A Wanderer in the Promised Land
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Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Norman Bentwich, A Wanderer in the Promised Land, London: The Soncino Press, 1932, bahai-library.com.
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A Wanderer in the Promised Land

Norman Bentwich
pp. 76-80

London: The Soncino Press, 1932

1. Text

A few years before Benjamin's visit, Maimonides, driven
from Fez by Moslem fanaticism, landed at Acre and was
rescued from apostasy. He remained for some months,
and from it visited Jerusalem. But the Christian kingdom
offered little freedom of life and thought to a Jewish
thinker, and he continued his way to Egypt. Nevertheless
he may have regretted in later years that he had not made
his home in the land of Israel; at least he wrote in his
Mishne Torah that it was better for a Jew to live in that
land in a town where the Jews were a minority than in
another place where they were a majority. Several famous
writers who taught and died at Acre after it had been
recaptured by the Moslems, including the lover of the land
of Israel, Nachmanides, were buried in Haifa, because it
was doubtful if Acre was part of the Land of Israel and
therefore was in the Holy Land. Benjamin of Tudela says
that it is on the borders of Asher and the commencement
of the Land of Israel. But he too records that the great
number of Jewish graves were at the foot of Carmel that
sheltered Haifa at the southern end of the Bay. [footnote 1: Travels, ed. Adler, p. 31.] In the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries famous Rabbis like
the Kabbalist Moshe Haim Luzzato and the heads of the
community were buried in the northern village of Kefr
Yassif, [footnote 2: See below, p. 81.] because of the same doubt.
That practice remained till the present century.

Acre was captured and pillaged in 1291 by the Mameluke
Sultan Baibars from Egypt, and thereafter the proud fortress
was reduced to a fishing village and a place of encampment
for the Bedu. The conquest of the country by the
Ottoman Turks in the sixteenth century brought no revival
of prosperity or commerce. It was not till the
eighteenth century that it becomes again a place of importance.
In the interval Palestine was a prey to the strife of local
feudal chiefs, like Europe in the Dark Ages. Then a
powerful chieftain from Safed seized it, and made himself
master of the surrounding lands and villages. He favoured
Jewish settlement in Acre and Galilee. He was followed
by one Ahmed of Gaza, surnamed Jezzar (the Butcher),
who built the Green Mosque that crowns the old city, and
the aqueduct which still gives the city a better water
supply than that of any other town in Palestine. Jezzar
had a Jewish Treasurer, Farhi, who procured him the
means for his enterprises but was blinded by his jealous
master.

It was in the days of Jezzar's tyranny that Napoleon
made his bid for world-empire, and laid siege to the fortress
which he described as the Key to the East. The hill
on which his forces were encamped still bears his name,
and an Arab survives who claims to have been in the army
that defended the place. He was defeated by the Arab
defenders with their stiffening of English sailors under Sir
Sydney Smith. The strategic importance of Acre was
recognized again thirty years later when another aspirant
for Empire, Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt, occupied Palestine
in his march to supplant his Suzerain, the Sultan of
Constantinople. He was checked by the Great Powers of
Europe; and when he would not accept their terms,
was besieged for six months in Acre by English and Austrian
naval forces and, in the end, forced to surrender. We
owe to his energy, however, a restoration of the walls and
towers of the City. The Turks, regaining authority,
realized the importance of the place and made it the chief
town of the Sanjak or county, which included Haifa and
all Galilee.

New economic circumstances, however, have made the
town which is situate at the southern end of the Bay of
Acre its successful rival. While Acre remained mainly a
Moslem city, Haifa was settled during the nineteenth
century by Christians who venerated Mount Carmel in
whose shade it was built, by Jews who divined its coming
importance, and by German "Templars" who, coming
to the Holy Land in the latter part of the century to establish
a more Christian way of life, placed their chief settlement
on the promontory of Carmel and made the town
the most civilized in the land. And while Acre was a
natural harbour of the ancient and medieval eras, Haifa
offered better conditions for a modern harbour for big
ships, and has been chosen for the chief British port of the
Eastern Mediterranean. Haifa, too, at the beginning of
this century, became the outlet of the Hedjaz Railway;
and the joining of that line with the Railway which the
British built from Egypt through the Sinai desert to
Palestine during the War has destined it a& the entrep&ocirc;t
for the trade of the growing hinterland.

Nevertheless, Acre to-day is growing and expanding as
an appendage and satellite of Haifa, and Jewish settlement
has begun to penetrate its walls. Its fortress still stands
superb, and its ramparts form the most picturesque city
girdle in Palestine. During the riots of 1929 the Jewish
populace was placed for safety within the fortress, which is
the principal prison of the Government; and it was reported
by the Arab District Officer that "the Jews were
in safety in the British Museum." Beneath the prison is a
Crusader church, which is now being excavated; and the
garden of the fortress has been made lovely as the garden
of an English cathedral close.

Another beautiful garden which makes Acre a place of
pilgrimage, but is in the Persian and not in the English
character, is known as El Bahshi. It is the burial-place of
the Persian Reformer Baha-Ullah, whose name means the
glory of God. He was the leader of the Universalist
movement which was derived from the Shia branch of
Islam in Persia one hundred years ago, and is known today
as Bahaism — after the first part of his name. His
coming was foretold by an ardent Shia Moslem, Mirza Ali
Mohammad who assumed the title of the Bab, that is, the
Gate: because he claimed to be the gate to the new era,
"the channel of grace for some great being still behind
the veil of glory." Mirza was martyred in Persia; but his
body was brought later by his followers to Palestine and is
buried on the slopes of Carmel above Haifa in a Persian
garden. Above and under his resting-place his followers
are making a series of nineteen terraces, corresponding
with the number of his disciples, that are designed to lead
from the top of the Carmel to the town. No monument or
tablet mars the simple beauty of the flowered and terraced
garden.

Baha-Ullah was one of the nineteen disciples of the Bab,
and was persecuted with his master. He was rigorously
1mprisoned for some years in his native Persia, and subsequently
exiled to Bagdad (then under Turkish rule)
where he claimed to be the Prophet and preached the
universal teaching. The Sultan of Turkey took alarm at
the spreading of the new religion, and caused Baha to be
brought to Constantinople, and later exiled him to Acre
and imprisoned him in its fortress for many years. Eventually
he was released, and he made his home in Acre and
Haifa. He wrote to the Kings and other rulers of Europe
announcing his mission, and calling on them to bend their
energies to the establishment of the true religion, just
government and international peace; and after his death
he was revered as a prophet by a vast number of followers
in Persia and the Orient. His son Abbas Abdul-Baha
(that is, the servant of the glory), was born in Persia and
imprisoned at Acre with his father when a young man;
but most of his life he lived a free man at Haifa and was
revered as a sage by the people around. He carried the
preaching of the new faith to Europe and America, but
his home was in Haifa. He was there during the war, and
remained after the British Occupation, respected by the
British authorities. He died in 1924, and is buried with
the Bab in the garden on the Carmel. In 1914 he had a
vision of Haifa as the coming commercial capital of the
Orient:

"In the future the distance between Acre and Haifa
will be built up and the two cities will clasp hands,
becoming the two ends of one mighty metropolis. The
great semicircular bay will be transformed into a fine
harbour wherein the ships of all nations will seek shelter
and refuge. . . . The flowers of civilization and culture
from all nations will be brought here to blend their
fragrances together. . . . A person standing on the
summit of Mt. Carmel and the passengers on the
steamers coming to it will look upon the most sublime
and majestic spectacle of the world."

That vision is being remarkably fulfilled in our day.

When Abbas died in 1924, the headship — or guardianship —
passed to his grandson who, educated at Oxford,
continued to live at Haifa. His house and the hostel of
the Bahais which have sprung up beside it are an oasis of
religious peace. Palestine may indeed be now regarded
as the land of four faiths, because the creed of the Bahais,
which has its centre of faith and pilgrimage in Acre and
Haifa has attained the character of a world-religion. The
main ideas of its universalism are the oneness of mankind
and the harmony of religions. Baha-Ullah its principal
teacher proclaimed: "Let not a man glory in this that
he loves his country, but let him glory in this that he loves
his kind"; and Abbas used to declare that the supreme
gift of God to this age is knowledge of the oneness of mankind
and of the fundamental unity of religions.

2. Image scans (click image for full-size version)

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-- A Wanderer in the Promised Land (Used by permission of the curator)