens, looking not at all sorry for being guilty of writing that copy. Young, who’d written some copy of his own, at least had the grace to look sheepish.

Grant, for his part, was more impressed than anything else – Hayes, it seemed, knew where the peace talks would be before anyone here did. “The poor honorary consuls,” he murmured – the United States’ men in Acre and Nablus had probably fielded more urgent telegrams in the past two weeks than in two ordinary years.

“We did want to visit Damascus anyway,” said Julia.

“But not so we could walk in the footsteps of Hayes.” Grant sighed. “Still and all, having answered another country’s call, I can hardly refuse my own.” He laid the telegram face-down on the table and called for a pen to make notes. “We’ll need someone who can interpret in diplomatic matters. And we should think on what about these talks America might want to know…”

_______​

In the days when Zahir al-Umar had led caravans to Damascus, the trip from the Galilee was a five-day journey. It still took two. The roads were much better than they’d been a hundred and fifty years before, but the railroad extension, though planned for two decades, hadn’t been built.

what is preventing it.

Still, the final hour of the journey made those two days worthwhile. The coach came over the crest of a hill, and there was the city, a forest of domes and minarets set alight by the late-afternoon sun and surrounded by a veritable garden of orange and pomegranate trees. Damascus was said to have as many mosques as Tzfat had synagogues or Nazareth churches, and it seemed to Grant that he could see every one of them.

“I know a better place than the caravanserai,” said Avram when the coach pulled up an hour later. He’d agreed to be Grant’s interpreter – it was past time to visit Damascus again, he said, and besides, Rahel had a year-old invitation from the city divan to consult on the establishment of a hakimas’ school. And though the eight-domed courtyard of the caravanserai was spectacular, Grant was willing to listen; the prices the touts were crying were expensive even by Cairo standards, and he could already tell that the roistering in the ground-floor restaurants would go on all night.

Avram led them to the other side of the souk and up the Straight Street to the Jaqmaq, a smaller hostel four hundred years old with a courtyard of tiles and fruit trees typical of the time. Grant remembered the name of the street, curiously enough, from the Bible; it was there, in a city ancient even then, that Ananias had been sent to the house of Judas to restore Saul of Tarsus’s sight. A number of buildings, including this one, claimed to be on the site of that very house.

“Many have walked in the footsteps of Jesus,” whispered Clemens when he was sure Julia couldn’t hear, “but it is given to few to share Judas’s mailing address.”

“A different Judas, I think,” said Avram.

“A complaint of the post office even in those days, I have no doubt.”

True even then or Alexander

In Cairo, Avram had claimed the victory, but this time he had to confess himself beaten, and he took them to find a late cup of ayran downstairs.

_______​

The peace talks were taking place in the old Turkish citadel, near to the Omayyad mosque where – so the story said – the head of John the Baptist lay entombed. A soldier led the Grant party into a room that had been a Janissary dining hall in Zahir’s day, in which tables – maybe the same ones that the Janissaries had used as barricades in the siege that followed the Auspicious Incident – were arranged in a long U-shape.

The Emir of Damascus, Ibrahim al-Shuwayki, presided from the central table. He was from an old ashraf family noted for its scholars, and was himself a mufti of no mean repute; to Grant, his manner instantly suggested that of a university professor rather than a monarch.

why not both

Learned as he was, though, he couldn’t resist his curiosity about the famous General Grant, and a place was soon found near his side.

That vantage point was an ideal one for surveying the assembly. Nearest to Grant were the emir and his council – an assortment of ulama, army officers, wealthy merchants, and the leading men of the Christian and Jewish communities. “The most important Damascene Jew is really over there, though,” whispered Avram, pointing to the next tables where the Galilean, Zaydani and Nabulsi delegations sat, and particularly to a clean-shaven man in a black cloak and fez who was seated next to the Emir of Nablus. “That’s Nissim Farhi – his family moved to Nablus eighty years ago, but they still know everything that goes on in this city. If the Galileans want something, they won’t go to any of the rabbis or bazaar merchants – they’ll go to him.”

Grant noted the man, and followed Avram’s gaze to the still more distant tables which held observers from farther away. Avram pointed out the younger brother of Prince Bashir of Jebel Lubnan, seated amid a small entourage, a group of notables from the Jebel Druze, and a brace of British and French diplomats. Grant was mildly surprised not to see any Russians, but on second thought, Russia’s interests were mainly in Jerusalem while Britain and France had historic relationships in Syria to protect. He wondered again what American interests might be at stake here – and for that matter, what the Shihabs thought they might get out of this. But that would presumably reveal itself, or not, later.

For now, it became clear that this wasn’t the first day of negotiations and that much had already been decided.

Hayes will be frustrated but thats the fault of communication and festivals.

Between Emir Ibrahim’s questions about the Civil War and about religion in America – the proceedings were slow enough to allow many such digressions – Grant learned that the State of Galilee, as it would now be called, would remain part of the Zaydani emirate in name but that the emir would give up all his rights of appointment and that its laws and customs would be inviolate. Its rulers henceforward would be chosen solely by the Va’ad and the council of seven; its fundamental laws would have the force of a constitution. This had been the arrangement for some time in practical terms, but it would now be enshrined in solemn treaty.

cunning of reason

There were details still being worked out – demarcating the borders that had been largely customary up to now, co-opting the Galilee into the customs union that it had hitherto been part of through the Zaydani state, setting rules for extradition, parceling out responsibility for maintaining the railroad and telegraph lines. These matters would occupy the day, and possibly the morrow. They were no doubt of great significance to the parties involved, but Grant was still grateful when, two hours after noon, the session adjourned.

In the afternoon, they wandered the city. Most of the buildings were plain on the outside, with filigree on the doors and upper-story windows but otherwise unadorned – but on the inside, both their furnishings and their ornamentation were lavish. The Omayyad mosque, the oldest and largest Grant had ever seen, dominated the Muslim quarter with its arched courtyard holding thousands, although John the Baptist’s head, if it were truly there, wasn’t on display. The emir’s palace gardens had fountains and shaded pools, tiled mosaics, intricate carvings that seemed to blend with the fruit trees. And then there were the bazaars.

The Grants had seen markets aplenty in Egypt and the Holy Land, but Damascus proved they still had the capacity for surprise. The bazaars were as large as any in Nablus or Tzfat – one devoted solely to goldsmiths, one to silk, one to weavers, one to weaponsmiths – and they were as cosmopolitan, but in a different way – they looked to Persia and Mesopotamia as well as the lands to the west and south, and their crafts were as ornamental and traditional as Nabulsi crafts might have been fifty years before. Here, too, Grant was recognized – one gunsmith, from a family that had made weapons since the days of Damascus steel, presented the famous general with a pair of elaborately chased pistols, and only after much insistence agreed to accept payment for them.

But the day ended once again on Straight Street. It was there, toward nightfall, that Rahel met with the city council and several of the leading Damascene doctors. The meeting-place had once been one of several Sabbatean synagogues at the edges of the Jewish quarter, but most Sabbateans had left for Aleppo or Turkey after the war forty years past; only two now remained in service, and the congregants of this one had granted it to the city to use as a hospital. Rahel, and Julia with her, found it impressive; it was old-fashioned but the doctors knew their business, and it was kept scrupulously clean to a standard that hospitals in America and Europe often failed to meet.

“You will have the same problem we started with in Egypt,” Rahel said – “the more wealthy and learned the family, the less they will want to send their daughters out into the world. But Damascus is a smaller city than Cairo or Alexandria, and there are many hakimas now who are qualified to teach. They can arrange classes for girls in private homes, and hold anatomy lessons and viewing of female patients in privacy.” Left unspoken was that there was likely to be less resistance among Jewish families; like the Jews of Egypt, they would see the women the nagidah had sponsored to study medicine and would come to their own conclusions about how respectable such study was.

“I’ll have to make sure the nagid – it seems so strange to say it that way – sends Muslim and Christian women – Druze women too – to teach here,” she said much later over lamb and rice and labneh in the courtyard of their hostel.

“Here is your American interest,” Julia added. “We should help these schools – and learn from them.”

Grant couldn’t find it in himself to disagree. And he thought he could convince Hayes, at least of the first part.

I think he was thinking more on the trade agreements but it is still good.

_______​

The next morning, as Grant predicted, was indeed spent haggling over more details of the new order, and the afternoon again was at the hospital. In the evening, they went to a concert-hall – an innovation of the previous Shuwayki emir, and still controversial among the ulama – where the national orchestra played classical Arab symphonies on the oud, rababa, darbouka and flutes.

The next morning – which, it soon became apparent, would be the final day of the conference – the negotiations took a different turn.

“This peace is not only between the Galilee, the Banu Zaydan, and Nablus,” said Emir Ibrahim, still sounding most professorial even though he’d risen from his chair and made his voice carry. “We are here to make a peace that will prevail throughout these lands, and for that, there must be a forum where we can learn what our differences are and work to resolve them. I propose that we establish a council of the Levant – that the rulers of each state meet once a year for three days in a city of their choosing, and that in time of crisis, any one of those rulers may call a special meeting. And I propose that from the moment a meeting is called until it ends, there will be a truce throughout the land that may not be violated.”

will it be rotated or permanent

Cheers rang throughout the hall – it was obvious that this, too, had already been discussed. There were speeches and motions, but in the end, the proposal passed by acclamation. The council, so far as Grant could tell, would have no power other than to talk – but it would provide the forum that the emir envisioned, and might forestall future wars at least for a few days. Had such a council been in place after the nagidah died, hundreds who were dead might still be alive.

probably and it will make the succession less of a crisis

“Now I see why Mount Lebanon and the Jebel Druze are here…” he murmured.

“And do you see,” said Avram, “why this peace was made in Damascus and not in Cairo?”

Grant didn’t, but then suddenly he did. It would have been logical for Cairo, the seat of the Egyptian alliance, to be the place where the peace was negotiated, but by meeting in Damascus and establishing their own council, the Levantine states were taking charge of their own affairs. This wasn’t a declaration of independence – far from it – but the American colonies, too, had begun making arrangements among themselves long before the Revolution.

Albany conference.

And if new relationships here were being made, the United States could play a part in them.

France theres not going to be a Revolution so US grant will not have the problem of have you forgotten Grant

Yes, he thought, Hayes should know about this.

 

[Yeiro]

Well intersting developments are happening in the levant curious about what would come next

 

[SpaceRome]

I wonder what Aleppo's ultimate fate will be ITTL - it's not inconceivable for the Aleppo Vilayet to end up as part of a post-Ottoman Turkish nation-state, without Damascus as a capital of a northern Syrian state.

Besides that, excellent update!

 

[Beatriz]

In the long run Sudan and the Red Sea territories may be granted autonomy

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

you played the diplomat now dont desert your post is what hes saying.

Yup - that and "you brought the United States' name into this, you can damn well see if we can get anything out of it."

what is preventing it.

Partly Damascus being a relatively new member of the regional alliance, but mainly the expense and logistics of getting the tracks over the Golan and the southern Syrian mountains. Damascus is a politically and economically important city, though, so the route will be built soon enough (likewise with the connection to Port Said, which has also been delayed due to the difficulties of crossing the Sinai).

I think he was thinking more on the trade agreements but it is still good.

He gets the hook for the trade agreements at the end, with the preview of the new internal arrangements being made by the Levantine states - the US will have a chance to steal a march on Britain and France as these relationships develop. But the hakimas' school could also be a socially influential idea in the US even if one is never actually founded there (the gender segregation of 19th-century Arab Muslim society actually made a women's medical school more practical than in the West, both IOTL and ITTL).

will it be rotated or permanent

That's one of the things that will be left for later, although the two most likely alternatives are a rotation or a permanent seat in Jerusalem. Which one might depend on whether, over the medium to long term, the council evolves into something that needs offices.

Well intersting developments are happening in the levant curious about what would come next

I wonder what Aleppo's ultimate fate will be ITTL - it's not inconceivable for the Aleppo Vilayet to end up as part of a post-Ottoman Turkish nation-state, without Damascus as a capital of a northern Syrian state.

In the long run Sudan and the Red Sea territories may be granted autonomy

The Red Sea territories will be very hard for Egypt to hold in the long term - even at this point, it mainly holds them through local vassals and has little control of the inland regions beyond the ports. It will probably have to let those go sooner or later, with or without military and trade deals. It might try harder to hold on to and integrate Sudan proper, but that too won't be easy once you get much beyond Khartoum or into the peripheral eastern and western territories.

Much of the Aleppo Vilayet ended up part of Turkey IOTL, and trade with Anatolian cities is important to its economy; ITTL, it's entirely possible for the southern part of the vilayet, including Aleppo city, to also gravitate in that direction. But much will also depend on what happens to the Ottoman Empire in 1880-1920 - at this point it's outside the butterfly net, so there's no guarantee that it will end up similarly to OTL. (I'm probably going to lift the butterfly net entirely after 1905 or at least after 1927, because there are certain mid-20th-century events that I don't want to lock myself into.)

Anyway, we'll find out more soon about developments in the Levant and elsewhere - there will be one more installment of Innocents Abroad, and then the story will jump to 1905.

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Obligatory comment so that the final story and notes for Innocents Abroad don't split the page:

Grant is going to leave the Holy Land shortly after Lag b'Omer, which means he's going to see Lag b'Omer. We've already established that, ITTL, this is an occasion for athletic games as well as the traditional bonfire and dancing. The question is - where?

IOTL, the main Lag b'Omer pilgrimage site is Mount Meron in the upper Galilee, where people gather at the tomb of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai who reputedly died on that day. The thing is that the association of Lag b'Omer with Shimon bar Yochai's death resulted from an 18th-century typographical error. We could assume, if we want, that the error still happens - but ITTL, part of the Or Tamid's job is to notice and correct such errors and to make sure they don't give rise to mistaken customs.

So there are several options.

One is for Mount Meron to be the site anyway. According to the same article that discusses the Rashbi typo, pilgrims already visited other tombs on Mount Meron at Pesach Sheni, which is four days earlier, and it would be easy enough for a Lag b'Omer gathering to grow out of that. Mount Meron also has other advantages - it's the highest mountain in the Galilee, close to population centers, plenty of open spaces. OTOH, a mountaintop might not be the best place for athletic fields.

Another possibility is not to have a main site at all - we already know there are local and district celebrations, and maybe that's all there are. But I have my doubts about that - the Galilee isn't that big, and the natural tendency would be for there to be a central site where the championship games are held.

Or the main celebration could be in another place. Lag b'Omer is closely associated with Rabbi Akiva, so the games could be held near his tomb in Tiberias - in a major population center and convenient to the trains, but it gets pretty damn hot in Tiberias in May. The holiday is also associated with talmidim (students), so the festivities could be held in the forests below Tzfat, close to the Or Tamid.

Any other ideas? This is particularly for @jacob ningen but all are welcome.