Page:PhilipK.Hitti-SyriaAShortHistory.djvu/203

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Syria

spoke French or Latin. The tolerance, breadth of view and trend toward secularization which usually result from mingling of men of different faiths and cultures seem in this case to have accrued to the Western rather than to the Eastern society. On the social and economic level Christians and Moslems mixed freely, traded horses, dogs and falcons, ex- changed safe-conducts and even intermarried. A new progeny from native mothers arose and was designated Pullani. Many modern Lebanese and Palestinians have inherited blue eyes and fair hair, while certain Christian families have preserved traditions or names suggesting European origins.

In his memoirs Usamah ibn-Munqidh (1095-1188) gives the clearest first-hand picture of interfaith association. A friend of Saladin, Usamah defended his picturesque ancestral castle on the Orontes, Shayzar, against Assassins and Franks. Never did this castle fall into Crusading hands. He himself fraternized with Franks in time of peace. To him the comparatively free sex relations among the Franks, 'who are void of all zeal and jealousy 5 , were simply shocking. Their methods of ordeal by water and duel were far inferior to the Moslem judicial procedure of the day. Especially crude by contrast was their system of medication. Two members of a Frankish family at al-Munaytirah were properly treated by a native Christian physician until a European was summoned. The latter laid the ailing leg of one of the patients on a block of wood and bade a knight chop it off with one stroke of the axe. He then shaved the head of the other patient, a woman, made a deep cruciform incision on it and rubbed the wound with salt — to drive off the devil. Both patients expired on the spot. The native physician, himself the narrator of the story, con- cludes with these words : 'Thereupon I asked them whether my services were needed any longer, and when they replied in the negative I returned home, having learned of their medicine what I knew not before.'

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