Works and Customs in Palestine Volume I/1: The Course of the Year and the Course of the Day Second Half: Autumn and Winter

By Gustaf Dalman

Volume I; Part 1, Autumn and Winter, dealt with agriculture in general, because the seasons of Palestine could not be described without describing the various farming tasks connected to them, and the religious customs associated with them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Al Nasher Technical Services
• Release date: May 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9789950385009

Book preview

G. Dalman . Work and Customs in Palestine

I/1

Translation

Nadia Abdulhadi-Sukhtian

Gustaf Dalman

Work and Customs in Palestine

Volume I/1

The Course of the Year and the Course of the Day

First Half: Autumn and Winter

Translated from the German

by

Nadia Abdulhadi-Sukhtian

Originally published in German by C. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh, 1928

Reprinted by Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim, Zürich, New York, 1987

English translation based on the 1987 Georg Olms Verlag edition

Translation copyright © Nadia Abdulhadi-Sukhtian 2013

ISBN 9789950385-00-9

Published by: Dar Al Nasher

Tel. [phone]

[e-mail]

www.enasher.com

Printed in Ramallah, Palestine

Distributed by

Al Ahlieh

Tel. [phone]

[e-mail]

Preface to the English Edition of Volume I/1 and Volume I/2

of

Work and Customs in Palestine

The goal of this English translation of Volume I of Gustaf Dalman’s eight-volume Arbeit und Sitte in Palästina is to make his work accessible to a much wider non-German-speaking public and so broaden interest in his work.

Gustaf Dalman (1855-1941) was a German orientalist and scholar of biblical studies, Jewish law and ancient Hebrew and Aramaic. He was born in Niesky in Saxony, Germany in 1855 and died in nearby Herrenhut in 1941, after having lived for many years in Palestine. In 1902 he established in Jerusalem the Deutsches Evangelisches Institut für Altertumswissenschaft des Heiligen Landes, the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology, which he directed for many years. He was one of the most outstanding, if not the most important European scholar of Palestine, and a most prolific and meticulous writer. He produced a vast body of scholarly work in the fields of Palestinian folklore, the historical geography of Palestine and Jerusalem, Hebrew and Aramaic language and Christian theology.

Arbeit und Sitte in Palästina is his opus magnum. In its eight volumes with over 3,000 pages, nearly 800 illustrations and a comprehensive bibliography, it provides an encyclopedic view of pre-industrial traditional life of the Palestinian people at the turn of the 20th century. In Volume I he describes the course of the year and day in autumn and winter (Volume I, Part One) and in spring and summer (Volume I, Part Two). For each season Volume I covers such topics as plants and animals, weather, agriculture, religious feasts and proverbs. This is followed in later volumes by a presentation of the activities and topics related to agriculture (Volume II), harvesting, threshing, winnowing, sieving, storing and milling (Volume III), the preparation of bread, oil and wine (Volume IV) and textiles, spinning weaving and clothing (Volume V). The description of life in tents, cattle and dairy farming, hunting and fishing (Volume VI) is followed by a description of the house and chicken-, dove- and bee-farming (Volume VII). Volume VIII deals with domestic life, birth, marriage and death, but was left unfinished at his death.

Volume I of Dalman’s Arbeit und Sitte in Palästina was first published in 1928 by the C. Bertelsmann publishing house in Gütersloh, Germany. The remaining volumes appeared between then and 1942. The notes for the eighth volume that Dalman left unfinished at the time of his death, were edited for publication in 2001 by Dr. Julia Männchen, professor and custodian of the Gustaf Dalman Institute in Greifswald, Germany.

Dr. Männchen has also written two studies of Dalman: her 1985 dissertation Gustaf Dalmans Leben und Wirken in der Brüdergemeinde, für die Judenmission und an der Universität Leipzig 1855-1902 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1987), and Dalman als Palästinawissenschaftler in Jerusalem und Greifswald: 1902-1941 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1993).

All seven volumes of the 1928 edition of Arbeit und Sitte were reprinted by Walter de Gruyter in Berlin in 1968 and again in 1987 by Georg Olms in Hildesheim. This translation uses the Olms 1987 edition.

My first acquaintance with Gustaf Dalman came in 1989, when I attended a lecture by the Palestinian historian, scholar and Jerusalem expert, the late Dr. Kamel Asali, at the Goethe Institute in Amman, with the title Gustaf Dalman and his Monumental Work on Palestine. Dr. Asali highlighted the importance of Dalman’s work as a reference for students and scholars of Palestine in general, be they biblical scholars, ethnographers, astrologers, geographers, botanists or linguists. But he also stressed that his work was particularly important for the people of Palestine themselves, since it preserved for them for posterity a valuable treasure of their folklore, recorded and passed on from generation to generation. It was a monumental work, providing an encyclopedic view of pre-industrial life of the Palestinian people at the turn of the 20th century, available only in the original language it was written in, German, just waiting to be translated ....! It was then that I knew I was going to start translating Arbeit und Sitte in Palästina.

Once I started immersing myself in the text I was struck by Dalman’s deep knowledge and minute descriptions of the daily life and traditions of the Arab population of Palestine and by his humanistic attitude that shone through in his writings – an attitude that was free of the religious and racial prejudices often found in other European scholars of Palestine of his time.

The picture that emerged for me was that Palestinian village culture at the turn of the 20th century represents – through the practices, sayings, songs and beliefs of its people – the living heritage of all accumulated past cultures, which the Arab inhabitants of Palestine incorporated and adopted, resulting in a culture that is distinctively their own. As Dalman says in his introduction to Volume I, Part One: Above all, the Arab inhabitants of Palestine, with justified pride in their uniqueness and their past, should erect a lasting monument to their culture by describing it faithfully and without any attempts to beautify it.

Dalman’s main aim and starting point was to shed light on the biblical and post-biblical past of Palestine. Instead of only studying texts and relics of the past, and the Bible, he studied the daily activities and customs of the Arab population of Palestine of the present. For this he had studied Arabic and acquainted himself with the Palestinian Arabic dialect. Already at a young age, he had produced a grammar of the Aramaic language and a Hebrew-Aramaic dictionary, among other books. But now he produced books like Jerusalem und seine Gelände (Jerusalem and its Environs) and compiled the Palästinischer Diwan, a collection of folkloric songs, containing their lyrics and melodies). By comparing his findings with practices and descriptions mentioned in the Bible, he was able to deduce what life must have been like at that time.

But the subject of his work became the popular culture of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine as such. Dalman did not only describe their customs and beliefs, but also their environment and everything connected to it. For that purpose he combined anthropology, comparative religion, music, and biblical scholarship with geography, geology, botany, astrology, meteorology and zoology into a Universalwissenschaft (universal science). He called this new multi-disciplinary field of study, which he established, Palästinakunde (Palestinology). In addition he gave his empirical descriptions their anthropological, mythological and religious backgrounds and explanations. He not only compared the daily practices he studied with those mentioned in the Bible, but also with those mentioned in the works of past centuries and antiquity, written by Greek, Roman, Jewish and Arab authors. He also compared some of their customs with those in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. As Dr. Asali said in his lecture: Dalman is an independent phenomenon in the world of science. His scholarship was unique and not to be repeated.

In 1920, Dalman established and directed the Institut für Palästinawissenschaft at the University of Greifswald. It was renamed the Gustaf Dalman Institut on the occasion of his 75th birthday. The institute houses his archives, manuscripts and documents, and includes thousands of books as well as tens of thousands of photographs of Palestine, and a large number of other items that he had collected over the years, and had brought back with him to Greifswald. It includes a museum consisting of various original Palestinian agricultural tools, Palestinian traditional dress, a herbarium with over 2,000 items, musical instruments, coins, weights, stones, wooden branches, and glass and metal objects. The Dalman Institute is in the process of digitalizing these items, and a database of the thousands of photographs of Palestine can be viewed at http://greif.uni-greifswald.de/webgate_dalman/. It is worth mentioning that the German Protestant Institute of Archeology in Jerusalem still houses part of Dalman’s collections that he had left there, while the Environmental Education Center in Beit Jala displays Dalman’s bird collection.

For many students and scholars, Dalman’s Work and Customs in Palestine is invaluable for understanding biblical and post-biblical Palestine, as well as pre-industrial village life in general. For Palestinian readers it is invaluable as a detailed record of their past and present folkloric culture. Furthermore, Work and Customs in Palestine is a description and reminder of a time in Palestine when all the three monotheistic religions lived side by side, in many instances sharing similar customs and sometimes even the same shrines. Dalman’s starting point was to find the past in the present, to think the present into the past. But he also saw and described the similarities between the religious practices of the three faiths in the present, making his work a valuable reference book also for those interested in inter-faith relations.

But what emerges as well is that, at a time when the challenges and threats to the daily life and existence of the Palestinian people on their land are taking on increasingly serious dimensions, when orders to demolish their villages are still being issued to this very day, and churches and mosques vandalized; when the authenticity of their claim to their homeland is being denied on nearly every level, Dalman’s Work and Customs in Palestine remains a monumental, encyclopedic validation of the identity of the Palestinian inhabitants of Palestine as a people and a validation of their deep roots in Palestine, roots which – without interruption – go all the way back to antiquity, if not to the dawn of history.

About the Translation

The main consideration guiding this translation has been to remain as close as possible to the original text, for the sake of conveying accurately not only the meaning, but also the linguistic style of Dalman’s scholarly work. Dalman can sometimes be lyrical, especially in his descriptions of the Palestinian landscape in different seasons, revealing himself as the photographer and painter he also was. On occasion when the German sentence structure becomes overly convoluted, the translation breaks up sentences to improve the English style.

With regard to Dalman’s own translation of Arab proverbs into German, I follow the German translation, which is not always literal. Only when there is a big difference between an Arabic word and its German counterpart, do I point this out in an occasional footnote.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all those who have contributed in preparing this English edition. Without their valuable help it would not be in the version it is in now.

My special thanks go to Dr. Robert Schick of the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman. He extended great care in meticulously revising my draft translation. He also carefully checked the transliterations and Bible citations, added the Greek words, proofread the text and prepared the indices. His expert knowledge was invaluable in improving the quality of the translation. He also encouraged me to prepare for publication the translations of these two parts of volume I, which I had started some time ago, without waiting until the rest of the volumes had been translated.

I would like to thank Ms. Isabelle Ruben in Amman for bringing a pair of fresh eyes to the translated text and for her help in stylistic editing and proofreading. Her expert knowledge of matters floral and faunal also improved the quality of the translation. Both Dr. Schick and Ms. Ruben, as native English speakers, gave the text the polish it needed.

I would also like to thank Mrs. Clare MacGillivray of Scotland who was the first contributor to this effort. She efficiently transformed my handwritten manuscript into a readable and editable digital version and contributed the first rough editing. Ms. Ana Silkatcheva in Irbid worked on some of the indexes, as well as added the index of place names, which is not in the German original.

I also would like to thank the Gustaf Dalman Institute in Greifswald, Germany, for their encouragement and support, and for making available high resolution scans of most of the original photographs that Dalman had used in Volume I.

My thanks also go to the Dar Al Nasher publishing house for bringing this translation to light.

Lastly, I would like to thank my husband, Ghiath Sukhtian for his constant support and my cousin Fadia Abdulhadi, for her initial and constant encouragement.

Amman, April 2013

Nadia Abdulhadi-Sukhtian

Editorial Notes

The general format of the volumes has been closely followed. The indices, including the topical index, reproduce the original indices, with only a few additions, such as the Latin names of plants added in parentheses after the common names. An index of place names, which the original German edition does not have, has been added.

The English translations of Arabic sayings and verses of poetry follow Dalman’s German translations; more literal translations are occasionally noted in a translator’s footnote.

At the end of Volume I, Part Two, Dalman included several pages of addenda. These have been placed in the text in footnotes marked as addenda. Typographical errors listed in the addenda have been silently corrected in the text.

For verses from the Bible, Dalman’s translations are also followed here, occasionally adopting phraseology from the Revised Standard or Jewish Publication Society English versions. When there is a significant difference between Dalman’s German translation and those versions, the fact is noted in a translator’s footnote.

Dalman cites verses from the Old Testament according to the verse numbering of the Hebrew Masoretic text, which occasionally differs from the verse numbering of modern Christian versions.

Several conventions that Dalman adopted have been kept, such as distinguishing Hebrew and Aramaic names from Arabic ones, by having the Hebrew and Aramaic names capitalized and the Arabic names in lower case and in italics. Arabic place names are transliterated and in italics, other than a handful commonly known by their English versions, e.g. Jerusalem and Hebron.

Transliterations

Dalman’s transliterations of Hebrew and Aramaic words are also reproduced here, but with sh for Dalman’s š; q for Dalman’s k; and y for Dalman’s j.

For Arabic words, the standard library of Congress English transliteration system is adopted here, which differs in some cases from the German system that Dalman used:

أ = ’

ب = b

ج = j

ح = ḥ

خ = kh

د = d

ذ = dh

ر = r

ز = z

ص = ṣ

ض = ḍ

ط = ṭ

ظ = ẓ

ع = ‘

غ = gh

ف = f

ق = q

ك = k

ل = l

م = m

ن = n

ه = h

و = w

ي = y

vi

vii

viii

ix

x

xi

xii

xiii

Robert Schick

Preface

I started collecting information for the description of work and customs of Palestine that is begun here in 1899. An invitation by a Scot then in Aleppo, the Rev. W. M. Christie, D.D., and a scholarship from Leipzig enabled me to travel to Palestine, with a seven-month stay in Aleppo from 27 June 1899 to 26 January 1900. So I had rich opportunity to explore the many facets of this northern Syrian city, little touched by the West, in summer as well as in winter, and to form relationships with the bedouin and farmers of the surrounding areas. After having already traveled through Palestine from 17 April to 22 June 1899, I arrived there for a second time on 6 February 1900. From 10 February to 15 March I stayed in Balāṭ, located between southern Lebanon and Mt Hermon, in the hospitable home of the Christian sheikh Fāris Ṣubḥīye. There I fully lived the life of a farmer, getting to know the rural economy. I then traveled with two farmers and their horses southwards through the whole of Palestine as far as Hebron and ‘Ēn Jidi, spending the nights in farmhouses and bedouin tents. We continued east of the Jordan north to Damascus, where I arrived on 10 May.[1] In this way, I laid the groundwork for my by no means complete, but nevertheless wide-ranging knowledge of Palestinian popular life. I especially had the opportunity in Aleppo to learn from Ḥabīb Ṣubḥīye, the son of Fāris Ṣubḥīye, how the customs of Palestine differ from those of northern Syria.

After a reluctant parting from the Orient, which included an instructive stay in Egypt until 2 June 1900, I arrived again in Jaffa on 25 October 1902, in order to set up and direct the German Protestant Institute for the Archaeology of the Holy Land in Jerusalem. From that date until 30 June 1914, I resumed the ethnological work that I had started in 1899, at home and during my yearly travels throughout Palestine. Every hike and every ride was dedicated to that purpose. I took advantage of the overnight stays in tents or farmhouses, rests in bedouin tents, the company of horse grooms from the cities, my peasant travel servants and all sorts of acquaintances. I remember with gratitude the bedouin Ḥmēd from the vicinity of Aleppo who taught me how to weave, the friends from Balāṭ, the teacher Faraḥ Ṭābri in es-Salṭ, then eṭ-Ṭaiyibe, and now in Jerusalem, the knowledgeable Khalīl Mikāīl from Rāmallah, whose conversations on journeys and in his home town clarified many a detail, and my servant ‘Ōde Sālih from Jifna. Above all I have not forgotten the half-bedouin ‘Abd el-Wālī, who was always prepared to share with me the vast treasure of his deep knowledge of popular life. He was actually from Ḥezma but had lived a good part of his life among the bedouin east of the Jordan, hence his familiarity with their customs and expressions. I usually met him in the Fāra Valley, where he cultivated cucumbers and pumpkins on a small piece of leased land. In winter he lived with his two daughters – he was a widower – in a cave, and in summer in a small stone hut. His plan was to build a picturesque recreational area for the people of Jerusalem next to the lower spring adjacent to his land. But war destroyed all of his plans. In March 1916, I was informed of his death. He was a Muslim in the best sense of the word. The fātḥa[2] was on his lips whenever, striding next to my horse, he came to a vantage point. To be sure, he always made his little calculations whenever he appeared with some figs and cucumbers in my house, but he was always willing to help, admitting whenever he did not know something, and always content with a modest reward. His last greetings to me were a qaṣīde that he dictated on 29 April 1914:

yā rākib fōq eṭ-ṭāyir

üdāk el-berq es-sāyir

derbak ‘abḥūr ujezāyir

raiyiḍ minshāni shwoiye.

tab‘ath ma‘ak qaṣīde

khaṭṭ el-qalam bijerīde

dalmān yaktibha fiīdeh

unsauwi byūt er-rasmīye.

sā‘at ma yūṣil iktābi

min faḍlak rudd ej-jawābi

uṭlub minni lā thābi

willi bitrīdeh ‘alaiyi.

qōli beṣalā kin tamm

‘ala ‘īsa ibn meryam

yā qāri lā shuft el-hamm

hādha illi ‘alaiyi.[3]

You, who rides above the flyer,[4]

Like the lightning that rushes along,

Your path goes over seas and islands

Wait for me a while!

So that I will send with you a song,

Written with a pen on paper.[5]

Dalman will write it himself

And we’ll create proper verses.

Then when my piece of writing arrives,

Please send me an answer,

Ask of me without hesitation.

What you want is my duty.

My words end with a prayer

To Jesus, Son of Mary.

O reader, may you not see any suffering.

That is what I desire.

My call hē yā ‘abd el wāli hē! with which I often climbed down to the Fāra springs to seek his company, will not be heard anymore. But the memory of its little river, which since 1926 also is no more,[6] flowing through fragrant mint, and the slopes of its valley glittering in the sun, will always remain indissolubly connected to his person. To him and to all other friends in the farmhouse and bedouin tent, I dedicate this greeting:

lā taḥsibu in ṭālat el-ghēbe nesīnākum

kullamā ṭālat el-ghēbe dhakarnākum

Do not think that because we were absent for so long we forgot you!

You remain on our mind even while we are far away.

After the war, I was able to stay in Palestine another two times, though not in my own home. First, from 5 April until 1 December 1921, and then from 4 March until 8 September 1925. Because of my many duties,[7] the first stay did not yield as much as the second for my study of work and customs. During both visits, as in 1900, I had my most important base in the leprosy asylum near Jerusalem. Its location outside the city between the rocky wilderness and the farmland gave me the opportunity for many an observation, and its inmates were always willing to share with me their life experiences from all parts of Palestine.[8] The well-meant reforms of the English government and Jewish immigration had not yet destroyed the magic and charm of the Orient. How wonderful it was to once again enjoy its hospitality in a village house; sitting on the floor without table and chair, to hold a sickle in the wheat field, a pitchfork on the threshing floor, and to listen to the flute of the shepherd boy in the rocky valley, to study the stones of the country, not only in a collection, but directly there in place, and to pick its purple blossoms from the fields. A Norwegian once praised the power of culture to promote the truth, so little of which was detectable during the war and the post-war period. I, for my part, was happy to have had the opportunity to widen my horizons by learning from the know-how and wisdom of those who could neither read nor write, and to stay in a time that was no less happy, because machines and electricity had not yet given new forms to life.

By merely immersing oneself in the world of the work and customs of Palestine nothing would really be gained that could promote Western scholarship. Reality, not sentiment, has to be comprehended and translated into images and texts. Even then, merely reproducing its form is not enough. It is the nature and development of things, their technique and practice that have to be grasped and made intelligible. This volume and the ones to follow hopefully will show that I have strived to do so. Let others join in the work! Above all, the Arab inhabitants of Palestine, with justified pride in their uniqueness and their past, should erect a lasting monument to their culture by describing it faithfully without any attempts to beautify it, before European influence unravels and destroys it.

Whoever undertakes such a task as a theologian cannot let himself be seduced into concentrating only on those points that at a first and perhaps very superficial glance seem to show biblical connections. How often does a closer look show that the connections point in another direction. It is also not permitted to report in the descriptions only those aspects that contribute to explaining biblical expressions and statements. Real conclusiveness and a correct perception are achieved only when things are studied in their own context. Add to this the fact that the exclusive consideration of biblical comparative material, in which many things appear only by chance, and other things just as much by chance do not appear at all, would mean doing without the much more extensive comparative material that ancient Jewish-Palestinian literature offers. This material can be found examined in almost complete form in a series of monographs,[9] but has not been yet sufficiently compared with forms of customs and work existing in Palestine today, since there is no account that sufficiently takes relevant Arabic expressions into consideration. This gap shall now be filled, by placing the Arabic present in the foreground and excluding what is recognizably the foreign impact of recent times. Here, from the Arab past I have consulted especially the kitāb ‘ajāib el-makhlūqāt[10] of Zakariyā ibn Muḥammad ibn Maḥmūd al-Qazwīni, who, based on his vast knowledge of the Near East, including Syria, wrote his book around 1263.[11] Naturally, I have used with gratitude what has been done in the present especially by Taufik Canaan but also by others for the illumination of Palestinian life, not without always stating what I have taken from such sources.

I have combined the biblical and the Jewish-Palestinian material, as well as archaeological findings, with findings from the Palestinian present, without ever intending to strive for completeness. I do not claim to have pursued in depth material drawn from Greek literature and the religious history of the Near East. Indexes of the biblical passages and of the Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic expressions, together with a subject index will make the interpretation of the Jewish-Palestinian literature easier, but also the relevant dictionaries, especially the Arabic ones, which all too often still lack precise definitions of technical terms, will certainly benefit from them. Finally, let the same work be done for the living Syriac of the East here and now. Many a detail in the Palestinian literature could thus be more securely understood and determined. Also, the Aramaic dialect of Ma‘lūla, which is geographically closer, in spite of its strong Arabic influence, could make a contribution if meticulously studied from this point of view.

I would have been happier with the results of my work, had I been able to complete it in Palestine and get answers for the questions that arose then and there. But circumstances, which I shall not discuss here, prevented that. Nevertheless, I dare to hope that the realities of Palestinian life can be recognized in this and the following volumes.

The second volume deals with agriculture and the further processing of grain through milling and baking. The complete work is to contain as multi-faceted a discussion of Palestinian life as possible, and thus offer a biblical archaeology that is not, as usually happens, based on the written sources of antiquity, where something Palestinian is brought up only as an example. On the contrary, it begins with present-day Palestine and from there goes back to antiquity.

Among the illustrations included are those that I owe to previous members of the German Protestant Institute, and among them some whose authors are unknown. I hope that this collaboration on an institute publication, which I gratefully acknowledge, belongs to the purposes for which the photographs were passed on to me.

I will add the promised indexes to the second half-volume, which should soon follow.

Greifswald, Palästina-Institut, 1 November 1927

G. Dalman

Abbreviations

PJB Palästinajahrbuch

ZDPV Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins

MuN des DPV Mitteilungen und Nachrichten des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins

ZDMG Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft

ZAW Zeitschrift für Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

PEFQ Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly.

JPOS Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society.

BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research.

The page numbers of the Midrash Rabba refer to the Octavo Edition, Vilna 1897.

Table of Contents

Preface ...................................................................................................................................... III

Abbreviations ...................................................................................................................... XI

A. Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 1

I. General ........................................................................................................................... 1

The Meaning of the Natural Year ............................................................... 2

II. The Popular Calendar .............................................................................................. 3

Natural and Work Calendars ........................................................................ 6

Calendar of Festivals ....................................................................................... 8

Cycle of the Moon ........................................................................................... 9

New Moon Customs .......................................................................................... 10

Stars ........................................................................................................................ 14

The Week .............................................................................................................. 16

Superstitions about Time ................................................................................ 17

III. The Months .................................................................................................................... 20

Names of the Months ....................................................................................... 22

Days of the Month ............................................................................................ 24

IV. The Beginning of the Year..................................................................................... 24

New Year Customs ........................................................................................... 26

Oracle .................................................................................................................... 29

Sacrifice ...........................................................................................................٫.... 32

V. The Seasons ................................................................................................................ 35

Two Seasons (Summer and Winter) ........................................................... 35

Their Boundaries ............................................................................................... 40

Influence of the Sun ......................................................................................... 43

Length of the Day ............................................................................................. 44

Four Seasons ....................................................................................................... 46

Six or Seven Seasons .............................................................................٫......... 50

Fifty-Day Periods .........................................................................................٫.... 51

B. The Course of the Year .53

I. Autumn.................................................................................................................................. 53

1. Dead Lower Plant Life................................................................................ 53

Rolling Plants................................................................................. 55

2. Trees, Fields and Cisterns at the Beginning of Autumn................... 58

Cultivated Shade Trees .............................................................. 58 Wild Trees ..................................................................................... 66

Vineyards and Fields .................................................................. 71

Water Storage ................................................................................ 72

3. The Forest......................................................................................................... 75

West of the Jordan ....................................................................... 76

East of the Jordan ....................................................................... 81

In Lebanon ..................................................................................... 83

Felling of Trees ............................................................................ 89

4. Temperature and Dew in Autumn ........................................................ 91

Shortness of the Days ................................................................. 91

Temperature ..................................................................................... 92

Dew ................................................................................................... 95

5. Blossoms Before the Rain.......................................................................... 98

Sea Squill ........................................................................................ 98 Autumn Crocuses ......................................................................... 99

6. Autumn Colors and Falling Leaves of Trees .................................. 100

At the Jordan River ................................................................... 103 Near Jerusalem ........................................................................... 104

7. The East Wind and the Onset of Rain................................................ 105

Appearance of the East Winds .............................................. 105

Their Effects ................................................................................ 107

8. Clouds and Lightning................................................................................ 111

Cloudy Sky .................................................................................. 112

Lightning, Rain Drops ............................................................. 116

9. The Autumn Rain and Its Proper Time ............................................... 117

Premature Rain ........................................................................... 118

Proper Time for Rain ................................................................. 120

St. George and Quzaḥ .............................................................. 121

Festival of the Booths .............................................................. 123

Early Rain ..................................................................................... 124

Flood .............................................................................................. 125

Jewish Rain Dates ..................................................................... 127

Right Amount of Rain .............................................................. 129

Amount of Rain .......................................................................... 129

10. The Temporary Absence of Rain ....................................................... 132

Local Rain .................................................................................... 133

Price of Grain .............................................................................. 134

11. Prayers for Rain ......................................................................................... 135

Popular Processions and Songs ............................................ 136

The Bringer of Rain .................................................................. 148

Prayers and Sacrifices .............................................................. 150

Festival of the Booths .............................................................. 152

Days of Fasting ............................................................................ 156

12. Autumn Storms.......................................................................................... 158

Maritime Traffic ......................................................................... 159

13. Rainless Intervals .................................................................................... 161

Their Advantages and Disadvantages ................................ 162

14. Agriculture in Autumn and Migrating Birds 164

Orchards ........................................................................................ 165

Booths and the Festival of the Booths ............................... 166

The Bee-Eater ............................................................................. 168

Pre-Rain Sowing ........................................................................ 169

Starling, Stork, Crane, Quail ................................................. 172

Pasture Economy ....................................................................... 173

Large and Small Livestock .................................................... 175

Cattle Tithe ................................................................................... 175

II. Winter................................................................................................................................ 178

1. Winter Rain..................................................................................................... 178

Short Days .................................................................................... 178

Amount of Rain .......................................................................... 178

December Rain ........................................................................... 184

January and February ............................................................... 187

Borrowed Days ........................................................................... 189

Types of Rain .................................................................................. 194

Water Trickling from Roofs ................................................... 196

Travel in Winter .......................................................................... 198

Sun, Rainbows, Clouds as Signs of the Weather ........... 199

2. Insufficient Winter Rain............................................................................. 202

No Year Without Rain .............................................................. 202

Periods of Drought (the Famine of the Bible) ................ 205

3. Water in Winter............................................................................................ 207

Rain Pools and Rain Streams ................................................ 211

Perennial Water Course ........................................................... 214

Destruction by Torrential Water ........................................... 215

4. Winter Thunderstorms............................................................................... 219

Thunder and Lightening .......................................................... 219

The Smoking of the Mountains (Sinai) ............................. 219

5. Winter Cold and Heating.......................................................................... 226

Winter Temperatures and Frost Days ................................. 227

Protection against the Cold .................................................... 230

Time and Abatement of the Cold ......................................... 231

Heating and Means of Heating ............................................. 235

6. Crystallized Precipitation......................................................................... 237

Frost and Ice ................................................................................ 238

Snowfall .......................................................................................... 239

Hail .................................................................................................. 242

Mentions in the Bible ............................................................... 244

7. Winds in Winter.......................................................................................... 246

Effect of Wind Directions ....................................................... 246

Statistics of Wind Directions ................................................ 249

Wind Stillness ............................................................................. 252

Wind Velocity ............................................................................. 253

Winds in the Bible ..................................................................... 254

The Wind System in the Book of Enoch .......................... 256

8. Vegetation in Winter..................................................................................... 257

The First Flowers ........................................................................ 257

The Mandrake ............................................................................. 258

Narcissus Tazetta and Anemonies ....................................... 260

Greening of Trees ...................................................................... 263

White Broom and Almond Blossoms ................................ 263

Evergreen Trees ......................................................................... 265

9. Agriculture in Winter............................................................................... 269

Early and Middle Winter Sowing ........................................ 269

Ploughing of Orchards and Pruning of Vines ................. 269

The New Year of Trees ............................................................ 269

Egg-Laying by Hens ................................................................. 269

Cats, Flies, Mosquitoes ........................................................... 269

Cattle and Lambs ....................................................................... 269

10. Winter Festivals......................................................................................... 278

Feast of Barbara ......................................................................... 278

Adonis Gardens .......................................................................... 281

Processions ................................................................................... 282

Christmas ...................................................................................... 283

Jewish Feast of the Dedication of the Temple ................ 285

Feast of Baptism ........................................................................ 286

Photographs ......................................................................................................................... 289

---

[1] See ZDPV 1900, p. 21ff., Saat auf Hoffnung 1900, p. 82ff.

[2] The first sura of the Koran.

[3] The last verse from another song of ‘Abd al-Wāli.

[4] The first airplanes had already been seen before the First World War.

[5] The qaṣīde is said to have been sent to Sven Linder, at the time a Swedish candidate of theology, who had dealings with him in 1912.

[6] The water of the spring was diverted to Jerusalem.

[7] See PJB 1921, p. 3ff.

[8] See Orient. Literaturzeitung (1926), p. 822ff., Christentum und Wissenschaft (1926), p. 522ff.

[9] Still missing, among others, are cattle-breading, dairy-farming, city and village, most handicrafts, trade, fruit-trees, aside from olive trees, fig trees and vines. Here