# A Wanderer in the Promised Land

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-19 — 1 clipping.*

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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 entrepôt
> 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)
> 
> METADATA
> 
> Views4994 views since posted 2013-07-22; last edit 2013-07-22 21:27 UTC;
> 
> previous at archive.org.../bentwich_wanderer_promised_land
> Language
> English
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> fair use
> History
> Scanned 2001 by Dan Povey; Formatted 2013-07-22 by Jonah Winters.
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> Citation: ris/2116
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> — *A Wanderer in the Promised Land (Used by permission of the curator)*