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THE ASSASSINS 419
which pervades it. Possibly this is apparent only to
the Western visitor, and in reality represents his
inability to understand the East or to think in its
terms. To such an one, however, all things here seem
to possess this subtle quality. To him the people's
faces are inscrutable. He wonders what all these
busy thronging crowds do for a living in a city
where industries are not apparent ; what do they
think about, having no politics and no newspapers
how do they amuse themselves, having no amusements
! Aleppo contains people of almost every race
under the sun—including twenty thousand Jews and
a greater number of Persians—but its citizens in the
gross have what may be called an Aleppo look of
mystery, and differ plainly from those of all other
Ottoman cities. The visitor asks himself why this
should be, and finds no answer but the fanciful one
that the city has somehow stamped them with itself
The alleys and courtyards contribute not a little to
this sense of mystery. The play of shadow and
sunlight in black and white, the vistas of arcades in
gloom, the small high-placed windows, the great blank
walls, the small heavy doors, animals where you
would expect to see none, the streams of silent people
too preoccupied to notice you—all seem steeped in
suggestion and mystery. You feel that these turning
narrow passages and opening courts and ready doors
would assort well with conspiracy and assassination.
Conspiracy in large matters perhaps is not so likely now,
but assassination is no far-fetched idea. And then
perhaps you remember, as if subconscious memory had
prompted the thought, that assassins in the earliest
meaning of the word came from these parts—that a
hill tribe called the Assassins, whose native territory
was in the mountains above Antioch, followed customs
which have given the name its present sinister meaning.
You may have read, also, that they had haunts
in this very city—that here they executed vengeance
both for themselves and for payment, and gave no
end of trouble to Crusader rulers of Antioch and