Where there are a number of shaykhs, in dealings with the government, the village is represented by one or more of the number who go by the name mukhtâr. So in Râm Allâh there are three of these mukhtârs, one for the Greeks, one for the Roman Catholics and one for the Protestants of the village. The last two are a concession to the interests of those who might not be fairly represented by the first mukhtâr.

The stone and building trades are highly respected industries among the peasants. In a typical peasant house there is scarcely any woodwork to be done except to set up a heavy door. The windows, if there are any, are small light-holes merely. Quarrying, stone-dressing and construction are carried on in every large village. The highlands have yielded inexhaustible supplies of building material from time immemorial. Limestone may be found and burned anywhere.^[164] The kilns are usually built in valleys or on their sides, where it is possible to dig a good-sized pit before building up the circular stone walls, and where the draft will be good.

A ḳonṭâr of lime is one hundred twenty ruṭls (seven hundred fifty pounds) instead of the usual one hundred ruṭls, and costs about a dollar delivered. The master workers in lime and stone and cement receive from seventy-five cents to a dollar and ten cents per day in the villages. Their helpers receive from twenty-five cents upwards, according to the grade of work.

As the common name for stone is ḥajar, the place where stone is found, the quarry, is called maḥjar, the prefix m conveying the sense of locality. Rough, undressed stone blocks are called debsh. Those roughly squared, but undressed, are called khâmy. Dressed building-stones are called ḥajar. Flat flagstones are called balâṭ. Stone cut for arches goes by the name maḳâdam (singular, maḳdum).

The limestone of the country is found in several grades of hardness and desirability for different kinds of building. The very best stone for house building is a hard white limestone which holds well with lime cement and is known as mizzy ḥulu. Mizzy aḥmar is very similar, but of a brownish-red color. The softer limestone is called kûkûly. The stronger kind is yellowish, kûkûly aṣfar; the other kind, a white stone, kûkûly abyaḍ. Malakeh is a pretty, brilliant, white stone used decoratively in finishing over doors and windows. The very hard flint ṣuwwân would ordinarily be unmanageable for building purposes. Nâry is a soft, easily crumbled stone that cements together in a compact mass with lime and is used in filling in the core of house walls and in arches supporting the house floors (muṣṭaby) above the cellars. Hethyân is similar to nâry, but even softer and reddish. Huwârah is really decomposed stone, very soft, used as a top dressing in building roads, where it settles into a natural cement, mingling with broken rock and soil. Soil is called trâb and a derivative from it, trâby, is used colloquially to designate clay and wet earth as materials in building. Lime is known as shîd and mortar as ṭîn. Cement goes by an imported name shementu, or ḥomrah, literally the red dust of pounded pottery. The hard cement, called kaḥly, used in pointing the house walls, is made of lime, ḥomrahḥomrah, that is, pounded pottery, and nehâteh, the dust that falls from the work of the stone-dressers’ tools. Plaster is called ḳaṣâreh or iḳṣâreh, and whitewash, trâsheh. Tile and brick go by the name ḳermîd. The heavy iron hammer with which rough stone is squared into workable shape is called the shaḳûf. The râs is a heavy sort of iron hammer with pointed ends of steel used as a pick. The hammer used to drive the chisels and occasionally to do slight dressing by pounding the edges of a stone is called muṭraḳeh and is quite unique in shape. Its two faces are set obliquely on the central part of the head and a short handle supplied. By this adjustment of the faces a downward stroke is more easily effected. It is of steel and about three pounds in weight. The shâḥûṭeh is a heavy double steel hammer toothed at both ends. One edge may have more, and the other edge less, than twenty teeth. Two grades of face dressing may be given to a block of stone with this one tool. The maṭabbeh is a very heavy hammer made of a rectangular bar of steel with ends about two inches or less square. These ends or faces are supplied with numerous points, making anywhere from eighty-one to one hundred and forty needlelike teeth, according to the grade of work required. The shôkeh is a pointed round steel chisel and comes in various sizes. The izmîl is a flat, bladelike steel chisel of differing sizes used in dressing the sides of stone where, in building, a close joint is desired. Stone is gotten out of the quarries with wedges, heavy hammers and the râs. The shâkûf is then brought into play. Mizzy stone may be dressed with the shôkeh (chisel), then with the shâḥûṭeh and lastly with the maṭabbeh. Kûkûly may be pounded with the râs and then dressed with the shôkeh and shâḥûṭeh, or, when quite soft, the shôkeh’s work may be done by the preliminary dressing with the râs. The trade of stone dressing is known as daḳâḳeh and the workmen as daḳḳîḳ, both terms being connected with the verbal root daḳḳ. The builder or mason is known as the bannâ. The more pretentious title muhandis or muhandis bannâ is given to those competent to undertake and judge of immense works. Such are often foreigners, resident in cities, who are called out on jobs demanding expert opinion and advice. The muhandis is highly respected as a master of the whole art of construction.

Foot travel is the rule among the peasants. Those whose business takes them away from the home village walk the entire day with about the same endurance that they work in the fields at home.^[165] The few who own donkeys or mules walk behind their loaded animals, carrying produce between the villages. Hence it comes about that donkey paths make up by far the great majority of the paths and that the transport of bulky and heavy articles is difficult in the interior. The government roads increase slowly, but are very great conveniences when constructed. The road at present under construction from Jerusalem to Nâblus (Shechem) is being made in sections by contract. The contractor hires the natives to bring the materials, broken rock, lime dust and pulverized stone, and an excellent carriage road results. The natives along the way then begin an irregular carriage service which creates a business. Seats for citizens range about twenty cents apiece for a ten-mile journey, though the price depends somewhat on the number of passengers clamoring for, or indifferent to, accommodations, and the apparent ability of the applicant. As in many other kinds of bargaining, the engaging of a carriage seat is made more sure by receiving a pledge from the owner that he will keep his word with you. This ‛arrabôn is frequently demanded by the party to a business arrangement who has the greater interest in its fulfilment and would suffer the greater inconvenience in the event of default. In the case in question perhaps half a fare will be demanded from the carriage driver as a pledge that he will perform the required service, and if he wants business badly enough he will entrust the sum to the keeping of his prospective passenger. Now and then, when a family is carrying a quantity of bedding and other household goods, copper vessels, baskets, boxes, their chickens and children, the carriage may seem a little crowded, but usually for men travelers the accommodations are fairly comfortable. Frequently some of the peasant passengers will become nauseated by the motion of the carriage and hang their white faces out the carriage door. The carriage will continue to be a luxury for some time in the country districts. Sick people and children are greatly convenienced by a carriage service, since in rainy weather it saves unnecessary exposure. Now and then a lone pedestrian will succumb to the raw chill of the rainy days and die on the road. During heavy rains the Russian pilgrims, if caught out in the dismal weather, suffer and lose some of their number by death.

Camel trains are used in transporting grain. Camels can be used only in dry weather, as their large, spongy feet slip on the muddy ways and they are apt to fall spread-eagle fashion and be hurt fatally.

In the village of Râm Allâh the customary width of a road is but three meters.

A case has been known where a man, who owned land on both sides of the road, desired to consolidate his properties, and accomplished it by building in the road and deflecting traffic to such an extent that it left him on one side of its course.

The trades that need a large patronage for support are usually carried on in the cities, though the craftsmen go on tours through the villages, doing such work in their line as has accumulated since their last visit. So carpenters, glaziers, tinsmiths, cleaners and whiteners of the copper cooking vessels (ṭungerer), sellers of ready-made garments, etc., itinerate among the villages. The gipsies are the country blacksmiths. In the cities native blacksmiths are found. In shoeing a horse the custom is to place the foot to be shod on a small block and have an attendant hold up the other foot of the same side to prevent kicking.

Ready money is scarce enough to be a very strong influence in favor of any occupation that can offer it. Many men and women from the villages about Jerusalem go into the city to sell their produce or their labor. Sitting about the streets near David’s Tower may be seen the Silwân women with vegetables, milk and eggs. Some men who own donkeys or mules act as messengers between their villages and the city, carrying produce into the markets and returning with purchases for the village. Some Râm Allâh men go into the city as mechanics, but more go for domestic service in the houses and convents. When women servants are needed they are usually secured from Bethlehem, which is only five miles from the city.

The peasants use the word antîky (plural, antîkât) for any antique object, such as a bit of carving, an inscription, an old coin or a piece of glass or pottery. Indeed, some friends of ours met an extension of the use of the term in Egypt. A girl, very eager to sell them some oranges, after following the carriage a long way and being continually refused, hit on what she thought would be a successful method. Thrusting the fresh fruit close to the Americans she cried, “Antîky, antîky.” Seldom can the peasants really comprehend the strange delight that foreigners take in ancient objects, unless perchance the material be precious metal or stone, but they have learned that antiquities command a price. So with a money stimulus the mischief is augmented. Certain of the country people go hunting for old objects, rifling ancient tombs and scattering the contents far and wide in order to gratify the hideous taste of curio purchasers. Fearing lest they may be traced in their philistinism the peasants give wrong information as to the places from which the articles came so that their “finds” lose much of their value as historic data. Could the place and conditions of their age-long burial be known they might give archeological information more precious than the intrinsic value of the objects themselves. Sometimes a “find” is more or less injured because it is supposed to be valueless.

The provisions of the Turkish law regarding antiquities are very strict and operate to make scientific research difficult when not impossible. But the administration of these laws is not skilful enough to prevent an immense amount of sly pilfering from old tombs and suspected localities. Ancient tombs are completely covered from observation by soil. After heavy rains these sealed tombs are often betrayed by a slight sinking of the earth about them, and thus possibly a whole series of tombs will be discovered and their contents disposed of in the distant city.^[166] These opened tombs may be seen all through the country, staring from the hillsides and among the terraces like ghastly eye-sockets. In the house which we hired for a boys’ school the builders had placed in one room as a floor stone an antîky of which they were proud. It was an ornamented and inscribed slab which they claimed to have found at Dayr Dîwân.^[167] The inscription in Greek read

For the repose of Sêlamôn (Solomon) Presbyter.