across. They seem to have suffered much in Jerusalem; their poverty and their lack of protection from any European Power having exposed them to hardships and injustice, especially from their neighbours, the Copts. I was privileged to visit their convent and to make some enquiries among them, in the company of Dr. Eno Littman of Strasburg, Professor at Princeton, U.S.A., who was translating a work, published in 1900, by the Abyssinian Deacon Verdan, which makes the interesting statement that the Empress Helena gave the site of the finding of the Cross to the Ethiopian monks, "who built a house and lived in it till the Muslims came to power, and with them suffering and death for the poor Abyssinians." And when the Pasha, the Governor of the Holy City, heard this, he came into the royal king's convent, and burnt the Ethiopian books with the help of an Egyptian, Gabra Kanota. There was only one monk left, and he went back to his country to report what had happened, and how the Egyptians were already taking advantage of the melancholy state of things. So began the quarrel which lasted till to-day.

There is probably a historical basis for the story which the Deacon relates, although he adorns it with much fantasy and has little regard for chronology. In 1888 almost all the occupants of the convent died from Egyptian plague, and the books and other properties were, in fact, burnt by the Government to prevent infection. There is no doubt that the monks were in great poverty till a few years ago, when the generosity of King Menelik and of the Queen-who loved Jerusalem and built herself a palace, later occupied by an English Jewish school, which, as the teachers were German, survived the War-enabled them to erect a church and convent outside the town, in place of those they had lost. The Deacon has also a story about the closing up of their entrance to the Holy Sepulchre, which must refer to the fact that in the days of their poverty the Copts took from them the Chapel of Saint Michael, which deprived them of the means of entrance to the court. At the same time the Armenians possessed themselves of the Chapel of Helena, which had been theirs so long. Both have since been practically disused; it is said for fear of raising questions of ownership.

It may be that the chapel was mortgaged to the Armenians, but careful enquiry has revealed nothing certain. An old Jerusalem resident related that he remembered the time when the Abyssinians received at the Armenian convent a daily allowance of rice and bread, and Consul Finn refers to the fact that at

an earlier date-about 1855-the Abyssinians were helped by the Armenians as some sort of return for the Chapel of Helena, which they held in pawn. It has never been returned, and the Abyssinians may find it difficult to retrieve their ancient heritage, as the Armenians may be regarded as the Christian usurers of the Near East. (Stirring Times, Finn, II., 272-81.)

The Muslims had a sort of superstitious fear of these gentle people, based upon a tradition that the time will come when they will arrive in such numbers that the fortifications of Jerusalem will be demolished by means of each one carrying away a single stone. "The Copts," says Finn, "could always count upon the help of the Egyptian Muslims and of the Turks in any spoliation or aggression which might bring them under the Muslim domination. Sometimes the Abyssinians came to the British Consulate to show the wretched food which had been given to them at the kitchen of the wealthy Armenian convent, and ask us to mediate, that a better quality might be bestowed, and in sufficient quantity to appease their hunger." It would surely be a worthy action to enquire into the conditions under which this Armenian oppression has been so long carried on. The Armenian convent is known to be immensely rich, and their ecclesiastical trésor is one of the most magnificent in Europe, though not often shown in its entirety, except to very privileged persons.

A Lazarist missionary in Abyssinia (1870-1900), Pater Coulbeaux, has published much interesting matter in relation to the association of the Abyssinians with Jerusalem, much of it being taken from the imperial registers. They seem to have been fond of pilgrimages from very early times, considering even a journey to Egypt as such, as a country which had sheltered our Lord. They treasure a letter, dated 356, alleged to have been addressed to two disciples of Frumentius, bishop and king, from the Emperor Constantine, thus giving some colour to the story of their early association with the Holy Sepulchre.

We hear of a pilgrimage of two hundred coming to the Holy Sepulchre on their return from a visit to the Emperor Justinian at Constantinople in the sixth century. We also hear of a King Kaleb, too old to end his days in the Jerusalem convent, sending his crown to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, which fits in with the account given by Antonius Placentius, who visited the Holy Sepulchre at the end of the sixth century, and describes the "imperial crowns of gold and the ornaments of empresses,' which he saw hanging upon iron rods upon the outer walls of the nb.

The Abyssinians allege that in the seventh century they were in possession of the so-called House of Caiaphas, which also is now in the hands of the Armenians. It stood upon Mount Sion, near the Church of the Last Supper, and I remember that about 1912 an Abyssinian cross was excavated near this spot. Many pilgrims, from the Bordeaux pilgrims onwards, speak of the church, but none mentions ownership except Theoderich (1172), who ascribes it to the Armenians. (Le Palais de Caiphe, Pater Urbain Coppens, 1904, p. 35.)

Remains of property said to be Abyssinian have been discovered near Nablus, and in Nazareth, where there is a well now in the hands of the Greeks, who are still bound to entertain Abyssinian pilgrims. The Crusaders regarded them as schismatic, which added to their sufferings. A letter still exists, addressed by Pope Alexander to the King, who had asked for a church in Rome and an altar in Jerusalem. The Church of S. Stefano de Mori behind the apse of S. Peter's is still theirs, but in Jerusalem they were less fortunate. Marco Polo mentions that King Yagba Sion was anxious to visit the Holy Sepulchre, and quotes a letter in which he is described as "the king of kings of Ethiopia, of the holy city of Jerusalem, and of the grave of our Lord Jesus Christ." In the fourteenth century the king Wadem Raad wished for the protection in Jerusalem of the Pope Clemens V. Still, although in Jerusalem there have long been a score or so of Uniat Abyssinians, they have come little under the influence of Rome. A Jesuit mission to their country under Portuguese auspices had little success among them.

They have no bishop in Jerusalem, only an abbot, and in addition to two convents and some huts with a tiny chapel among the ruins of the buildings of the Knights of S. John, near the Holy Sepulchre, they have a handsome new church outside the walls, in which their interesting ritual, with its curious Jewish analogies, may be studied.

About the time of the oriental Easter one has often seen a few strange-looking monks, said to occupy certain caves east of the Jordan, during the Lenten Fast of fifty-six days. They are said. to leave their homes only to ascend the Mount of Temptation during the week before Easter, going on to Jerusalem to be present at the ceremony of the Foot-washing on Maunday Thursday. The Abyssinian pilgrims used to take part in the Epiphany ceremonial of the Blessing of the Waters of the Jordan a little further up the river than the Russians and others of the Orthodox churches.

The number of Abyssinian religious in Jerusalem before the War was about seventy-five, including about a score of nuns. They have collected a library of some three hundred or more volumes, since the unhappy destruction of their former one. This is kept in the new building known as the Garden Convent. Their convent within the town, known as that of The Sultan, excited the cupidity of the Copts a few years ago, so that they put up over the entrance, "The Sultan's Convent is the property of the Copts." A deacon removed this, and a disturbance followed, but the Turkish Government maintained the rights of the Abyssinians.

NOTE. The pilgrim Faber relates (op. cit. I. 373) that in his time (1480-83) "the Chapel of Adam in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was in the hands of the Nubian Christians (Abyssinians), who conduct their services therein and say that King Melchior, one of the Magi, was a king of Nubia and that when he had drawn nigh to Jerusalem he would not enter the city, but was entertained near Mount Calvary, and that therefore this place has been assigned to them from old times."

This chapel, however, seems often to have changed hands. Tobler tells us that in the fourteenth century it belonged to the Georgians. In the sixteenth century we hear that it passed into the hands of the Copts. In the first half of the seventeenth it was occupied by the Greeks, who in the year 1690 gave it up to the Latins.

It is often difficult to trust the pilgrims' reports on questions of ownership. Santo Brasca, the fellow-traveller of Faber, alleged that the Chapel of the Copts which he shows in a sketch of the Holy Sepulchre was built by the Ethiopian friars or Abyssinians "-obviously a confusion of two churches, both from Africa.

See Casola's Pilgrimage (1494) p. 275: Faber I. 435 Santo Brasca Viaggio al Santa Sepulchro.

CHAPTER VIII

ABOUT HOSPITALITY

Meet welcome to her guest she made
And every courteous rite was paid
That hospitality could claim,

Though all unasked his birth and name.
Such, then, the reverence to a guest,
That fellest foe might join the feast
And from his deadliest foeman's door
Unquestioned turn, the banquet o'er.

The Lady of the Lake (Scott).

WHEN We speak of Arab hospitality we have to remember that it is a principle of the Muslim religion. It is not the "cutlet for cutlet" of ordinary society; it is sharing, not merely giving; it is a recognition of need, whether that of the poor or of the traveller. He, as well as the host, is dependent upon the bounty of Allah from day to day. What another needs to-day, he may need to-morrow. Doughty represents this in his own picturesque way. "They speak of themselves," he says, " as the guests of God, deyuf Allah, spending life's brief day under the blue canopy of God's great tent. These flitting houses in the wilderness, dwelt in by robbers, are also sanctuaries-theuf Allah," for it is the hospitality of the desert which is, of course, the supreme idea of hospitality—the most necessary to the guest, the most costly to the host. The wanderer, the refugee, the pursued, has only to take hold of the tent-rope-that of the Shech by preference, as the strongest man in the tribe-and say, dakhilak (I am thy guest) or ana bi wejhak ya shech! (I am under thy countenance, O Shech!) or ana nuzilak (I have alighted at your tent), to be absolutely certain of protection and hospitality. Even if an enemy, no hand can be raised against him for two nights and a day. There are three kinds of guests-the dafe il 'alaf, the dafe ittalaf, and the dafe Allah. (The pretty play upon words is lost in translation.) These are those of rank, to whom you are bound to give, who count less in the sight of Allah than the rest;