The people are simple and country-like in dress and manners, and the most of them have a cow-yard within the courts of their houses, thus combining the pastoral with the citizen life.  The majority of the Greeks are silk-weavers and shoemakers, weaving girdles, scarfs and robes for different parts of Syria and Egypt, and supplying the Bedawin and the Nusairy villagers with coarse red-leather boots and shoes.

Hums early became the seat of a Christian Church, and in the reign of Diocletian, its bishop, Silvanus, suffered martyrdom.  In 636 A.D., it was captured by the Saracens, (or “Sherakiyeen,” “Easterns,” as the Arab Moslems were called,) and although occupied for a time by the Crusaders, it has continued a Moslem city, under Mohammedan rule.  The Greek population have been oppressed and ground to the very dust by their Moslem neighbors and rulers, and their women have been driven for protection into a seclusion and degradation similar to that of the Moslem hareems.

The Rev. D.M.  Wilson, a missionary of the A.B.C.F.M., took up his residence in Hums in October 1855, and remained until obliged to leave by the civil war which raged in the country in 1860.  Mr. and Mrs. Aiken went to Hums in April, 1856, but Mrs. Aiken died June 20, after having given promise of rare usefulness among the women of Syria.

After Mr. Wilson left Hums, a faithful native helper, Sulleba Jerwan, was sent to preach in Hums.  His wife, Luciya Shekkoor, had been trained in the family of Rev. W. Bird in Deir el Komr, and was a devoted and excellent laborer on behalf of the women of Hums.  In October, 1862, one of the more enlightened men among the Greeks was taken ill, and sent for Pastor Sulleba to come and make him a religious visit.  He went, and found quite a company of relatives and friends present.  The sick man asked him to read from the Word of God, and among the passages selected, was that containing the Ten Commandments.  While he was reading the Second Commandment, the wife of the sick man exclaimed, “Is that the Word of God?  If it is, read it again.”  He did so, when she arose and tore down a wooden painted picture of a saint, which had been hung at the head of the bed, declaring that henceforth there should be no idol worship in that house.  Then taking a knife, she scraped the paint from the picture, and took it to the kitchen to serve as the cover to a saucepan!  This was done with the approbation of all present.  The case was the more remarkable, as it was one of the first cases in Syria in which a woman has taken such a decided stand against picture-worship and saint-worship, in advance of the rest of the family.