Some travelers of the 19th century have described the houses of el-Mejdel. Mark Twain enjoys the task:“The houses are built upon one arbitrary plan—the ungraceful form of a dry-goods box. The sides are daubed with a smooth white plaster, and tastefully frescoed aloft and alow with disks of camel-dung placed there to dry. This gives the edifice the romantic appearance of having been riddled with cannon-balls, and imparts to it a very warlike aspect.”
The roofs of the house were flat, built with tree trunks, branches, and a layer of mud and gravel, forming a terrace. According to the Catalan historian Víctor Gebhardt, on these roofs, there were “huts made of reeds, where the inhabitants seek refuge during the scorching summer nights.” And the mystic Solomon Malan describes the interior: “Such a house held not only the family, but all the family was worth, even the owner’s plough and the few fowls he might have reared (…) It was dark within, for there was no window to any of these houses; but the door was the only opening made to let in both air and light, and the inmates of the house. These in general only spend the day-time inside their dwellings, sheltered from the heat of the sun; and at night they sleep on the roof.” And with the heart aflame, he cries out with devotion: “They were then, houses like the one in which Peter lived, and in which our Saviour healed his mother-in law; like the one also in which He sat and taught, when the man sick of the palsy was brought to Him borne of four; —yea, like the house in which He lived Himself at Capernaum”.
