It was reflected in the mirror of his soul; it was reflected in his work. In a letter to his cousin Gibran wrote: “The things which the child loves remain in the domain of the heart until old age. The most beautiful thing in life is that our souls remain hovering over the places where we once enjoyed ourselves. I am one of those who remembers those places regardless of distance or time.”

In his book Jesus the Son of Man in the chapter “The Woman from Byblos” Gibran wrote:

“Weep with me, ye daughters of Ashtarte, and all ye lovers of Tamouz.

Bid your heart melt and rise and run blood-tears,

For He who was made of gold and ivory is no more.

In the dark forest the boar overcame Him,

And the tusks of the boar pierced His flesh.

Now He lies stained with the leaves of yesteryear,

And no longer shall His footsteps wake the seeds that sleep in the bosom of Spring.

His voice will not come with the dawn to my window,

And I shall be forever alone.

Weep with me, ye daughters of Ashtarte, and all ye lovers of Tamouz,

For my Beloved has escaped me;

He who spoke as the rivers speak;

He whose voice and time were twins;

He whose mouth was a red pain made sweet;

He on whose lips gall would turn to honey.

Weep with me, daughters of Ashtarte, and ye lovers of Tamouz.

Weep with me around His bier as the stars weep,

And as the moon-petals fall upon His wounded body.

Wet with your tears the silken covers of my bed,

Where my Beloved once lay in my dream,

And was gone away in my awakening.

I charge ye, daughters of Ashtarte, and all ye lovers of Tamouz,

Bare your breasts and weep and comfort me,

For Jesus of Nazareth is dead.”

Byblos was not one of the mightiest Phoenician cities, but it was the greatest religious center. The Old Testament was called the Book of Byblos. The head deity of that city was El, the father of all gods. El is the name in the Bible often called Elohim, and in Arabic is called Elah. The earliest alphabetical writing was discovered in Byblos. Gibran, attending school in Beirut, must have passed through Byblos and Tripoli each time he went home on visits. Byblos is on the seashore, north of Beirut, and a full day’s journey on horseback from Bcherri.

Gibran’s knowledge of geography and history was not limited to his home town or the school route. His description of places, events, customs and history of the Middle East prove that he had visited those places. Gibran was twelve years of age when he came to the United States. After two years of schooling in Boston he was back in Lebanon finishing his education. During the summer his father took him all over Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. After four years of studying Arabic and French, he left for Greece, Rome, Spain and then Paris to do more studying. After two years of study in Paris, Gibran returned to Boston.

Among the places Gibran visited were Nazareth, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Tyre (Sidon), Tripoli, Baalbek, Damascus, Aleppo and Palmyra. These names are but small dots on the map of the world, but they must have had profound effect on the thinking, the writings and philosophy of Gibran. They are reflected in the mirrors of his soul and in every word he wrote. It is reasonable to assume that while Gibran’s feet were stumbling on the stones of Nazareth, he decided to write his book Jesus the Son of Man.

Baalbek is one of the wonders of the world; among its strewn stones and columns a man stands in humility, bowing his head to the skill, might and devotion of its builders to their gods. Baalbek was built east of one of the highest summits of the chain of mountains confining the Mediterranean; the cedar forest is on the west side of this summit, and Gibran’s humble home was a short distance from both of them.

Baalbek was the oldest and the greatest religious center of the white man; the Egyptian Pharaohs placed boats of cedar wood near their tombs to transport them, on the day of resurrection, across the Mediterranean into Baalbek. The god Baal was found in all of the holy places of the white man, from Babylonia to the Baltic Sea.2 The greatest competition to Jehovah came from Baal and his mother, Eshtar. Baal created the rain for everything living; but he was also temperamental and in his anger created storms, lightning and earthquakes. How could Gibran remove him from the mirrors of his soul when he gazed daily at Wadi Qadisha, created by the anger of this god? Who is to say that Gibran’s book The Earth’s Gods was not conceived on the cliffs of Bcherri, or amid the ruins of Baalbek? Within this book, Baalbek was the setting for many articles dealing with religion and mystic life.

Damascus, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, was the capital of the golden period of Islam. While Europe was in its dark ages, its rulers unable to sign their own names, and while numbers and science were considered the work of the devil, the Ommiad dynasty at Damascus was gathering learned men from the four corners of the empire, which stretched from Spain to India, an area greater than any empire preceding it. These men translated the works of the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans and added their own. The outcome of this labor was preserved and translated into the modern languages after the Crusades. In other words, the works of the Greeks were translated into Arabic and from Arabic into English.

Wandering in the streets and mosques of Damascus, Gibran realized the absence of pictures of the great Arab leaders. This was due to the fact that Islam prohibits the use of images. Before he reached the age of sixteen, Gibran studied the works of the Arab philosophers and poets, and to match the written characters, he etched a set of pictures depicting those men and women.

Among the cities near the birthplace of Gibran were Tyre and Sidon. They were the main Phoenician cities which Carried trade and civilization to the known world; they colonized and civilized Greece; they founded the city of Rome; they colonized North Africa and developed constitutional government in Carthage (this system originated in Tripoli, which is on the road between Bcherri and Beirut).