There Are Only Forty Turkish Families, And
Twenty Enzairie.
The inhabitants make cotton cloth for shirts and gowns,
and have a few dyeing houses.
The principal production of their fields
is olives. The chief of the village is an Emir of the Druses, who is
dependent both on the Pasha of Damascus and the Emir Beshir. He lives in
a well-built Serai, which in time of war might serve as a castle. The
following villages belong to the territory of Hasbeya: Ain Sharafe, El
Kefeir, Ain Annia, Shoueia, Ain Tinte, El Kankabe, El Heberie, Rasheyat
el Fukhar, Ferdis, Khereibe, El Merie, Shiba, Banias, Ain Fid, Zoura,
Ain Kamed Banias, Djoubeta, Fershouba, Kefaer Hamam, El Waeshdal, El
Zouye.
The neighbourhood of Hasbeya is interesting to the mineralogist. I was
told by the priest that a metal was found near it, of which nobody knew
the name, nor made any use. Having procured a labourer, I found after
digging in the Wady a few hundred paces to the E. of the village,
several small pieces of a metallic substance, which I took to be a
native amalgam of mercury. According to the description given me,
cinnabar is also found here, but we could discover no specimen of it
after half an hour's digging. The ground all around, and the spring near
the village, are
SOUK EL KAHN.
[p.34] strongly impregnated with iron; the rock is sandstone, of a dark
red colour. The other mineral curiosities are, a number of wells of
bitumen Judaicum, in the Wady at one hour below the village on the west
side, after recrossing the bridge; they are situated upon the declivity
of a chalky hill; the bitumen is found in large veins at about twenty
feet below the surface. The pits are from six to twelve feet in
diameter; the workmen descend by a rope and wheel, and in hewing out the
bitumen, they leave columns of that substance at different intervals, as
a support to the earth above; pieces of several Rotolas in weight
each[The Rotola is about five pounds.] are brought up. There are upwards
of twenty-five of these pits or wells, but the greater part of them are
abandoned and overgrown with shrubs. I saw only one, that appeared to
have been recently worked; they work only during the summer months. The
bitumen is called Hommar, and the wells, Biar el Hommar [Arabic]. The
Emir possesses the monopoly of the bitumen; he alone works the pits, and
sells the produce to the merchants of Damascus, Beirout, and Aleppo. It
was now at thirty-three paras the Rotola, or about two-pence-halfpenny
the pound.
I left Hasbeya on the same day, and continued to descend the valley on
the side of the river. Half an hour from the bridge, I arrived at Souk
el Khan. In the hills to the right is the village Kankabe. Souk el Khan
is a large ruined Khan, where the inhabitants, to the distance of one
day's journey round, assemble every Tuesday to hold a market.
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