'Y^LH«¥JMH¥lEIESflir¥- ""«« iiiiiiim iiiiiiwimi i»iii,HftrrrrmfffinnmTlfl BOUGHT WITH THE INX30ME OH THE Ann S. Farnam Fund WXMIIISDN.Ita, MX TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A VOL. M. SonDcm : C. J. CLAY and SONS, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AVE MARIA LANE. CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL, AND CO. LEIPZIG: P. A. BROCKHAUS. TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA BY CHARLES M. DOUGHTY. VOL. II. CAMBRIDGE: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. I< [All Rights reserved.] (tambrfogc : FEINTED BY C. j. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS, AT THE UNIVERSITY PKESS. CONTENTS TO VOL. II. CHAPTER I. IBN RASHID'S TOWN. Curious questioning of the townspeople. A Moor hakim had visited Hayil. He cast out demons. The jins. Superstitious fears of the Arabs. Exorcists. A counterfeit Christian vaccinator cut off in the desert. Advantage of the profession of medicine. Hamiid sends his sick infant son to the Nasrany hakim, who cures also Hamud's wife. Diseases at Hayil. The great Easr. The guest-chambers. Hayil house building. Wards of the town. Artificers. Visit to S'weyfly. The makbara has swallowed up the inhabitants. Deaf and dumb man-at- arms of the Emir. Majid shooting with ball. English gunpowder. Gulf words heard at Hayil. Palms and a gum-mastic tree in Ajja. 'The coming of Mohammed foretold in the Enjil.' Hamud's tolerant urbanity. Another audience. The princely family of Ibn Rashid. Telal a slayer of himself. Metaab succeeded him. His nephews, Telal's sons, conspire to kill him. Metaab dies by their shot. Bunder prince. Mohammed who fled to er-Riath returns upon assurance of peace. He is again conductor of the Bagdad pilgrims: and returns to Hayil with the yearly convoy of temn for the public kitchen. Bunder rides forth with his brother Bedr and Hamiid to meet him. Mohammed slays (his nephew) Bunder. Hamud's speech to the people. Tragedies in the Castle. Mohammed's speech in the M6shab. He sits down as Muhafuth. Bedr taken and slain. Mohammed slays the slayer. Hamud's nature. Mohammed the Emir is childless. His moderation and severity. The princely bounty. The Shammar state. Villages and hamlets. The public dues and taxes and expense of government. The Prince's horses sold in India. His forces. Ibn Rashid's forays. He "weakens" the Aarab. The Shammar principality. ... ... 1 — 23 Vi CONTENTS. CHAPTER II. LIFE IN HAYIL. PAGE The great tribes beyond Ibn Rashid. Akhu Noora. The princely families. The Prince Mohammed childless. His "Christian wife". Abd el-Aziz the orphan child of Telal, and his half-brother Bunder's orphan. Secret miseries of Princes. The family of Abeyd. A song of Abeyd. Abeyd could be generous. Fahd. The poor distracted soul sells his daughter to his father Abeyd. Feyd. Sleyman. Abdullah. Wealth of Abeyd's family. Hamud's daughter. The government of Ibn Rashid. Beginning of the Shammar state. By some the Emir is named Zdlim, a tyrant. A tale of Metaab's government. A Christian Damascene trades man visits Hayil. Discord among tribes of the Emir's domination. The Rajajil es-Sheukh. Imbarak. The Moors' garrison in the tower Marid at Jauf. Their defection and the recovery of Jauf. Tale of the Ottoman expedition against Jauf. Words of Sherarat tribesmen, to the sheykhs in Jauf. Ibn Rashid rides to save Jauf. Ibn Rashid and the Ottoman pasha. Beduins among the rajajil. Men of East Nejd and of er-Riath come to serve the Western Emir. Ibn Saud is " ruined "- A messenger from er-Riath. Kahtan tribesmen at Hayil. Their speech. The Wady Dauasir country. Hayz&n their sheykh. He threatens to stab the Nasr&ny. People's tales of the Kahtan. 'Their graves are crows' and eagles' maws.' Ibn Rashid's lineage. Kindreds of Shammar. Rashid, a lettered Beduwy. A fanatio kady. Dispute with the pedant kady. "The Muscovs of old possessed the land of Nejd." Inscriptions at Gubba. Study of letters in Nejd. Their nomad-like ignorance of the civil world. A village schoolmaster. A prophecy of Ezekiel. Plain words among the Arabs. Travelled men in Hayil. Winter weather. An outrage in the coffee-hall. The coffee-server called before the Emir. [Note .- itinerary from Hayil to Kuweyt.] 24 46 CHAPTER III. DEPART FROM HAYIL: JOURNEY TO KHEYBAR. The 'Persian pilgrimage'. Imbarak's words. Town thieves. Jauf pilgrims in Hayil. Beduins on pilgrimage. The Caravan to Mecca arrives from the North. An Italian hajjy in Hayil. The Persians passed formerly by el-Kasim. Murderous dangers in Mecca. Concourse at Hayil.— The Kheybar journey. Violent dealing of Imbarak. Ibn Rashid's passport. Departure from Hayil. Gofar. Seyadin, Beduin pedlars. El-Kasr village. Biddia hamlet. Adventure in the desert. Eyada ibn Ajjueyn. Kasim ibn Banik. Salih the raflk. "It is the angels." The Wady er-Rummah. Kasim's sister. Set forward again with Salih. The Nasrany abandoned at strange tents. The hospitable goodness of those nomads. Thaifullah. Set forth with Ghroceyb from the menzil of Eyada. The Harra in sight. Heteym menzil in the Harra. Lineage CONTENTS. vii PAGE of the Heteym. The lava-field. The division of waters of Northern Arabia. The dangerous passage. The great Harrat (Kheybar). El- Hayat, village. Cattle paths in the Harra. An alarm near Kheybar. Locusts. Ghroceyb in trouble of mind. Wady Jellas. Kheybar village. The Husn. An antique Mesjid. ... ... 47 76 CHAPTER IV. KHEYBAR. "THE APOSTLE'S COUNTRY." The night at Kheybar. Abd el-Hady. Ahmed. The gunner's belt. Kheybar by daylight. Medina soldiery. Muharram. Sirur. The Nasrany brought before the village governor. Amm Mohammed en-Nejfimy. AmSn. The Gallas. Evening in the soldiers' kahwa. Ibrahim the kady. Abdullah's tale of the Engleys. Hej&z Arabic. A worthy negro woman. Amm Mohammed's house. Umm Kida. Brackish soil. Wadies of Kheybar. The Albanians. Kheybar genealogy. The Nasrany accused. The villagers in fear of his enchantments. Friendship with Amm Mo hammed. Our well labour. His hunting. Kasr en-Ne"by. El-Asmleh. Blood-sprinkling. Hospitality of the sheykh of the hamlet. Gatunies. Barrows upon the Harra. Magicians come to Kheybar to raise treasures. The Husn rock. 77 105 CHAPTER V. THE KHEYABARA. Kheybar witches. Dakhtlullah, the Menhel. Ibrahim. Our garden labour. Their custom to labour for each other without wages. House building. The negro villagers are churlish and improvident. Famine in the land. Kheybar "The Land's Wealth.'' Antique Kheybar conquered by the Annezy. The ancient partnership of Beduins and villagers. Sirur. The villagers' rights in the soil. Their husbandry is light. Afternoons and evenings at Kheybar. The Asiatic priests' mystery of stabbing and cutting themselves. Villagers going out for wood are surprised by a ghrazzu. 'The work of the Dowla is mere rapine.' Kheybar occupied by the Dowla. The Beduins taxed. A day of battle with the Aarab. Vility of a Turkish colonel. Perfidy of the Fukara. The Kheyabara sup of their hostile (nomad) partners' camels. The ears of the slain are cut off. The Medina soldiery at Kheybar. The cholera. Wandering hills. Fabulous opinion, in the East, of Kheybar. Abdullah's letter to the Governor of Medina. Abdullah's tales. His tyranny at Kheybar. Sedition in the village. The village kindreds. Abdullah's stewardship. Dakhll the post. Aly, the religious sheykh, an enemy to death. The Nejumy's warning to Abdullah, spoken in generous defence of the Nasrany. The ostrich both bird and camel. Amm Mohammed had saved other strangers 106 — 137 vm CONTENTS CHAPTER VI. THE MEDINA LIFE AT KHEYBAR. PAGE Amm Mohammed's Kurdish family. His life from his youth. His son Haseyn. His easy true religion. He is a chider at home. Ahmed. A black fox. The kinds of gazelles. The Nejumy a perfect marksman. His marvellous eye-sight. The ignorances of his youth. A transmuter of metals. A brother slain. His burning heart to avenge him. A Beduin marksman slain, by his shot, in an expedition. A running battle. He is wounded. Fiend-like men of the Bashy Bazuk. The Muatterln at Damascus. Religious hospitality of the Arabs. Syrian tale of a bear. Mohammedan and Christian cities. Mohammed (in his youth) went in a company, from Medina, to rob a caravan of pilgrims. He saves a pilgrim's life. The Lahabba of Harb, a kindred of robbers. Tales of the Lahabba. Imperfect Moslems in the Haj. A Christian found at Medina. His martyr's death. A friar in Medina. Another Christian seen by Mohammed in Medina. Yahud and Nas&ra. 'Whose Son is Jesus?' Mohammed answers the salutation of just men, from his tomb. The martyrs' cave at Bedr Honeyn. Dakhll returns not at his time. The Nasrany's life in doubt. Amm Mohammed's good and Abdullah's black heart. Dakhll arrives in the night. Atrocious words of Abdullah. "The Engleys are friends and not rebels to the Sooltan.'' Andalusia of the Arabs. An English letter to the Pasha of Medina. Abdullah's letter. Spitting of some account in their medicine. ..... 138 — 164 CHAPTER VII. GALLA-LAND. MEDINA LORE. The Abyssinian Empire. Galla-land. Perpetual warfare of (heathen) Gallas and (Christian) Abyssinians. A renegade Frank or Traveller at Mecca and Medina. Subia drink. A hospitable widow (at Tayif). "The Nasara are the Sea's offspring." Wady Bishy. Muharram's death. The Nasrany accused. Sale of Muharram's goods. Aly, the (deadly) enemy of the Nasrany. The Ferra. El-Auazim. Thegif. The Nejumy in Hayil. A Roman invasion of ancient Arabia. Aelius Gallus sent by Augustus, with an army, to occupy the riches of A. Felix. Season of the Haj. Alarms. Tidings from the War. Palm plait. Quern stones wrought by the Arabs. New Alarms. Antique building on the Harra. Yanba. The Kheybar valleys. Harrats of Medina. The Halhal. The Hiirda. Clay summer-houses of W. Aly Beduins. The Kheyabara ab stain from certain meats. Another Ageyly's death.— His grave 'violated by the witches'. Tales of the Jan. A man wedded with a jin wife at Medina • • . . 165—19 CONTENTS. ix CHAPTER VIII. DELIVERANCE FROM KHEYBAR. PAGE Amm Mohammed's wild brother-in-law. The messenger arrives from Medina. The Nasrany procures that the water is increased at Kheybar. Ayn er-Reyih. Abu Middeyn, a derwish traveller. A letter from the Pasha of Medina. Violence of Abdullah. Might one forsake the name of his religion, for a time ? Amm Mohammed would persuade the Nasrany to dwell with him at Kheybar. Abu Bakkar. ' All is shame in Islam.' The Engleys in India, and at Aden. The Nasrany's Arabic books are stolen by a Colonel at Medina. Return of the camel-thief. Heteym cheeses. Wedduk. The villagers of el-Hayat. Humanity loves not to be requited. 'God sends the cold to each one after his cloth.' Mutinous villagers beaten by Abdullah. Deyik es-siidr. Departure from Kheybar. Hamed. Love and death. Amm Mohammed's farewell. Journey over the Harra. Come to Heteym tents. Habara fowl. Stormy March wind. The Hej jur mountains. Eagles. Meet with Heteym. 'The Nasara inhabit in a city closed with iron.' Solubbies from near Mecca. ' The rafiks seeking for water. Certain deep and steyned wells "were made bythejan". Blustering weather. The Harra craters. "God give that young man (Ibn Rashid) long life!" . . 195 — 226 CHAPTER IX. DESERT JOURNEY TO HAYIL. THE NASRANY IS DRIVEN FROM THENCE. Eyada ibn Ajjueyn, seen again. Uncivil Heteym hosts. Ghroceyb. Salih, again. Nomad names of horses. Strife with the rafiks. A desolate night in the khala. Zol. Come to tents and good entertain ment. A rautha in the desert. Hunters' roast. The Tih, or phantom thelul in the Sherarat country. Eyad, his person. Muthir, a poor Bishry. Braitshan, a Shammar sheykh. An Heteymy's blasphemy. Poor Beduins' religious simplicity. A Beduin boy seeking a herdsman's place. The first hamlet in J. Shammar. Another grange in the desert. 'Between the dog and the wolf.' The village el-Kasr. Tidings that the Emir is absent jrom Hayil. Beny Temin. Hayil in sight. Gofar. Come to Hayil, the second time. Aneybar left deputy for Ibn Rashid in the town. The Nasrany is received with ill-will and fanaticism. Aneybar is now an adversary. A Medina Sherif in Hayil. A Yemeny stranger who had seen the Nasrany in Egypt. Tidings of the war, which is ended. The great sheykh of el-Ajman. The Sherif. The townspeople's fanaticism in the morning ; a heavy hour. Depart, the second time, with trouble from Hayil. Come again to Gofar. B. Temin and Shammar. 227-262 x CONTENTS. CHAPTER X. THE SHAMMAR AND HARB DESERTS IN NEJD. PAGE Herding supper of milk. A flight of cranes. An evil desert journey, and night, with treacherous rafiks. Aly of Gussa again. Braitshan's booths again. "Arabs love the smooth speaking." Another evil journey. A menzil of Heteym ; and parting from the treacherous rafiks. Nomad thirst for tobacco. A beautiful Heteym woman. Solubba. Maatuk and Noweyr. "Nasara" passengers. Life of these Heteym. Burial of the Nasrfiny's books. Journey to the Harb, eastward. Gazelles. Camel- milk - bitter of wormwood. Heteym menzils. Come to Harb Aarab. False rumour of a foray of the Wahaby. El-Aiif. An Harb sheykh. An Harb bride. Khalaf ibn Nahal's great booth. Khalaf's words. Seleymy villagers. Mount again, and alight by night at tents. Motlog and Tollog. Come anew to Ibn Nahal's tent. Ibn Nahal, a merchant Beduin. His wealth. A rich man rides in a ghrazzu, to steal one camel; and is slain. Tollog's inhospitable ferij. Wander to another menzil. "Poor Aly." An Ageyly descried. A new face. A tent of poor acquaintance. . 263—294 CHAPTER XL JOURNEY TO EL-KASfM : BOREYDA. Beduin carriers. Set out with Hamed, a Shammary. False report of the foray of Ibn S'aud and the Ateyba. The digging of water-pits in the khala. Ibn Rashid's forays. Solubba. Beny Aly. Semira, anciently Dirat Ruwalla. Terky, a Medina Beduin. A rahla of Beny Salem. The Ataia. A tempest of rain. Triple rainbow. Lightning by night in the desert. Religious Beduw. A gentle host. A Harb menzil pitched ring- wise. el-FUrn, a kindred of Harb. Sara mountain. The first village of el-Kasim. Ayun. Gassa. Watchtowers. Bare hospitality in el-Kasim. The deep sand-land and its inhabitants. Aspect of Boreyda. The town. The Emir's hostel. The Nasrany is robbed in the court yard. Jeyber, the Emir's officer. The Kasr Hajellan. Abdullah, the Emir's brother. Boreyda citizens ; the best are camel masters in the caravans. Old tragedies of the Emirs. The town. A troubled afternoon. Set out on the morrow for Aneyza. Well sinking. Ethel trees. . . . 295 330 Appendix to Chap. XL The Triple Rainbow.— Note by Prof. P. G. Tait, Sec. R.S.E. . . 330 CONTENTS. xi CHAPTER XII. ANEYZA. PAGE The Nefud (of el-Kasim). Passage of the Wady er-Rummah. The Nasrany, forsaken by his raflk, finds hospitality ; and enters Aneyza. Aspect of the town. The Emir Zamil. His uncle Aly. The townspeople. Abdullah el-Khenneyny . His house and studies. Breakfast with Zamil. The Nasrany is put out of his doctor's shop by the Emir Aly. A Zelot. Breakfast with el-Khenneyny. Eye diseases. Small-pox in the town. The streets of Aneyza. The homely and religious life of these citizens. Women are unseen. Abdullah el-Bessam. A dinner in his house. The Bessam kindred. Nasir es-Sm$ry. The day in Aneyza. Jannah. el- Khenneyny's plantation. Hamed es-S&fy, Abdullah Bessam, the younger, and Sheykh Ibn Ayith. An old Ateyba sheykh : Zelotism. The infirm and destitute. The Nasr&ny's friends. A tale of Omar, the first Calif. Archeology. The Khenneyny. The vagabond Medina Sherif arrives at Aneyza. The good Bessam. .... 331—364 CHAPTER XIII. LIFE IN ANEYZA. Rumours of warfare. A savage tiding from the North. The Meteyr Aarab. The 'Ateyba. A Kahtany arrested in the street. A capital crime. Friday afternoon lecture. The Muttowwa. Bessam and Khen neyny discourse of the Western Nations. An Arabic gazette. " The touchstone of truth." The Shazlieh. An erudite Persian's opinion of The three (Semitic) religions. European evangelists in Syria. An Ara bian's opinions of Frankish manners (which he had seen in India). An inoculator and leech at Aneyza. The Nasrany without shelter. A learned personage. Mohammed. The Semitic faiths. " Sheykh " Mo hammed. Laudanum powder medicine. A message from Boreyda. Discourse of religion. A Jew's word. The small-pox. Yahi/a'a house hold. Maladies. A short cure for distracted persons ; story of a Maronite convent in Lebanon. Stone-workers at Aneyza. An outlying home stead. Money borrowed at usury. Oasis husbandry. An Aneyza horse- broker. Ants' nests sifted for bread. Arabian sale horses; and the Northern or Gulf horses. El-'Eyarieh. The Wady er-Rummah north ward. Klidlid bin Walid. Owshazieh. Deadly strife of well-diggers. Ancient man in Arabia. The Nasrany is an outlaw among them. Thoughts of riding to Siddus and er-Riath. The Arabic speech in el- T- ' a ... 365 — 398 Kasim xn CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIV. THE CHRISTIAN STRANGER DRIVEN FROM ANEYZA ; AND RECALLED. PAGE Yahya's homestead. Beduins from the North. Rainless years and murrain. Picking and stealing in Aneyza. Handicrafts. Hurly-burly of fanatic women and children against the Nasrany. Violence of the Emir Aly, who sends away the stranger by night. Night journey in the Nefud. The W. er-Rummah. Strife with the camel driver. Come to Kho'bra in the Nefud. The emir's kahwa. The emir's blind father. Armed riders of Boreyda. Medicine seekers. The town. An 'Aufy. The cameleer returns from Zamil ; to convey the stranger again to Aneyza! Ride to el-Helalieh. El-Bukerieh. Helalieh oasis. Night journey in the Nefud. Alight at an outlying plantation of Aneyza (appointed for the residence of the Nasrany). Visit of Abdullah el- Khenneyny. — Rasheyd's jen&yny. Salih. Joseph Khalidy. A son of Rasheyd had visited Europe ! Rasheyd's family. Ibrahim. The Suez Canal. The field labourers. El-Weshm. A labouring lad's tales. Ruin of the Wahaby. Northern limits of Murra and other Southern Aarab. A foray of Ibn Rashid. . . .... 399—427 Appendix to Chap. XIV. The 'Ateyba Aarab. . ... . 427 CHAPTER XV. WARS OF ANEYZA. KAHTAN EXPELLED FROM EL-KASIM. The Wahaby governor driven out by the patriot Yahya. Aneyza beleaguered by Ibn S'aud. The second war. A sortie. Aneyza women in the-field. The words of Zamil. A strange reverse. Words of Yahya. A former usurping Emir was cut off by Zamil. Zamil's homely life. The Emir's dues. Well-waters of Aneyza. Well-driving and irrigation. Evenings in the orchard. The kinds of palms. Locusts. The Bosra caravan arrives. Violence of Ibrahim. Rasheyd visits his jeneyny. The hareem. The small-pox. Bereaved households. The jehad. Ara bian opinion of English alms-deeds. The Meteyr Aarab gather to Aneyza. Warfare of the town, with the Meteyr, against the (intruded) Kahtan. Morning onset of Meteyr. Z&mil approaches. Final overthrow and flight of the Kahatin. Hayzan is slain. The Kahtan camp in the power of Meteyr. A Moghrebby enthralled among those Kahtan is set free. The Meteyr and the town return from the field. Beduin wives wailing for their dead. 'When the Messiah comes will he bid us believe in Mohammed?' The great sheykh of the Meteyr. The departure of the Mecca caravan is at hand. Hamed el-Yahya. The Nasrany removes to the Khenneyny's palm-ground. .... . 128 454 CONTENTS. xiii CHAPTER XVI. SET OUT FROM EL-KAStM, WITH THE BUTTER CARAVAN FOR MECCA. PAGE Abdullah el-Khenneyny ;— a last farewell. Sleyman, a merchant-carrier in the kafily. The camp at "Auhellan. The emir el-kdfily. The setting- out. Noon halt. Afternoon march. The evening station. Er-Russ. The Aban mountains. Ibrahim, the emir. Simiim wind. The last desert villages. A watering. Beduin rafiks.— Are not these deserts watered by the monsoon rains ? An alarm. Caravaners and Beduins. The land scape seyls to the W. er-Rummah. Camels and cameleers. 'Af If, a well-station. Signs of hunters. Caravan paths to Mecca. Wady Jer'nr. Mountain landmarks, Thillm and KIM. Water tasting of alum. The Harrat el-Kisshub. Thirst in the caravan. Sleyman's opinion of Eng lish shippers. A pleasant watering-place. El-Moy : cries in the evening menzil. Er-Bukkaba. Beduins. Sh'aara watering. Harrat 'Ashlry. Er-Bi'a. Es-Seyl [Kukn el-Menazil]. Head of the W. el-Humth. New aspect of Arabia. The caravaners about to enter Mecca take the ihram. The Hatheyl. The ashrdf descend from Mohammed. Arrive at the 'Ayn (ez-Zeyma). Mecca is a city of the Tehdma. The Nasrany leaves the Nejd caravan, at the station before Mecca ; and is assailed by a nomad Bhel'lf- - ... 455-488 CHAPTER XVII. TAYIF. THE SHERIF, EMIR OF MECCA. Maabub and Salem. The Nasrany captive. Troubled day at the 'Ayn. Night journey with Mecca caravaners. Return to es-Seyl. The Seyl station. The Nasr&ny assailed again. A Mecca personage. An unworthy Bessam. A former acquaintance. 'Okatz. The path beyond to et-Tayif. Night journey. Alight at a sherif's cottage near Tayif. Poor women of the blood of Mohammed. Aspect of et-Tayif. The town. The Nasrany is guest of a Turkish officer. Evening audience of the Sherif. Sherif Hasseyn, Emir of Mecca. The Sherif's brother Abdillah. Turkish officers' coffee-club. A bethel stone. Zeyd, a Bishy. Harb villages and kindreds. S&lem brings again their booty. A Turkish dinner. " What meat is for the health." Three bethels. Mid-day shelter in an orchard. 489— 517 xiv CONTENTS. CHAPTER XVIII. WADY FATIMA. PAGE Ghraneym. His unequal battle with the Kahtan. A second audience of the Sherif. The tribes of ashraf. The dominion of the Sherif. Gog and Magog. The Bdb'a eUKhaly. Tayif is in fear of the Musc6v. The Koreysh. Set out to ride to Jidda. " The English are from the Tayif dira." A love-sick sherif. A renowned effigy. The maiden's mountain. New dates. The Wady Fatima. Tropical plants. The shovel-plough. Another Harra. Bee-hive-like cottages. The Tehama heat. A rich man in both worlds. Mecca-country civil life and hospitality. A word of S'aud Ibn S'aud when he besieged Jidda. A thaif-Ullah. A poor negro's hospitality. End of the Fatima valley. The Mecca highway to Jidda. Sacred doves. Witness-stones. Apes of the Tehama. A wayside Kahwa. — Jidda in sight ! Melons grown in the sand without watering. Works and cisterns of Jidda water-merchants. 'Eve's grave.' Enter the town. — A hospitable consulate. 518 — 539 Appendix to Vol. II. Geology of the Peninsula of the Arabs. . . 540 542 CHAPTER I. Curious questioning of the townspeople. A Moor hakim had visited Hayil. He cast out demons. The jins. Superstitious fears of the Arabs. Exorcists. A counterfeit Christian vaccinator cut off in the desert. Advantage of the pro fession of medicine. Hamiid sends his sick infant son to tlie Nasrany hakim, who cures also Hamud's wife. Diseases at Hayil. The great Kasr. The guest- chambers. Hdyil house-building. Wards of the town. Artificers. Visit to S'weyfty. The mdkbara has swallowed up the inhabitants. Deaf and dumb man-at-arms of tlie Emir. Mdjid shooting with ball. English gunpowder. Gulf words heard at Hdyil. Palms and a gum-mastic tree in Ajja. ' The coming of Moliammed foretold in the Enjil.' Hamud's tolerant urbanity. Another audience. The princely family of Ibn Bashid. Tela! a slayer of himself. Metaab succeeded him. His nephews, Tel&Vs sons, conspire to kill him. Metaab dies by their shot. Bunder prince. Mohammed who fled to er-Bidth returns upon assurance of peace. He is again conductor of the Bagdad pilgrims. He comes again to Hayil with the yearly convoy of temmn for the public kitchen. Bunder rides forth with his brother Bedr and Hamiid to meet him. Mohammed slays (his nephew) Bunder. Hamud's speech to the people. Tragedies in the Castle. Mohammed's speech in the MSshab. He sits down as Muhafuth. Bedr taken and slain. Moliammed slays the slayer. Ham&d's nature. Mohammed the Emir is childless. His moderation and severity. The princely bounty. Tlie Shammar state. Villages %nd hamlets. The public dues and taxes and expense of government. The Prince's horses sold in India. His forces. Ibn Bashid's forays. He "weakens" the Aarab. Tlie Shammar principality. When I returned in the afternoon from the ascent of the Sumra I found it was already a matter of talk in the town. The first persons met with approached to ask me, " What have you found there— anything ? tell us ! certainly you went^ to see something yonder, — and else wherefore had the Nasrany slimbed upon those high rocks, and paid pence for an ass?" As I passed by the suk tradesmen beckoned to me from the shops, they too would speak with me of the adventure. My former friends durst no more be seen openly in the D. T. il 1 2 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. Nasrany's company ; it might be laid to their charge, that they also favoured the kafir. As I walked on the morrow in the town, one of the young patricians of those daily about the Emir came to question me :— the most of these complacent young gallants, as I might perceive them, through their silken shining petticoats, are some of the vilest spirits in Hayil. With many shallow impatient gestures, and plucking my mantle, " Ehalil, said he, what dost thou here, so far from the suk ? Why wander round about ? what brings thee into this place ? what seekest, what seest thou ? Is Hayil a good town ? the air, is it well?— and when wilt thou depart?" As I came again a Beduwy who sat in the upper end of the Me"shab saluted me friendly, he was of the Welad Aly sheykhs, and had seen the Nasrany at el-Hejr. We sat down together, and another came to me of those effeminate young silken Arabs, masking in the insolent confidence of the Emir. The cockerel disdainfully breaking our talk, I cut him off with — " Pass on, young man; my ears ache of thy ignorance and malevolent speech." The you»g man left us in anger, and as he was gone, " Khalil, said the friendly Beduwy, I speak it of fellowship, deal not so plainly with this townspeople ; believe me they will take-up thy words, he also that you now sent away will not cease to hate thee extremely ; and billah the young man is of their principal houses, and one nigh to the Emir. — Ay! here is another manner of life, than that to which thou hast been wont in the desert, and we are not here in the desert, neither be these the Beduw:" — and himself, a messenger from the rebellious tribe, he seemed somewhat to be daunted in the tyrannical shadow of the place. Some friendly persons coming to visit me, after I had flitted from my old beyt to the next makhzan, said, "Khalil is the second hakim we have seen in this lodging." — "Who was the hakim in this chamber before me?" — "A Moghreby, a doctor indeed, [better than Khalil,] there was hone like him to write hijabs, and upon everyone he received three reals: — why, Khalil, write you no hijabs ? Write, man, and the whole town will be at thy door, and every one with two dollars, or three, in his hand. Thou mightest be enriched soon, that now never canst thrive in this selling of medicines, the Arabs desire.no medi cines. — But the Moghreby, wellah, holding his hijabs a moment in the smoke, delivered them to those who paid him reals, and the people found them very availing. If such were the Moghreby's hijabs, is not Khalil a Nasrany, and therefore one who might write even better than he ? — Ah ! how that man was A MOGHREBY HAKIM. 3 powerful in his 'reading' (spells)! He cast out the demons of possessed persons, and he bound the jan, wellah, in yonder corner." — "What bound he in that corner?" — "AM el-aard, (the demon-folk, which inhabit under the earth,) they make men sick, and the possessed beat themselves, or they fall down, raging and foaming." Aly el-Ayid, my neighbour in the next houses, who was beholden to me for some faithful (medical) service, brought me a lamp of tallow, saying, 'He would not have a friend sleep here in the darkness, the demons might affray me ; ' and, looking round, " This makhzan, he said, is full of jan (since the Moghreby's casting out so many), I myself durst not sleep in this place." — " But tell me, who has seen these jan, and what is their likeness?" — "I have seen them, Khalil, some tall, and some be of little stature, their looks are very horrible ; certain of them have but one eye in the midst of their faces ; other jins' visages be drawn awry in fearful manner, or their face is short and round, and the lips of many jins hang down to their middles." Aly el-Ayid came early on the morrow to my beyt to know how I fared, and seeing not an hour of his tallow burned, he called me foolhardy to sleep without light. But pointing upward, he showed me a worse case, the great beam was half broken in the midst ! the load of the earthen heaped ceiling threatened ruin and destruction, and therefore they had lodged none here of late : — but even that abandoned makhzan Hamiid had conceded to the Nasrany unwillingly. The wavering branches of a palm which grew in Hamud's orchard- grounds, sliding ghostly in the open casement by night, might, I thought, be the jan of their unquiet consciences. By day little chirping sparrows of the Me'shab were my guests, and more than other, amiable company. I found professors of exorcism (as before said) at Hayil : they were two vile and counterfeit persons. One of them was a man growing into years ; I had seen him at Abeyd's kahwa, and by certain of his answers he surprised me, and by his know ledge of letters; this person was a foreigner from East Nejd, but now he dwelt at Gofar. He seemed afraid in that presence to answer me ; perhaps he durst not speak frankly, or much above his. breath. That other was a young man of Hayil, and he came secretly to my makhzan, to learn some mastery in the art, from the Nasrany. He asked me, ' what were my manner to lay strong constraint upon the demons, and the words of my powerful spells, kerreya. ' He had a book too written full of very strong readings at home, and he sped very well by it, for he could cast out the jins more than any person besides.' 1—2 4 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. This was a smooth fellow, Nature had favoured him in all, and for his sweet voice the shrew was sometimes called in (he boasted) to sing before the Emir. That Moghreby, with his blind arts, lived at Hayil in the popular favour, and he had won much silver: also to the lone man they lent a pretty widow to wife, — " wherefore should he live without housewifery ? " Abdullah, a slave of the Emir, came to the Nasrany upon a day with a like proffer, and Majid showed me a pleasant Galla maiden of his father's house hold, saying, that did I consent, she should be mine. The poor girl was gentle and modest, and without unwillingness ; but because I would not lead my life thus, they ascribed it to the integrity of the Christian faith, and had the more tolerance of me in the rest. Word that 'the Princes suffered at Hayil, and even favoured the Nasrany ' was spread by Beduins returning from the capital, into all the next parts of Arabia ; and after ward I came no whither in Nejd, until I arrived at the Kasim villages, where they had not heard of the wandering Nasrany, and by the signs they all knew me. They told me also of a Nasrany (some Syrian by likelihood or Mesopotamian), who years before, coming to Hayil, had taken the people's ^ money for pretended vaccination. "But Ullah, they said, cut him off, for he was met with and slain in the desert by the Aarab." Little was my practice of medicine, yet this name pro cured me entrance amongst them, and., the surest friends. A man of medicine is not found in' Nejd ; but commonly they see some Ajamy hakim, once a year, at Hayil amongst the Persian pilgrims. I was called to visit suffering persons ; yet' because they would not leave with me the smallest pledge of their good faith, I remained with hardly any daily patients. Hamud now sent to me an infant son, Feysal, that seemed to be of a very good disposition, and was sick of fever and dys entery. The child whom they brought to me, languishing and likely to die, I left, when I departed from Hayil, nearly restored to health. I was called also to Hamud's wife in his family house. I found her clad as other Arabian women in a simple calico smock dyed in indigo, her face was blotted out with the heathenish veil-clout; I gave her a medicine and she in a few days recovered. Of all their ailings most common (we have seen already) are eye-diseases, — it is the poorer, that is_ the misdieted _ people, who are the sooner affected- then diseases of the intestines, agues, old rheumatism; and men, the ignominy of the Meccawy's religion, too often com plain of inability. The morbus gallicus is common at Hayil, MALADIES. 5 and in the neighbourhood ; I saw many hypochondriacs [they are a third of all the Arabians]. There were brought to me cases of a sudden kind of leprosy ; the skin was discoloured in whitish spots, rising in the space of two or three days in the breast and neck. Cancer was not uncommon, and partial paralysis with atrophy of the lower limbs. I enquired when was the Kasr founded ? — which though clay-built is of a certain noble aspect. The wall is near eight feet in thickness at the ground, and more than forty in height, and seems to be carried about a great space. Upon the public place, I measured this castle building, one hundred and ten paces, with two towers. The doorway of the Kasr, under the tower in the midst, is shut at evening by a rude gate of heavy timber, in which is a little wicket, only to be entered stooping — and that before dark is put-to. The wall and foundation of the huge clay building is from old times and was laid by some of the former sheykhs (surely men of ambitious mind) at Hayil, before Abdullah. The Meshab in front is twenty-five paces over, and the makhzans built in face of the castle are nine in number, [v. the fig., Vol. I. p. 587.] To every makhzan is a door with a wooden lock opening into a little court, and beyond is the guest-chamber without door, square and dark, some fifteen feet by twelve feet. If any rubba would have fuel in the cold winter days, they must ask it of the Emir sitting in the public mejlis. Telal built the makhzans, and the great mesjid; his father Abdullah had ended the building of the Kasr, only one year before his decease. The clay of the house-building at Hayil is disposed in thick layers, in which are bedded, as we saw at M6gug, flat brick-blocks, long dried in the sunny air, set leaning wise, and very heavy, of great strength and endurance. The copes of the house- walling at Hayil, and the sills of their casements, are often finished above with a singular stepped pinnacle (fig, Vol. I. p. 106), which resembles the strange sculptured cornice of the Petra and Hejr frontispices. i Their streets — I came in then from living long in the ! wilderness — I thought well set out ; the rows are here of one- storied houses. There is no seeming of decay, but rather of newness, and thriving and spending : their capital village is seen, as her inhabitants, well arrayed. Hayil is divided into eleven wards, a twelfth is S'weyfly. All the settlements in nomad Arabia, even the smallest hamlets, with the incorrupt desert about them, have a certain freshness and decent aspect above that which the traveller arriving from the West may 6 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. have seen in Syria. The village Arabians— come of the nomad blood — are happy (where God's peace is not marred by striving factions) under the mild and just government of their home- born sheykhs; and in their green palm islands, they have much of the free-born and civil mind of the desert. At Hayil, and Teyma, the stranger's eye may mark certain little close frames set high upon the front walling of many dars, and having the form of right-angled triangles ; he will see them to be timbered above the doorways. These are shooting sconces (like the machicolations of our old fortresses), for defence of the door of the household. As for the administration of the town, there are no dues at Hayil for maintenance of ways or public lighting, — which is unknown even at Damascus — nor so much as for watchmen: yet the streets are clean, and draffe is cast out into certain pits and side places. Irrigation water drawn by camel labour from their deep wells, though not of the best, is at hand in sebils and I conduits ; to these common pools the town housewives resort to fill their pans and their girbies, and for the household washing. Dogs are not seen by day in any Nejd villages, but some lost hounds which remain without the most oases, will prowl by their streets in the night-time. Of household animals, there are in nearly all the settlements small kine for their sweet milk and as light plough-beasts, asses for riding and carriage, cats to quit them of vermin, besides poultry. The artificers in Hayil are few and of the smiths' caste, workers in metal and wood, in which there are some who turn small and brittle ethelware bowls. Their thelul saddle here lis other than that of Teyma and westwards, in which the pillars are set upright. There is a petty industry among women i of sewing and embroidering, with silk and metal thread, the mantles which are brought down (in the piece) from Jauf and Bagdad, — none are made here. I saw in the suk fine skein- silks, folded in printed papers, and such the shopkeepers oft- times put in my hands to read for them; — but the language was English ! and when I found the title it was The Bombay Gazette. Their hareem plait the common house-matting of the tender springing palm-leaf, as in all the oases. There are besides a few men of builders' and carpenters' craft, rude workers, nearly without tools, and pargeters in jiss or jips, a gypsum-stone which is brought from the mountain, and found clotted together, like mortar, in the desert sand. The jips, broken and ground to a flour-like powder, they mix with water, and spread it for the border and lining-walls of hearth-pits : S'WEYFLY; A PLAGUE-STRICKEN VILLAGE. 7 this dries quickly to a hard white crust, shining like marble, that will bear the fire. The wood and hay gatherers who go far out into the wilderness, are Kusmdn, laborious foreigners from el-Kasim ; the nomad-spirited townspeople of Jebel Sham mar are not good for such drudging labour. I went out of Hayil another day towards S'weyfly. Beyond Wasit I walked by fields where men were labouring, and one threw clods at the Nasrany, but the rest withheld him ; I went on between the two Samras, and beside the wide seyl bed, being there half a stone-cast over. The soil is now good loam, no more that sharp granite grit of Hayil ; the dates are good, they are the best of the country. — The first houses I found to be but waste walls and roofless, and the plantations about them forsaken ; the languishing palm-stems showed but a dying crown of rusty leaves. I had not perceived a living person in these fields, that were once husbanded upon both sides of the large-bedded torrent. The pest, which destroyed the Jebel villages, came upon them after a year of dearth, when the date harvest had failed, and the price of corn (three sahs to the real) was risen more than twofold. Strange it seems to us, used to public remedies, that in none of the merchants, more than in cattle, nor in the Prince himself, was there any readi ness of mind to bring in grain from a distance : — the Moslem religion ever makes numbness and death in some part of the human understanding. The waba being come upon them there died in two months in this small village two hundred persons. The few which remained at S'weyfly were feeble even now, and had lost their health, so that it was said of them " They might hardly bear the weight of their mantles." The cruel disease seized upon men sooner than women and children. At length I came where a few persons were loitering abroad ; I saluted them in passing, and asked " Who has here a coffee house, and where are the inhabitants?" They saw he was a stranger who enquired this of them and responded with a desolate irony, " They lie in yonder makbara !" I went forward where I heard the shrilling of a suany. A woman (since the men were dead) was driving that camel-team at the well. It is eight fathoms here to water; all their wells are brackish, and sweet water to drink must be fetched from Hayil ' for money '. Brackish water in a sweet soil is best for the palm irrigation ; but if the palms be rooted in any saltish or bitter earth, as at Kheybar, they have need of a fresh irrigation water : and always for some little saltiness in the soil or water palm-plants thrive the better. Such water to drink is very unwholesome in -these 8 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. climates, and was a cause they think of so many dying here in the pestilence. In old time, they say, when S'weyfly was ancient Hayil, the wells in this part were sweet, that is until the new planting above them had spent the vein of good water. One led the stranger in hospitable manner to the best house which remained, to drink coffee. We entered a poor clay room, long unswept, and in the sun a swarming place of flies ; this was their kahwa. The three or four ghastly looking and weakly speaking men who followed us in to drink were those that survived in the neighbourhood ; and it seemed as if the nightmare lay yet upon them. Kindly they received the guest, and a tray was presently set before me of their excellent dates. The S'weyfly villagers, for this hospitable and gentle humour, are said to resemble rather the Beduw than Hayil towns people. Enough it seemed to them that the stranger was the hakim, they would not cavil with a guest or question of his religion. Whilst I sat with them at the coffee, there entered, with his sword, a deaf and dumb young man, whom I knew in Hayil, one of the Prince's armed rajajil : and with vehement signs and maffling cries he showed us he was come out from Hayil to seek me. The poor fellow had always a regard of m§ in the town, and would suffer none to trouble me. I have seen him threaten even Majid in my chamber with angry looks, and shake his stick at the princeling boy, who too much, he thought, molested me. He now made them signs — drawing the first finger across his throat — that he feared for me so far abroad. All the way homeward the poor man blamed me, as if he would say "Why adventure so far alone, and thou art in danger to be waylaid ?" I made him signs I went to visit sick people, that were in need of medicines. Lower where we passed he showed me smiling a few palm trees and a field which were his own. I heard he was a stranger (as are so many of the Emir's men) from el-Aruth. At my first arriving at Hayil, when they beckoned to him that I was not of their religion, he quickly signified his friendly counsel that 'I should pray as the rest'. The poor Speechless uttered his soul_ in a single syllable, Ppahppah; that is nearly the first voice in children and dumb creatures, beginning in M-, B-, W-, which is all one. This P is not found in all the large Arabic alphabet, but any foreign taken-up words having in them that initial letter they must pronounce with F- or else with B-. All his meaning was now very well understood by the people of Hayil ; they made him kindly answers with movement of the lips, as in speaking, and of his wistful life- SHOOTING AT A MARK. 9 long comparison, he could guess again their minds: but if any mocked, with great bursting forth of Ppahs and chatter ing, and furious eyes, and laying hand upon his sword, he threatened their lives, or suddenly he drew it forth rattling, to the half, in the scabbard. Of his long sufferance of the malice of the world might be this singular resolution in him, to safeguard another manner of deaf and dumb person. He rode in the band upon his thelul, and served very well, they said, in the Prince's ghrazzus. As I returned to town I met with Majid and his company carrying guns in the fields, his uncle Fahd was with them. Thus they went out daily, shooting with ball at a white paper set up in an orchard wall at a hundred and twenty paces. I sat down with Fahd to see the practice; their shots from the long Arabic matchlocks struck at few fingers' distance all round the sheet, but rarely fell within it. The best was Ghranim, when he was one amongst them, for looking through spectacles, he would send his ball justly at the first shot into the midst of the white; — this firing with the match does not unsettle the aim. They shot with ' powder Engleysy ', of a tin flask, whereupon I read in a kind of stupor, Hall, Dart- ford ! There are many sea-borne wares of the Gulf- trade seen at Hayil, and the people take as little thought from whence they come to them, as our country people of China tea-chests ; European are many things of their most necessary use, as the husbandmen's spades and crowbars, pigs of lead with the , English stamp, iron and tinning metal ; their clothing is calico 1 of Manchester and Bombay. All their dealings are in foreign l money; reals of Spain, Maria Theresa dollars, and Turkish imejidy crowns; gold money is known more than seen among |them. They call doubloon the piece of 5 Turkish pounds, (English sovereigns ginniydt or bintu, and the 20 fr. piece lira Wransdwy. For small silver in the Hayil suk they have Austrian sixpences, and certain little gross Persian coins, struck awry, /and that for the goodly simplicity of the workmanship resemble (the stamps of the old Greek world. With the love of novelty I which is natural even to Semitic souls, they are also importers with their foreign merchandise of some Gulf words, especially from the Persian, as they will say for a dromedary shittr, rather than of their own wealth in the current Arabic, (hajin) theMl, rikdb, (haditj), mdtiyah, rohbl, hdshy, hurra. Majid invited me, if I stayed till winter, to take part in ' their hunting expeditions in Ajja. Then the young franklins and men of H&yil, and even the Princes, go out to the mountain to shoot at the bedun, driving asses with them to carry their 10 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. Jwater: they commonly stay out a week thus and trust to /shooting the game for their supper. In many small wadies of Ajja are wild palms watered by springs, or growing with their roots in the seyl ground. The owners are Beduin families which come thither only in the time of the date gathering: the date is smaller than the fruit of trees which are husbanded. There grows a tree in Ajja, named el-ardr, from which flows a sort of gum-mastica, "it resembles the tamarisk." Ajja is greater, and a score of miles longer, than the sister mountain Selma. Hamiid I saw daily ; I went to dine with him again, and as we sat in the evening, he said to me, " Is there not some thing written in the Enjil, of Mohammed?" — "Nay, nothing, and I know of it every word." — "But is there not mentioned that a prophet, by name Hamed, should come after; — and that is Mohammed ? " I answered shortly again : " No, there is not." Hamud startled, he believed me, his humanity per suaded him that I could not intend any offence — and that were without remission — towards the religion. I said further : " If such were found in the Enjil, I would be a Mosleman ; do you read this word in the koran!" Hamud did not an swer, he sat on gravely musing. It was an enigma to me what they might mean by a prediction of Hamed or Mo hammed (which is one) in the Christian scriptures. — We read in the sixth verset of the koran chapter 61, " And said Isa-bin- Miriam, 0 Beny Israel, I am the apostle of Ullah, to confirm the Towrdt (Mosaic Scriptures) and to show unto you the coming of an apostle, — his name shall be Ahmed " (The Glorious). To such Ahmed or Glorious One responds in the tongue of the New or Hellenic Scriptures the word Hept/oXuro?, 'very illus trious.' Therefore their barbaric doctors bray that the malicious Nasara have miswritten Hapd/c\r]To<;, 'Comforter' [which word is but four times found, and namely, in the last testament of Christ, from the xiv. to the xvi. chapters of St John]. Hamud took pleasure to question, and commune with me of our religion; he smiled with pious admiration to hear the Nasrany stranger repeat after him some part of their canonical prayers, and say 'he held them thus far for godly,' as the fatiha, commonly said in the beginning of their de votion, which sounds in their full and ripe Nejd utterance of a certain surprising beauty and solemnity : the sense of the text is this : " In the name of the God. of the Bowels of Mercies. The praise be unto God, the Lord of all worlds [creatures], the God of the Bowels and Mercies, Sovereign of the day of doom ; we adore Thee, we for help do cry unto Thee. Lead us in PRAYING-STANDS. II the right way ; the way of those unto whom Thou hast been gracious, with whom Thou art not wroth, and which be not gone astray." Hamud, even in his formal religion, was of a tolerant urbanity: religion was in him the (politic) religion of rulers. In the palm, ground without his kahwa, he has (in their town manner) a raised place for prayers; this was a square platform in clay, with a low cornice, bestrewn with clean gravel, and so large that a coffee company might kneel in it _ and bow themselves to the ground. Hamiid prayed in this oratory in the day-time, as imam, before the men of his household. Some day whilst they prayed, Aly, that ribald foot-follower of Majid, laid hands suddenly on my mantle to have drawn me among them. But Hamud stayed in his prayers to smile towards one and the other, and with a sign forbade that the stranger should suffer any displeasure. In all the house-courts at Hayil, and in their orchard grounds, there is made some such praying-stand ; it may be a manner of the reformed religion in Nejd, and like to this we have seen prayer-steads in the open deserts defended from the common hy a border of stones. Every such raised clay masdlly, littered with pure gravel, is turned towards the sanctuary of Arabia. A week passed and then the Emir Mohammed came again from the wilderness : the next afternoon he called for me after the mejlis. His usher found me slumbering in my makhzan ; worn and broken in this long year of famine and fatigues, I was fallen into a great languor. The Prince's man roused me with haste and violence in their vernile manner : " Stand up thou and come off; the Emir calls thee;" and because I stayed to take the kerchief and mantle, even this, when we entered the audience, was laid against me, the slave saying to the Emir that ' Khalil had not been willing to follow him' ! Mohammed had gone over from the mejlis with the rajajil to Abeyd's kahwa. The Emir sat now in Hamud's place, and Hamud where Sleyman daily sat. The light scimitar, with golden hilt, that Mohammed carries loose in his hand, was leaned up to the wall beside him ; the blade is said to be of some extremely fine temper. He sat as an Arabian, in his loose cotton tunic, mantle and kerchief, with naked shanks and feet, his sandals, which he had put off at the carpet, were set out before him. I saluted the Emir, Salaam aleyk. — No answer : then I greeted Hamud and Sleyman, now of friendly acquaint ance, in the same words, and with aleykom es-salaam they hailed me smiling comfortably again. One showed me to a 12 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. place where I should sit down before the Emir, who said shortly "From whence?" — "From my makhzan." — 'And what found I there to do all the day, ha ! and what had I seen in the time of my being at Hayil, was it well ?' When the Prince said', "Khalil!" I should have responded in their manner Aunak or Labbeyk or Tamil el- Ummr, " 0 Long-of-age ! and what is _ thy sweet will?" but feeling as an European among these light- tongued Asiatics, and full of mortal weariness, I kept silence. So the Emir, who had not responded to my salutation, turned abruptly to ask Hamud and Sleyman: Md gar-Add? 'how! he returns not one's word who speaks with him ?' Hamud responded kindly for me, 'He could not tell, it might be Khalil is tired.' I answered after the pause, "I am lately arrived in this place, but aghr4ty, I suppose it is very well." The Emir opened his great feminine Arab eyes upon me as if he wondered at the not flattering plainness of my speech ; and he said suddenly, with an emphasis, before the company, "Ay, I think so indeed, it is very well ! — and what think you Khalil, it is a good air ?" — "I think so, but the flies are very thick." — " Hmm, the flies are very thick ! and went you in the pilgrim age to the Holy City (Jerusalem)?" — "Twice or thrice, and to J. T6r, where is the mountain of our Lord Musa." — Some among them said to the Emir, "We have heard that monks of the Nasara dwell there, their habitation is built like a castle in the midst of the khala, and the entry is by a window upon the wall ; and who would come in there must be drawn up by a wheelwork and ropes." The Emir asked, "And have they riches ? " — " They have a revenue of alms." The Emir rose, and taking his sandals, all the people stood up with him, — he beckoned them to be seated still, and went out to the plant ation. In the time of his absence there was silence in all the company ; when he returned he sat down again without cere mony. The Prince, who would discern my mind in my answers, asked me, "Were dates good or else bad?" and I answered " battdl, battdl, very bad." — " Bread is better ? and what- in your tongue is bread ?" he repeated to himself the name which he had heard in Turkish, and he knew it in the Persian; Mo hammed, formerly conductor of the pilgrimage, can also speak- in that language. The Emir spoke to me with the light impatient gestures of Arabs not too well pleased, and who play the first parts, a sudden shooting of the brows, and that shallow extending' of the head from the neck, which are of the bird-like inhabitants of nomadic Nejd, and whilst at their every inept word's end they expect thy answer. The Emir was favourably minded to- A THIRD AUDIENCE. TELAL. 13 ward me, but the company of malignant young fanatics always about him, continually traduced the Nasrany. Mohammed now Prince was as much better than they, as he was of an higher understanding. When to some new question of the Emir I confirmed my answer in the Beduin wise, By his life, haydtak, he said to Hamud, " Seest thou ? Khalil has learned to speak (Arabic) among the Annezy, he says aghrAty." —"And what might I say, O el-Muhafuth ? I speak as I heard it of the Beduw." The Prince would not that I should question him of grammar, but hearing me name him so justly by his title, Warden (which is nearly that in our histoiy of Protector), he said mildly, "Well, swear By the life of Ullah !" (The other, since they are become so clear-sighted with the Wahaby, is an oath savouring of idolatry.) I answered some what out of the Prince's season, " — and thus even the nomads use, in a greater occasion, but they say, By the life of thee, in a little matter." As the Prince could not draw from me any smooth words of courtiers, Hamiid and Sleyman hastened, with their fair speech, to help forth the matter and excuse me. " Certainly, they said, Khalil is not very well to-day, eigh, the poor man ! he looks sick indeed ! " — And I passed the most daylight hours, stretched weakly upon the unswept floor of my makhzan, when the malignants told the Emir I was writing up his beled; so there ofttimes came in spies from the Castle, who opened upon me suddenly, to see in what manner the Nasrany were busied. — Emir : "And thy medicines are what ? hast thou tirydk [thus our fathers said treacle, drjpiaK-, the antidote of therine poisons]. In an extreme faint- ness, I was now almost falling into a slumber, and my attention beginning to waver I could but say, — " What is tiryak ? — I , remember, but I have it not, by God there is no such thing." Sleymdn : " Khalil has plenty of salts Engleys (magnesia) — hast thou not, Khalil?" At this dull sally, and the Arabian Emir being so much in thought of poison, I could not forbear to smile, — an offence before rulers. Sleyman then beginning to call me to give account in that presence of the New Con tinent, -he would I should say, if we had not dates there, but the " Long-of-Days " rose abruptly, and haughtily, — so rose all the rest with him, and they departed. A word now of the princely family and of the state of J. Shammar : and - first of the tragedies in the house of Ibn ' Rashid. Telal returning from er-Biath (whither he was ac customed, as holding of the Wahaby, to go every year with a present of horses) fell sick, musky, poisoned, it was said, in his 14 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. cup, in East Nejd. His health decayed, and the Prince fell into a sort of melancholy frenzy. Telal sent to Bagdad for a certain Persian hakim. The hakim journeyed down to Hayil, and when he had visited the Prince, he gave his judgment unadvisedly : " This sickness is not unto death, it is rather a long disease which must waste thy understanding." — Telal answered, "Aha, shall I be a fool ?— wellah mejnun ! wa ana eZ-HAKiM, and I being the Ruler ?" And because his high heart might not longer endure to live in the common pity, one day when he had shut himself in his chamber, he set his pistols against his manly breast, and fired them and ended. So Metaab, his brother, became Emir at Hayil, as the elder of the princely house inheriting Abdullah their father's dignity : Telal's children were (legally) passed by, of whom the eldest, Bunder, afterwards by his murderous deed Emir, was then a young man of seventeen years. Metaab I have often heard praised as a man of mild demeanour, and not common understanding; he was princely and popular at once, as the most of his house, politic, such as the great sheukh el-Aarab, and a fortunate governor. Metaab sat not fully two years, — always in the ambitious misliking of his nephew Bunder, a raw and strong-headed young man. Bunder, conspiring with his next brother, Bedr, against their uncle, the ungracious young men determined to kill him. They knew that their uncle wore upon his arm "an amulet which assured his life from lead", therefore the young parricides found means to cast a silver bullet. — Metaab sat in his fatal hour with his friends and the men-at-arms before him in the afternoon mejlis, which is held, as said, upon the further side of the Meshab, twenty-five paces over in face of the Kasr. — Bunder and Bedr were secretly gone up from the apartments within to the head of the castle wall, where is a terrace and parapet. Bunder pointing down his matchlock through a small trap in the wall, fired first ; and very likely his hand wavered when all hanged upon that shot, for his ball went a little awry and razed the thick head-band of a great Beduin sheykh Ibn Shaldn, chief of the strong and not unfriendly Annezy tribe er-Ruwalla in the north, who that day arrived from his dira, to visit Prince Ibn Rashid. Ibn Shalan, hearing the shot sing about his ears, started up, and (cried he) putting a hand to his head, "Akhs, Mohafuth, wouldst thou murder me !" The Prince, who sat on, and would not save himself by an un seemly flight, answered the sheykh with a constant mild face, " Fear not ; thou wilt see that the shot was levelled at myself." A second shot struck the Emir in the breast, which was Bedr's. BUNDER SLAIN. 1 5 Bunder being now Prince, sat not a full year out, and could not prosper: in his time, was that plague which so greatly wasted the country. Mohammed who is now Emir, when his brother Metaab was fallen, fled to er-Riath, where he lived awhile. The Wahaby prince, Abdullah Ibn Saud, was a mean to re concile them, and Bunder, by letters, promising peace, invited his uncle to return home. So Mohammed came, and receiving his old office, was governor again of the Bagdad haj caravan. Mohammed went by with the convoy returning from Mecca to Mesopotamia, and there he was to take up the year's provision of temmn for the Mothif (if you would believe them, a thousand camel-loads, — 150 tons!). Mohammed finding only Thuffir Aarab at el-Meshed, hired camels of them with pro mise of safe-conduct going and returning, in the estates of Ibn Rashid; for they were Beduw from without, and not friendly with the Jebel. The journey is two weeks' marches of the nomads for loaded camels. — Mohammed approaching Hayil, sent before him to salute the Emir saying, " Mohammed greets thee, and has brought down thy purveyance of temmn for the Mothif."- — " Ha ! is Mohammed come ? answered Bunder, — he shall not enter Hayil." Then Bunder, Bedr, and Hamud rode forth, these three together, to meet Mohammed ; and at Bunder's commandment the town gates behind them were shut. Mohammed sat upon his thelul, when they met with him, as he had ridden down from the north, and said Bunder, " Mohammed, what Beduw hast thou brought to Hayil ? — the Thuffir ! and yet thou knowest them to be g6m with us !" Mohammed : " Wellah, ya el-Moh.afu.th, I have brought them M wdjhy, under my countenance ! (and in the Arabian guise he stroked down his visage to the beard) — because I found none other for the carriage of your temmn." Whilst Bunder lowered upon him, Hamud, who was in covenant with his cousin Mohammed, made him a sign that his life was in doubt, — by drawing (it is told) the forefinger upon his gullet. Mohammed spoke to one of the town who came by on horseback, " Ho there ! lend me thy mare awhile," making as though he would go and see to the entry and unloading of his caravan. Mohammed, when he was settled on horseback, drew over to the young Prince and caught Bunder's " horns ", and with his other hand he took the crooked broad dagger, which upon a journey they wear at the belt. — "La ameymy, la ameymy, do it not, do it not, little 'nuncle ! " exclaimed Bunder in the horror and anguish of death. Mohammed an swered with a deadly stern voice, "Wherefore didst thou kill 1 6 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. thine uncle ? wa hu fi batn-ak, and he is in thy belly (thou hast devoured him, dignity, life, and all)," and with a mur derous hand-cast he struck the blade into his nephew's bowels ! — There remained no choice to Mohammed, when he had received the sign, he must slay his elder brother's son, or himself be lost ; for if he should fly, how might he have out gone the godless young parricides? his thelul was weary, he •was weary himself; and he must forsake the Thuffir, to whom his princely word had been plighted. — Devouring is the im potent ambition to rule, of all Arabians who are born near the sheykhly state. Mohammed had been a loyal private man under Metaab ; his brother fallen, what remained but to avenge him ? and the garland should be his own. Bunder slain, he must cut off kindred, which else would endanger him. The iniquity of fortune executed these crimes by Mohammed's hand, rather than his own execrable am bition. — These are the tragedies of the house of Ibn Rashid ! their beginning was from Telal, the murderer of himsalf : the fault of one extends far round, such is the cursed inHure of evil, as the rundles of a stone dashed into water, trouble all the pool. There are some who say, that Hamud made Bunder's dying sure with a pistol-shot, — he might do this, because his lot was bound up in Mohammed's life : but trustworthy persons in Hayil have assured me that Hamud had no violent hand in it. — Hamiid turning his horse's head, galloped to town and commanded to ' keep the gates close, and let no man pass out or enter for any cause'; and riding in to the M^shab he cried : " Hearken, all of you ! a Rashidy has slain a Rashidy, — there is no word for any of you to say ! let no man raise his voice or make stir, upon pain of my hewing off his head wellah with this sword." In Hayil there was a long silence, the subject people shrunk in from the streets to their houses ! Beduins in the town were aghast, inhabitants of the khala, to which no man "may set doors and bars ", seeing the gates of Hayil to be shut round about them. An horrible slaughter was begun in the Kasr, for Mohammed commanded that all the children of Telal should be put to death, and the four children of his own sister, widow of one el-Jabbdr of "the house Ibn Aly, (that, till Abdullah won all, were formerly at strife with the Rashidy family for the sheykhship of Hayil, — and of them was Mohammed's own mother). Their uncle's bloody command was fulfilled, and the bleeding warm corses, deceived of their young lives, were carried out the same hour to the burial ; there died with them also the slaves, their equals MOHAMMED PRINCE. 17 in age, brought up in their fathers' households, — their servile brethren, that else would be, at any time, willing instruments to avenge them. All Hayil trembled that day till evening and the long night till morning, when Mohammed, standing in the Me'shab with a drawn sword, called to those who sat timidly on the clay banks, — the most were Beduins — "Ya, Moslemin! I had not so dealt with them, but because I was afraid for this! (he clapped the left palm to the side of his neck), and as they went about to kill me, ana sabdktahum, I have prevented them." Afterward he said: — "And they which killed my brother Metaab, think ye they had spared me ?" "And hearing his voice, we sat (an eyewitness, of the Meteyr, told me) astonished, every one seeing the black death before him." — Then Mohammed sat down in the Emir's place as Muhafuth. Bye and bye some of the principal persons at Hayil came into the Me'shab bending to this new lord of their lives, and giving him joy of his seized authoifjpk Thus 'out dock in nettle', Bunder away, Mohammed began to rule ; and never was the government, they say, in more sufficient handling. — Bedr had started away upon his mare for bitter-sweet life to the waste wilderness : he fled at assr. On the morrow, fainting with hunger and thirst, and the suffered desolation of mind and weariness, he shot away his spent horse, and climbed upon a mountain. — From thence he might look far out over the horror of the world, become to him a vast dying place ! Mohammed had sent horsemen to scour the khala, and take him ; and when they found Bedr in the rocks they would not listen to his lamentable petitions : they killed him there without remedy, and hastily loading his body they came again the same day to Hayil. The chief of them as he entered, all heated, to Mo hammed, exclaimed joyfully, "Wellah, O Muhafuth, I bring thee glad tidings ! it may please thee come with me where as I will show thee Bedr lies dead ; this hand did it, and so perish all the enemies of the Emir!" But Mohammed looked grimly upon the man, and cried, "Who commanded thee to kill him ? I commanded thee, son of an hound ? when, thou cursed one? Ullah curse thy father, akhs! hast thou slain Bedr?" and, drawing his sword, he fetched him a clean back-stroke upon the neck-bone, and swapt off at once (they pretend) the miserable man's head. Mohammed used an old bitter policy of tyrants, by which they hope to make their perplexed causes seem the more honest in the thick eye sight of the common people. " How happened it, I asked, that Bedr, who must know the wilderness far about, since the princely D. T. 11. 2 1 8 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. children accompany the ghrazzus, had not ridden hardily in some way of escape ? Could not his mare have borne him an hundred miles ? — a man of sober courage, in an extremity, might have endured, until he had passed the dominion of Ibn Rashid, and entered into the first free town of el-Kasim." It was answered, "The young man was confused in so great a ca lamity, and jahil, of an inept humour, and there was none to deliver him." Hamiid and Mohammed allied together, there was danger between them and Telal's sons; and if they had not fore stalled Bunder and Bedr, they had paid it with their lives. The massacres were surely contrary to the clement nature of the strong man Hamud. Hamiid, who for his pleasant equal countenance, in the people's eyes, has deserved to be named by his fellow citizens Aziz, " a beloved," is for all that, when contraried out of friendship, a lordly man of outrageous incon tinent tongue and jabbar, as his father was; and doubtless he would be a high-handed Nimrod in any instant peril. Besides, it is thus that Arabs deal with Arabs ; there are none more pestilent, and ungenerous enemies. Hamiid out of hospi tality, is as all the Arabs of a somewhat miserable humour, and I have heard it uttered at Hayil, "Hamiid khdra!" that is draffe or worse. These are vile terms of the Hejaz, spread from the dens of savage life, under criminal governors, in the Holy Cities ; and not of those schools of speaking well and of comely manners, which are the kahwa in the Arabian oases and the mejlis in the open khala. — A fearful necessity was laid upon Mohammed: for save by these murders of his own nigh blood, he could not have sat in any daily assurance. Mohammed is childless, and ajjr, a man barren in himself; the loyal Hamiid el- Abeyd has many children. His instant dangers being thus dispersed, Mohammed set himself to the work of government, to win opinion of his proper merit ; and affecting popular manners, he is easier of his dispense than was formerly Telal. Never Prince used his authority, where not resisted, with more stern moderation at home, but he is pitiless in the excision of any unsound parts of the commonwealth. When Jauf fell to him again by the mutiny of the few Moghrareba left in garrison, it is said, he commanded to cut off the right hands of many that were gone over to the faith of the Dowla. Yet Jauf had not been a full generation under the Jebel ; for Mohammed himself, then a young man, was with his uncle Abeyd at the taking of it, and he was wounded then by a ball in the foot which lodged in the bone ; — the shot had lately been taken from him in THE STATE OF JEBEL SHAMMAR. 19 Hayil by a Persian hakim, come down, for the purpose, from Mesopotamia. As for any bounty in such Arabian Princes, it is rather good laid out by them to usury. They are easy to loose a pound to-day, which within a' while may return with ten in his mouth. The Arabs say, "Ibn Rashid uses to deal with every man aly aklu, according to his understanding." Fortune was to Mohammed's youth contrary, a bloody chance has made him Ruler. In his government he bears with that which may not be soon amended; he cannot by force only bridle -the slippery wills of the nomads ; and though his heart swell secretly, he receives all with his fair-weather countenance, and to friendly discourse ; and of few words, in wisely questioning them, he discerns their minds. Motlog, sheykh of the Fejir, whom he misliked, he sends home smiling ; and the Prince will levy his next year's miry from the Fukara, without those tribes men's unwillingness. The principal men of Teyma, his good outlying town', whose well was fallen, depart from him with rewards. Mohammed smooths the minds of the common people ; if any rude Beduin lad call to him in the street, or from the mejlis (they are all arrant beggars), "Aha ! el-Muha- futh, God give thee long life ! as truly as I came hither, in such a rubba, and wellah am naked," he will graciously dismiss him with " bismillah, in God's name ! go with such an one, and he will give thee garments," — that is a tunic worth two shillings at Hayil, a coarse worsted cloak of nine shillings, a kerchief of sixpence ; and since they are purchased in the gross at Bagdad, and brought down upon the Emir's own camels, they may cost him not ten shillings. 1 What is the state and authority for which these bitter ! Arabians contended ? Ibn Rashid is master, as I can under stand, of some thirty oases, of which there are five good desert towns : Sh'kaky, Jauf, Hayil, Gofar, Teyma, with a population , together of 12,000 to 13,000 souls: others are good villages, ¦as el-Kasr, Mdgug, Aly, Mustajidda, Feyd, er-Rautha, Semira, el-Hdyat, and more, with hardly 5000 persons. There are, besides the oases, many outlying hamlets in the desert of Jebel Shammar inhabited by a family or two or three households, that are colonists from the next villages; in the best maybe a score of houses, in the least are not ten inhabitants; such are Jefeyfa, el- ,Agella,el-Gussa,Biddia, Haley fa, Thurghrod, Makha4l, Otheym. :Some among them are but granges, which lie forsaken, after jthe April harvest is carried, until the autumn sowing and the new months of irrigation: but the palm hamlets have stable 2—2 20 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. inhabitants, as Biddia, Thurghrod. So the settled population of Jebel Shammar may be hardly 20,000 souls : add to these the tributary nomads, Beny Wahab,— the Fejir, 800, and half tribe of Welad Aly in the south, 1600— say together 2500; "then Bishr in the south, say 3000, or they are less ; northern Harb in the obedience of Ibn Rashid, say 2000; southern Shammar, hardly 2000 ; midland Heteym, say 1500 ; Sherarat, say 2500 ; and besides them no more. In all, say 14,000 per sons or less : and the sum of stable and nomad dwellers may be not much better than 30,000 souls. The burden of the Emir's public contribution is levied in the settlements, upon the fruits of corn and dates, — we have seen that it was in Teyma nearly £1 sterling for every head; and among nomads, (who have little regard of any government set up for the public advantage,) it was in the Fukara, a poor tribe, ,about £1 sterling for eight or ten persons. Other than these exactions there are certain dues, of which I am not well in formed, such as that payment to be made of sixty reals upon every camel-load of Hameydy tobacco, which is brought in, jat the siik gates of Hayil. In this not improbable course of .conjecture I can compute the state revenues of Ibn Rashid, partly in kind, and partly paid in silver, to be nearly £40,000, 'of which hardly the twentieth part is gathered among his nomads. The private rents of the Prince are also very large. The price and fruits of all confiscated possessions are brought yearly into the beyt el-mal, or public treasure-house. The ordinary government expenses, for the castle service, for the maintenance of the armed band, the slave grooms of his stud and the herdsmen of his live wealth in the wilderness, stewards, mutas&llims, his residents in outlying towns as Teyma and Jauf, the public hospitality at Hayil, and for the changes of clothing, may be nearly £12,000. His extra ordinary expenses are nearly £1000 yearly in gunpowder and provision for the general ghrazzus, and yearly gifts. His bribes are according to the shifting weather of the world, to great Ottoman government men; and now on account of Kheybar, he was gilding some of their crooked fingers in Medina. These disbursements are covered by his selling, most years, Nejd horses (all stallions) in India ; which, according to the request, are shipped at Kuweyt, commonly about two score together : — his stud servants, who convey them, are absent from Hayil, upon the India expedition, about two months. In a necessity of warfare Ibn Rashid might summon to the field, I suppose, without much difficulty, 2000 fighting men from his villages, riders upon camels (the most theluls), but not all THE PRINCE'S BATTLE. 2 1 provided with fire-arms ; and to ride in an expedition not easily to_ a fourth of the number. Among the subject Beduw he might raise at a need, of the tribes more bound to him, or most fearing him as nigh neighbours, Shammar, Bishr, Harb, Heteym, as I can estimate of my knowledge of the land, eight hundred or nine hundred: of the B. Wahab, as borderers, always of doubtful trust, and not seldom rebels, two hundred and fifty; of the oppressed Sherarat, who would gladly turn from him to the Dowla, if the Syrian government would stand by them, nearly another two hundred ; that is altogether to the number of 1300 nomad Arabians, namely dromedary riders (only a few principal sheykhs are horsemen) — and two-third parts of them armed with matchlocks, the remnant riding as they may, with swords, clubs, spears and lances. The Prince is said to have " four hundred horses ", lent out to men of his trust and interest among the submitted tribes ; they are riders in his yearly expeditions. In the Prince's general ghrazzus there ride, his rajajil and Hayil townsmen and men of the next villages, about four hundred men, and nearly as many of the tributary Beduw that are ready at the word of the Emir to mount with him in the hope of winning : and to all a day is given and the assembling place. The Arabians, dwelling in a dead country, think that a marvellous muster of human lives which they see assemble to Ibn Rashid's forays. They will tell you "All the way was full of riders betwixt Hayil and Gofar !" — since it is hardly twelve miles, that were but a rider, in their loose array, for every twenty paces ; and eight hundred or nine hundred armed Arabs mounted upon dromedaries, even in the eyes of Europeans, were a noble spectacle. The Prince Mohammed is pitiless in battle, he shoots with an European rifle; Hamud, of ponderous strength, is seen raging in arms by the Emir's side, and, if need were, since they are sworn together to the death, he would cover him with his body. The princes, descended from their theluls, and sitting upon horseback in their " David shirts of mail ", are among the forefighters, and the wings of the men-at- arms, shooting against the enemy, close them upon either hand. The Emir's battle bears down the poor Beduw, by weight and numbers; for the rajajil, and his riders of the villages, used to the civil life, hear the words of command, and can maintain themselves in a body together. But the bird-witted Beduins who, in their herding life, have no thought of martial exercises, may hardly gather, in the day of battle, under their sheukh, but like screaming hawks they 2 2 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. '.fight dispersedly, tilting hither and thither, every man with less regard of the common than of his private interest, and that is to catch a beggarly booty: the poor nomads acknowledge ^themselves to be betrayed by toma, the greediness of gain. Thus their resistance is weak, and woe to the broken and turned to flight ! None of the Emir's enemies are taken to quarter until they be destroyed: and cruel are the mercies of the rajajil and the dire-hearted slaves of Ibn Rashid. I have , known when some miserable tribesmen made prisoners were cast by the Emir's band into their own well-pits : — the Arabians .take no captives. The battles with nomads are commonly j fought in the summer, about their principal water-stations, (where they are long lodged in great standing camps. ! Thus the Beduins say " It is Ibn Rashid that weakens the I Beduw!" Their resistance broken, he receives them among i his confederate tributaries, and delivers them from all their i enemies from his side. A part of the public spoil is divided to the rajajil, and every man's is that commonly upon which he first laid his hand. Ibrahim the Algerian, one of them who often came to speak with me of his West Country, said that to every man of the Emir's rajajil are delivered three or four reals at the setting out, that he may buy himself wheat, dates and I ammunition ; and there is carried with them sometimes as much as four camel loads of powder and lead from Hayil, which ] is partly for the Beduw that will join him by the way. j ' But to circumscribe the principality or dominion in the deserts of Ibn Rashid: — his borders in the North are the Ruwalla, northern Shammar and Thuffir marches, nomad tribes friendly to the Jebel, but not his tributaries. Upon the East his limits are at the dominion of Boreyda, which we shall see is a principality of many good villages in the Nefud of Kasim, as el-Ayun, Khubbera, er-Russ, but with no subject Beduw. The \ princely house of Hayil is by marriage allied to that usurping .peasant Weled Mahanna tyrant of Boreyda, and they are ac corded together against the East, that is Aneyza, and the now decayed power of the Wahaby beyond the mountain. In the South, having lost Kheybar, his limits are at about an hundred miles from el-Medina ; the deserts of his dominion are bounded /westwards by the great haj -way from Syria, — if we leave out the I B. Atieh — and all the next territory of the Sherarat is subject | to him, which ascends to J. Sherra and so turns about by the W. Sirhdn to his good northern towns of Jauf and Sh'kaky and j their suburbs. In a word, all that is Ibn Rashid's desert country lying between Jauf, el-Kasim and the Derb el-Haj ; north and IBN RASH ID'S BORDERS. 23 south some ninety leagues over, and between east and west it may be one hundred and seventy leagues over. And the whole he keeps continually subdued to him with a force (by their own saying) of about five hundred thelul riders, his rajajil and villagers ; for who may assemble in equal numbers out of the dead wilderness, or what were twice so many wild Beduins, the half being almost without arms, to resist him ? CHAPTER II. The great tribes beyond Ibn Rashid. Akhu Noora. The princely families. The Prince Mohammed childless. His " Christian wife "- Abd el-Aziz the orphan child of Telal, and his brother orphan child of Bunder. Secret miseries of Princes. The family of Abeyd. A song of Abeyd. Abeyd could be generous. Fahd. The poor distracted soul sells his daughter to his father Abeyd. Feyd. Sleyman. Abdullah. Wealth of Abeyd' s family. Hamud's daughter. The government of Ibn Bashid. Beginning of the Shammar state. By some the Emir is named Zalim, a tyrant. A tale of Metaab's government. A Christian Damascene tradesman visits Hdyil. Discord among tribes of the Emir's domi nation. The Bajajil es-Sheukh. Imbarak. The Moors' garrison in the tower Mdrid at Jauf. Their defection and the recovery of Jauf. Tale of the Ottoman expedition against Jauf. Words of Sherardt tribesmen, to the sheykhs in Jauf. Ibn Bashid rides to save Jauf. Ibn Rashid and the Ottoman pasha. Beduins among the rajajil. Men of East Nejd and of er-Riath come to serve the Western Emir. Ibn Saud ruined. A messenger from er-Ridth. Kahtdn tribesmen at Hdyil. Their speech. The Wady Daudsir country. Hayzan their sheykh. He threatens to stab the Nasrdny. People's tales of the Kahtdn. ' Their graves are crows' and eagles' maws' Ibn Rashid's lineage. Kindreds of Shammar. Bashid, a lettered Beduwy. A fanatic kady. Dispute with the ^pedant kddy. "The Muscovs of old possessed the land of Nejd." Inscriptions at Gubba. Study of letters in Nejd. Their nomad-like ignorance of the civil world. A village schoolmaster. A prophecy of Ezekiel. Plain words among the Arabs. Travelled men in Hdyil. Winter weather. An outrage in the coffee-hall. The coffee-server called before the Emir. The great tribes partly or wholly west of the Derb el-Haj are too far from him ; they fear not Ibn Rashid in their dangerous encumbered diras. Beginning from the north, they are the B. S6khr in the Belka, now submitted to the govern ment of Syria, then B. Atieh, and backward of them the stout nomad nation of the Howeytat, so far extended betwixt the two' seas, Billi behind the Harra, and their neighbours the noble and ancient stock of Jeheyna: besides the southern Harb, nomads and villagers, in Hejaz, and all whose soil seyls into the Wady el-Humth. Between Mecca country and el-Kasim is the great nomad territory, more than one hundred leagues over, (the best I have seen in the wilderness of Arabia,) of the Ateyba nation ; they are stout in arms, and civil-spirited Beduins, and Ibn Rashid's capital enemies. There hardly passed a year in which Ibn Rashid did not invade them, and they again were the bane of the next Aarab of his federation, especially of the midland Heteym, upon the W. er-Rummah, and their Harb AKHU NOORA. 25 neighbours. — Such are his estates, and this is the government of Ibn Rashid, a name now so great in the (after the master strokes of the Wahaby) timid Upper or Nomadic Arabia. Between affection and fear the desert people call him, and he will name himself (it is the pleasant oath of his house) Akhu Noora. Thus Abdullah, the first Muhafuth, in Hayil, swore after the Nejd urbanity and magnanimity by his little sister, "As I am the akhu (brother of) Noora." Telal after him, and Metaab, swore likewise thus, and so does Mohammed ; for a second Noora, Abdullah's daughter, was their sister, now de ceased. — That is a formidable utterance of the Ruler, above the jest, were it spoken against a man's life ! I have heard a man, who had no sister, swear pleasantly by his infant daughter, "I am Abu (the father of) Atheba!" So it is in friendship a pretty adulation, and may be a knavish irony, to say to one, " 0 thou akhu of Such (naming her) ;" — as much as " 0 magnanimous, that even in thy weak things art worthy to be named among the valiant." I have heard nomad lads (Bishr) exclaim, Ana akhu Chokty (dkhty) ! I am the brother of Sissy, my little sister; and akin to this, in the Beduin urbanity, is that (old man's) word of sober astonishment, Ana weled abuy ! I (am) the son of my father. To speak shortly of the princely families: Mohammed (as said) is ajjr, made sterile by some pernicious medicine, given him in a sickness, " when by this only he might be saved from death." In such he is unhappy, it is impossible he should strengthen himself by his own offspring. Mohammed has the four wives of their religious licence, two are hathariydt, 'women of the settlements ', and other two are beduwiydt. By strange adven ture, one of those townswomen, we have seen, is named "a Christian". This I often heard; but what truth there might be in their words, I cannot tell. What countrywoman she was, I could not learn of them. 'She came to Hayil few years before with her brother, a young man who showing them masteries, and fencing with the lance upon horseback,' had delighted these loose riding and unfeaty Arabians. "The Christian became a Mosleman in Hayil," and departing, he left his sister wife of the lord of the land. Might this, I mused, have been some horse-player from Egypt or the northern border countries? — ¦ but where my words would be quickly misreported by tale bearers in the Castle, to ask at large of the Prince's matter were not prudent. The other town wife is ¦ a sister of Hdsan, Weled Mahanna, tyrant of Boreyda ; and Hamiid has a daugh ter of this Emir Hasan, among his wives. Mohammed puts away and takes new wives, at his list, 26 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. "month by month:" howbeit the princely wretch cannot pur chase the common blessing ! his children are as dead within him, and the dreaded inhabitant of yonder castle remains a desolate man, or less than a man, in the midst of his marriages. But the childless Emir cherishes as his own son the little orphan child, Abd el-Aziz, the flesh which is left in the world of his brother Metaab, and has a father's tenderness of his daily thriving and learning, that he himself oversees. The child brought him every day his task, versets of the koran, written, as the Arabian oasis children use, in their ink made of the soot of pome granate rinds, upon a wooden tablet, which is whitened with jiss or pipe-clay: for another school-day the ink is washed out, and the plate new whitened. Abd el- Aziz came often to my makhzan, and he asked me to give him some better ink and sheets of paper, and percussion caps for a little pistol which had been given him by his uncle Mohammed. If Majid came in then, Abd el-Aziz would rise and go out,— and I saw there was no word or sign of fellowship between them. Abd el- Aziz came alone, or with another princely child, (whom Mohammed had spared,) — it was the orphan of Bunder ! A Galla slave-boy of a very good nature accompanied them. Those princely children by an horrible confusion of wedlock were half-brothers, born of one mother, of an uncle and nephew, of whom one had murdered the other ! and the young parricide, whom no man mourned, was now gone by the murderous avenging hand of Mohammed his next uncle (to-day Emir) to his bloody grave. — Bunder having murdered the Prince his uncle, took to wife the widow of the slain and mother of Abd el- Aziz, — his aunt; and the parricide begat upon her a son. The murderous young man spared his uncle's infant, for the present, and might look, by such an healing of the breach of blood, to lay up some assurance for himself against a day when this little orphan of murdered Metaab should be grown. — Would Abd el-Aziz seek in that day the life of the father of his half-brother, with whom he had been bred, the same being his step-father, his "uncle" and his cousin-german, and yet the same by whom his own father was done to death long ago ? Now Mohammed succeeding, the danger from the side of the children is changed : will Bunder's son, if he may come to years, for Abd el- Aziz's sake, and because he himself was preserved, pardon in Mohammed his father's cutting off ? — but that horrid deed was not in men's sight unjust. The little Abd el-Aziz shows the gait and countenance of his uncle the Emir, and carries a little sword which his mother has given him ; yet there is somewhat in the child of sad THE PRINCELY HOUSE. 27 orphan looks, of the branch planted alone by waters not of his natural parentage. Already his mind seemed to muse much of these things; I have heard him say to himself, when he_ came to visit me, " Ha ! it was he, ellathi thdbah — who killed such an one or other," and the horrible word seemed to be of presage, it was so light upon the child's lips. — 0 God ! who can forecast their tragedies to come ! what shall be the next vengeance and succession and fore stalling of deaths between them ? The eyes painted, their long hair shed in the midst and plaited in love-locks all round their orphan heads, and with the white tunics to their feet, these two princely children had the tender fresh looks of little maidens. Upon that other part may stand Majid, for who is after the Prince to-day but his cousin Hamiid ? Of this perhaps the children's early shunning each other ; — it was Abd el- Aziz who shunned Majid. But is it for aught that was practised against his parentage by Hamud? perhaps they al ready had determined in their young hearts the destruction of each other. Majid also is a pleasant grandson of his father's brother, and like a nephew to the Emir. Majid, grandson of Abeyd, is as his father, of a cheerful popular spirit, but less loyal ; and there is some perilous presentiment in him, an ambitious confidence that he shall himself one day be the Ruler. Abd el-Aziz, grandson of Abdullah, is an eagle's young ; and in his day, if he may so long live, he will pierce through an hand that holds him with a stroke of his talons ; but he seems to be of a gentle heart, and if God please that this child be afterward Emir in Hayil, he is like to be a good princely man, like his father Metaab. — Such for all their high looks, which is but sordid prince-craft, are the secret miseries of the Emirs' lives at Hayil ; and an horror must hang over Mohammed, or he is not a man, in his bloody solitude. In Kasim I heard men say of Mohammed ibn Rashid, "He has committed crimes which before were not known in the world !" To speak then of the family of Abeyd, of which Hamiid is now head. Abeyd was conductor of the military power of J. Shammar, in Abdullah his brother and in his nephew Telal's days. He was a martial man, and a Wahaby more than is now Hamud, born in easier times. He was a master of the Arabian warfare, a champion in the eyes of the discomfited Aarab. Abeyd, as said, was an excellent kassad, he indited of all his desert warfare ; his boastful rimes, known wide in the wilderness, were ofttimes sung for me, in the nomad booths. The language of the kasasid is as a language apart from the popular speech ; but here I may remember some plain and notable verse of Abeyd, as 28 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. that which says, "By this hand are fallen of the enemies ninety men. Smitten to death the Kusman perished before me, until the evening, when my fingers could not be loosed from the handle of the sword ; the sleeve of my garment was stiffened with the blood of war." This he made of the repulse of an ill-commanded and worse starred expedition, sent out by the great Kasim town Aneyza, against Ibn Rashid. — "And how happened it, I asked, that Abeyd, one man, could make so monstrous a slaughter of the men contending against him in battle ?" Answer : "When the Kusman were broken and turned to flight, Abeyd pursuing, whilst the day lasted, struck down so many of the fugitives (from the backward) that they were numbered as ninety men ;" and a worthy and principal person who told me the tale put it to Abeyd's glory that he had killed many thus ! Abeyd could be generous, where the Arabs are so least, with an adversary : and clad in his hauberk of mail which they call Davidian, — for David, say they, first found the ringed armour, and Ullah made the crude iron easy to be drawn in his pro phetic fingers — the jeopardy of the strong leader was not very^ great in the field of battle. One day in his bitter warfare with the Annezy Ibn Mujdllad, Beduins of el-Kasim and nomad in heritors of the palm valleys el-Hdyat (in the Harrat Kheybar), the sheykh of the tribe espying this prince their destroyer in the battle, with a great cry defied him, and tilted desperately against him ; but Abeyd (though nettled with his injuries, yet pitying a man whom he had sorely afflicted) let the Beduwy pass under his romhh, calling to him 'that he would not kill a man [having upon him only a cotton tunic] who ran thus wilfully to his own destruction '. Abeyd was in his latter days the old man of the saffron beard at home, a mild father of the Arabian household ; he was dead, according to their saying, seven years before my coming to Hayil, and two years after the decease of Telal. Of Abeyd's children we have seen Fahd, the elder, had been set aside for the weakness of his understanding, a man now at the middle age, of a very good countenance, well-grown, and of such stature nearly as his next brother Hamiid, who had supplanted him. He was of a gentle virtuous disposition, and with a sort of cheerful humility consenting to the will of others, only some obscure drawing of the brows, a perplexed secret sadness of face and troubled unsteadfastness of the eyes, were tokens in him of the distracted mind. He was an onlooker with the placid day-long musing of the Moslemin, and little he said ; he was thus in some sort at Hayil the happiest of mankind, — the only man's life that feared nothing. Fahd passed his daily ABEYD'S FAMILY. 29 hours in Abeyd's kahwa, and Hamud now sat in their father's hall in Abeyd's room, and next by him in a seat of honour sat Sleyman: and Fahd had no stately place, but he sat upon the common sitting-carpet with the younkers of the princely households, and with the officers of the Emir and any visiting sheykhs of the tribes and villages. Fahd was become as it were a follower of Hamud and the com panion and play-fellow of HamM's son Majid. Majid his nephew said to me, " I love him, he is so quiet and peaceable a man ;" but yet he did not name him ammy, mine uncle. At the supper-time Fahd departed, who was the father of a family. From his home Fahd returned again to the paternal coffee house to sit out the evening, and modestly he would attend awhile in the closet where kahwa was made, if he came in then, until "the Emir" (Hamud) had ended all the saying of his superstitious devotion. When the princes forayed, Fahd was left in Hayil. Upon a time he would needs ride out to them and came to his father in the field ; so said Abeyd, " How now, my son ! why comest thou hither?"- — "Father, I would ride in the ghrazzu and take a part in the spoil ;" and Abeyd, " Well, go home to thy house in Hayil and abide our coming again, which shall be soon, it may please Ullah ; this is my will, and. thou shalt lose nothing." The Semitic greediness of the prey wrought in his infirm heart : and another time the poor man brought forth his fair growing daughter to Abeyd, saying, 'It was time now to sell her away' (to be a bond- woman); and Abeyd falling fatherly in with his son's distracted humour gave him fuMs, silver, for the price of his granddaughter, and bade Fahd keep her still for him. The third brother, to read anything in his pale vicious looks, was an umbratile young man, and very fana tical ; he lived apart near the Meshed gate, and came never to sit amongst his brethren in their father's hall. I met with him one or two times in a month, passing in the public street, and he cast upon me only sour glances; he passed his time perhaps with the hareem, and seemed not to be held in any estimation at Hayil. The fourth younger brother was Feyd, a good plain-hearted almost plebeian young man of seventeen years. Yet in him was some misshaping of nature, for I found in his jaws a double row of teeth. Sometimes in the absence of the Princes in the spring holidays or upon warfare, Feyd was left deputy-Emir, to hold the daily mejlis — at such times nearly forsaken — in Hayil. After him was one Sleyman, as I remember, a boy of little worth, and another, Abdullah, of his nephew Majid's age, sordid spirits and fitter to be bound 39 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. prentices to some ratcatcher than to come into any prince's hall and audience. The last had fallen in his childhood from a height and put an arm out of joint ; and as a bone-setter is not found in these countries, and "it were not worth "_ to send to Mesopotamia, they had let 'Ullah provide for him', and his arm now hanged down withered. He came very often to my makhzan, to beg some trifle of the stranger: sore eyes added to his unlovely looks, he asked for medicine, but "I will not pay thee, said he, and I have not half a dollar." Fanatical he was, and the dastardly lad would even threaten me. The Hayil princes {bred up in the company of bond servants) are perhaps mostly like vile-spirited in their youth. When, rarely, Abdullah entered their father's kahwa, Hamiid called the boy cheerfully and made him sit down beside him ; and casting his brother's arm about the child's neck, as the Arabians will (caressing equally their own young sons and their youngest brethren) he asked gently of his mirth and what he did that day; but the ungracious boy hardly responded and soon shrunk sourly away. — Such were the old eagle Abeyd's children, afftin, crow's eggs, all of them born with some deficiency of nature, except Hamud only. So it seems the stock was faulty, it were strange if there lingered no alloy in the noble substance of Hamiid; and the temper of his mind, though good, is not very fine ; but this may be found in the Emir Mohammed. Abeyd's family are wealthy, were it only of their landed possessions in Hayil ; they have palms also at Jauf, — and an Arabian man's spending for his household, except it come by the Mohammedan liberty of wiving, is small in our comparison. Besides they are rich with the half fruits of el-Hayat, which of old appertained to the inheriting Annezy ; but when those were driven out by Abeyd, their rents were given by Telal to his uncle and his heirs. Abeyd's family are also happy in this, that no vengeance clouds the years before them for kinsmen's blood. The wild nomads look on and speak with an awe of the last damnable deeds in the house of Abdullah : in their own little commonwealths of uncles' sons in the desert, are not such impious ambitions. Feyd and Abdullah lived yet minors in their brother Hamud's house in Hayil, where almost daily I came to treat Feysal, and when I knocked at the ring it was opened to me sometimes by a slave woman, the child's nurse, sometimes by Feyd himself. I have found him stand quarrelling with a carpenter, and they scolded together with the Arabian franchise as equals. Or it was Abdullah that opened, and sometimes Hamud's daughter came to the door, IBN RASHID'S GOVERNMENT. 31 a pleasant girl, with her father's smiling ingenuous looks, clad only in her poor calico smock, dipped in indigo, without any ornament, and not to discern from the other village maidens of like age ; and such perhaps was Tamar David's daughter, who kneaded and baked bread. Simple was their place, a clay court and dwelling-chambers beyond, a house of hareem and eyyal, where no strangers were admitted. I saw a line and a cross together, rudely chalked upon the wall of the doorway, IX— it is_ the wasm of Ibn Rashid. The children of the sheukh mingled with the people in the town ; they went only more freshly clad than other men's sons. Girls are like cage birds bred up in their houses; young maidens are not seen abroad in the public streets. At fifteen years the sheykhly boys ride already in the ghrazzus; having then almost two years been free of the schoolmaster, of whom there is little to learn but their letters. To consider the government of Ibn Rashid, which is for the public security in a great circuit of the nomad country : — the factious strifes had been appeased in the settlements, even the disorders of the desert were repressed by the sword of the Wahaby religion, and the land of Ishmael became beled amdn, a peaceable country. In the second generation a sheykhly man, Abdullah Ibn Rashid, of one of the chief Hayil houses, who had become a principal servitor of the Wahaby Prince at er-Riath, was sent home by Ibn Saud to his own town in Jebel Shammar : — to be his constable of the west marches of Nejd, " TO govern Annezt," and namely the southern tribes of that Beduin nation, landlords in the palm valleys of the Harrat Kheybar. Abdullah soon seated himself by the sword at Hayil, and prevailing all round, he became muhafuth of a new state, tithing villages and tribes ; yet of the zika, brought into his government treasury, yielding no tribute to er-Riath, other than a present of horses which he led with him in his yearly visit to Ibn Saud. This homage is now disused, — in the decay of the Wahaby state ; and Ibn Rashid is to-day the greatest prince in Nejd. His is a ruling of factious Arabs by right of the sword; none of them not persuaded by fear would be his tributaries. The Beduw and oasis dwellers are not liegemen (as they see it) to any but their natural sheykhs. Townsmen have said to me ofttimes of Ibn Rashid, even in Hayil, Henna mamlukin, 'we dwell here as bondsmen under him.' A northern nomad patient, pointing backward, whilst he sat within my makhzan door, as if he feared to be descried through wood and walls, murmured to me between his 32 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTS teeth, " The Inhabitant of yonder Kasr is Zalim, a strong- handed tyrant." At Hayil, where are no stocks, tortures, nor prison, punishment is sudden, at the word of the Ruler ; and the guilty, after his suffering, is dismissed. The Emirs in Hayil have austerely maintained the police of the desert. — This was told me of Metaab's time : One of the few salesmen to the tribes from the Syrian coun tries, who from time to time have arrived at Hayil, was • stripped and wounded, as he journeyed in the Sherarat dira. The stranger came to Hayil and complained of this outrage to the Emir. Metaab sent riders to summon the sheykhs of the Sherarat to find, and immediately deliver the guilty persons, which was done accordingly, they not daring to disobey Ibn Rashid, and the riders returned with a prisoner. Metaab com manded the nomad to stand forth in the mejlis, and enquired of the stranger if this were he? When he answered, "It is he," said the Emir, " Sherary hound ! how durst thou do this violence ?" Metaab bade the stranger take the Sherary 's lance which had been brought with him, and as he had done unto him so to do to the fellow again. "What must I do, 0 el-Muhafuth ! " — "Pierce him, and kill him too, if it please thee !" But the tradesman's heart was now cold, and he could not strike the man, but entreated the Emir, since he had his things again, to let him go. I have known certain Damascene salesmen to "the Beduw, that had visited Hayil, and one of them was a Christian, who traded every year to the W. Sirhan and Jauf. The man understanding that mantles were dear in the Jebel, had crossed the Nefud with a camel-load to Hayil. Telal, the prince, spoke to him kindly, and was content that he should remain there awhile and sell his wares; only exhorting him "not to shave the chin", — the guise of Damascus Christians and the young coxcombs among the town Moslems. Tribes agreeing ill together in Ibn Rashid's confederacy (we have seen) are not in general suffered to molest each other: yet there are some nomads (whether because Hayil would weaken them, or they are too outlying from him, and not so much bound to keeping of good neighbourhood) who com plaining to the Emir of inroads made by Aarab of his sub jection, have received his hard answer : " This lies between you and I will be no party in your Beduin dissensions." All the great sheykhs of Arabs are very subtle politic heads: and I think it would be hard to find a fault in Ibn RasMd's govern ment, — -yet my later Kasim friends (his enemies at Aneyza) dispraised it. DEFECTION OF THE MOORS AT JAUF. 33 —A word of the armed band, rajajil es-sheukh. Ibn Rashid is much served (as said) by foreigners (adventurers, and fugi tives) from East Nejd : and such will be faithful servants of the Emir, with whom they stand or fall. Besides these, there are nearly two hundred men in his salary of the town. Captain of the guard, the Prince's chamberlain at home, and his standard- bearer in battle, was Imbarak, a pleasant but fanatic strong man. He was a stranger from el-Aruth, and had been promoted from the low degree by succeeding Emirs, for his manly suf ficiency, until he was become now, in his best years, the executive arm of Ibn Rashid. Among the strangers, in my time, in Hayil, that lived of Ibn Rashid's wages, were certain Moghrebies. These Moors were at the taking of Jauf, in the expedition from Syria. Unto them, at the departure of the Pasha, was committed one of the two towers, Mdrid ; and the other to a few Syrian1 soldiery. — These were left in garrison with a kaimakam, or Resident for the Dowla. But when a time passed, and they had not received their stipends, the bitter and hot-headed men of the West said in their disdain, ' They would call in Ibn Rashid ' ! They went also to assail the soldiery of Syria, who though in the same case, yet as men that would return to their homes, held "for the Sooltan," against them. The Moors had the upper hand, and when this tiding was brought in haste to Hayil, the Emir returned with his armed men, and reoccupied the place which he had lately lost with so much displeasure. The Moors, — fifteen persons — were transported to Hayil ; where they be came of the Prince's armed service. One of them (grown unwieldly to ride) has been made the porter of his castle gate, and no man may pass in thereat but by that Moor's allowance. Sometimes when the sheukh are absent, the Moorish men- at-arms are left in Hayil, and lodged in the Kasr by night, for fear of any irruption of the wild Beduw, who have heard marvels reported of Ibn Rashid's treasury : for there is no peace among the Ishmaelites, nor assurance even in the Prince's capital ! Jauf was thus recovered, by the defection of the Moors, four years before my coming to Hayil. The men were now wedded and established in the town; only two had departed. Another of them, Haj Ibrahim an Algerian, who had been a soldier in his youth (he remembered the words of command) in the French service, was little glad of the Arabian Emir's small salary, and the lean diet of the Mothif; and he said, as ever his little son, born in H&yil, should be of age for the journey, he would take his leave. He and the Moors despised the Arabians as ' a benighted wild kind of people.' D. T. II. 3 34 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. The tale of Jauf may help our estimation of the value _ in the field of Arabian numbers, against troops under Turkish command, armed with rifles. In or about the year 1872, an expedition was sent by the government of Syria (the Turk, at that time, would extend his dominion in Arabia) to reduce the desert town of Jauf, fifty leagues eastward from the haj road, to the obedience of the Sultan. The small force was assembled at Maan camp. Mahmud, who went with them, has told me they were seventy irregular soldiery, and the rest a motley crew of serving men in arms ; among them those Moghrebies had been hired in Damascus to go upon the expedition. Mo hammed Aly, who rode also with the Pasha, gave me their numbers more than the truth, — troopers two hundred, police soldiery (zabtiyah) one hundred, besides fifty ageyl of the haj service. The Kurdy Pasha, Mohammed Said, commanded them. Ten marches to Jauf in the desert are counted from Maan, with laden camels. Great care was had to provide girbies, for there is little water to find by the way. " But, said Mahmud, by the mercy of Ullah, it rained plentifully, as we were setting out, so that we might drink of the standing pools where we would, in our daily marches." The ninth evening the Pasha halted his soldiery at three or four leagues from Jauf, and bade them kindle many watch-fires in the plain :— and they of the town looking from their towers, saw this light in the sky, as if all the wilderness had burned. In the first watch some Sherarat came by them, — nomads well disposed towards the Dowla, in as much as they think themselves grieved by (the tyranny en Ibn Rashid; they related marvels that night in Jauf of tm great army of the askars of the Sooltan ! " We passed, said they, where they lie encamped; and they cannot be less than forty thousand men. We saw them, wellah a score or two about every fire ; at some they were beating the tambour, at some they danced; and their companies are without number: you might walk four hours among their camp-fires! — and what help is there in Ibn Rashid, 0 ye inhabitants of Jauf!" — The sheukh went out and delivered the keys the same night, and surren dered themselves to the Pasha, who in the morning peaceably occupied the place. When word came to the Prince in Hayil, that his good town in the North had been taken by the Dowla, Ibn Rashid sent a letter thus written to the Ottoman Pasha: "As thou hast entered Jauf without fight, now in like manner depart from it again ; and if not, I come to put you out." Ibn Rashid rode over the Nefud from Hayil, with his JAUF OCCUPIED BY THE DOWLA. 35 rajajil and villagers upon theluls; and a great cloud of his Beduw followed him (Mohammed Aly said ten thousand in all, that is perhaps one thousand at most). There were some old cannon in the towers : but the Pasha levelled against the Arabians an " English " piece of steel mountain artillery, which had been borne upon a mule's back in the expedition. The first ball struck a Beduin rider in the middle, from a wonderful distance; and naught remained of him but his bloody legs, hang- ^ ing in the shidad. The hearts of the Arabians waxed cold at that sight, — the black death, when they thought themselves secure, was there in the midst of them! also the bullets of the Dowla fell to them from very far off; nevertheless they passed on to the assault. Mahmud and the seventy stood without the gates with their small arms to resist them, and the rest repulsed them with musketry from the towers. Ibn Rashid perceiving that his rajajil and the multitude of Beduw could not avail him, that his enemies were within walls, and this beginning against him had been made by the Dowla, invited the Pasha to a parley; and trusted to find him a Turk reasonable, greedy to be persuaded by his fee. They met and, as the Arabs speak, "understood each other." Mohammed ibn Rashid said: "I give you then Jauf." — Mohammed Said: "We are in Jauf; and if the Lord will we may go on to take Hayil." In the end it was accorded between them that Jauf should be still the Prince's town but tributary to the Dowla; Ibn Rashid covenanted to pay every year for the place, at Damascus, 1500 mejidy crowns : ^nd a kaimakam with his Syrian garrison was to be resident in the place. Each of these principal men looked upon the other with a pleasant admiration; and in that they became friends for their lives. In the mixed body of the rajajil, I found some Beduins. Poverty had persuaded them to abandon the wandering life in the desert. Small was the Prince's fee, but that was never in arrear, and a clay house in Hayil and rations. Certain among the strangers at Hayil had been formerly servants of the Wahaby! — I knew a company of Riath men, a sort of perpetual guests of the Emir. They rode in all Ibn Rashid's ghrazzus, and the Prince who lent them their theluls, bestowed upon them, from time to time, a change of clothing and four or five reals ; and with that won in the forays, there came in, they reckoned, to each of them twenty reals by the year ; and they had their daily rations in the Mothif. This life they now led six years, they were unwedded, and one among them was a blind man, who when his fellows forayed must abide at home. — Their house was one of the many free lodgings of 3—2 36 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. the Emir, — a walled court, for their beasts, and two clay cham bers, beyond the suk, in the upper street leading to Gofar. There I went to visit them often, for another was a scholar who knew many ancient lays of the nomad tribes and the muallakat, which he read to me from a roll of parchment. They have often told me that if I went to er-Riath I should be well treated. I asked, " What has brought you to leave your homes and come to encamp without your families at Hayil?" — "Ibn Saud (answered the scholar, with an Arabian gesture, balancing his outstretched hand down to the ground) is every day sinking lower and lower, but Ibn Rashid is ha-ha-ha-ha-ha coming up thus up-up-up ! and is always growing." It was said now at Hayil "Ibn Saild khurbdn " (is ruined). Abdullah the Wahaby prince, son of old blind Feysal, was come himself two years before into these parts, a fugitive, driven from his government by the rebellion of his younger brother Saud. Abdullah wandered then awhile, bare of all things, pitching his tent among the western Beduw within the jurisdiction of Ibn Rashid. The Emir Mohammed sent to Abdullah el- Wahaby offering him sheep and camels and horses and all things necessary, only forbidding him to enter Hayil: but Saud soon dying, Abdullah returned in peace, to that little which remained to him of his former dominion. Abdullah took at that time a sister of Mohammed Ibn Rashid for one of his wives ; — but she dying he had afterward a sister of Hamud: yet, since the past year, some enmity was said to be sprung up between them ; and that is in part because Mo hammed ever bitterly harries the great tribe of Ateyba, which are the old faithful allies (though no more tributaries) of Abdullah the Wahaby. — There came a messenger from er-Riath whilst I was at Hayil. As I sat one day with him at coffee, the man seeing me use a lead-pencil, enquired of the company, " Tell me, ye who know him, is the Nasrany a magician ! " other than this he showed no dislike towards me, but looked with the civil gentleness of an Arabian upon the guest and the stranger. And someone saying to him, " Eigh now ! if this (man) go to er-Riath what thinkest thou, will they kill him?" he answered mildly, " Nay, I think they would treat him with gentleness, and send him forward on his journey; have not other Nasranies visited er-Riath (peaceably) ! " •A Hayil is now a centre of Nomadic Arabia on this side J. Tueyk, and within the Syrian haj road. Embassies often arrive from tribes, not his tributaries, but having somewhat to treat with the Emir Ibn Rashid. Most remarkable of these strange KAHTAN TRIBESMEN A T HA YIL. 3 7 Aarab were some Kahtan Beduins, of that ancient blood of el- Yemen and called the southern stock of the Arabs,— as is the Abrahamid family of Ishmael of the north Arabians. The men wondered to hear that any named them Beny Kahtdn. "This | (they said) is in the loghrat of Annezy." Jid or grandsire of their nation they told me to be the ' prophet Htid ', and their begin ning to be from the mountain country et-TSr in Asir. Ismayin (Ishmael) they said, was brother of Hud their patriarch. These men had not heard of Hud's sepulchre in the southern country, nor have they any tradition (it sounded like old wives' tales to them) of the dam-breach at Mdreb, [from which is fabled the dispersion of the ancient Arabs in the little world of Arabia]. One of them sang me some rimes of a ditty known to all the Kahtan, in which is the stave, " The lance of Ne"by Hud, raught to the spreading firmament." Some of them asked me, " Wellah ! do the Nasara worship asndm," graven images ? — I think this book- word is not in the tradition of the northern Arabs. The Kahtan now in Hayil were two rubbas : they had ridden with the young man their great sheykh, Hayzdn, from el-Kasim ; in which country their division of the tribe were intruders these two years, and that was partly into the forsaken Annezy dira of the Ibn Mujallad expelled by Abeyd. They were two hundred tents, and had been driven from their Yemen dira, — where the rest remain of their nomad kindred. These southern tribesmen wandering in Ibn Rashid's bor ders, sent, now the second time, to treat with the Prince of Shanimar, offering themselves to become his Aarab, and pay tithing to Hayil; but Ibn Rashid, not willing that this dire and treacherous tribe should be established in Nejd, dis missed them with such words; — 'They might pasture in his neighbourhood as guests, giving no occasion against themselves, but that he looked upon them as aliens, and should neither tax them, nor give any charge to the tribes concerning them.' The messengers of Kahtan responded, " Wellah ! 0 Muhafuth, be we not thy brethren ? is not Ibn Rashid Jaafary, of the " fendy Abda Shammar, which is from the Abida of Kahtan?" But the prince Mohammed responded hardly, "We know you not, your speech is strange in our hearing, and your manners are none of ours : go now, we are not of you, we will neither help you nor hurt you." Abhorred at er-Riath, — since by their treachery the old power of the Wahaby was broken, — the Nejd Aarab pressing upon them, and the Ateyba from the southward, these intruded Kahtan were now compassed in by strong enemies. The men seemed to me to speak very well in the Nomad Arabic, with little difference from the utterance of Nejd Beduins, 38 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. save perhaps that they spoke with a more eloquent fulness. When they yet dwelt in the south country they drew their pro vision of dates from the W. Dauasir ; one of them told me the palms there lasted — with no long intermissions — for three thelul journeys : it is a sandy bottom and all their waters are wells. Those of the valley, he said, be not bad people, but " good to the guest". It is their factions which so much trouble the country, the next villages being often in feud one with another. El-Afldj (plur. of Fdlaj — Peleg, as some learned think — which may signify 'the splitting of the mountain') is in Jebel Tuey(k)ch, and the villagers are Dauasiries. From er-Riath he counted, to el-Aflaj three, and to W. Bisha twelve thelul journeys, and he named to me these places by the way, el-Ferra, el-Sulhyl, Leyla, el-Bediya, Silla, El-Hadda, Hdmmr, es-Sihh: some of them asked me if I had heard tell of the Kasr Ibn Shadddd. The 'wild oxen' are in their country, which they also name wothyhi. Certainly these men of Kahtan differed not in the least gestures from any other Beduw whom I have known ; they were light-coloured and not so swarthy, as are many of the northern Aarab. The Kahtan who talked with me in the Meshab were pleased when I confirmed the noble antiquity of their blood, -in the ears of the tribesmen of Nejd, who until that hour had never heard anything in the matter. The men invited me to visit them at evening in their makhzan, when they would be drinking kahwa with the sheykh. These Kahtan came not into the great public coffee-hall of the Kasr, whether because of the (profane) bibbing there of tobacco smoke, or that they were at enmity with most of the tribesmen: they drank the morning and mid-afternoon and evening cup apart, in their own makhzan; but they received the coffee-berries from the Emir's kitchen. After supper I sought them out : their young sheykh Hayzan immediately bid me sit down on the saddle- skin beside him, and with a good grace he handed to me the first cup of kahwa. This was a beautiful young man, of manly face and stature; there was nothing in him that you would have changed, he was a flower of all whom I have seen among the Arabians: his life had never suffered want in the khala. In his countenance, with a little ferocity of young years, ap peared a pleasant fortitude : the milk-beard was not yet sprung upon Hayzan's hardy fresh face. His comeliness was endowed with the longest and greatest braided side-locks, which are seen among them; and big he was, of valiant limbs: — but all this had no lasting ! They were in some discourse of religion ; and their fanatic HAYZAN. 39 young sheykh pronounced the duty of a Moslem to lie in three things chiefly,— "the five times daily prayers, the fast in Rama- than, and the tithe or yielding of zika."— How the Semites are Davids ! they are too religious and too very scelerat at once ! Their talk is continually (without hypocrisy) of religion, which is of genial devout remembrance to them, as it is to us a sad, un comfortable, untimely and foreign matter. Soon after, their dis course began to turn upon my being a Nasrany. Then Hayzan said to one of his rubba, "Give me there my kiddamiyyah," which is their crooked girdle-knife. Then holding the large blade aloft, and turning himself upon me, he said, Sully aly en- Niby, 'Give glory to the apostle,' so I answered, "We all worship the Godhead. I cannot forsake my name of Nasrany, neither wouldst thou thine if thou be'st a worthy man." — But as he yet held the knife above my breast, I said to him, "What dagger is that ? and tell these who are present whether thy meaning be to do me a mischief!" Then he put it down as if he were ashamed to be seen by the company savagely threatening his coffee guest; and so returning to his former behaviour, he answered all my questions. "Come, he said, in the morning, and we will make thee coffee ; then ask me of all that you please, and I will tell thee as it is." When I said, " You have many Yahud in your Yemen country," the fanatic young man was much troubled to hear it. "And that knife, is from whence?" — "From Nejran." — "And in Nejran be not your sanies Yahudies ? was not the smith who made this dagger-blade a Yahudy?" The ignorant young Beduin, who thought I must know the truth, hissed between his teeth : Ullah yusullat aleyhim, "The Lord have the mastery of them (to bring evil upon them)." — When I returned on the morrow, I found Hay zan alone ; the young sheykh, with an uncommon courtesy, had awaited me, for they think it nothing not to keep their promises. So he said, "Let us go to the rubba in the next makhzan, they have invited us, and we will drink our coffee there." When I came another evening to the Kahtan, to hear their lays, Hayzan did not return my greeting of peace. Soon after I had taken the cup, the young sheykh as before bade one bring him his kiddamiyyah ; and handling the weapon with cruel looks, he turned himself anew upon me, and insisted saying, "Sully aly en-Niby" I answered, "Oh! ignorant Beduwy, how is it that even with your own religion I am better acquainted than thyself!" — "Thou art better acquainted with my religion than myself! sully aly en-Niby}' — (Some of the Kahtan company now said, "Hayzan, nay! he is a guest.") — "If thou mayest come 40 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. even to the years of this beard, thou wilt have learned, young man, not to offer any violence to the guest." I thought if I said ' the guest of the lord of yonder castle ', he might have responded, that the Prince permitted him ! In the same moment a singular presentiment, almost a persuasion, possessed my soul, that the goodly young man's death was near at hand; and notwithstanding my life daily threatened in a hazardous voyage and this infirm health, that I should survive him. "Your coffee, I added, was in my throat when you lifted the knife against me ; but tell me, 0 ye of the Kahtan, do ye not observe the rites of the other Aarab?" Some of them answered me, "Ay, Ullah! that do we;" but Hayzan was silent, for the rest of the company were not with him, and the Arabs are never of one assent, save in blind dogma of religion : this is for one's safety who adventures among them. — Hayzan, few months afterward, by the retaliation of fortune, was slain (in battle) by my friends. This case made the next day some idle talk in the town, and doubtless was related in the palace, for Imbarak asked me of it in the great kahwa: — "Khalil, what of the Kahtan? and what of Hayzan, when he took the knife to stab thee, fearedst thou not to die?" — "If I feared for every word, judge thyself, had I entered your Arabian country ? but tell me, did the young ignorant well, thinkest thou?"— Imbarak, who was in such times a spokesman for the Emir, kept silence. Very ugly tales are current of the Kahtan in the mouths of Nejd Arabians. It is commonly reported that they are eaters of the flesh of their enemies ; and there is a vile proverb said to be of these human butchers, 'eth-thail, the rump, is the best roast.' They are esteemed faithless, "wood at a word, and for every small cause ready to pluck out their weapons." A strange tale was told me in Kasim, by certain who pretended they had it of eye-witnesses : ' Some Kahtan riders returning weary and empty from a ghrazzu passed by er-Russ ; and finding an abd or bondsman of the village without in the khala, they laid hands on him and bound him, and carried the negro away with them. Before evening the Kahtanies alighted in the Nefud, the men were faint with the many days suffered hunger ;— and they said among themselves, 'We will kill the captive and eat him:' they plucked also bushes and gathered fuel for a great fire. — The black man would be cast in, when they had cut his throat, and roasted whole ; as the manner is of passengers and hunters in the wilderness to dress their game. But in that appeared another band riding over the sand dunes ! The Kahtan hastily A LITTER ATE BEDUWY. 41 re-mounted on their theluls; and seeing them that approached to be more than their number, they stayed not, but, as Beduw, they turned their beasts to flight. Those that now arrived were some friendly Kasim villagers, who loosing the poor bonds man heard from him his (unlikely) tale.' — But most fanatic are these scelerats, and very religious even in their crimes. So it is said of them proverbially in Nejd, "El-Kahtan murder a man only for his drinking smoke, and they themselves drink human blood." But sheykhly persons at Aneyza have told me that "el-Kahtan in el-Ye'men do confirm their solemn swearing together by drinking human gore; also a man of them may not wive, nor loose his leathern band, until he have slain an enemy." Another sheykh of Kahtan visited Hayil two years before, — and after discourse of their affairs the Prince ibn Rashid said to him: "In all my riding southwards through the Beduin country we never saw a Kahtan burying place!" The sheykh, it is reported, answered him (in a boast), "Ay wellah Muhafuth, thou hast seen the graves of Kahtan, in the air! — the crows and the rakham and the agab:" he would say their carcases are cast out unburied, — that which happens in the wild battle-fields of Arabia ; the fallen of the losers' side remain without burial. It was so with Kahtan when this Hayzan was slain in the sum mer: a week after I passed by, and the caravaners avoided that sinister neighbourhood ! Somewhat has been said of Ibn Rashid's lineage. Shammar is not, as the most great nomad tribes, reputed to spring from one Jid, but according to the opinion in Nejd, is of mixed ancestry. Others say the name of their patriarch is Shimmer. The divi sions by fendies or lineages of Shammar were given me by a lettered nomad of Annezy Sbaa living at Hayil. The fendy Abda is from the fendy Abida of Kahtan whereof the Jaafar kindred, of which is Ibn Rashid's house ; the other fendies are many and not of one descent, — Sinjdra, Tumdn, Eslam, Deghreyrat, Qhreyih, Amdd, Fadddghra, Thdbit, Afarit, ez-Zumeyl, Ham- mazdn, Saiyeh, Kh'drussy, Z4ba, Shammar-Toga (in Irak). No man of the inhabitants of the wilderness knows letters ; and it was a new pleasure to me to meet here with a lettered Beduwy, as it were an eye among their dull multitude, for he was well taught and diligent, and his mind naturally given to good studies. This was one Rashid who had been bred a scholar at er-Riath; but had since forsaken the decaying Wahaby state and betaken himself to Hayil, where he was become a man of Hamud's private trust and service. He made every year some scholarly journey, into distant provinces. He 42 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. was last year, he told me, in the land of Israel, where he had visited Bethlehem, "the place (he said devoutly) where the Messiah was born," and the Holy (City). There is in these Arabians such a facility of mind, that it seems they only lack the occasion, to speed in any way of learning ; — that were by an easy imitation. Rashid was a good man of liberal understanding [I could have wished for such a rafik in my Arabian travels], but too timid as a Beduwy under masters : almost he dared not be seen in the town to discourse with the Nasrany, lest it should displease any great personage. There is reported to be a far outlying settlement in el-Aruth, of Shammar lineage, the name of the village is Aleyi and the kindred Kuruniyah. One day I found Rashid carrying my book of Geography in the Me'shab. As he said that Majid sent him with it to some learned man in Hayil, a kady, I accompanied him; but come to his dar we found not the learned person at home. I heard the kady had . compiled shdjr, a tree, of genealogies, in which he exhibited the branching from the stock of all their Arabian lines. I went another day to visit him, and could not soon find his distant house, because a swordsman of the Emir, whom I met stalking in his gay clothes, sent me upon a false way about; and when I arrived I found the shallow fellow sitting there before me ! so knavish they are in a trifle, and full of Asiatic suspicions. When I re proached him the fellow could not answer a word, only feeling down the edge of his sword, he let me divine that he had the best will in the world to have tried his force and the temper of the metal upon my neck. The same man was afterwards not less ready to defend me from the insolence of others. I greeted the kady, who hardly saluted me again : Mdtha turid, quoth the pedant ; — and this is all their learning, to seem well taught in the Arabic tongue. He was sitting under his house wall in the dust of the street. All their gravity is akin to levity, and first showing me his watch, he asked, "What is this written upon the face of it ? " Then he sent for a book, and showed me in the fly-leaf his copies of some' short antique inscriptions which he had found scored upon the rocks in this neighbour hood (they were written in a kind of Himyaric character), and he asked of me, " Are these Yundny (of Javan), in the Greek tongue, or Muscovy?— the Muscovs of old inhabited this country." I answered, "Art thou so ignorant then even of your own language ! This is the Himyaric, or ancient Yemenish writing of Arabia. I heard thou wast a learned man, and upon that common ground we might be friends. Though thy name be Moslem and mine is Messihy, we all say 'There is an only Godhead'." — "The impiety is not unknown to me of the A LEARNED KADY. 43 Messihiyun ; they say ' Ullah childed, and that the only God is become more Gods' ! Nay ! but if thou wilt turn from the way of idolatry to be a Moslem, we may be accorded together." — "I become a Moslem ! I think thou wouldst ifot become a Nasrany; neither will I take on me the name of your reli gion, ebeden! (ever): yet may we be friendly in this world, and seekers after the true knowledge." — "Knowledge of the Messihiyun! that is a little thing, and next to unlearning." — " How art thou called learned ! being without knowledge even of your own letters. The shape is unknown to you of the dry land, the names of the hundred countries and the great nations ; but we by navigation are neighbours to all nations, we encom pass the earth with our speech in a moment. Says not Sleyman bin Daud, 'It is the glory of man's solicitous spirit to search out the sovereign works of the Lord' ? ye know not those scriptures, but our young children read these things with under standing." — The pedant could not find his tongue; he might feel then, like a friar out of his cell, that he was a narrow soul, and in fault to have tempted the stranger in argument. He was mollified, and those that sat with him. Afterwards, meeting with Rashid, he said, " How found you him, he knows very much?" — "The koran, the muallakat, the kamiis and his jots, and his titles (the vowel points in their skeleton writing), and he knows nothing else." — "It is the truth, and I can think thou didst not like him;" for it seems, the learned and religious kady was looked upon as a crabbed fellow in his own town. As we were talking of the ancient scored inscriptions, in Abeyd's kahwa, Majid's tutor said to Hamud, "Have we not seen the rocks full of them at GubbaV Gubba is the outlying small Nefud village next to J. Shammar, upon the way to Jauf. In Nejd I have found the study of letters in most honour amongst the prosperous merchants at Aneyza. At Hayil it was yet in the beginning : though Hamiid and the Prince are said to be possessors (but who may ever believe them!) of two or three thousand volumes. I found in Abeyd's kahwa not above a dozen in their cotton cases, and bound in red leather: — but the fewer they were, the more happy I esteemed them, as princes, not to be all their lives going still to school. Hamud sometime asked me of the art of printing, 'Could I not show him the manner ?' but when I answered he might buy himself a printer's press from Bagdad, for not much money, he was discouraged, for they will spend nothing. It is wonderful in what nomad-like ignorance of the natural world they all pass their lives ! Some evening Hamud asked me, " Do the Nasara, 44 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. Khalil, see the moon?"— his meaning might be — 'The new moon is the ensign of the Sultan of Islam, the moon then is of the Moslemin ; — -therefore the moon is not of the other religions ! ' There were in Hayil four common schools. The master of one of them, a depraved looking fanatical young man, daily uttered the presumptuous saws of his self-liking heart of gall to the ignorant assembly in the kahwa: sordid was his voice, and the baseness of his snake-looking eyes a moral pes tilence. Upon a day he called upon me loudly, and smiling in his manner, before them all, " Khalil, why so steadfast in a false way ? Wouldst thou come to my house, to-morrow, I will lay before thee the proofs, and they shall be out of your own scriptures. Thou shalt read the prophecy of Hazkiyal and the other testimonies ; and then, if the Lord will, thou mayest say, ' I that was long time blind, do now see and bear witness that God is One, and Mohammed is the apostle of God.'" — "Will you make my head ache in the Prince's coffee-hall about your questions of religion ! where I come but to drink a cup with my friends." The Beduins answered for me, " He has well said ; peace, thou young man, and let this stranger be." — " But it is of the great hope I have, hissed the holy ribald, of this man's conversion ; for was it not so with the Yahudy before him ? " Desiring to see a book at Hayil and in Arabic " of Ezekiel the prophet"! I went the next afternoon to his dar, which I found by the Me'shab, near the common draught-yard, as unsavoury as himself. " Ah ! he said, welcome, also I hope thou art come disposed to receive the truth." He set dates before the stranger, and fetched me his wise book; which I found to be a solemn tome of some doctor of Islam, who at a certain place quoted a voice of the prophet, but in other than barbarous ears of little meaning. The Arabs have a curious wit for the use of this world, but they are all half-rational children in religion. " Well ! (I asked) is there no more than this ? and I was almost in hope to have reformed myself !" But now the young man, who looked perhaps that I should have taken his vanity upon trust, was displeased with himself, and so I left him. This school master was maintained by the State ; he dined miserably in the Mothif, and received, besides, a few reals in the year, and a change of clothing. The Arabs are to be won by gentleness and good faith, they yield to just arguments, and before I left Hayil the most of my old foes wished me well in their hearts. To use an unflattering plainness of speech was also agreeable to the part of suwahh, or wandering anchorite in the fable of human life. The best that I met with here, were some who had been in Egypt SNOW IN ARABIA. 45 and Syria, or conductors of the Emir's sale-horses to Bombay, where they told me, with a pleasant wonder, they had seen the horse-race ; men who viewed a stranger, such as themselves had been in another soil, with eyes of good- will and understand ing. "This people (they would say) have learned no good manners, they have not corrected themselves by seeing foreign countries: else why do they molest thee, Khalil, about your religion ; in which no man ought to be enforced. — But we have instructed ourselves in travel ; also we have seen the Nasara, their wealth, their ingenuity, and justice and liberality." The weather, sultry awhile after my coming to Hayil, was now grown cold. Snow, which may be seen the most winters upon a few heads of Arabian mountains, is almost not known to fall in the Nejd wilderness, although the mean altitude be nearly 4000 feet. They say such happens about "once in forty years". It had been seen two winters before, when snow lay on the soil three days: the camels were couched in the menzils, and many of them perished in that unwonted cold and hunger. A fire was kindled morning and evening in the great kahwa, and I went there to warm myself with the Beduins. One evening before almost anyone came in, I approached to warm myself at the fire-pit. — "Away ! (cried the coffee- server, who was of a very splenetic fanatical humour) and leave the fire to the guests that will presently arrive." Some Beduins entered and sat down by me. "I say, go back!" cries the coffee-keeper. " A moment, man, and I am warm ; be we not all the Prince's guests?" Some of the Beduw said in my ear : "It were better to remove, not to give them an occasion." That kahwajy daily showed his rancour, breaking into my talk with the Beduw, as when someone asked me "Whither wilt thou next, Khalil?" — "May it please Ullah (cries the coffee-server) to jehennem ! " 1 have heard he was one of servile condition from Aneyza in Kasim; but being daily worshipfully saluted by guesting Beduin sheykhs, he was come to some solemn opinion of himself. To cede to the tyranny of a servant might, I thought, hearten other fanatics' audacity in Hayil. The coffee-server, with a frenetic voice, cried to a Beduwy sitting by, "Reach me that camel-stick," (which the nomads have always in their hands,) and having snatched it from him, the slave struck me with all his decrepit force. The Beduins had risen round me with troubled looks, — they might feel that they were not themselves safe ; none of these were sheykhs, that durst say any word, only they beckoned me to withdraw with them, and sit down with 46 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. them at a little distance. It had been perilous to defend myself among dastards ; for if it were told in the town that the Nasrany laid heavy hands on a Moslem, then the wild fire had kindled in many hearts to avenge him. The Emir must therefore hear of the matter and do justice, or so long as I remained in Hayil every shrew would think he had as good leave to insult me. I passed by the gallery to the Emir's apartment, and knocking on the iron door, I heard the slave-boy who kept it within say to the guard that it was Khalil the Nasrany. The Emir sent out Nasr to enquire my business, and I went to sit in the Me'shab. Later someone coming from the Kasr who had been with the Emir, said that the Emir sent for the coffee-server immediately, and said to him, "Why! Ullah curse thy father, hast thou struck the Nasrany ? " — " Wellah, O el-Muhafuth (the trembling wretch answered) I touched him not!" — so he feared the Emir, who said then to some of the guard "Beat him!" but Hamud rose and going over to Mohammed, he kissed his cousin's hand, asking him, for his sake, to spare the coffee-server, 'who was a mesquin (meskin).' "Go kahwajy, said the Emir, and if I hear any more there shall nothing save thee, but thou shalt lose thy office." Because I forsook the coffee-hall, the second coffee-server came many times to my makhzan, and wooed me to return among them; but I re sponded, "Where the guests of the Emir are not safe from outrage — !" Note. — Ibn RashId's horses, for the Indian market, are shipped at Kuweyt. The itinerary is, from Hayil to el-Khasira, 9 stounds; — Baka, 8; — Khathra, 18; — el-Fesas, 17mm Arthama (the well there 32 fathoms), 28 ;— el-Wakba, 24 ;— el-Hafr (in the Wady er-Rum mah, the well 35 fathoms), 24 ; — Arrak'i (where there is little water), 16; — el-Jahra (on the sea coast), 30; — el-Kuweyt, 9. [Abn Datid, sheykh el-Ageyl, Damascus.] CHAPTER III. The 'Persian pilgrimage'. Imbarak' s words. Town thieves. Jauf pilgrims in Hayil. Beduins on pilgrimage. The Caravan to Mecca arrives from the North. An Italian hajjy in Hdyil. The Persians passed formerly by el-Kasim. Murderous dangers in Mecca. Concourse at Hdyil.— The Kheybar journey. Violent dealing of Imbarak. Ibn Rashid's passport. Departure from Hdyil. Gofar. Seyadin, Beduin pedlars. El-Kasr village. Biddia hamlet. Adventure in the desert. Eydda ibn Ajju&yn. Kdsim ibn Bardk. Sdlih the rafik. " It is the angels." The Wady er-Rummah. Kdsim' s sister. Set forward again with Sdlih. The Nasrany abandoned at strange tents. The hospitable goodness of those nomads. Thaifullah. Set forth with a rafik from the menzil of Eyada. Ghroceyb. The Harra in sight. Heteym menzil in the Harra. Lineage of the Heteym. The lava-field. The division of waters of Northern Arabia. The dangerous passage. The great Harrat (Kheybar). El-Hdyat, village. Cattle paths in the Harra. An alarm near Kheybar. Locusts. Ghroceyb in trouble of mind. Wady Jellds. Kheybar village. The Husn. An antique Mesjid. | The Haj were approaching; — this is Ibn Rashid's convoy from Mesopotamia of the so-called 'Persian pilgrimage' to Mecca: — and seeing the child Feysal had nearly recovered, I thought after that to depart, for I found little rest at all or refreshment at Hayil. Because the Emir had spoken to me of mines and minerals, I conjectured that" he would have sent some with me on horseback, seeking up and down for metals : — but when he added " There is a glancing sand in some parts of the khala like scaly gold," I had answered with a plainness which must discourage an Arab. Also Hamiid had spoken to me of seeking for metals. Imbarak invited me one morning to go home with him "to kahwa ", he had a good house beside the mesjid, backward from the M&hab. We found his little son playing in the court : the martial father took him in his arms with the tenderness of the Arabians for their children. An European would bestow the first home love upon the child's mother ; but the Arabian 48 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. housewives come not forth with meeting smiles and the eyes of love, to welcome-in their husbands, for they are his espoused servants, he purchased them of their parents, and at best, his liking is divided. The child cried out, "Ho! Nasrany, thou canst not look to the heaven !" — " See, my son, I may look upon it as well, I said, as another and better ; — taal hiibbiny ! come thou and kiss me;" for the Arab strangers kiss their hosts' young children. — When some of the young courtiers had asked me, Fen rubbuk, 'Where is thy Lord God?' I answered them very gravely, Fi kull makdn, 'The Lord is in everyplace:' which word of the Nasrany pleased them strangely, and was soon upon all their tongues in the Kasr. "Khalil, said Imbarak, as we sat' at the hearth, we would have thee to dwell with us in Hayil ; only become a Moslem, it is a little word and soon said. Also wouldst thou know more of this country, thou shalt have then many occasions in being sent for the Emir's business here and there. The Emir will promote thee to an high place and give thee a house where thou mayest pass thy life in much repose, free from all cares, wellah in only stretching the limbs at thy own hearth-side. Although that which we can -offer be not more than a man as thou art might find at home in his country, yet consider it is very far to come again thither,' and that thou must return through as many new dangers." — Imbarak was doubtless a spokesman of the Emir, he promised fair, and this office I thought might be the col lecting of taxes ; for in handling of money they would all sooner trust a Nasrany. Those six or seven reals which came in by the sale of my naga, — I had cast them with a few small pieces of silver into a paper box with my medicines, I found one day had been stolen, saving two reals and the small money ; that either the Arab piety of the thief had left me, or his superstition, lest he should draw upon himself the Christian's curse and a chastisement of heaven. My friends' suspicion fell upon two persons. The dumb man, who very often entered my lodging, for little cause, and a certain Be duwy, of the rajajil at Hayil, of a melancholy scelerat humour; he had bought my camel, and afterward he came many times to my makhzan, to be treated for ophthalmia. I now heard him named a cut-purse of the Persian Haj, and the neighbours even affirmed that he had cut some of their wezands. When I spoke of this mischief to Hamiid, he affected with the barbaric sleight of the Arabs not to believe me. I looked then in my purse, and there were not thirty reals ! I gave my tent to the running broker and gained four or five more. The dellal sold it to some young patrician, who would ride in this winter pilgrimage of 160 JAUF: THE DRUSES. 49 leagues and more in the khala, to Mecca. Imbarak set his sword to the dumb man's throat, but the dumb protested with all the vehement signs in the world that this guilt was not in him. As for the Beduwy he was not found in Hayil ! Already the fore-riders of the Haj arrived : we heard that the pilgrims this year were few in number. I saw now the yearly gathering in Hayil of men from the villages and the tribes that would follow with the caravan on pilgrimage, and of petty tradesmen that come to traffic with the passing haj : — some of them brought dates from Kasim above a hundred miles distant. A company from the Jauf villages lodged in the next makhzans; they were more than fifty persons, that had journeyed ten days tardily over the Nefud in winter rain and rough weather : but that is hardly a third of their long march 1 (of seven hundred miles) to Mecca. I asked some weary man of them, who came to me trembling in the chill morning, how he looked to accomplish his religious voyage and return upwards in the cold months without shelter. " Those, he answered, that , die, they die ; and who live, God has preserved them." These men told me they reckon from Jauf eight, to el-Meshed and to Damascus nine camel journeys ; to Maan are five thelul days, or nine nights out with loaded camels. Many poor Jaufies come every year into the Hauran seeking labour, and are hired by the Druses to cleanse and repair their pools of rain-water: — it is the jealous manner of the Druses, who would live by themselves, to inhabit where there is scarcity of water. Much salt also of the Jauf deserts is continually carried thither. The Jauf villagers say that they are descended from Mesopotamians, Syrians and from the Nejd Arabians. The suk in Hayil was in these days thronged with Beduins that had business in the yearly concourse, especially to sell camels. The Me'shab was now full of their couching theluls. The multitude of visiting people were bidden, at the hours, in courses, by Mufarrij and those of the public kitchen, and led in to break their fasts and to sup in the Mothif. Three days later the Haj arrived, they were mostly Ajam, strangers ' of outlandish speech ' ; but this word is commonly understood of Persia. They came early in an afternoon, by 1 my reckoning, the 14th of November. Before them rode a great company of Beduins on pilgrimage ; there might be in all a thousand persons. Many of the Aarab that arrived in Hayil were of the Syrian Annezy, Sbaa, whose dira is far in the north-west near Aleppo. With this great yearly convoy came down trains of laden camels with wares for the tradesmen D. T. 11. 4 50 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. of Hayil ; and I saw a dozen camels driven in through the jcastle gate, which carried bales of clothing, for the Emir's daily gifts of changes of garments to his visiting Beduins. The Haj passed westwards about the town, and went to encamp before the Gofar gate, and the summer residency, and the Ma es-Sama. The caravan was twelve nights out from Bagdad. I numbered about fifty great tents : they were not more, I heard, than half the hajjies of the former season ; but this was a year of that great jehad which troubled el-Islam, and the most Persians were gone (for fear) the long sea way about to the port of Mecca. I saw none of them wear the Persian bonnets or clad as Per- jsians : the returning pilgrimage is increased by those who visit j el-Medina, and would go home by el-Me'shed. I wondered to mark the perfect resemblance of the weary, travel-stained, and ruffianly clad Bagdad akkams to those of Damascus; the same moon-like white faces are of both the great mixed cities. In their menzil was already a butchers' market, and I saw saleswomen of the town sitting there with baskets of excellent girdle-bread and dates; some of those wives — so wimpled that none might know them — sold also buttermilk ! a traffic which passes for less than honest, even in the towns of nomad Arabia. Two days the pilgrims take rest in Hayil, and the third morrow they depart. The last evening, one stayed me in the street, to enquire, whether I would go with the Haj to Mecca ! When I knew his voice in the dusk I answered only, "Ambar, no!" and he was satisfied. Ambar, a home-born Galla of Ibn Rashid's house, was now Emir el-Haj, conductor of the pilgrim convoy — this was, we have seen, the Emir Mohammed's former office ; Aneybar was his elder brother, and they were freemen, but their father was a slave of Abdullah ibn Rashid.- Aneybar and Ambar, being thus libertine brethren of the succeeding Emirs," were holders of trusts under them; they were also welfaring men in Hayil. On the morrow of the setting out of the Haj, I stood in the menzil to watch their departure. One who walked by in the company of some Bagdad merchants, clad like them and girded in a kumbaz, stayed to speak with me. I asked, 'What did he seek ?' — I thought the hajjy would say medicines : but he answered, "If I speak in the French language, will you under stand me?" — "I shall understand it! but what countryman art thou?" I beheld a pale alien's face with a chestnut beard: — who has not met with the like in the mixed cities of the Levant? He responded, "I am an Italian, a Piedmontese of Turin." — "And what brings you hither upon this hazardous voyage? good Lord! you might have your throat cut among FRANCESCO FERRARI. 51 them; are you a Moslem ?"— "Ay."— "You confess then their 'none ilah but Ullah, and Mahound, apostle of Ullah'— which they shall never hear me utter, may Ullah confound them !" — "Ay, I say it, and I am a Moslem; as such I make this pilgrimage." — He told me he was come to the Mohammedan countries, eight years before ; he was then but sixteen years of age, and from Damascus he had passed to Mesopotamia: the last three years he had studied in a Mohammedan college, near Bagdad, and received the circumcision. He was erudite in the not short task of the Arabic tongue, to read, and to write scholarly, and could speak it with the best, as he said, "without difference." For a moment, he treated in school Arabic, of the variance of the later Arabian from the antique tongue, as it is found in the koran, which he named with a Mohammedan aspira tion es-sherif, 'the venerable or exalted scripture.' With his pedant teachers, he dispraised the easy babble-talk of the Aarab. When I said I could never find better than a head ache in the farrago of the koran; and it amazed me that one born in the Roman country, and under the name of Christ, should waive these prerogatives, to become the bro ther of Asiatic barbarians in a fond religion ! he answered with the Italic mollitia and half urbanity, — "Aha! well, a man may not always choose, but he must sometime go with the world." He hoped to fulfil this voyage, and ascend with the returning Syrian Haj : he had a mind to visit the lands beyond Jordan, and those tribes [B. Hameydy, B. Sokhr], pos sessors of the best blood horses, in Moab ; but when he under stood that I had wandered there, he seemed to pass over so much of his purpose. It was in his mind to publish his Travels when he returned to Europe. Poor (he added) he was in the world, and made his pilgrimage at the charges, and in the com pany, of some bountiful Persian personage of much devotion and learning: — but once returned to Italy, he would wipe off all this rust of the Mohammedan life. He said he heard of me, "the Nasrany", at his coming to Hayil, and of the Jew-born Abdullah : he had visited the Moslemanny, but "found him to be a man altogether without instruction". There was a hubbub in the camp of the taking up tents and loading of baggage and litters ; some were already mounted : — and as we took hands, I asked, "What is your name ? and remem ber mine, for these are hazardous times and places." The Italian responded with a little hesitation — it might be true, or it might be he would put me off — Francesco Ferrari. Now the caravan was moving, and he hastened to climb upon his camel. 4—2 52 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A From Hayil to Mecca are five hundred miles at least, over vast deserts, which they pass in fifteen long marches, not all years journeying by the same landmarks, but according to that which is reported of the waterings (which are wells of the Aarab), and of the peace or dangers of the wilderness before them. Ibn Rashid's Haj have been known to go near by Kheybar, but they commonly hold a course from Mustajidda or the great watering of Semira, to pass east of the Harrat el-Kesshub, and from thence in other two days descend to the underlying Mecca country by W. Layman. It is a wonder that the Ateyba (the Prince's strong and capital enemies) do not waylay them : but a squadron of his rajajil ride to defend the Haj. Formerly this convoy from Mesopotamia to Mecca passed by the way of el-Kasim, with the kafilas of Aneyza, or of Boreyda; in which long passages of the deserts, those of the Persian belief were wont to suffer harshness and even violence, especially by the tyranny of Mahanna, the usurping jemmdl or "cameleer" sheykh of Boreyda, of whom there is many a tale told. And I have heard this of a poor Ajamy: When the caravan arrived in the town, he was bound at the command of Mahanna and beaten before him; the Emir still threatening the needy stranger, — "Son of an hound, lay me down thy four giniydt, and else thou diest in this place." The town Arabs when crossed are very un civil spirits, and their hostility turning to a beastly wildness, they set no bounds to their insane cruelty; it is a great prudence therefore not to move them. — It was now twelve years since all the "Persian" overland pilgrims use to come down from el- Meshed under the strong conduct of the Prince of Shammar : — to him they pay toll, (if you can believe the talk) 'an hundred reals' for each person. — I saw a mare led through the town, of perfect beauty : the Emir Mohammed sent her (his yearly pre sent) with the Haj to the sherif of Mecca. It was eight o'clock when the Haj departed ; but thelul riders of Hayil were still leaving the town to overtake the slow camel-train till mid-day. When in the favourable revolution of the stars I was come again to peaceable countries, I left notice of the Italian wanderer "Ferrari" at his consulate in Syria, and have vainly enquired for him in Italy : — I thought it my duty, for how dire is the incertitude which hangs over the heads of any aliens that will adventure themselves in Mecca, — where, I have heard it from credible Moslems, that nearly no Haj passes in which some unhappy persons are not put to death as intruded Christians. A trooper and his comrade, who rode with the yearly Haj cara vans, speaking (unaffectedly) with certain Christian Damascenes (my familiar acquaintance), the year before my setting out, said THE "PERSIAN" PILGRIMS AT HAYIL. 53 ' They saw two strangers taken at Mona in the last pilgrimage, that had been detected writing in pocket-books. The strangers being examined were found to be " Christians "; they saw them executed, and the like happened most years !' Our Christian governments too long suffer this religious brigandage! Why have they no Residents, for the police of nations in Mecca? Why have they not occupied the direful city in the name of the health of nations, in the name of the common religion of humanity, and because the head of the slave trade is there ? It were good for the Christian governments, which hold any of the Mohammedan pro vinces, to consider that till then they may never quietly possess them. Each year at Mecca every other name is trodden down, and the "Country of the Apostle" is they pretend inviolable, where no worldly power may reach them. It is "The city of God's house", — and the only God is God only of the Moslemin. Few or none of the pilgrim strangers while lying at Hayil had entered the town, — it might be their fear of the Arabians. Only certain Bagdad derwishes came in, to eat of the public hospitality; and I saw besides but a company of merry ad venturers, who would be bidden to a supper in Arabia, for the novelty. In that day's press even the galleries of the Mothif were thronged ; there I supped in the dusk, and when I rose, my sandals, the gift of Hamiid, were taken. From four till half-past six o'clock rations had been served for " two to three thousand " persons ; the Emir's cheer was but boiled temmn and a little samn. It is a passion to be a pointing-stock for every finger and to maintain even a just opinion against the half-reason of the world. I have felt this in the passage of Arabia more than the daily hazards and long bodily sufferance : yet some leaven is in the lump of pleasant remembrance; it is oftentimes by the hearty ineptitude of the nomads. In the throng of Aarab in these days in the Me'shab, many came to me to speak of their infirmities; strangers where I passed called to me, not know ing my name, "Ho! thou that goest by, el-hakim there!" others, when they had received of me (freely) some faithful counsel, blessed me with the Semitic grace, "God give peace to that head, the Lord suffer not thy face to see the evil." And such are phrases which, like their brand-marks, declare the tribes of nomads: these were, I believe, northern men. One, as I came, showed me to his rafik, with this word : Urraie urraie, hu hu ! ' Look there ! he (is) he, this is the Nasrany.' — Cheyf Nasrany? (I heard the other answer, with the hollow drought of the desert in his manly throat), ag4l ! 54 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. weysh yimsurhu ? He would say, " How is this man victorious, what giveth him the victory?" In this strange word to him the poor Beduwy thought he heard nasr, which is victory. A poor nomad of Ruwalla cried out simply, when he received his medicines : ' Money he had none to give the hakim, wellah ! he prayed me be content to receive his shirt.' And, had I suffered it, he would have stripped himself, and gone away naked in his sorry open cloak, as there are seen many men in the indigence of the wilderness and, like the people of India, with no more than a clout to cover the human shame ; and when I let him go, he murmured, Jizak Ullah kheyr, 'God recom pense thee with good,' and went on wondering, whether the things ' which the Nasrany had given him for nothing, could be good medicines ' ? I thought no more of Bagdad, but of Kheybar ; already I stayed too long in Hayil. At evening I went to Abeyd's kahwa to speak with Hamiid ; he was bowing then in the beginning of his private devotion, and I sat down silently, awaiting his leisure. The son of Abeyd at the end of the first bout looked up, and nodding cheerfully, enquired, "Khalil, is there need, wouldst thou anything immediately?" — "There is nothing, the Lord be praised." — " Then I shall soon have ended." As Hamiid sat again in his place, I said, ' I saw the child Feysal's health returning, I desired to depart, and would he send me to Kheybar?' Hamud answered, 'If I wished it.' — "But why, Khalil, to Kheybar, what is there at Kheybar? go not to Kheybar, thou mayest die of fever at Kheybar; and they are not our friends, Khalil, I am afraid of that journey for thee.". I answered, "I must needs adventure thither, I would see the antiquities of the Yahud, as I have seen el-Hejr." — "Well, I will find some means to send thee ; but the fever is deadly, go not thither, eigh Khalil! lest thou die there." — Since I had passed the great Aueyrid I desired to discover also the Harrat Kheybar, such another vulcanic Arabian country, and wherein I heard to be the heads of the W. er-Rummah, which westward of the Tueyk mountains is the dry waterway of all northern Arabia. This great valley which descends from the heads above el-Hayat and Howeyat to the Euphrates valley at ez-Zbeyer, a suburb of Bosra, has a winding course of "fifty camel marches". Hamiid, then stretching out his manly great arm, bade me try his pulse ; the strokes of his heart-blood were greater than I had felt any man's among the Arabians, the man was strong as a champion. When they hold out their forearms to the hakim, THE SICK LEFT AT HAYIL. 55 they think he may well perceive all their health : I was cried down when I said it was imposture. "Yesterday a Persian medicaster in the Haj was called to the Kasr to feel the Emir's pulse. ^ The Persian said, ' Have you not a pain, Sir, in the left knee ?' the Prince responded, 'Ay I feel a pain there by God ! ' — and no man knew it !" The Haj had left some sick ones behind them in Hayil : there was a welfaring Bagdad tradesman, whose old infirmities had returned upon him in the way, a -foot-sore camel driver, and some poor derwishes. The morrow after, all these went to present themselves before the Emir in the mejlis, and the derawish cried with a lamentable voice in their bastard town Arabic, Jandbak ! 'may it please your grace.' Their clownish carriage and torpid manners, the barbarous border speech of the north, and their illiberal voices, strangely discorded with the bird-like ease and alacrity and the frank propriety in the tongue of the poorest Arabians. The Emir made them a gracious gesture, and appointed them their daily rations in the Mothif. Also to the tradesman was assigned a makhzan ; and at Hayil he would pass those two or three months well enough, sitting in the sun and gossiping up and down the suk, till he might ride homeward. Afterward I saw led-in a wretched young man of the Aarab, who was blind; and spreading his pitiful hands towards the Emir's seat, he cried out, Yd Tawil el-Ummr! yd Weled Abdullah! 'Help, 0 Long-of-days, thou Child of Abdullah!' The Emu- spoke immediately to one over the wardrobe, and the poor weled was led away to receive the change of clothing. Afterwards, I met with Imbarak. " Wouldst thou (he said) to Kheybar ? there are some Annezy here, who will convey thee." When I heard their menzils were in the Kharram, and that they could only carry me again to Misshel, and were to depart immediately : I said that I could not so soon be ready to take a long journey, and must call in the debts for medicines. " We will gather them for thee ; but longer we cannot suffer thee to remain in our country : if thou wouldst go to Kheybar, we will send thee to Kheybar or to el-Kasim, we will send thee to el-Kasim." — " To Kheybar, yet warn me a day or two beforehand, that I may be ready." The morning next but one after, I was drinking kahwa with those of er-Riath, when a young man entered out of breath, he came, he said, to call me from Imbarak. Imbarak when I met him said, " We have found some Heteym who will convey thee to Kheybar." — 'And when would they depart?' — "To-morrow or the morning after." But he sent for me in an hour to say 56 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. he had given them handsel, and I must set out immediately. "Why didst thou deceive me with to-morrow?" — "Put up thy things .and mount." — " But will you ' send me with Heteym ! " — "Ay, ay, give me the key of the makhzan and make up, for thou art to mount immediately." — "And I cannot speak with the Emir?" — "Ukhlus! have done, delay not, or wellah ! the Emir will send, to take off thy head." — " Is this driving me into the desert to make me away, covertly?" — " Nay, nothing will happen to thee." — " Now well let me first see Hamiid." There came then a slave of Hamud, bringing in his hand four reals, which he said his "uncle" sent to me. So there came Zeyd, the Moghreby porter of the Kasr; I had shown him a good turn by the gift of medicines, but now quoth the burly villain, " Thou hast no heart (understanding) if thou wouldst resist Imbarak ; for this is the captain and there ride behind him five hundred men." I delayed to give the wooden key of my door, fearing lest if they had flung the things forth my aneroid had been broken, or if they searched them my pistol had been taken ; also I doubted whether the -captain of the guard (who at every moment laid hand to the hilt of his sword) had not some secret commis sion to slay the Nasrany there within. His slaves already came about me, some plucked my clothes, some thrust me for ward ; they would drive me perforce to the makhzan. — " Is the makhzan thine or ours, Khalil?" — "But Imbarak, I no longer trust thee : bear my word to the Emir, ' I came from the Dowla, send me back to the Dowla'." The Arab swordsman with fugh ! spat in my face. " Heaven send thee confusion that art not ashamed to spit in a man's face." — "Khalil, I did it because thou saidst ' I will not trust thee'. " I saw the Moghreby porter go and break open my makhzan door, bursting the clay mortice of the wooden lock. The slaves plucking me savagely again, I let go the loose Arab upper garments in their hands, and stood before the wondering wretches in my -shirt. "A shame ! I said to them, and thou Imbarak dakhil-ak, defend me from their insolence. " As Imbarak heard 'dakhll-ak', he snatched a camel-stick from one who stood by, and beat them and drove them from me. They left me in the makhzan and I quickly put my things in order, and took my arms secretly. Fahd now came by, going to Abeyd's kahwa: I said to him, "Fahd, I will enter with thee, for here I am in doubt, and where is Hamud?" The poor man answered friendly, " Hamiid is not yet abroad, but it will not be long, Khalil, before he come." — Imbdrak: "Wellah, I say the Emir will send immediately to cut off thy head!" Mdjid LAST TROUBLE IN HAYIL. 57 (who passed us at the same time, going towards Abeyd's kahwa): "Eigh! Imbarak, will the Emir do so indeed?" and the boy smiled with a child's dishonest curiosity of an atrocious spectacle. As I walked on with Fahd, Imbarak retired from us, and passed through the Kasr gate, perhaps then he went to the Emir. — Fahd sighed, as we were beyond the door, and "Khalil, please Ullah, said the poor man, it may yet fall out well, and Hamud will very soon be here." I had not sat long, when they came to tell me, ' the Emir desired to see me.' I said, " Do not deceive me, it is but Imbarak who knocks." Fdhd : " Nay, go Khalil, it is the Emir." When I went out, I found it was Imbarak, who with the old menaces, called upon me to mount immediately. " I will first, I answered,. see Hamiid:" so he left me. The door had been shut behind me, I returned to the makhzan, and saw my bag gage was safe ; and Fahd coming by again, " Hamud, he said, is now in the house," and at my request he sent back a servant to let me in. After a little, Hamiid entering, greeted me, and took me by the hand. I asked, ' Was this done at the com mandment of the Emir?' Ham4d: "By God, Khalil, I can do nothing with the Emir; hu ydhkam aleyna he rules over us all." — " Some books of mine, and other things, were brought here." — " Ha ! the eyyal have taken them from thy makhzan, they shall be restored." When I spoke of a knavish theft of his man Aly — he was gone now on pilgrimage — Hamiid exclaimed: "The Lord take away his breath!" — He were not an Arab if he had proffered to make good his man's larceny. "What intended you by that money you lately sent me ?" — "My liberality, Khalil, why didst thou refuse it ?" — "Is it for medicine and a month's daily care of thy child, who is now restored to health ?" — " It was for this I offered it, and we have plenty of quinine ; wilt thou buy an handful of me for two reals ?" He was washing to go to the mid-day public prayer, and whilst the strong man stayed to speak with me it was late. "There is a thing, Hamiid."— "What is that, Khalil?" and he looked up cheerfully. " Help me in this trouble, for that bread and salt which is between us."- — "And what can I do ? Moham med rules us all." — "Well, speak to Imbarak to do nothing till the hour of the afternoon mejlis, when I may speak with the Emir." — " I will say this to him," and Hamud went to the mesjid. After the prayer I met the Prince himself in the Me'shab ; he walks, as said, in an insolent cluster of young fanatics, and a half score of his swordsmen close behind them. — Whenever I had encountered the Emir and his company of late, in the 58 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. streets, I thought he had answered my greeting with a strutting look. Now, as he came on with his stare, I said, without a salutation, AriXhh, 'I depart.' "R4hh, So go," answered Mo hammed. "Shall I come in to speak with thee?" — "MeshghrtU! we are too busy." When at length the afternoon mejlis was sitting, I crossed through them and approached the Emir, who sat enforcing himself to look gallantly before the people ; and he talked then with some great sheykh of the Beduw, who was seated next him. Mohammed Ibn Rashid looked towards me, I thought with dis pleasure and somewhat a base countenance, which is of evil augury among the Arabs. "What (he said) is thy matter?" — "I am about to depart, but I would it were with assurance. To-day I was mishandled in this place, in a manner which has made me afraid. Thy slaves drew me hither and thither, and have rent my clothing ; it was by the setting on of Imbarak, who stands here : he also threatened me, and even spat in my face." The Emir enquired, under his voice, of Imbarak, ' what had he done,' who answered, excusing himself. I added, "And now he would compel me to go with Heteym ; and I foresee only mischance." " Nay (said the Emir, striking his breast), fear not ; but ours be the care for thy safety, and we will give thee a passport," — and he said to Nasr, his secretary, who sat at his feet — "Write him a schedule of safe-conduct." I said, "I brought thee from my country an excellent tele scope." The cost had been three or four pounds; and I thought, ' if Ibn Rashid receive my gift, I might ask of him a camel ' : but when he said, "We have many, and have no need," I answered the Emir with a frank word of the desert, weysh aad, as one might say, 'What odds !' Mohammed ibn Rashid shrunk back in his seat, as if I had disparaged his dignity before the people ; but recovering himself, he said, with better looks and a friendly voice, "Sit down." Mohammed is not ungenerous, he might remember in the stranger his own evil times. Nasr having ended his writing, upon a small square of paper, handed it up to the Emir, who perused it, and daubing his Arabic copper seal in the ink, he sealed it with the print of his name. I asked Nasr, " Read me what is written herein," and he read, " That all unto whose hands this bill may come, who owe obedience to Ibn Rashid, know it is the will of the Emir that no one yaarud aley, should do any offence to, this Nasrany." Ibn Rashid rising at the moment, the mejlis rose with him and dispersed. I asked, as the Emir was going, "When shall I depart ?" — "At thy pleasure."—" To-morrow ?"— " Nay, to-day." He had turned the back, and was crossing the Meshab. DEPART FROM HAYIL. 59 "Mount!" cries Imbarak: but, when he heard I had not broken my fast he led me through the Kasr, to the Mothif and to a room behind, which is the public kitchen, to ask the cooks what was ready. Here they all kindly welcomed me, and Mufarrij would give me dates, flour and samn for the way, the accustomed provision from the Emir, but I would not receive them. The kitchen is a poor hall, with a clay floor, in which is a pool and conduit. The temmn and barley is boiled in four or five coppers : other three stand there for flesh days (which are not many), and they are so great that in one of them may be seethed the brittled meat of a camel. So simple is this palace kitchen of nomadic Arabia, a country in which he is feasting who is not hungry ! The kitchen servants were one poor man, perhaps of servile condition, a patient of mine, and five or six women under him; besides there were boys, bearers of the metal trays of victual for the guests' suppers. — When I returned to the Meshab, a nomad was come with his camel to load my baggage : yet first he entreated Imbarak to take back his real of earnest- money and let him go. The Emir had ordered four reals to be given for this voyage, whether I would or no, and I accepted it in lieu of that which was robbed from my makhzan; also I accepted the four reals from Hamiid for medicines. "Imbarak, swear, I said as we walked together to the slik, where the nomads would mount, that you are not sending me to the death." — "No, by Ullah, and Khalil nothing I trust will happen to thee." — -"And after two journeys in the desert will the Aarab any more observe the word of Ibn Rashid ?" — "We rule over them ! — and he said to the nomads, Ye are to carry him to Kdsim ibn Bardk (a great sheykh of the midland Heteym, his byiit were pitched seventy miles to the southward), and he will send him to Kheybar." — The seller of drugs from Medina, a good liberal Hejaz man, as are many of that partly Arabian city, came out, as we passed his shop, to bid me God speed, " Thou mayest be sure, he said, that there is no treachery, but un derstand that the people (of Hayil and Nejd) are Beduw." — "0 thou (said the nomad to me) make haste along with us out of Hayil, stand not, nor return upon thy footsteps, for then they will kill thee." Because I would not that his camel should kneel, but had climbed upon the overloaded beast's neck standing, the poor pleased nomad cried out, "Lend me a grip of thy five! " that is the five fingers. A young man, Ibrahim, one of the Emir's men — his shop was in the end of the town, and I had dealt with him — seeing us go by, came out to bid me farewell, and brought me forward. He spoke sternly to the nomads that they should have 60 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. a care for me, and threatened them, that ' If anything befell me, the Emir would have their heads.' Come to the Ma es-Sama, I reached down my water-skin to one of the men, bidding him go fill it. " Fill the kafir's girby ! nay, said he, alight, Nasrawy, and fill it thyself." Ibrahim then went to fill it, and hanged the water at my saddle-bow. We passed forth and the sun was now set. My companions were three, — the poor owner of my camel, a timid smiling man, and his fanatic neighbour, who called me always the Nasrawy (and not Nasrany), and another and older Heteymy, a somewhat strong-headed holder of his own counsel, and speaking the truth uprightly. So short is the twilight that the night closed suddenly upon our march, with a welcome silence and solitude, after the tumult of the town. When I responded to all the questions of my nomad company with the courtesy of the desert, " Oh ! wherefore, cried they, did those of Hayil persecute him ? Wellah the people of Hayil are the true Nasara !" We held on our dark way three and a half hours till we came before Gofar ; there we alighted and lay down in the wilderness. When the morrow was^ light we went to an outlying kasr, a chamber or two built of clay-brick, without the oasis, where dwelt a poor family of their acquaintance. We were in the end of November (the 21st by my reckoning) ; the nights were now cold at this altitude of 4000 feet. The poor people set dates before us and made coffee ; they were neither settlers upon the soil nor nomads, but Beduw. Weak and broken in the nomad life, and forsaking the calamities of the desert, they had become ' dwellers in clay ' at one of the Jebel villages, and Seyadin or traffickers to the Aarab. They buy dates and corn in harvest time, to sell later to the hubts or passing market parties of nomad tribesmen. When spring is come they forsake the clay- walls and, loading their merchandise upon asses, go forth to trade among the Aarab. Thus they wander months long, till their lading is sold ; and when the hot summer is in they will return with their humble gains of samn and silver to the oasis. From them my companions took up part of their winter provision of dates, for somewhat less than the market price in Hayil. These poor folk, disherited of the world, spoke to me with human kindness; there was not a word in their talk of the Mohammedan fanaticism. The women, of their own thought, took from my shoulders and mended my mantle which had been rent yesterday at Hayil ; and the house-father put in my hand his own driving-stick made of an almond rod. Whilst I sat with them, my companions went about their other busi ness. Bye and bye there came in a butcher from Hayil, (I had THE DESERT SOUTHWARD OF HAYIL. 6l bought of him three pounds of mutton one morning, for four- pence), and with a loud good humour he praised the Nasrany in that simple company. The men were not ready till an hour past midday; then they loaded their dates and we departed. Beyond Gofar we journeyed upon a plain of granite grit ; the long Ajja mountain trended with our course upon the right hand. At five we alighted and I boiled them some temmn which I carried, but the sun suddenly setting upon us, they skipt up laughing to patter their prayers, and began to pray as they could, with quaking ribs; and they panted yet with their elvish mirth. — Some wood- gatherers of Hayil went by us. The double head of the Sumra Hayil was still in sight at a distance of twenty-five miles. Remounting we passed in the darkness the walls and palms of el-Kasr, thirteen miles from Gofar, under the cliffs of Ajja ; an hour further we alighted in the desert to sleep. A view of J. Ajja below el-Kasr. I saw in the morning the granite flanks of Ajja strangely blotted, as it were with the shadows of clouds, by the running down of erupted basalts ; and there are certain black domes upon the crest in the likeness of volcanoes, [v. fig.] Two hours later we were in a granitic mountain ground el-Mukhtelif. Ajja upon the right hand now stands far off and extends not much further. We met here with a young man of el-Kasr riding upon his thelul in quest of a strayed well-camel. Rock-partridges were everywhere calling and flying in this high granite country, smelling in the sun of the (resinous) sweetness of southern wood. About four in the afternoon we went by an outlying hamlet Biddia, in the midst of the plain, but encompassed by lesser mountains of granite and basalt. This small settlement, which lies thirty-five miles W. of S. from el-Kasr, was begun not many years ago by projectors from M6gug ; there are only two wells and four households. When I asked my companions of the place, they fell a coughing and laughing, and made me signs 62 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. that only coughs and rheums there abounded. — A party of Shammar riding on dromedaries overtook us. They had heard of Khalil and spoke friendly, saying that there lay a menzil of their Aarab not far before us (where we might sup and sleep). And we heard from them these happy tidings of the wilderness in front, "The small cattle have yeaned, and the Aarab have plenty of 16ban ; they pour out (to drink) till the noon day !" One of them cried to me: "But why goest thou in the company of these dogs ?" — he would say ' Heteymies '. A great white snake, hdnash, lay sleeping in the path : and the peevish owner put it to the malice of the Nasrany that I had not sooner seen the worm, and struck away his camel, which was nearly treading upon it ; and with his lance he beat in pieces the poisonous vermin. When the daylight was almost spent my companions climbed upon every height to look for the black booths of the Aarab. The sun set and we journeyed on in the night, hoping to espy the Beduin tent-fires. Three hours later we halted and lay down, weary and supperless, to sleep in the khala. The night was chill and we could not slumber ; the land-height was here 4000 feet. We loaded and departed before dawn. Soon after the day broke we met with Shammar Aarab removing. Great are their flocks in this dira, all of sheep, and their camels were a multi tude trooping over the plain. Two herdsmen crossed to us to hear tidings : " What news, they shouted, from the villages ? how many sahs to the real?" — Then, perceiving what I was, one of them who had a lance lifted it and said to the other, ' Stand back, and he would slay me.' " Nay do not so ! wellah ! (exclaimed my rafiks), for this (man) is in the safeguard of Ibn Rashid, and we must billah convey him, upon our necks, to Ch(K)asim Ibn Barak." Heteymies in presence of high-handed Shammar, they would have made no manly resistance ; and my going with these rafiks was nearly the same as to wander alone, save that they were eyes to me in the desert. In the slow march of the over-loaded camels I went much on foot ; the fanatic who cried Nasrawy, Nasrawy ! complained that he could not walk, he must ride himself upon my hired camel. Though weary I would not contradict them, lest in remembering Hayil they should become my adversaries. I saw the blown sand of the desert lie in high drifts upon the mountain sides which encompassed us; they are granite with some basalt bergs. — We were come at unawares to a menzil of Shammar. Their sheykh hastened from his booth to meet us, a wild looking carl, and he had not a kerchief, but only the woollen cord maasub wound about his tufted locks. He required KASIM SHEYKH OF THE MIDLAND HETEYM. 63 of me dokhan; but I told them I had none, the tobacco-bag with flint and steel had fallen from my camel a little before.—" Give us tobacco (cried he), and come down and drink kahwa with us, and if no we will nS'kh thy camel, and take it perforce." — " How (I said), ye believe not in God ! I tell you I have none by God, it is a'yib (a shame) man to molest a stranger, and that only for a pipe of tobacco." Then he let me pass, but they made me swear solemnly again that I had none indeed. As we journeyed in the afternoon and were come into Heteym country we met with a sheykhly man riding upon his thelul : he would see what pasture was sprung hereabout in the wilderness. The rafiks knew him, and the man said he would carry me to Kheybar himself, for tdma. This was one whom I should see soon again, Eydda ibn Ajjueyn, an Heteymy sheykh. My rafiks counselled me to go with him : ' He is a worthy man, they said, and one with whom I might safely adventure.' — The first movements of the Arabs from their heart, are the best, and the least interested, and could the event be foreseen it were often great prudence to accept them ; but I considered the Emir's words, — that I should go to Kasim ibn Bardk sheykh of the Beny Rashid ' who would send me to Kheybar ', and his menzil was not now far off. This Kasim or Chasim, or Jdsim, they pronounce the name diversely, according to their tribes' loghrat, my companions said was a great sheykh, " and one like to Ibn Rashid " in his country. The sun set as we came to the first Heteym booths, and there the rafiks unloaded. Kasim's beyt we heard was built under a brow yonder, and I mounted again with my rafik Salih, upon his empty camel, to ride thither. And in the way said Salih, " When we arrive see that thou get down lightly ; so the Aarab will hold of thee the more as one inured to the desert life." Kasim's tent was but a hejra, small and rent ; I saw his mare tied there, and within were only the hareem. One of them went to call the sheykh, and Salih hastily put down my bags : he remounted, and without leave-taking would have ridden away ; but seizing his camel by the beard I made the beast kneel again. " My rafik, why abandon me thus ? but Salih thou shalt deliver all the Emir's message to Kasim;" — we saw him coming to us from a neighbour beyt. Kasim was a slender young man, almost at the middle age. At first he said that he could not receive me. ' How ! (he asked), had the Emir sent this stranger to him, to send him on to Kheybar, when he was at feud with those of Kheybar!' Then he reproached Salih who would have 'for- 64 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. saken me at strange tents'. — I considered how desperate a thing it were, to be abandoned in the midst of the wilderness of Arabia, where we dread to meet with unknown mankind more than with wild beasts! "You, Kasim, have heard the word of Ibn Rashid, and if it cannot be fulfilled at least I have alighted at thy beyt and am weary; here, I said, let me rest this night, wa ana dakhilak, and I enter under thy roof." He now led me into his booth and bade me repose : then turning all his vehement displeasure against Salih, he laid hands on him and flung him forth — these are violences of the Heteym — and snatched his mantle from him. "Away with thee ! he cried, but thy camel shall remain with me, whereupon I may send this stranger to Kheybar ; Ullah curse thy father, 0 thou that forsakedst thy rafik to cast him upon Aarab." Salih took all in patience, for the nomads when they are overborne make no resistance. Kasim set his sword to Salih 's throat, that he should avow to him all things without any falsity, and first what tribesman he was. Salih now acknowledged himself to be of Bejaida, that is a sub-tribe of Bishr ; he was therefore of Annezy, but leading his life with Noamsy Heteymies he passed for an Heteymy. Many poor families both of Annezy and Harb join themselves to that humbler but more thriving nomad lot, which is better assured from enemies ; only they mingle not in wedlock with the Heteym. So Kasim let Salih go, and called to kindle the fire, and took up himself a lapful of his mare's provender and littered it down to Salih 's camel ; so he came again and seated himself in the tent with the hypochondriacal humour of a sickly person. " Who is there, said he, will go now and seek us kahwa that we may make a cup for this stranger ? — thy name ?"— "Khalil."— " Well, say Khalil, what shall I do in this case, for wellah, I cannot tell ; betwixt us and those of Kheybar and the Dowla there is only debate and cutting of throats : how then says the Emir, that I must send thee to Kheybar?" — Neighbours came in to drink coffee, and one answered, "If Khalil give four reals I will set him down, billah, at the edge of the palms of Kheybar and be gone." Kdsim: " But Khalil says rightly he were then as much without Kheybar as before." The coffee-drinkers showed me a good countenance ; " Eigh ! Khalil (said Kasim), hadst thou complained to me that the man forsook thee, he who came with thee, wellah I would have cut off his head and cast it on this fire : accursed be all the AwObZ [nation of Annezy]." — "Well, if Kheybar be too difficult, you may send me to Hannas sheykh of the Noamsy; I heard he is encamped not far off, and he will receive me friendly." — "We shall see in the morning." A scarce dish of A NIGHT TEMPEST. 65 boiled temmn without samn, and a little old rotten le"ban was set before me, — the smallest cheer I had seen under worsted booths; they had no fresh milk because their camel troops were azab, or separated from the menzil, and pasturing towards Baitha Nethil, westward. The night closed in darkly over us, with thick clouds and falling weather, it lightened at once upon three sides without thunder. The nomad people said, " It is the Angels !" — their word made me muse of the nomads' vision in the field of Bethlehem. " The storm, they murmured, is over the Wady er-Rummah," — which they told'me lay but half a thelul journey from hence. They marvelled that I should know the name of this great Wady of middle Nejd : the head, they said, is near el-Hayat, in their dira, one thelul day distant, — that may be over plain ground forty-five to seventy miles. The cold rain fell by drops upon. us through the worn tent-cloth : and when it was late said Kasim, " Sleep thou, but I must wake with my eyes upon his camel there, all night, lest that Annezy (man) come to steal it away." When I rose with the dawn Kasim was making up the fire ; " Good morrow ! he said : well, I will send thee to Hannas ; and the man shall convey thee that came with thee." — "He be trayed me yesterday, will he not betray me to-day ? he might even forsake me in the khala." — " But I will make him swear so that he shall be afraid." Women came to me hearing I was a mudowwy, with baggl or dry milk shards, to buy medicines ; and they said it was a provision for my journey. Kasim's sister came among the rest and sat down beside me. Kasim, she said, was vexed with the rihh or ague-cake, and what medicine had I ? These women's veil is a blue calico clout suspended over the lower face; her eyes were won derfully great, and though lean and pale, I judged that she was very beautiful and gracious: she leaned delicately to examine my drugs with the practised hands of a wise woman in simples. When she could find no medicine that she knew, she said, with a gentle sweet voice, "Give then what thou wilt, Khalil, only that which may be effectual." Although so fair, and the great sheykh's sister, yet no man of the Beduins would have wedded with her ; because the Heteym " are not of the stock " of the Aarab. Now came Salih, and when he saw his camel restored to him, he was full of joy, and promised all that Kasim would ; and he swore mighty oaths to convey me straightway to Hannas. We mounted and rode forth; but as we were going I drew bridle and bound Salih by that solemn oath of the desert, aly D. T.TI. 5 66 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. el-aiid wa Rubb el-mabiid, that he would perform all these things : if he would not swear, I would ride no further with him. But Salih looking back and trembling cried, " I do swear it, billah, I swear it, only let us hasten and come to our rafiks, who have awaited us at the next tents." We set out anew with them, and quoth Salih, " I was never in such fear in my life as when Chasim set his sword to my neck !" We marched an hour and a half and approached another Heteym menzil of many beyts : as we passed by Salih went aside to them to enquire the tidings. Not far beyond we came upon a brow, where two lone booths stood. My companions said the (overloaded) camels were broken, they would discharge them there to pasture an hour. When we were come to the place they halted. In the first tent was an old wife : she bye and bye brought out to us, where we sat a little aloof, a bowl of milk shards and samn, and then, that which is of most comfort in the droughty heat, a great bowl of her butter-milk. " Canst thou eat this fare ? said Salih, — the Heteym have much of it, they are good and hospitable." The men rose after their breakfast and loaded upon the camels,— but not my bags ! — and drove forth. I spoke to the elder Heteymy, who was a worthy man, but knitting the shoulders and turning up his palms he answered gravely, "What can I do ? it is Salih 's matter, wellah, I may not meddle in it ; but thou have no fear, for these are good people, and amongst them there will no evil befall thee." " Also Eyada ibn Ajjueyn, said Salih, is at little distance." — "But where is thy oath, man?" The third fanatic fellow answered for him, "His oath is not binding, which was made to a Nasrawy !" — " But what of the Emir ? and Kasim is not yet far off." Sdlih : "As for Kasim we curse both his father and his mother ; but thou be not troubled, the Heteym are good folk and this will end well." — To contend with them were little worth ; they might then have published it that I was a Nasrany, I was as good quit of such rafiks, — here were but two women — and they departed. — "It is true, quoth the old wife, that Eyada is near, yesterday I heard their dogs bark." In the second tent was but her sick daughter-in-law; their men were out herding. The old wife looked somewhat grim when the hubt had for saken me; afterwards she came where I sat alone, and said, " Be not sorrowful ! ana khdlatak, for I am thy mother's sister." Soon after that she went out to bear word to the men in the wilderness of this chance. Near by that place I found the border of a brown vulcanic flood, a kind of trachytic basalt : AN HONOURABLE HETEYM Y. 67 when the sun was setting I walked out of sight, — lest seeing the stranger not praying at the hour I had been too soon known to them. Not much after the husband came home, a deaf man with the name of happy augury Thaifullah : kindly he welcomed me, and behind him came three grown sons driving-in their camels ; and a great flock of sheep and goats followed them with many lambs and kids. I saw that (notwithstanding their Heteym appearance of poverty) they must be welfaring persons. Thaif- ullab, as we sat about the evening fire, brought me in a bowl of their evening milk, made hot; — "We have nothing, he said, here to eat, no dates, no rice, no bread, but drink this which the Lord provideth, though it be a poor supper." I blessed him and said it was the best of all nourishment. "Ay, thus boiled, he answered, it enters into the bones." When he heard how my rafiks forsook me to-day he exclaimed, 'Billah if he had been there, he had cut off their heads.' That poor man was very honourable ; he would hardly fill his gallhin once with a little tittun that I had found in the depth of my bags, although it be so great a solace to them; neither suffered he his young men to receive any from the (forlorn) guest whom the Lord had com mitted to them, to-day. These were simple, pious and not (formal) praying Arabs, having in their mouths no cavilling questions of religion, but they were full of the godly humanity of the wilderness. ' He would carry me in the morning (said my kind host) to Eyada ibn Ajjueyn, who would send me to Kheybar.' It was dim night, and the drooping clouds broke over us with lightning and rain. I said to Thaifullah, " God sends his blessing again upon the earth." — "Ay verily," he answered devoutly, and kissed his pious hand towards the flashing tempest, and murmured the praises of Ullah. — How good ! seemed to me, how peaceable ! this little plot of the nomad earth under the dripping curtains of a worsted booth, in comparison with Hayil town! When the morning rose the women milked their small cattle ; and we sat on whilst the old housewife rocked her blown-up milk-skin upon her knees till the butter came; they find it in a clot at the mouth of the semily. I saw soon that little butter seething on the fire, to be turned into samn, and they called me to sup the pleasant milk-skim with my fingers. They throw in now a little meal, which brings down the milki- ness ; and the samn or clarified butter may be poured off. The sediment of the meal thus drenched with milky butter is served to the guest ; and it is the most pleasant sweet-meat of the poor nomad life. Afterward the good old woman brought me 5—2 68 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. the samn (all that her flocks had yielded this morning), in a little skin (it might be less than a small pint) : this was her gift, she said ; and would I leave with them some fever medicine ? I gave her doses of quinine. She brought forth a large bowl of butter-milk; and when we had drunk a good draught Thaifullah laid my bags upon a camel of his. We mounted, and rode southward over the khala. We journeyed an hour and approached Eyada's menzil, the worsted booths were pitched in a shelving hollow overlooking a wide waste landscape to the south: I saw a vast blackness beyond, — that was another Harra (the Harrat Kheybar) — and rosy mountains of granite. Sandstones, lying as a tongue be tween the crystalline mountains and overlaid by lavas, reach southward to Kheybar. — " When we come to the tents thus and thus shalt thou speak to them, said Thaifullah : say thou art a mudowwy arrived from Hayil, and that thou wouldst go over to Kheybar ; and for two reals thou shalt find some man who will convey thee thither." We alighted and Thaifullah commended me to Eyada; I was (he said) a skilful mudowwy, — so he took his camel again and departed. This was that Heteymy sheykh whom I had seen two days before chevying in the wilderness : — he might have understood then (from some saying of the fanatic) that I was not a right Moslem, for now when I saluted him and said I would go to Kheybar with him, he received me roughly. He was a sturdy carl, and with such ill-blooded looks as I have remarked in the Fehjat, which are also of Heteym. Eydda: " Well, I said it yesterday, but I cannot send thee to Kheybar." — Some men were sitting before his tent — " Ho ! which of you, he said, will convey the man to Kheybar, and receive from him what — ? three reals." One answered, " I will carry him, if he give me this money." I promised, and he went to make ready ; but returning he said, " Give me four reals, — I have a debt, and this would help me in it." Eydda : " Give him four, and go with him." I consented, so the sheykh warranted me that the man would not forsake his rafik, as did those of the other day. " Nay, trust me, this is Ghroceyb, a sheykh, and a valor ous man." — "Swear, 0 Ghroceyb, by the life of this stem of grass, that thou wilt not forsake me, thy rafik, until thou hast brought me to Kheybar !" — "I swear to bring thee thither, but I be dead." Eydda : " He has a thelul too, that can flee like a bird." Ghroceyb : "See how the sun is already mounted ! let us pass the day here, and to-morrow we will set forward." — " Nay, tut to-day," answered the sheykh, shortly, so that I wondered GHROCEYB: ANOTHER GREAT HARRA. 69 at his inhospitable humour, and Ghroceyb at this strangeness. The sheykh did not bid me into his tent, but he brought out to us a great bowl of butter-milk. The hareem now came about me, bringing their little bowls of dry milk shards, and they clamoured for medicines. I have found no Beduins so willing as the Heteym to buy of the mudowwy. After my departure, when they had proved my medicines, they said that Khalil was a faithful man ; and their good report helped me months later, at my coming by this country again. Ghroceyb told me that from hence to Baitha Nethil was half a (thelul) journey, to Hayil three, to Teyma four, to el- Ally four and a half; and we should have three nights out to Khey bar. When we had trotted a mile, a yearling calf of the thelul, that was grazing in the desert before us, ran with their side long slinging gait (the two legs upon a side leaping together) to meet the dam, and followed us lowing, — the mother answered with sobs in her vast throat; but Ghroceyb dismounted and chased the weanling away. We rode upon a plain of sand. Nigh before us appeared that great craggy blackness — the Harra, and thereupon certain swarty hills and crests, el-Hilly : I per ceived them to be crater-hills of volcanoes ! A long-ranging inconsiderable mountain, Bothra, trended with our course upon the left hand, which I could not doubt to be granitic. Ghroceyb encouraged his thelul with a pleasant gluck ! with the tongue under the palate, — I had not heard it before ; and there is a diversity of cattle-calls in the several tribes of the Arabian khala. We entered upon that black Harra. The lava field is now cast into great waves and troughs, and now it is a labyrinth of lava crags and short lava sand-plains. — This is another member of the vulcanic country of West Arabia, which with few con siderable breaches, extends from Tebiik through seven degrees of latitude to the borders of Mecca. We found clayey water, in a cavern (after the late showers), and Ghroceyb alighted to fill our girby. At half-afternoon we saw a goatherd loitering among the wild lavas. The lad was an Heteymy, he knew Ghroceyb, and showed us where the beyts were pitched, in a deep place not far off. Here Ghroceyb came to his own kindred; and we alighted at the tent of his brother. The cragged Harra face is there 4300 feet above the sea-level. Their hareem were veiled like those of Kasim's encampment, and they wore a braided forelock hanging upon their foreheads. In the evening we were regaled with a caldron of temmn, and the host poured us out a whole skinful of thick butter-milk. 70 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. One of those men was a hunter; the Heteym and the Sherarat surpass the Beduw in the skill, and are next to the Solubba. In the last season he had killed two ostriches, and sold the skins (to that Damascus feather merchant who comes down yearly with the Haj) for 80 reals : 40 reals for an ostrich skin ! (the worth of a good camel) — a wonderful price it seems to be paid in this country. Of the lineage of the Heteym I could never learn anything in Arabia. They are not of so cheerful temper, and they lack the frank alacrity of mind and the mag nanimous dignity of Beduins. Ghroceyb spoke of his people thus, " Jid el-Heteym is Rashid and we — the midland Heteym — are the Beny Rashid. Those Heteymies at the Red Sea bord, under el-Wejh, are the Gerabis, our kindred indeed but not friendly with us. The B. Rashid are as many as the B. Wahab" (nearly 600 beyts, not much above 2000 souls). Of the Sherarat akin to the Heteym he said, "We may wed with them and they with us,- — but there is cattle stealing between us ; they are 800 beyt." He told me that in former days, some camels having been reaved by a Noamsy ghrazzu from the Gerabis, the sheykh Ibn N6mus (father of Hannas), ordained their restitution, saying, " Wellah they be our kindred." In the early morning Ghroceyb milked our theliil and brought me this warm bever; and after that, in the fatigue of the long way to be passed almost without her tasting herbage, her udder would be dried up, and the Beduwy fetched in a hurr to cover her ; [at such times doubtless in the hope that she may bear a female]. We were called away to break fast in another booth where they set before us dates fried in samn, and bowls of butter-milk. All was horrid lava-field far before us, and we should be " two nights out without Aarab", and the third at Kheybar. Gloomy were these days of drooping grey clouds in the golden aired Arabia. We journeyed quickly by the camel paths (jiddar pi. jiddrdn) worn, since ages, in the rolling cinders and wilderness of horrid lavas. Hither come Bishr and Heteym nomads in the early year with their cattle, to seek that rabia which may be sprung among the lava clefts and pits and little bottoms of vulcanic sand. Before noon we were among the black hills (hillidn) which I had viewed before us since yesterday ; they are cones and craters of spent volcanoes. Our path lay under the highest hilly, which might be of four hundred or five hundred feet. Some are two-headed, — it is where a side of the crater is broken down. Others are seen ribbed, that is they are guttered down from the head. AU is here as we have seen in the Harrat el-Aueyrid. We passed over THE HARRA. Ji a smooth plain of cinders ; and, at the roots of another hilly, I saw yellowish soft tufa lying under the scaly crags of lavas. From hence we had sight of the Kharram, a day distant to the westward ; lying beyond the Harra in a yellow border of Nefud ; the white sand lay in long drifts upon the high flanks of the mountain. There was now much ponded rain upon these vulcanic high lands ; and in a place I heard the heavy din of falling water ! We came to a cold new tarn, and it seemed a fenny mountain lake under the setting sun ! from this strange desert water issued a wild brook with the rushing noise of a mill-race. Having gone all the daylight, we drew bridle in a covert place, where we might adventure to kindle our fire. My rafik was never come so far in this sea of lava, but he knew the great landmarks. He went about to pull an armful of the scanty herbage in the crevices, for his fasting thelul ; I gathered dry stems to set under our pot, poured in water and began our boiling, which was but of temmn. When Ghroceyb came again I bid him mind the cooking ; but said he, "What can I do ? I, billah, understand it not." — "Yet I never saw the nomad who could not shift for himself upon a journey." — " I eat that which the hareem prepare and have never put my hand to it." — He had brought for himself only two or three handfuls of dry milk shards ! in Ghroceyb was the ague-cake of old fever, and he could eat little or nothing. In this place I found the greatest, height which I had passed hitherto in Arabia, nearly 6000 feet. And here I have since understood to be the division of waters between the great wady bottoms of northern Arabia ; namely the W. er-Rummah descending from the Harra to the north-eastward, and the W. el-Humth. This night was mild, and sheltered in the wild lavas, as between walls, we were warm till the morning: We mounted in the morrow twilight ; but long after day break the heavens seemed shut over us, as a tomb, with gloomy clouds. We were engaged in the horrid lava beds ; and were very oftentimes at fault among sharp shelves, or finding before us precipitous places. The vulcanic field is a stony flood which has stiffened ; long rolling heads, like horse-manes, of those slaggy waves ride and over-ride the rest : and as they are risen they stand petrified, many being sharply split lengthwise, and the hollow laps are partly fallen down in vast shells and in ruinous heaps as of massy masonry. The lava is not seldom wreathed as it were bunches of cords ; the crests are seen also of sharp glassy lavas, Idba (in the plural Mb) ; laba [v. vol. I. p. 422] is 72 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. all that which has a likeness to molten metal.- — That this soil was ever drowned with burning mineral, or of burning moun tains, the Aarab have no tradition. As we rode further I saw certain golden-red crags standing above the black horror of lavas ; they were sandstone . spires touched by the scattered beams of the morning sun. In the sheltered lava bottoms, where grow gum-acacias, we often startled gatta fowl (" sand-grouse ") ; they are dry-fleshed birds and not very good to eat, say the nomads. There is many times seen upon the lava fields a glistering under the sun as of distant water ; it is but dry clay glazed over with salt. Ghroceyb spread forth his hands devoutly ; he knew not the formal prayers, but wearied the irrational element with the lowings of his human spirit in this perilous passage. "Give, Lord, that we see not the evil ! and oh that this be not the day of our deaths and the loss of the thelul!" My rafik knew not that I was armed. Ghroceyb, bearing his long matchlock, led on afoot betwixt running and walking, ever watching for a way before the thelul, and gazing wide for dread of any traversing enemies. Upon a time turning suddenly he surprised me as I wrote with a pencil [a reading of the aneroid]. " Is it well, 0 Khalil ? quoth my rafik, how seest thou (in your magical art of letters), is there good or else evil toward ? canst thou not write something (a strong spell) for this need ?" Then seeing me ride on careless and slumbering for weariness he took comfort. My pistol of six chambers gave me this confidence in Arabia, for must we contend for our lives I thought it might suffice to defend me and my company, and Ghroceyb was a brave companion. Ghroceyb's long piece must weigh heavily upon the strenuous man's sick shoulders, and I spoke to him to hang it at the saddle-bow of me his rafik ; to this he consented, ' so I did not loop the shoulder-cord about the peak ; it must hang simply, he said, that in any appearance of danger he might take it again at the instant.' Two hours after the sunrise we passed the Harra borders, and came without this lava field upon soil of sandstone. The vulcanic country which we had crossed in seventeen hours is named Harrat el-Ethndn, of the great crater-hill of that name J. Ethndn; the dira is of the Noamsa Heteym. We came in an hour by a descending plain of red sand-rock, to a deep cleft, es-Shotb, where we drove down the dromedary at short steps, upon the shelves and ledges. In the bottom were gum-acacias, and a tree which I knew not, it has leaves somewhat like the mountain ash. " The name of it is thirru, it has not any use that we know," said Ghroceyb. Beyond the grove were some HARRAT EL-ABYAD. 73 thin effluxions of lava run down upon the sandstone soil, from the vulcanic field above. By noon we had passed the sand-rock and came again upon the main Harra beyond, which is all one eastward with the former Harra; and there we went by a few low craters. The whole — which is the Harrat Kheybar — lies between north-west and south-east four days in length ; and that may be, since it reaches to within a thelul journey of Medina, an hundred great miles. The width is little in com parison, and at the midst it may be passed in a day. Ghroceyb now said: "But wouldst thou needs go to Kheybar? — tHahi, hearest thou ? shall I not rather carry thee to el- Hayat ? " — My rafik was in dread of going to Kheybar, the Dowla being there : those criminals-in-office (I understood it later) might have named him an enemy and seized the poor nomad's thelul, and cast him into prison ; but el-Hayat was yet a free village in the jurisdiction of Ibn Rashid. Ghroceyb I knew afterward to be an homicide, and there lay upon him a grievous debt for blood ; it was therefore he had ridden for four reals with me in this painful voyage. From Eyada's menzil we might have put the Harra upon our left hand, and passed by easy sand-plains [where I journeyed in the spring] under the granite mountains ; but Ghroceyb would not, for in the open there had been more peril than in this cragged way of the Harra. An hour from the Shotb I found the altitude to be 5000 feet. Before midrafternoon upon our right hand, beyond the flanks of the Harra and the low underlying sand-plain, appeared a world of wild ranging mountains Jebdl HejjUr, twenty-five miles distant, in dirat of the Welad Aly. We went all day as fugitives in this vulcanic country. Sunset comes soon in winter, and then we halted, in a low clay bottom with tall acacias and yellow ponds of rain water. Ghroceyb hopshackled her with a cord and loosed out the two days' fasting thelul to browse the green branches. There we cooked a little temmn; and then laid ourselves down upon the fenny soil and stones in a mizzling night-rain to slumber. When the day began to spring we set forward, and passed over a brook running out from ponded water in the lava-field. The weather was clearer, the melting skies lifted about us. The vulcanic country is from henceforward plain, and always descending and full of jiddran. Before and below our path, we had now in sight the sharp three-headed mountain, Atwa, that stands beside Kheybar: Ghroceyb greeted the landmark with joy. 'Beyond Atwa was but a night out, he said, for thelul 74 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. riders to Medina. Upon our left hand a distant part of the Harra, Harrat el-Abyad, showed white under the sun and full of hillian. Ghroceyb said, " The hills are whitish, the lava-field lies about them; the white stone is burned-like, and heavy as metal." Others say " The heads only of the hillian are white stone, the rest is black lava." — Those white hills might be lime stone, which, we know, lies next above the Hisma sand-rock. Already we saw the flies of the oasis : Kheybar was yet covered from sight by the great descending limb of the Harra ; we felt the air every moment warmer and, for us, faint and breathless. All this country side to Jebal Hejjur seyls down by the wady grounds el-Khdfutha and Gumm'ra to the Wady el-Humth. Ghroceyb showed me a wolf's footprints in the vul canic sand. At the half-afternoon we were near Kheybar, which lay in the deep yonder, and was yet hidden from us. Then we came upon the fresh traces of a ghrazzu : they had passed down towards Kheybar. We rode in the same jiddar behind them ! — the footprints were of two mares and two camels. Ghroceyb made me presently a sign to halt ; he came and took his gun in silence, struck fire to the match and ran out to reconnoitre. He stayed behind a covert of lavas, from whence he returned to tell me he saw two horsemen and two rdduffa (radifs), upon theluls, riding at a long gunshot before us: they had not seen us. And now, blowing his match, he enquired very earnestly, 'Were I able with him to resist them?' — Contrary to the will of Ghroceyb I had stayed this day, at noon, ten minutes, to take some refreshment : but for this we had met with them as they came crossing from the west ward, and it is too likely that blood had been shed between us. We stood awhile to give them ground, and when they were hidden by the unequal lava-field, we passed slowly forward. The sun was now going low in the west, — and we would be at Kheybar this night ere the village gate should be shut. Locusts alighted by our path, and I saw aloft an infinite flight of them drifted over in the evening wind. Ghroceyb asked again, ' If I were afraid of the Dowla.' — "Am I not a Dowlany ? they are my friends."- — " Wellah yd sdmy, my namesake, cbuldst thou deliver me and quit the thelul, if they should take me ?" — " Doubt not ; they of the Dowla are of my part." Now we descended into a large bottom ground in the lava- field, el-H'drda, full of green corn: — that corn I saw ripen before my departure from Kheybar ! Here Ghroceyb dreaded to meet with the ghrazzu, — the robbers might be grazing their mares in the green corn of the settlement. Where we came by suanies, wild doves flew up with great rattling of wings,- ABOUT TO ENTER KHEYBAR. 75 from the wells of water. I thought these should be the fields of Kheybar, and spoke to Ghroceyb to carry me to the Jiriat Wilad Aly. There are three villages, named after the land- inheriting Annezy tribes, Jeriat Bishr (that is Kheybar proper), Je'riat W. Aly, at the distance of half a mile, and at two miles the hamlet Jiriat el-Fejir. — Jenat is said for keriat in the loghrat of these nomads. Ghroceyb saw only my untimely delay, whilst he dreaded for his thelul, and was looking at every new turn that we should encounter the enemies who had ridden down before us. I drew bridle, and bade my rafik — he stepped always a little before me on foot — promise to bring me to none other than the Welad Aly village. My visiting Kheybar, which they reckon in ' The Apostle's Country,' was likely to be a perilous adventure ; and I might be murdered to-night in the tumult if it went ill with me : but at the W. Aly hamlet I should have become the guest of the clients of Motlog and M^hsan, great sheykhs of that tribe. Ghroceyb saw me halt, as a man beside himself ! and he came hastily, to snatch the thelul's halter ; then he desperately turned his matchlock against me, and cried, "Akhs! why would I compel him to do me a mischief?" — " Thou canst not kill thy rafik ! now promise me and go forward." He promised, but falsely. — Months after I heard he had told his friends, when he was at home again, that ' he had found the stranger a good rafik, only in the journey's end, as we were about entering Kheybar, I would have taken his thelul'! We passed the corn-fields of the Hurda without new alarms, and came upon the basalt neck of the Harra about the oasis' valleys, which is called el-figgera (in the pi. el-fuggar) Kheybar. Ghroceyb mounted with me, and he made the thelul run swiftly, for the light was now failing. I saw ruins upon the figgera of old dry building- and ring- walls : some are little yards of the loose basalt blocks, which the Beduw use to dry their dates in the sun before stiving the fruit in their sacks. After a mile, we came to a brow, and I saw a palm forest in a green valley of Kheybar below us, but the village not yet. The sun set as we went down by a steep path. At the left hand was an empty watch-tower, one of seven lately built by the now occupying Medina government, upon this side, to check the hostile Annezy [Bishr and Fejir]. This human landmark seemed to me more inhuman than all the Harra behind us ; for now I remembered Medain Salih and the danger of the long unpaid and some times beastly Turkish soldiery. How pleasant then seemed to 76 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. me the sunny drought of the wilderness, how blessed the security of the worsted booths in the wandering villages ! These forts are garrisoned in the summer and autumn season. We came through palm-groves in a valley bottom, W. Jellds, named after that old division of Annezy, which having long since forsaken Kheybar, are at this day — we have seen — with the Ruwalla in the north. The deep ground is mire and rushes and stagnant water, and there sunk upon our spirits a sickly fenny vapour. In the midst we passed a brook running in a bed of green cresses. Foul was the abandoned soil upon either hand, with only few awry and undergrown stems of palms. The squalid ground is whitish with crusts of bitter salt-warp, sum- makha [written subbakha], and stained with filthy rust : whence their fable, that ' this earth purges herself of the much blood of the Yahud, that was spilt in the conquest of Kheybar.' The thelul which found no foot-hold under her sliding soles, often halted for fear. We came up between rough walling,. built of basalt stones, and rotten palm-stocks, and clots of black clay. — How strange are these dank Kheybar valleys in the waterless Arabia ! A heavy presentiment of evil lay upon my heart as we rode in this deadly drowned atmosphere. We ascended on firm ground to the entering of Kheybar, that -is Jeriat Bishr, under the long basalt crag of the ancient citadel el-Hiisn. In the falling ground upon the left hand stands an antique four-square building of stone, which is the old mesjid from the time of Mohammed ; and in the precinct lie buried the Ashab en-N&by, — those few primitive Moslemin, partisans and acquaintance of the living " apostle ", that fell in the (poor) winning of Kheybar. At the village gate a negro woman met us in the twilight, of whom I enquired, whether (Bou) Abu Ras were in the town ? —I had heard of him from the Moghrebies in Hayil as a safe man : he was a Moghreby negro trader settled in those parts ; also I hoped to become his guest. But he was gone from the place, since the entrance of the (tyrannical) Dowla — being now, as they say, shebbaan, or having gotten his fill of their poor riches, — to live yet under the free Nejd government at el- Hayat. — She answered timidly, bidding the strangers a good evening, " She could not tell, and that she knew nothing." CHAPTER IV. KHEYBAR. "THE APOSTLE'S COUNTRY." . The night at Kheybar. Abd el-Hddy. Ahmed. The gunner's belt. Kheybar by daylight. Medina soldiery. Muharram. Sirur. The Nasrany brought be fore the village governor. Amm Mohammed en-Nejumy. Amdn. The Galtas. Evening in the soldiers' kahwa. Ibrahim the kady. Abdullah's tale of the Engleys. Hejdz Arabic. A worthy negro woman. Amm Mohammed's house. Umm Kida. Brackish soil. Wadies of Kheybar. The Albanians. Kheybar genealogy. The Nasrany accused. The villagers in fear of his enchantments. Friendship with Amm Mohammed. Our well labour. His hunting. Kasr en-N6by. El-Asmieh. Blood-sprinkling. Hospitality of the sheykh of the hamlet. Gatunies. Barrows upon the Harra. Magicians come to Kheybar to raise treasures. The Husn rock. We passed the gates made of rude palm boarding into the street of the Hejaz negro village, and alighted in the dusk before the house of an acquaintance of Ghroceyb. The host, hearing us busy at the door of his lower house, looked down from the casement and asked in the rasping negro voice what men we were ? Ghroceyb called to him, and then he came down with his brother to receive the guests. They took my bags upon their shoulders, and led us up by some clay stairs to their dwelling-house, which is, as at el- Ally, an upper chamber, here called suffa. The lower floor, in these damp oases, is a place where they leave the orchard tools, and a stable for their few goats which are driven in for the night. This householder was named Abd el-Hddy, 'Servitor of Him who leadeth in the way of Truth,' a young man under the middle age, of fine negro linea ments. — These negro-like Arabians are not seldom comely. Our host's upper room was open at the street side with long casements, tdga, to the floor; his roof was but a loose strawing of palm stalks, and above is the house terrace of beaten clay, to which you ascend [they say erkd /] by a ladder of two or three palm beams, with steps hacked in them. Abd el-HMy's was one of the better cottages, for he was a sub stantial man. Kheybar is as it were an African village in the Hejaz. Abd el-Hady spread his carpet and bade us welcome, and set before us Kheybar dates, which are yellow, small and stived together ; they are gathered ere fully ripe [their Beduin 78 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. partners' impatience, and distrust of each other !] and have a drug-like .or fenny savour, but are " cooler " than the most dates of the country and not unwholesome. After these days' efforts in the Harra we could not eat ; we asked for water to quench our burning thirst. They hang their sweating girbies at the stair-head, and under them is made a hole in the flooring, that the drip may fall through. The water, drawn, they said, from the spring head under the basalt, tasted of the ditch ; it might be sulphurous. We had left our thelul kneebound in the street. Many persons, when they heard say that strangers had arrived, came up all this evening to visit us; — the villagers were black men. Ghroceyb told them his tale of the ghrazzu; and the negroes answered " Wellah ! except we sally in the morning to look for them — ! " They feared for the out lying corn lands, and lest any beast of theirs should be taken. There came with the rest a tall and swarthy white man, of a soldierly countenance, bearing a lantern and his yard-long tobacco-pipe: I saw he was of the mixed inhabitants of the cities. He sat silent with hollow eyes and smoked tobacco, often glancing at us ; then he passed the chibdk to me and enquired the news. He was not friendly with Abd el-Hady, and waived our host's second cup. The white man sat on smoking mildly, with his lantern burning ; after an hour he went forth [and this was to denounce us, to the ruffian lieutenant at Kheybar]. My rafik told me in a whisper, "That was Ahmed; he has been a soldier and is now a tradesman at Kheybar." — His brother was Mohammed en-Nejilmy, he who from the morrow became the generous defender of my adversity at Kheybar : they were citizens of Medina. It was near midnight when the last coffee- drinkers departed; then I whispered to Ghroceyb: "Will they serve supper, or is it not time to sleep ? " " My namesake, I think they have killed for thee ; I saw them bring up a sheep, to the terrace, long ago." — "Who is the sheykh of the village?" — "This Abd el-Hady is their sheykh, and thou wilt find him a good man." My rafik lied like a (guileful) nomad, to excuse his not carrying me to the W. Aly village. Our host and his brother now at length descended from the house-top, bearing a vast metal tray of the seethed flesh upon a mess of thura (it may be a sort of millet) : since the locusts had destroyed their spring corn, this was the only bread-stuff left to them at Kheybar. The new day's light beginning to rise Ghroceyb went down to the street in haste ; " Farewell, he said, and was there any difference between us forgive it, Khalil ;" and taking my THE ASPECT OF KHEYBAR. 79 right hand (and afraid perchance of the stranger's malediction) he stooped and kissed it. Hady, our host's brother, mounted also upon the croup of his thelul; this strong-bodied young negro with a long matchlock upon his shoulder rode forth in his bare tunic, girded only with the hdzam or gunner's belt. Upon the baldric are little metal pipes, with their powder charges, and upon the girdle leather pouches for shot, flint and steel, and a hook whereupon a man — they go commonly barefoot — will hang his sandals. The hazams are adorned with copper studs and beset with little rattling chains ; there are some young men who may be seen continually muhdzamin, girded and vain-glorious with these tinkling ornaments of war. It is commonly said of tribes well provided with fire-arms "They have many muhdza min." — Hady rode to find the traces of the ghrazzu of yesterday. Some of the villagers came up to me immediately to enquire for medicines : they were full of tedious words ; and all was to beg of me and buy none. I left them sitting and went out to see the place, for this was Kheybar. Our host sent his son to guide me ; the boy led down by a lane and called me to enter a doorway and see a spring. I went in: — it was a mesjid! and I withdrew hastily. The father (who had instructed the child beforehand), hearing from him when we came again that I had left the place without praying, went down and shut his street door. He returned and took his pistol from the wall, saying, ' Let us go out together and he would show me round the town.' When we were in the street he led me by an orchard path out of the place. We came by a walled path through the palms into an open space of rush-grass and black vulcanic sand, es-Sefsdfa : there he showed me the head of a stream which welled strongly from under the figgera. The water is tepid and sulphurous as at el-Ally, and I saw in it little green-back and silver-bellied fishes : — all fish are named hut by the Arabians. " Here, he said, is the (summer) menzil of the Dowla, in this ground stand the askars' tents." We sat down, and gazing into my face he asked me, ' Were I afraid of the Dowla ? ' "Is the Dowla better or Ibn Rashid's government?" — "The Dowla delivered us from the Beduw, — but is more burdenous." We passed through a burial ground of black vulcanic mould and salt-warp : the squalid grave-heaps are marked with head stones of wild basalt. That funeral earth is chapped and ghastly, bulging over her enwombed corses, like a garden soil, in spring time, which is pushed by the new-spiring plants. All is horror at Kheybar ! — nothing there which does not fill a stranger's eye with discomfort. 8o TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. — " Look, he said, this is the spring of our Lord Aly ! — I saw a lukewarm pool and running head of water. — Here our Lord Aly [Fatima's husband] killed Mdrhab, smiting off his head ; and his blade cleft that rock, which thou seest there divided to the earth:" — so we came beyond. — "And here, he said, is Aly's mesjid" [already mentioned]. The building is homely, in courses of the wild basalt blocks: it is certainly ancient. Here also the village children are daily taught their letters, by the sheykh of the religion. .. When we had made the circuit, " Let us go, he said, to the Emir." So the villager named the aga or lieutenant of a score of Ageyl from Medina. Those thelul riders were formerly Nejd Arabians ; but now, because the Dowlas wages are so long in coming, the quick-spirited Nejders have forsaken that sorry service. The Ageyl are a mixed crew of a few Nejders (vil lagers, mostly of el-Kasim, and poor Nomads), and of Gallas, Turks, Albanians, Egyptians, Kurdies and Negroes. The Ageyl at Kheybar now rode upon their feet : some of their theluls were dead, those that remained were at pasture (far off) with the nomads. They all drew daily rations of corn for their theluls alive and dead ; and how else might the poor wretches live ? who had not touched a cross of their pay (save of a month or twain) these two years. A few of the government armed men at Kheybar were zabtiyah, men of the police service. — "The Aga is a Kurdy," quoth Abd el-Hady. We ascended, in a side street, to a suffa, which was the soldiers' coffee-room : swords and muskets were hanging upon the clay walls. Soon after some of them entered; they were all dark-coloured Gallas, girded (as townsmen) in their white tunics. They came in with guns from some trial of their skill, and welcomed us in their (Medina) manner, and sat down to make coffee. I wondered whilst we drank together that they asked me no questions ! We rose soon and departed. As we stepped down the clay stair, I heard a hoarse voice saying among them, "I see well, he is adu (an enemy);" — and I heard answered, " But let him alone awhile." It was time I thought to make myself known. When I asked where was the Kurdy Aga ? my host exclaimed, "You did not see him ! he sat at the midst of the hearth." That was Abdullah es-Sirudn, chief of the Medina crew of soldiery : his father was "a Kurdy," but he was a black man with Galla looks, of the younger middle age, — the son of a (Galla) bond-woman. I was new to discern this Hejaz world, and the town manner of the Harameyn. In the street I saw two white faces coming out of a doorway; they were infirm soldiery, and the men, who THE APOSTLE'S COUNTRY. 81 walked leaning upon long staves of palm-stalks, seemed of a ghastly pallor in the dreadful blackness of all things at Kheybar: they came to join hands with me, a white man, and passed on without speaking. One of them with a hoary beard was an Albanian, Muharram ; the other was an Egyptian. When we were again at home Abd el-Hady locked his street door ; and coming above stairs, "Tell me, said he, art thou a Moslem ? and if no I will lay thy things upon a cow and send thee to a place of safety." — " Host, I am of the Engleys ; my nation, thou mayest have heard say, is friendly with the Dowla, and I am of them whom ye name the Nasara." Abd el-Hady went out in the afternoon and left his street- door open ! There came up presently Sdlem a Beduin Ageyly, to enquire for medicines, and a Galla with his arms, Sir4r ; — he it was who had named me adu. — " Half a real for the fever doses !" (salts and quinine), quoth Salem. The Galla murmured, ' But soon it would be seen that I should give them for nothing ; and he added, "This man has little understanding of the world, for he discerns not persons : ho ! what countryman art thou?" — "I dwell at Damascus." — "Ha! and that is my country, but thou dost not speak perfectly Araby ; I am thinking we shall have here a Nasrany : oho ! What brings thee hither ?" — "I would see the old Jews' country." — "The Jews' country! but this is dirat er-Ras4l, the apostle's country:" so they forsook me. And Abd el-Hady returning, "What, said he, shall we do ? for wellah all the people is persuaded that thou art no Moslem." — "Do they take me for an enemy! and the aga...?" — "Ah! he is a jabbdr, a hateful tyrant." My host went forth, and Siriir came up anew ; — he was sent by the aga. ' What was I ?' he demanded. — "An Engleysy, of those that favour the Dowla." — "Then a Nasrany; sully aly en-Ndby, — come on!" and with another of the Ageyl the brutal black Galla began to thrust me to the stairs. Some villagers who arrived saying that this was the police, I consented to go with them. "Well, bring him (said the bystanders), but not with violence." — " Tell me, before we go further, will ye kill me without the house?" I had secretly taken my pistol under my tunic, at the first alarm. At the end of the next street one was sitting on a clay bench to judge me, — that dark-coloured Abyssinian 'Kurdy', whom I heard to be the soldiers' aga. A rout of villagers came on behind us, but without cries. — In what land, I thought, am I now arrived ! and who are these that take me (because of Christ's sweet name !) for an enemy of mankind ? — Siriir cried, in his bellowing voice, to him on the clay bench, "I have detected him, — a Nasrany!" I said, "What is this! I am an Engleysy, D. T. II. 6 82 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. and being of a friendly nation, why am I dealt with thus?" " By Ullah, he answered, I was afraid to-day, art thou indeed an Engleysy, art thou not a Muskovy ?" — " I have said it already !" -VBut I believe it not, and how may I trust thee?" — "When I have answered, here at Kheybar, I am a Nasrany, should I not be true in the rest ? " — " He says well ; go back, Abd el-Hady, and fetch his baggage, and see that there be nothing left behind." The street was full of mire after the late rain ; so I spoke to Abdullah, and he rising led to an open place in the clay village which is called es-Saheyn, 'the little pan.' — "By God (added Abdullah es-Siruan, — the man was illiterate), if any books should be found with thee, or the what-they-call-them, — charts of countries, thou shalt never see them more : they must all be sent to the Pasha at Medina. But hast thou not an instrument, — ah ! and I might now think of the name, — I have it ! the air-measure ? — And from whence comest thou ? " — " From Hayil ; I have here also a passport from Ibn Rashid." Abdullah gave it to a boy who learned in the day school, — for few of the grown villagers, and none of those who stood by, knew their letters. Abdullah: " Call me here the sheykh Sdlih, to read and write for us." A palm-leaf mat was brought out from one of the houses and cast before us upon a clay bench ; I sat down upon it with Abdullah. — A throng of the black villagers stood gazing before us. So Salih arrived, the sheykh of this negro village — an elder man, who walked lame — with a long brass inkstand, and a leaf of great paper in his hand. Sirudn : " Salih, thou art to write all these things in order. [My great camel-bags were brought and set down before him.] Now have out the things one by one; and as I call them over, write, sheykh Salih. Begin : a camel-bridle, a girby, bags of dates, hard milk and temmn ; — what is this ?"¦ — -"A medicine box." — " Open it !" As I lifted the lid all the black people shrunk back and stopped their nostrils. Sirur took in his hands that which came upper most, a square compass, — it had been bound in a cloth. " Let it be untied!" quoth Abdullah. The fellow turning it in his hand, said, " Auh ! this is sabdny." (a square of Syrian soap), so Abdullah, to my great comfort, let it pass. But Abd el-Hady espying somewhat, stretched forth his hand suddenly, and took up a comb ; " Ha ! ha !" cries my host (who till now had kindly harboured me; but his lately good mind was turned already to fanatical rancour — the village named him AbuSummakh, 'Father Jangles ') what is this perilous instrument, — ha ! Nasrany ? Abdullah, let him give account of it ; and judge thou if it be not some jin devised by them against the Moslemin !" Next came up a great tin, which I opened before them : it THE NASRANY "A MUSCOVITE SPY". 83 was full of tea, my only refreshment. " Well, this you may shut again," said Abdullah. Next was a bundle of books. " Aha ! exclaimed the great man, the former things — hast thou written them, sheykh Salih ? — were of no account, but the books ! — thou shalt never have them again." Then they lighted upon the brass reel of a tape measure. "Ha! he cries, tell me, and see thou speak the truth (alemny b'es sahihh), is not this the sky-measure ?" " Here, I said to him, I have a paper, which is a circular passport from the Waly of Syria." — "Then read it, sheykh Salih." Salih pored over the written document awhile ; — " I have perused it, he answered, but may perceive only the names, because it is written in Turki, [the tongue was Arabic, but engrossed in the florid Persian manner !], and here at the foot is the seal of the Pasha," — and he read his name. "Ho! ho! (cries Siriir) that Pasha was long ago; and he is dead, I know it well." — A sigh of bodily weariness that would have rest broke from me. ' " Wherefore thus ? exclaimed the pious scelerat Abdullah, only stay thee upon el-Mowla (the Lord thy God)." — To my final confusion, they fetched up from the sack's bottom the empty pistol case ! — in that weapon was all my hope. "Aha, a pistol case ! cried many voices, and, casting their bitter eyes upon ine, oh thou ! where is the pistol?" I answered nothing; — in this moment of suspense, one exclaimed, "It is plain that Ibn Rashid has taken it from him." — " Ay, answered the black villagers about me, he has given it to Ibn Rashid ; Ibn Rashid has taken it from him, trust us, Abdullah." — A pistol among them is always preciously preserved in a gay holster; and they could not imagine that I should wear a naked pistol under my bare shirt. After this I thought ' Will they search my person?' — but that is regarded amongst them as an extreme outrage ; and there were here too many witnesses. He seemed to assent to their words, but I saw he rolled it in his turbid mind, 'what was become of the Nasrany 's pistol?' The heavy weapon, worn continually suspended from the neck, not a little molested me ; and I could not put off my Arab cloak (which covered it) in the sultry days.— So he said, " Hast thou money with thee ? — and we may be sure thou hast some. Tell us plainly, where is it, and do not hide it ; this will be better for thee, — and, that I may be friends with thee ! also it must be written in the paper; and tell us hast thou anything else ? — mark ye 0 people, I would not that a needle of this man's be lost !" — "Reach me that tin where you saw the tea: in the midst is my purse, — and in it, you see, are six liras ! " The thief counted them, with much liking, in his black palm ; then shutting up the purse he put it in his own bosom, saying, "Salih, 6—2 84 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. write down these six liras Fransawy. I have taken them for their better keeping; and his bags will be under key in my own house." There came over to me Ahmed, whom I had seen last even ing ; he had been sitting with the old tranquillity amongst the lookers-on, and in the time of this inquisition he nodded many times to me friendly. " Md aleyk, md aleyk, take comfort, he said, there shall no evil happen to thee." — Abdullah: "Abd el-Hady, let him return to lodge with thee ; also he can cure the sick." The negro answered, " I receive again the kafir ! — Only let him say the testimony and I will receive him willingly." — " Then he must lodge with the soldiery ; thou Amdn — a Galla Ageyly — take him to your chamber: Khalil may have his provisions with him and his box of medicines." I saw the large manly presence standing erect in the back ward of the throng — for he had lately arrived — of a very swarthy Arabian ; he was sheykhly clad, and carried the sword, and I guessed he might be some chief man of the irregular soldiery. Now he came to me, and dropping (in their sudden manner) upon the hams of the legs, he sat before me with the confident smiling humour of a strong man ; and spoke to me pleasantly. I wondered to see his swarthiness, — yet such are commonly the Arabians in the Hejaz — and he not less to see a man so 'white and red '. This wras Mohammed en-Nejiimy, Ahmed's brother, who from the morrow became to me as a father at Kheybar. " Go now, said Abdullah, with the soldier." — "Ma aleyk, ma aleyk," added some of the better-disposed bystanders. Abdullah: "You will remain here a few days, whilst I send a post to the Pasha (of Medina) with the books and papers." — " Ho ! ye people, bellows Siriir, we will send to the Pasha ; and if the Pasha's word be to cut his head off, we will chop off thy head Nasrany." " Trouble not thyself, said some yet standing by, for this fellow's talk, — he is a brute." Hated was the Galla bully in the town, who was valiant only with their hareem, and had been found khbaf, a skulking coward, in the late warfare. So I came with Aman to the small suffa which he inhabited with a comrade, in the next house. They were both HabUsh, further-Abyssinians, that is of the land of the Gallas. Lithe figures they are commonly, with a feminine grace and fine lineaments; their hue is a yellow-brown, ruddy brown, deep brown or blackish, and that according to their native districts, — '¦ so wide is the country. They have sweet voices and speak not one Galla tongue alike, so that the speech of distant tribes is hardly understood between them. Aman could not well understand his comrade's talk (therefore they spoke together in A FRIEND IN NEED. 85 Arabic), but he spoke nearly one language with Siriir. Aman taught me many of his Galla words ; but to-day I remember no more than btsdn, water. Though brought slaves to the Hejaz in their childhood they forget not there their country language: so many are now the Gallas in Mecca and Medina, that Hdbashy is currently spoken from house to house. Some of the beautiful Galla bondwomen become wives in the citizen families, even of the great, others are nurses and house servants ; and the Arab town children are bred up amongst them. — The poor fellows bade me be of good comfort, and all would now end well, after a little patience : one set bread before me, and went out to borrow dates for their guest. They said, "As for this negro people, they are not men but oxen, apes, sick of the devil and niggards." — These Semite-like Africans vehemently disdain the Sudan, or negro slave-race. "Great God ! " I have heard them say at Kheybar, " can these woolly polls be of the children of Adam ?" We heard Mohammed en-Nejiimy upon the clay stairs. He said, "It is the first time I ever came here, but for thy sake I come." At night-fall we went forth together, lighting our way with flaming palm-branches, to the soldiers' kahwa. Abdullah, whom my purse had enriched to-day, beckoned me to sit beside him. Their talk took a good turn, and Mohammed en-Nejiimy pronounced the famous formula: kull wdhed aly dinu, 'every man in his own religion!' — and he made his gloss, "this is to say the Yahudy in his law, the Nasrany in his law and the Moslem in his law ; aye, and the kafir may be a good faithful man in his belief." The Nejumy was an heroic figure, he sat with his sword upon his knees, bowing and assenting, at every word, to the black villain Abdullah: this is their Turkish town courtesy. Sometimes (having heard from me that I understood no Turkish) they spoke together in that language. Mohammed answered, after every clement saw of the black lieutenant, the pious praise [though it sounded like an irony], Ullah yubeyith wejhak, ' the Lord whiten thy visage (in the day of doom)!' There was some feminine fall in the strong man's voice, — and where is any little savour of the mother's blood in right manly worth, it is a pleasant grace. He was not altogether like the Arabs, for he loved to speak in jesting- wise, with a kindly mirth : though they be full of knavish humour, I never saw among the Arabians a merry man ! Mohammed and Ahmed were sons of a Kurdy sutler at Medina; and their mother was an Harb woman of the Ferra, a palm settlement of that Beduin nation in the Hejaz, betwixt the Harameyn. We drunk round the soldiers' coffee ; yet here 86 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. was not the cheerful security of the booths of hair, but town constraint and Turkish tyranny, and the Egyptian plague of vermin. They bye and bye were accorded in their sober cups that the Nasara might pass everywhere freely, only they may not visit the Harameyn : and some said, " Be there not many of Khalil's religion at Jidda ? the way is passed by riders in one night-time from Mecca " [many in the Hejaz pronounce Mekky]. Abdullah said at last, "Wellah, Khalil is an honest man, he speaks frankly, and I love him." I was soon weary, and he sent his bondman to light me back to my lodging. Hearing some rumour, I looked back, and saw that the barefoot negro came dancing behind me in the street with his drawn sword. Abdullah said to me at the morning coffee, that I might walk freely in the village ; and the black hypocrite enquired 'had I rested well?' When it was evening, he said, "Rise, we will go and drink coffee at the house of a good man." We went out, and some of his soldiers lighted us with flaming palm leaves to the cottage of one Ibrahim el-kddy. Whilst we sat in his suffa, there came up many of the principal villagers. Ibrahim set his best dates before us, made up the fire, and began to prepare kahwa, and he brought the village governor his kerchief full of their green tobacco. Then Abdullah opened his black lips — to speak to them of my being found at Kheybar, a stranger, and one such as they had not seen in their lives. "What, he said, are these Nasara? — listen all of you ! It is a strong nation : were not two or three Nasranies murdered some years ago at Jidda ? — well, what followed ? There came great war-ships of their nation and bombarded the place : but you the Kheyabara know not what is a ship ! — a ship is great, well nigh as the Htisn (the old acropolis). They began to shoot at us with their artillery, and we that were in the fortress shot again ; but oh ! where was the fortress ? or was there, think ye, any man that remained in the town ? no, they all fled ; and if the Lord had not turned away that danger, we could not have resisted them. And who were those that fought against Jidda? I tell you the Engleys, the people of this Khalil: the Engleys are high-handed, ay wellah, jababara ! " Shall I tell you a tale ? — There was in the city of Sham a tumult and a slaughter of the Nasara ; the youngest of you all might have heard of it, if ye heard anything at Kheybar. Listen all of you ! I would have each one of you consider how I fear for myself, and wherefore I do well in preserving this Khalil. [The Ottoman lieutenant in Kheybar makes his apology, to the black audience, for not murdering me yesterday!] THE VILLAGE GOVERNOR'S DISCOURSE. 87 I tell you, sirs, that the Nasara are mighty nations; — but whether that killing of the Nasara in es-Sham were or were not expedient, we are not now to consider. The Pasha of es-Sham and, mark ye, he is a Pasha of pashas and governor over a great province,— and Sham is a city so great that by comparison Medina might be called a village; he being also mushir, marshal of the Sultan's army in Syria — was attached, at the commandment ye are to understand of the Sooltan! I tell you, his arms were bound behind his back; and he was led forth like a common evil-doer before the people; and as the Sooltan had commanded in his firman — ye wot all of you that a firman of the Sooltan of Islam must needs be obeyed — his head was struck off ! His punishment was followed by the suf fering, in like manner, of many more who had borne the chief parts in slaying the Nasara; — and you may understand that they were Moslemin ! Ah my friends ! we must all be governed by reason, but ye know little of the world." — A black adulator answered him, "Eigh me! Abdullah says sooth; for what are the Kheyabara ! or know we any other thing than the hus bandry of these palms ? and our thoughts hardly pass the Harra ; and if some of us take a journey it is but to go to Medina: and they are few that in former years have visited Hayil ! " Sirudn: "Ye know now, what a power have the Nasara with the Sooltan, and in what peril I stand ! I could tell you more of these Engleys: some even of the ships of the Sooltan are commanded by Engleysies. Have none among you heard of a great ship of war, from Stambul, with a treasure on board for the pay of the. army, that was lost on the coasts yonder? Well, her commander was an Engleysy; a man with a terrible visage, and so great mustachios, that you might have tied them behind his ears. I have seen him, and wellah there is none of you who had not been afraid to look in his face. He was at his drink, — for ye know it is so with them ! they drink 'the fermented', which is forbidden to the Moslemin. The watch sent word to him where he sat drunken, after night fall, 'Master kobtdn, we heard breakers, the ship is running on land, give the word to put the helm about.' He answered them, ' Ullah confound you all ! and hold on your course.' A little after they came to him saying, ' Sir, we are now amongst the reefs;' and he, 'What reefs? I tell you sail on to jehennem!' — for he had lost his mind. That great ship fell upon the rocks, and foundered, beaten by the waves, in the wild darkness : there were drowned upon her 800 persons and this kobtan, — and those treasure chests were afterward fished by divers. " And now shall I tell you what is a /consul of theirs : 88 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. konsul is a Resident of their nation in all chief cities, — but, ye understand well, not in the Harameyn, which may be en tered by the Moslemin only. Well, if I cut off a man's head, and might run under the banner of a konsul, none might lay hands upon me there, — and why? because I am under his protection. Such power, ye can understand, they have not of themselves, but by a firman of the Sooltan. — Shall I tell you of a visit which I made myself to a konsul, at Jidda: he was the konsul of the Engleys, and this Khalil's konsul ! and if Khalil came there, and were in need, that konsul would send him home to his own country, — the distance, by land, were twelve months journey, eigh Khalil ? One winter we were stationed at Mecca, and I was sent to bring up five hundred sacks of rice, for the soldiery. I went down to Jidda in company of Such-an-one whom some of you here know : and as we were sitting in the government house, we heard that the Konsul el-Engleys was at the door, and he would speak with the Pasha. The Pasha made us a sign, as he came in, that we should not rise, — and ye wot why ?— because the konsul was a Nasrany! The konsul was admitted, and we remained sitting. We talked together ; and that konsul could speak Araby well, — better than Khalil. When he learned our business, that we were come about the government service, and were strangers at Jidda, he invited us to his house; — this they call el-Konsulato. We went there to see him the next day; it was a great building! and we were led on from one room to another. Life of Ullah ! we passed through five doors before we reached him, — five doors !"— " Then the man it seems lived in much fear for himself! (laughed the Nejiimy,) may not one door suffice among them ? " — " But I would have you understand the magnificence of that Nasrany, and — ouff! what was his coffee service ? believe me, sirs, mere silver ! his coffee tray an ell wide of splendid plate ! Begin ye now to see ? — what then must be their govern ment ! But the wealth of them is nearly incredible ! " — (Abdullah rolled his black head.) En-Nej4my: "The Nasara must be guwiyin a strong people ; it is very well. And thou sayest, that they injure none, but they be first aggrieved ; and the Engleys are the Sooltan's friends, and Khalil is Engleysy: is it thus, sheykh Khalil?" Abdullah: "And that konsul 's kawasses (javelin men) seemed more stately than the kawasses of the Pasha ! wellah the silver knops upon their sticks were greater than the knops upon the sticks of the Pasha himself, — the Pasha of Mecca !" Abdullah, though ignorant in school-lore, spoke with that popular persuasion of the Turkish magistrates, behind whose A BOUNTIFUL WIDOW. 89 fair words lies the crude handling of the sword. The Arabs and Turks whose books .are men's faces, their lively experience of mankind, and whose glosses are the common saws and thousand old sapient proverbs of their oriental world, touch near the truth of human things. They are old men in policy in their youth, and have little later to unlearn; but especially they have learned to speak well. Abdullah, and the Medina soldiery, and the black Kheyabara spoke Medina Arabic. Their illiberal town speech resembles the Syrian, but is more full and round, with some sound of ingenuous Arabian words : the tan win is not heard at Kheybar. I thought the Nejumy spoke worst among them all ; it might be he had learned of his father, a stranger, or that such was the (Hejaz) speech of his Harb village : his brother spoke better. Medina, besides her motley (now half Indian) population, is in some quarters a truly Arabian town ; there is much in her of the Arabian spirit : every year some Arabians settle there, and I have met with Medina citizens who spoke nearly as the upland Arabians. I was his captive, and mornings and evenings must present myself before Abdullah. The village governor oppressed me with cups of coffee, and his official chibiik, offered with comely smiles of his black visage ; until the skeleton three days' hos pitality was ended. The soldiery were lodged in free quarters at Kheybar, where are many empty houses which the owners let out in the summer months to the salesmen who arrive then from Medina. Abdullah was lodged in one of the better houses, the house of a black widow woman, whose prudent and bene ficent humour was very honourably spoken of in the country. If any marketing nomads dismounted at her door, she received them bountifully ; if any in the village were in want, and she heard of it, she would send somewhat. Freely she lent her large dwelling, for she was a loyal woman who thought it reason . to give place to the officer of the Dowla. Although a comely person in her early middle age, yet she constantly refused to take another mate, saying, 'She was but the guardian of the inheritance for her two sons.' She already provided to give them wives in the next years. The Kheybar custom is to mortgage certain palm-yards for the bride-money ; but thus the soil (which cannot bring forth an excessive usury) not seldom slips, in the end, quite out of the owner's hands. But this honest negro wife imagined new and better ways: she frankly sold two beleds, and rode down with the price to Medina ; and bought a young Galla maiden, well disposed and gracious, for her elder son's wife : and she would nourish the girl as a daughter until 90 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. they should both be of the age of marriage. The Kheyabara are wont to match with the (black) daughters of their village ; but the Galla women might be beloved even by white men. Abdullah once called me to supper : he had a good Medina mess of goat's flesh and french-beans. When we rose he smiled to those about him and boasted "Hag Ullah! 'it is God's truth,' seeing Khalil has eaten this morsel with me, I could not devise any evil against him !" Another time I came up weary in the afternoon, when the soldiery had already drunk their coffee and departed ; yet finding a little in the pot I set it on the coals, and poured out and sipped it. — Abdullah, who sat there with one or two more, exclaimed, "When I see Khalil drink only that cup, wellah I cannot find it in my heart to wish him evil :" — this was the half-humane black hypocrite ! The Nejumy, who — since a white man is the black people's " uncle" — was called in the town Amm Mohammed, did not for get me ; one forenoon I heard his pleasant voice at the stair head : " Sheykh Khalil, sheykh Khalil, hi) ! come, I want thee." He led me to his house, which was in the next street, at the end of a dark passage, from whence we mounted to his suffa. The light, eth-th6w, entered the dwelling room at two small casements made high upon the clay wall, and by the ladder- trap in the roof: it was bare and rude. — "Sit down, sheykh Khalil, this is my poor place, said he ; we live here like the Beduw, but the Lord be praised, very much at our ease, and with plenty of all things : " Amm Mohammed was dwelling here as a trader. A Bishr woman was his housewife ; and she had made us an excellent dish of moist girdle- cakes, gors, sopped in butter and wild honey. " This honey comes to me, said he, from the Beduw, in my buying and selling, and I have friends among them who bring it me from the mountains." The fat and the sweet [in the Hebrew Scriptures — where the fat of beasts is forbidden to be eaten — ' Fat things, milk and honey, or butter and honey, oil olive and honey] are, they think, all-cure; they comfort the health of the weak-dieted. There is a tribe of savage men upon the wide Jebel Rodwa (before Yanba), who " are very long lived and of marvellous vigour in their extreme age ; and that is (say the Arabs) be cause they are nourished of venison (el-bediin) and wild honey." When we had eaten, " I and thou are now brethren, said the good man ; and, sheykh Khalil, what time thou art hungry come hither to eat, and this house is now as thine own : undo the door and come upstairs, and if I am not within say to this woman, thou wouldst eat dates or a cake of bread, and she will make ready for thee." He told me that at first the negro THE NASRANY "A MAGICIAN". 91 villagers had looked upon me as a soldier of the Dowla ; but he said to them, ' Nay, for were the stranger a soldier he had gone to alight at the Siruan's or else at my beyt.' When, the day after, they began to know me, there had been a sort of panic terror among the black people. ' I was sdhar, they said, a warlock, come to bewitch their village': and the hareem said "Oh! look! how red he is!" Amm Mohammed: "This is a feast day (A$d eth-thahia), shall we now go and visit the acquaintance ? " — We went from house to house of his village friends : but none of them, in their high and holy day, had slain any head of cattle, — they are reputed niggards ; yet in every household where we came a mess was set before us of girdle-bread sopped in samn. " I warn thee, sheykh Khalil, said my friend, we must eat thus twenty times before it is evening." "In these days, whilst we are sending to Medina, said Abd^ ullah the Siruan, thou canst cure the sick soldiery; we have two at Umm Kida, another is here. Siriir, and you Salem, go with him, take your arms, and let Khalil see Muharram." — " I cannot walk far." — " It is but the distance of a gunshot from the Sefsdfa." — We came thither and descended behind the figgera, into another valley W. es-Sillima, named thus because in the upper parts there is much wild growth of slim acacia trees. The eyes of the Aarab distinguish four kinds of the desert' thorns : tdlh (the gum-acacia), sdmmara, sillima and sidla; the leaves of them all are like, but the growth is diverse. The desert smiths cut tdlh timber for their wood work, it is heavy and tough; the other kinds are too brittle to serve them. The sammara is good for firewood ; it is sweet-smelling, and burns with a clear heat leaving little ash, and the last night's embers are found alive in the morning. They have boasted to me of this good fuel, — " We believe that the Lord has given you many things in your plentiful countries, but surely ye have not there the sammara!" W. Sillima descends from the Harra beyond the trachytic mount Atwa, and gives below the basalt headland Khusshm es-Sefsdfa into W. Zeydieh, the valley of the greater Kheybar village and the antique citadel. W. Sillima is here a rusty fen, white with the salt- warp, summakha, exhaling a sickly odour and partly overgrown with sharp rushes, el-girt, which stab the shanks of unwary passengers. — Such is, to the white man, the deadly aspect of all the valley-grounds of Kheybar ! If you question with the villagers, seeing so much waste 92 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. bottom and barrenness about them, they answer, "There is more aheady upon our hands than we may labour." The summakha soil, which is not the worst, can be cured, if for two or three seasons the infected salt-crusts be pared with the spade : then the brackish land may be sowed, and every year it will become sweeter. A glaze of salt is seen upon the small clay bottoms in the Harra ; yet of the many springs of Kheybar, which are warm and with some smack of sulphur, there is not one brackish: they rise between certain underlying clays and the basalt, which is fifty feet thick, at the edge of the figgera. The large Kheybar valleys lie together, like a palm leaf, in the Harra border: they are gashes in the lava-field — in what manner formed it were not easy to conjecture — to the shallow clays beneath. Where an underlying (sandstone) rock comes to light it is seen scaly (burned) and discoloured. — We came up by walled ways through palm grounds and over their brook, to the village Umm Kida : this is Je"riat W. Aly. The site, upon the high wady-bank of basalt, is ancient, and more open and cheerful, and in a better air than the home village. We ascended near the gateway to a suffa, which was the soldiers' quarters ; the men's arms hanged at the walls, and upon the floor I saw three pallets. — The Turkish com rades bade us welcome in the hard manner of strangers serving abroad at wages, and tendered their chibilks. Two of them were those pale faces, which I had first seen in Kheybar ; the third was Mohammed, a Kurdy, from some town near Tiflis (in Russian Armenia). Muharram was a tall extenuated man, and plainly European. He had worn out forty years in military service in the Hejaz, about Medina and Mecca, and never the better: I asked him where was his fustdn? He answered smiling, with half a sigh, "There was a time when we wore the petticoat, and many of the Arnaiit were prosperous men at Medina ; but now they are dispersed and dead." He wore yet his large tasseled red bonnet, which seemed some glorious thing in the rusty misery of Kheybar ! His strength failed him here, the fever returned upon him : I gave him rhubarb in minute doses, and quinine. This poor man was pleased to speak with me of B&ed er-R4m, that is Greekland, Hellas, bordering on his native country ; and he had heard of the English at Corfu. The Egyptian was an unsavoury fellah, but thankful for my medicines: he told me that certain Franks, traders, came every year for grain to his Nile village, which was some days' march from Koseyr, a port of the Red Sea in front of Wejh: he had only honour to report of them. When I asked him "And was Ismaiel Pasha, the Khedewy, a good MUIIARRAM. 93 ruler?" he answered, "Akhs! that is a cursed man." — I said to Mohammed, the Kurdy, "You are the only man, of the strangers, whom I do not hear groan at Kheybar." — But the others answered for him, " He too is often ailing, and has only lately risen from his bed of fever." The Kurdy, who was one of the police soldiers, moved always with a formidable clattering of arms. He told me that he had once served in an English family at Tiflis ! their bountiful humour and the purity of their manners, he highly commended. He had learned to speak, with the full Turkish mouth, a little Medina Arabic, and would civilly greet me in the fore noons, in the city guise, with keyf usbaht, ' how have you passed the morning ? — you have risen well ? ' Besides these, two or three Ageylies were stationed at Umm Kida in another house : one of them (a Nejd man from Kasim) remembered me ! for I had spoken with him at Damascus, in the time of the Haj, when I would ride to Medain Salih. — The fellow had promised then immediately, with a mighty oath, to mount me in the troop, and convey me not only to Medain, but (if I would) to Medina also and Mecca ! — His head was too light for my enterprise. Now meeting with me here in Arabia, as we descended to the street, he said, "It is I ! and dost thou not know me ?" Muharram, though "rich", and the hakim was come from the village to give him remedies, had made us no coffee ; — such, in the eyes of the Arabs, are always the Albanians. ' I love not the Arnaut (I have heard Abdullah and the Nejumy say), they are selfish and wretched, and in land where they are strangers they desire not even the welfare one of another.' When we left them I bade my companions find where I might breakfast, since I could not return fasting. They knocked at a door, and we ascended to the suffa of one of the principal cottages. — They live more cleanly here in the hamlet, and are less negro-like than the most in the village : they are land-partners of the Allayda, W. Aly. The householder spread his matting, and fetched dates ; and sat down beside us with the alacrity and smiling acquiescence of Arabian hosts: and presently as their custom is, there came up many idle persons to sit with the strangers. They were landowners and such as went not out to labour themselves, having bond servants or eyyal that wrought for them in the plantations. Seeing these more Arab-looking, and even copper-coloured vil lage faces, and that some young men here wore their negro locks braided as the Nomads, I enquired, had they no tradition of their ancestry. They answered me: "We are Jeheyna; — but is there nothing of Kheybar written in your books ?" — "Are not 94 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. the Kheyabara from the Sudan ? — or from whence have they these lips and noses?" — "Nay, we are tribesmen of Jeheyna, we are Aarab." They said also, "We are kdm (the stock or people of) Marhab." Siriir (with his ribald malice), "Come up, ye people of Umm Kida ! and let this wise stranger feel each of your noses (khusshm), and declare to you what ancestry - ye be of, and where is every man's natural beled." Among the Kheyabara it rarely happens that some welfaring negro villager takes a lone Beduwia to wife. — After an hour the good man set before us a hot mess, which was of boiled millet. Those of the Bishr village find some diversity in the speech of this hamlet, not a mile from them, and say, " how they puff off their words !" — My third Ageyly patient was in the home village, a Nejd man from Boreyda : in his evil day he had been sent to Kheybar ; where he was now low with famine and fever. Abdullah, who embezzled the fifth part of the soldiers' pay, enquired of me affectedly before them all, 'What might he do for him?' — " Give him a little broth and meat, he is dying of hunger." The guest in the Arabic countries sees the good disposition of his host, after three days, turned as the backside of a gar ment. — Each morning, after I had presented myself to the village tyrant at the kahwa, I went to breathe the air upon the figgera above the Sefsafa. I might sit there in the winter' sun, without the deadly damps of the valley, to meditate my time away; and read the barometer unespied, and survey the site of Kheybar (v. next page), and the brick-red and purple-hued distance of mountains in the immense Arabian landscape beyond. One day having transcribed my late readings of the aneroid, I cast down the old papers, and, lest the wind should betray me, laid stones on them : but my vision never was good, and there were eyes that watched me, though I saw no man. As I walked there another day a man upon a house-top, at Umm Kida, fired his gun at me. The morning after, seeing two men approach with their matchlocks, I returned to the village : and found Abdullah sitting with malevolent looks. "What is this, he said, that I hear of thee ? — children of Umm Kida saw you bury papers, I know not what ! They have taken them up, and carried them to the hamlet, where all the people were troubled ; and a sheykh, a trusty man, has been over here to complain to me. What were the papers ? [in their belief written full of enchantments:] — and now the sheykhs have solemnly burned them." Besides a Beduwy had been to Abdullah accusing the Nasrany ' that he saw me sitting upon the Harra with a paper in my hand '. DANGER OF THEIR SHOT. 95 Abdullah told me, that as I returned yesterday, by the path, through the plantations, two young men of Umm Kida nB NrSr J#f"*.»7 ' sat behind the clay walling with their matchlocks ready, and disputed whether they should take my life ; and said one to 96 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. the other, "Let me alone, and I will shoot at him:" but his fellow answered, "Not now, until we see further; for if his blood were shed we know not whom it might hurt." Abdullah : " What hast thou done, Khalil ? what is this that I hear of thee ? The chief persons come to me accusing thee ! and I do tell thee the truth, this people is no more well-minded towards thee. Observe that which I say to thee, and go no more beyond the gates of the village ; — I say go not ! I may protect thee in the village, in the daytime : by night go not out of thy chamber, lest some evil befall thee ; and the blame be laid upon me. For Ullah knoweth — and here the malevolent fanat icism kindled in his eyes — who is there might come upon thee with his knife ! — a stroke, Khalil, and thou art dead ! But the slayer was not seen, and the truth of it might never be known. Only in the day visit thine acquaintance, and sit in friendly houses. I have said go not beyond the gates ; but if thou pass them, and thou art one day slain, then am I clean of it ! Canst thou look through walling ? a shot from behind some of their (clay) walls may take thy life ; there are some here who would do it, and that as lightly as they shoot at crows, because thou art an alien, and now they have taken thee for an enemy ; and that they have not done it hitherto, wellah it was for my sake." Abdullah, born in the rude and dark places of Medina, came not much behind the negro villagers in their mad fantasies ; and to all their fable-talk he lent his large ass's ears. The tyrannical wretch threatened me another day that, if I would go any more wandering without the village, he would put me in prison. I said to him: "If any think they have cause against me, send for the persons and call me ; and let the matter be examined before thee." — But the superstitious doubt of those written papers long clouded the village governor's mind ! Another day being at coffee in Ibrahim's house, I said to the villagers present : " Is it true which Abdullah the Siruan says, that the Kheyabara have an evil opinion of me ? " They an swered, "We think well of thee." Ibrahim added, "A stranger is a guest, whoso he be, without question of his religion." — Among these black villagers of the Dirat er-RasM, the coffee server says, in handing down his tray (upon the left hand), "Sully aly en-Ne"by!" and they religiously respond, "Upon whom be peace." In sighing, yawning and stretching them selves, they exclaim Yd Rasill Ullah ! ' aha missionary of God!' As they sit at the morning coffee the negro peasants recount their yesternights' dreams, and draw from them pro gnostics : and oftentimes those heavy lips disputed of their THE FRIENDSHIP OF AMM MOHAMMED. 97 pedigrees, seeking to attribute to themselves the coveted nobility. Amm Mohammed said to me, smiling, " Knowest thou, that aU the Kheyabara tremble for fear of thee?" — "And how should they be afraid of one man, who is infirm and poor, and a stranger?" — "This is the manner of them, they are like beasts, and have no understanding : they say of thee thou art a magi cian ! Fie ! I am afraid of thee, sheykh Khalil ; and what thinkst thou the asses say to me ? — ' Oho ! Amm Mohammed, how canst thou eat with him ! or art thou not in dread that he will bewitch thee?' — was there ever such a beast-like malice? And I tell them that though I eat with thee I am never the worse : yet they say, ' Trust well that Khalil is of a kind of enchantment, he is not born of human nature, he is not of the children of Adam': — but they themselves what are they? the children of apes; and when they say 'He is a Nasrany!' I answer them, and so am I- — a Nasrany ! " Such was the amity that grew daily betwixt me and this estimable person. At first he called me often to eat with him ; then seeing me bare of necessary things (Abdullah had now my purse) he took me altogether to his house to live with him, in the daytime. Some evenings we went abroad, — 'nedowwer (said he,) el-haky wa el-kdhwa, — seeking pleasant chat and coffee', to friendly houses. At night, since his home was but an upper chamber, I withdrew to sleep in Aman's suffa. At each new sunrising I returned to him : after his prayers we breakfasted, and when the winter sun began to cast a little golden heat, taking up our tools, a crowbar, a spade and a basket, we went forth to an orchard of his ; and all this was devised by Mohammed, that I might not be divided from him. He carried also (for my sake) his trusty sword, and issuing from the sordid village I breathed a free air, and found some respite in his happy company, in the midst of many apprehensions. Amm Mohammed set himself to open a water-pit in a palm ground of his next the troops' summer quarters ; the ground water lies about a spade deep in the valley bottom of Kheybar, but the soil rising there and shallowing out under the figgera, he must break down an arm's length through massy basalt. We passed the days in this idle business : because he saw his guest full of weariness he was uneasy when in my turn I took up the bar. " Sit we down, sheykh Khalil, a breathing while ! nisma : nay, why make earnest matter of that which is but our pastime, or what haste is there so all be ended before the summer?" A good crowbar is worth at Kheybar five reals; their D. T. 11. 7 9? TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. (Medina) husbandmen' s-tools are fetched from the coast. The upper shells of basalt were easy to be broken through: but next lies the massy (crystalline) rock, which must be riven and rent up by force of arms ; and doubtless all the old spring-heads of Kheybar have been opened thus! — Seldom at this -season there arrived a hubt, or company of marketing nomads: then his wife or son called home Amm Mohammed, and the good man returned to the village to traffic with them. Amm Mohammed— endowed with an extraordinary eyesight — was more than any in this country, a hunter. Sometimes, when he felt himself enfeebled by this winter's (famine) diet of bare millet, he would sally, soon after the cold midnight, in his bare shirt, carrying but his matchlock and his sandals with him : and he was far off, upon some high place in the Harra, by the day dawning, from whence he might see over the wide vulcanic country. When on the morrow I missed the good man, I sat still in his suffa, full of misgiving till his coming home again ; and that was near mid-day. Only two or three days of autumn rain had fallen hereabout, and the new blade was hardly seen to -spring ; the gazelles and the wild goats had forsaken this side of the Harra: Amm Mohammed there fore found nothing. — At Kheybar they name the stalker of great ground game gennds : seydd is the light hunter with hawk and hound, to take the desert hare. He led me with him sometime upon the Harra, to see certain ancient inscriptions ; — they were in Kufic, scored upon the basalt rock, and full of Ullah and Mohammed. Many old Arabic inscriptions may be seen upon the scaly (sand stone) rocks which rise in the valley, half an hour below the place. I found no more of heathen Arabic than two or three inscriptions, each of a few letters. (Doc. Epigr. pi. xxviii.) They are scored upon a terrace of basalt, under the Khusshm es-Sefsafa, with images of animals : I found the wild ox, but not the elephant, the giraffe, and other great beasts of the African continent, which Aman told me he had seen there. One forenoon we went over the figgera towards the third hamlet of Kheybar, el-Asmieh, or Jeriat el-Fejir. After a long mile's way, in Wady Zeydieh, under a low brow where those sand-rocks rise from the valley ground, we passed by a lone antique building — the walls are of rude stone courses — which is venerable in their religious eyes, and the name of it is Kasr en-Ndby, ' the Prophet's cottage.' For they say, that "Mohammed, returning some time from Damascus, drew here -the bridle of his thelul, and would have made her kneel, but gnats swarming up about him, he rode on to lodge at Umm RUINED KHEYBAR VILLAGES. 99 Kida; and, where his dromedary couched, that spring welled forth whereof they now drink. The old Arabian dwelling is but a ground chamber with a door and casement. It is maintained by the devotion of the Kheyabara, who build-in any fallen stones, and renew the roof with fresh palm beams from time to time. The Nejumy had an outlying plot of com ground in this valley side : and good part of it cost him no more, he laughed, than an old cutlass and the scabbard. In the border of his field were some graves of those who had perished in the plague, few years before, — that in which his brother Ahmed sickened to death ; the heaps were now hoary with summakha. Amm Mohammed (little nice) had now a mind to take up the bones, for said he, 'It would enlarge his ground, and he might sow more corn there. ' But the good man promising to do after my rede, I made answer that he should reverence the dead, and not remove them. We found a skull under a d6m palm, amongst the wild rocks, — " Ha ! he said musing, this is of some Beduwy fallen in last year's warfare ; a hound has carried away the head, and left it here." We went beside our path in the large valley (of the now joint wadies Sillima and Zeydieh), to visit the ruins of a village, in the midst, seated upon a crag of basalt : he called it el-Gereyeh. — The walls of her strait streets are of dry courses of the Harra stones. Small were those antique dwell ings, every house is no more than a narrow chamber, and the earthen floor is advanced, like a step, — as the use is in the Arabic countries, above the doorway and entry, where they leave their sandals. This site is not only well chosen for de fence, but the ancient date-eaters overlooked their palm-valleys in a better air. Those old inhabitants, far beside the great trade road, were by likelihood mesakin: though we searched through the ruined hamlet, I saw not an ornament, nor an inscription. We found but a great mortar, in the street, and pitted blocks of basalt, wherein — as the use now is — they brayed their corn stuffs, for boiling. The housewives of Israel beat even their manna in a mortar; and this was a sapient saying among them, ' Though thou bray a fool in a mortar, amongst wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him.' We came to the mouth of the W. Jellas, where I saw wide watery grounds that might be husbanded. There is another ruinous village upon the next basalt figgera, the name of it, he said, is Geriat Abu Robai. Those ruins were such as we had viewed in el-Gereyeh ; and I saw there a small four-square tower finished as a pyramid above, — it was but an earthen heap 7—2 IOO TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. within, and might be a sepulchre. Under this old village, is a spring of the sweetest water. Amm Mohammed gazed about us; and said, "Wellah the ancients had more wit (than this people that now is), for they built upon free overlooking headlands in a better air!" I saw el-Asmieh not far off, upon a height of the figgera : but here he would have turned back. — El-Nejvtmy : "Nay, we will not enter, lest it should be said, we went to eat the bread of any man." — " Yet let us go and repose an hour in the sheykh's house, and drink coffee, and be gone." That hamlet is ancient : the few families are land- partners with the Fukara. They are not Kheyabara, but colonists from el-Hayat, where they have yet possessions. El- Hayat is a Nejd negro village, and the people are of more liberal mind than they of lowland Kheybar. The palms growing here in sweeter soil, are more robust than the palms about the Bishr village. We now ascended the rock to their gate, and the first met civilly saluted us, " Welcome sheykhs, and what news from the jeria?" The sheykh's kahwa hearth we found to be but a fire in the street, and a palm mat! for he was building. This sheykh — and in general they of el-Hayat are such — was a man of the Arabian hospitality ; so that it was commonly said of him, in Kheybar, "He will sacrifice a sheep, if but a (strange) child come there." The good man brought us clotted dates, and sat down with much goodwill to make his guests kahwa. I asked wherefore the corner of his new building had been sprinkled with gore? They wondered to hear me question them thus (and felt in their hearts that I was an alien) ! they thought I should have known that it was the blood of a goat which had been sacrificed [to the jan] for the safety of the workmen, "lest, . as they said, any one should be wounded". Labourers, since all the householders at„el-Asmieh are substantial persons, must be hired from " the jena ". — Bye and bye we rose to depart, but that good man held our cloaks, and made us sit down again. One who came then to speak with the sheykh was the husbandman partner of Zeyd es-Sbeykan, my sheykhly friend among the Fukara. Though the yearly rent of their plantations might be valued at hun dreds of reals, the thriftless peasant was always behind hand with old indebtedness: Amm Mohammed said, 'he had not sometimes a ready real to buy himself a new shirt-cloth ! ' — Of our host he told me an incredible thing ! ' that he had 2000 to 3000 reals by the year (say £400 sterling), and he could spend it all. His beleds (beled is at Kheybar palm-yard) were so many that he hardly knew some of them : and if any poor man A VILLAGE SHEYKH'S HOSPITALITY. IOI came to settle there, he would give him the fruit of two or three beleds only to keep them; he bestows much upon his poorer acquaintance, both villagers and nomads, and in his bountiful hospitality.' The palms of these Kheybar valleys are innumerable: the far outlying are abandoned to the Beduw, and yield but wild fruits. When we had sat three hours, till the afternoon, our host called us, and those who were sitting at the hearth with us, to an inner room ; where he set down before us a vast trencher of his hospitality ; two boiled kids were heaped in it, on a mess of thura. He said with host's smiles, that such was poor cheer, but his sheep were at that hour out of call, and, after the locusts, they had none other grain than this bare millet (thura). He stood a moment comforting his guests to eat, and added, ' might it do us good': he would not sit down with us, since, by their magnanimous fiction, the host is the servant of his guests. — The growing thura is a cane-like stem with a flaggy head of many hard corns; the harvest is in the early autumn, the stalks are good provender for camels. The thura corn is dry and woody ; and in common years the villagers eat none, — they sell it to the nomads: and the desert housewives patiently seething this cheap grain in butter-milk make of it a wholesome porridge. Amm Mohammed's Beduwia prepared very well our daily messes of this harsh meal. Yet many of the villagers could not eat it; they chose rather to live of their date-fruit, though already they had not half enough. The Kheyabara (negroes) say that the valley dates are to their stomach " as fresh meat ". Amm Mohammed looked, as we came again over the figgera, to see if the new blade began now to spring : he said at last, "There will be no rabia this year!" — If the green herb were sprung in the land he would have called-in some of his goats from the Heteym; and gone forth, to wander like the nomads upon the Harra : and then, he said, I should have been with him. — He had gone out last year with his Beduin wife and most of the geyatin (sing, gatiiny, indigent Beduin squatters at Kheybar) : they made themselves booths of their palm matting; and lodged in hollow places. Amm. Mohammed led me round by a site, Mdsr, which overlooks the plain-like W. Jellas : we sought for inscriptions, but found only ruins of old walling such as there are upon all the fuggar about Kheybar. — I wondered to see the stalwart man so often sit down complaining that he was weary ! and neither could he labour long at once in the garden : the ignorances of his youth, and pernicious drugs, had brought 102 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. down his strength, and the fever of Kheybar. As we went, he looked on the ground for bullets, which had been shot in the last year's warfare. Many times we went by certain bowl-shaped and dry-built vaults of the rude lava stones, none of them above six feet large and high ; some have a ring-border of stones laid about them (v. fig.). — Are they not grave chambers ? and such as the rijjiim Section of vaulted barrows upon the Harra near Kheybar. in the Harrat el-Aueyrid, and the nawamis of Sinai ? - To bury upon the basalt floor, must needs be by building. It was the ancient manner to the ends of the world to lay the dead ancestors in barrows of earth or stone. I said to Amm Mohammed, "What thinkest thou, are they not tombs ?" — " Eigh ! it may be so ; and now I remember sometimes in my hunting to have seen bones in them." In the evening he showed me morsels of glassy quartz, which he had found from time to time upon the Harra, — vehemently hoping that they might be diamonds. The good man said cheerfully, in his disappointment, " At least they will be beau tiful to have set in rings." Such is the Orientalism, the fond dream, of the Arabs, — to be rich upon a day, before we die, by the benign influence of the stars, without our labour: then would one live — on this side the grave — voluptuously, and be a boun tiful householder. Even Amm Mohammed believed with the rest, that I might find them a thing if I would : for this cause also Abdullah, after his violent iniquity, sought to win favour with the Nasrany. Sometimes with a smiling hypocrisy he threatened me, crying 'Confess, Khalil! and I was ungrateful not to remember his kindness ; for had he not saved my life in the beginning, when he might (as easily) have broken my pan with a pistol shot: confess, Khalil! or the felon's mind Was to hang me upon yonder breastwork of the Husn,' — where certain "guide stones" appeared. "Ay, wellah ! answered him the old sheykh Salih, and might one interpret those signs they would lead him to a treasure." — In the dry walling of the ancient acropolis, built of rude basalt blocks, are five white stones, near the southern end above the village, and laid in such enig matical order as the stars in their constellations. — 'And if I would not fall out of his favour, added the village tyrant,— and what then could save me? — I must sally to-morrow with MAGICAL ARTS TO RAISE HID TREASURES. 1 03 him upon the Hiisn; and he would have the tools borne up before us. — And if I were of the siiwahh, that seek no part in the sliding riches of this world, yet they were not men of that perfection; they loved well the use of this world and to live richly: and would I none of it wherefore should I envy them the silver?' — Alas ! how might I persuade them that there is no such lore ? when already certain strangers had attempted to raise the hid treasures of Kheybar: and they held that the silent Nasrany, from a far country, should have some more deep sight in the cabalistical learning. Salih added this toothless argument, 'All (outlandish) strangers would to Kheybar ! — for what other cause could it be than to seek fortune at Kheybar?' They have often told me of a Moghreby that came hither to raise hidden treasures : — it is always in the people's faith a Moor who is master of the magical art. 'This Moor sacrificed [to the jan] in the night, a black cock ; he read his spells, and a great black fowl alighted beside him. He read on, and a strange black steer (it was none of the village cattle, but a phantom) ascended from the valley palms ! The earth rumbled ; and rose as it were in billows, gaping and shutting ; and in that earthy womb appeared an infinite treasure. Then the wise man commanded his black slave to hew off a foot of the black bull with his sword : but the bondman's heart failing him at this point, the enchantment was broken ; — and all that pelf of wealthy metal was turned (they said who saw it) to such vile and brittle matter as the sea shells. Then the Moghreby flung a magical writing into the well, and there ascended a smoke, which he. commanded the slave to smite with his mantle; and there rained down about them pieces of pure gold. — Another enchantment was made by night in a field nigh Umm Kida : the ground was seen swelling and rolling ; but in neither could the master of the spells come to the looked-for end of his labour.' Another treasure-trover had been here in these years, namely that Yahudy who perished miserably in the valleys of Kheybar. [v. Vol. I. p. 151.] I heard some say he came to them from Yamba, — others said from el-Ally. One day I ascended with Salem the Bishr Ageyly to the Husn ; and he also told me of " a Yahudy " who had made an incan tation in the night : the earth wallowed and yawned ; but the spell had been broken by the untimely intruding of some villagers, — and all that glittering metal was turned to brittle chalk-scales before their eyes. The Yahudy, he told me, had visited Kheybar, with the Beduw. The Hiisn, or citadel-rock of 104 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. basalt, stands solitary in the wady Zeydieh; and upon its south ern skirt is built the clay (Bishr) village. The length of the walled platform is two hundred paces, and the breadth ninety : the floor is deep mould [that may be partly of the old (clay) buildings which are melted away] upon the uneven rock. The .33 Siruan digging there (to repair the ancient wall with a clay breastwork, and build a covert for the soldiery), found potsherds, broken glass, egg-shells, date-stones and dung of horses. — Strangely shouldering upon the Hiisn flanks, from the valley UNNATURAL TRIBESMEN. 105 ground above the village, are seen the twin heads of two antique clay pyramids [v. the fig], whose lower parts are cased with dry building of trimmed stones. Those pyramids are of clay bricks, and they enclose an ancient covered well ! so that, in times of public danger, the townspeople in the acropolis should not lack water. " From hence, said Salem, we shot at the Beduw [his own tribesfolk!] and the Beduw shot against us from yonder figgera. We killed we know not how many, for there fell some of them in the palms, and after the Beduins fled, none sought them ; but in a day or two the stench of the dead was horrible : one man was wounded of our side." — "Salem, I know that thou art an Auajy: tell me didst thou fire upon thine own tribes- folk ? " — " Ay ! I fired upon them, and so did another, Eydd, and so did another, Merjdn, and another, a gatuny. We that eat the bread of the Dowla must fight for the Dowla, even against our own people: — but why came they to bring war upon us ? " — The same afternoon I saw that gatuny drinking coffee at Abdullah's ; and the Siruan said, " See Khalil, how they be all of them at my commandment ! this Beduwy here killed his own tribesmen in the war, aha-ha-ha!" — "Ay billah (the fellow answered), and if Abdullah bid me rise now and cut the wezand of any one in the company, I would do it." CHAPTEE V. Kheybar witches. Dakhilullah, the Menhel. Ibrahim. Our garden labour. Their custom to labour for each other without wages. House-building. Thenegro villagers are churlish and improvident. Famine in the land. Kheybar ' ' The Land's Wealth". Antique Kheybar conquered by the Annezy, The ancient part nership of Beduins and villagers. Sirur. The villagers' rights in the soil. Their husbandry is light. Afternoons and evenings at Kheybar. The Asiatic priests' mystery of stabbing and cutting themselves. Villagers going out for wood are surprised by a ghrazzu. ' The work of the Dowla is mere rapine.' Kheybar occupied by the Dowla. The Beduins taxed. A day of battle with the Aarab. Vility of a Turkish colonel. Perfidy of the Fukara. The Kheydbara sup of their hostile (nomad) partners' camels. Tlie ears of the slain are cut off. The Medina soldiery at Kheybar. The cholera. Wandering hills. Fabulous opinion, in the East, of Kheybar. Abdullah's letter to the Governor of Medina. Abdullah's tales. His tyranny at Kheybar. Sedition in the village. The village kindreds. Abdul lah's stewardship. Dakhil the post. Aly, the religious sheykh, an enemy to death. The Nejumy's warning to Abdullah, spoken in generous defence of the Nasrdny. The ostrich both bird and camel. Amm Mohammed had saved other strangers. Whenever in the late evenings I returned to Aman's lodging, I found that our door was barred ! and I must stand in the street, with my flaming palm branch, calling and knock ing to awaken Aman ; and he would rise and come down to undo for me : he was now alone, since his Galla comrade, for some displeasure, had forsaken him. Though I daily asked Aman, why did he bar me out? he answered nothing; but one night the poor fellow acknowledged that, after dusk, he was in ghostly fear of the hags of Kheybar ; and showing me our palm rafters, "Wellah, he said, sheykh Khalil, one of them, sitting on such a beam, may ride in the night-time to Medina and re turn ere day, and no man know it ; for they will be found in their houses when the people waken." — "How may a witch that has an husband gad abroad by night, and the goodman not know it?"- — "If she take betwixt her fingers only a little of the ashes of the hearth, and sprinkle it on his forehead, the dead sleep will fall upon him till the morning. But though one KHEYBAR WITCHES. 107 knew his wife to be a witch, yet durst he not show it, nor put her away, — for she might cause him to perish miserably! yet the most witches are known, and one of them, he added darkly, is a neighbour of ours. When it is the time to sleep they roam through the village ways : and I warn thee, sheykh Khalil ! — for a thing which we looked not for may happen in a moment ! have a care in thy coming home by night." — "I would willingly see them." — "Eigh! speak not so foolhardily, — except thou know some powerful spells to say against them. I have heard that Dakhihdlah [a menhel, or man of God] once meeting with the witches did cry against them words which the Lord put into his heart, out of the koran, and they fled from him shrieking that the pains of hell were come upon them. — The witches, said the melancholy Aman, are of all ages : they have a sheykh over them, who is a man, and he also is known." — "And, why are they not punished?" — "Wellah it is for fear of their malice! The hags assemble in dead hours of the night, and sitting in a place of ordures, they strip off their smocks, and anoint their bodies with cow milk [which in Arabia is es teemed medicinal] ; and then the witches cry, 'We be issued from the religion of Islam.' So they gad it in the dim streets, and woe worth any man returning lateward if they meet with him ! For they will compel him to lie with them ; and if he should deny them they will change him into the form of some beast — an ox, a horse, or an ass : and he shall afterward lose his mind, and in the end perish miserably. But they eat wellah the heart (and he is not aware of it) of him who con sents to them, and suck the blood of his living body; and after this he will become a fool, and be a dazing man all his days." There were few at Kheybar that could not tell of some night's fearful jeopardy of their precious soul and body. Amm Mohammed at his first coming hither, being then a robust young man and his heart not misgiving him, had many times lurked behind his casement, in the night shadow, in wait for the witches. And he learned certain texts, against that hard adventure, out of a book which he had that time by him ; for his purpose was to leap down his stair-head as ever he heard them before the house, throw up the street door and break out upon them. Yet, for all his watching, he told me, he had never seen the witches ; and he now inclined to my (in credulous) opinion. "Wellah, sheykh Khalil," we are ghrashemin, rude (he said) and ignorant ; and such tales, out of their black blockheads, may be but mushrak ! (meddling supersti tious vanities to the dishonouring of the only God)." — But 108 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. sheykh S&lih said one evening, "I have seen them myself! It was in my father's days when I was a child, as I came late homeward from a neighbour's house : and what did I see in the street ! — wellah Such-a- woman (he named her) go by all naked, and I saw her gross belly, and her eyes rolling like fire. I shrunk into a doorway, and had but time and sense — I knew little else for I was yet untaught — to cry Ullahu akhbar ! and start to my father's threshold : and there I fell down in a swoon ; and so the neighbours found me ! Ay ! I knew her right well, — I could not be mistaken, and some of you are of age to remember her." Dakhilullah, as his father before him, was the maul of the village witches. This poor man, at certain times when the spirit moved him, went forth by night, with a great cry in his mouth, and proclaimed the kingdom of God and Mohammed through the village ways. One night as Dakhilullah issued from his house he saw the man whom the village whispered to be ' sheykh of the witches ', going in the street a little before him. Dakhilullah ran and leapt upon his back, and beating him in the head, he cried at his ears, " Say, thou cursed one ! La ilah ill' Ullah ; say, La ilah ill' Ullah !" The startled man, who thought the fiend was fallen on his neck, ran the length of the street under him, and fell down in a swoon; but Dakhilullah wrung from him the words of the testimony before leaving him, 'There is no ilah but Ullah.' — Dakhil though otherwise poor in spirit, feared no after-claps of the beaten and mishandled man ; for the saving religion defended and maintained him. One of these nights I was wakened by a judgment-voice which resounded through the village streets ! — and I heard a strong footfall coming roundly on in haste through the silent aswdk. It was Dakhilullah, and his words were, Yd abeyd Illah, la ilah ill' Ullah, wdhed Ullah ! ' Ho ! ye worshippers of the Lord, there is none God but the Lord, one' is the Lord!' and he strode through the Saheyn, and went-on thus till he was out of hearing. Aman sat up in the cold moonlight; he listened devoutly and said to me, ' Dakhilullah was calling to the Moslemin'. After a space, when Dakhilullah had gone through all that side of the village, we heard the portentous voice with the same words and his mighty tread coming about again. Only a wall of clods parted us from our neighbours: I could hear them rake their embers, and the voices of the rude families inhabiting about our little open place ; they took up the burden and repeated long and devoutly his La ilah ill' Ullah ! I looked out, and saw in every casement the red dakiiIlullah. 109 firelight : they had blown their embers, it wanted not much to the day, and none might sleep more. — The sickly Aman said to me with a pious sigh, " Oh ! what sweetness is there in believing ! Trust me, dear comrade, it is a thing above that which any heart may speak ; and would God thou wert come to this (heavenly) knowledge; but the Lord will surely have a care of thee, that thou shouldst not perish without the religion. Ay, how good a thing it were to see thee a Moslem, and become one with us ; but I know that the time is in God's hand : the Lord's will be done. — But ah ! what a marvellous Providence, sheykh Khalil, has brought us here together ! I born at six months' distance, and thou as far in the other parts of the world ; and when we speak one may understand the other!" — Full was the tender and weary human heart of this poor Galla; and I could not perceive that any thing in him was barbarous, or uncivil : he had grown up in a foreign land in the divine school of affliction and poverty. Dakhilullah was a dull man, all the day after this night- wrestling and effusion of his spirits. At other times, the poor negro was a simple soul, and for fear of certain persons in the village, about some question of inheriting land, he had lately been a fugitive among theJ nomads. He was a neighbour of ours, and in his trouble he reverted to the magnanimous defence of the Nejumy ! and he saw me always with a good eye, since I was the friend of Mohammed. When we passed forth to our labour in the morning, he sat drooping in the street upon the public clay benches. — Amm Mohammed enquired, with a little hardness and irony in his voice : " Why thus ? up ! and go to thy work, man." Dakhil only answered sadly, Nay ! — I ques tioned Mohammed, and drew from him an unwilling answer, that ' Dakhilullah was a menhel '. When the religious passion was upon him, he could not forbear; he must go forth and prophesy through the town. Certain days later, any sick persons might enquire of him ; and Dakhilullah would answer them [as he was taught by the spirit] and prescribe remedies. Amm Mohammed tells me it is the second day of the week after, when the infirm or their friends resort to him, 'bearing coffee and incense.' — "And woman, (he spoke to his wife) see thou forget not ! the seventh day from to-day carry our sick bint to him, with a present of dates, and we shall hear what he says." — In that day, the seer responded, 'That because Mohammed was a harsh man in his household their babe should die ; — but let the father sacrifice a sheep for the life of his child.' — Amm Mohammed as he heard this answer, exclaimed in disdain, "The slave's divination is ivaswassat, IIO TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. a making religious mystery by whispers ; and all this I be gin to believe, with sheykh Khalil, is not in the religion. — Dakhil is an ass, a fool, and he tells my wife that because I - am of hard speech, the little daughter must die ! and thy daughter Khalil, for, since thy medicines saved her life, she is a child of thine." Her sickness was dysentery and fever; and we were in dread, from day to day, of the babe's dying. Two infant children, which his housewife had borne him, before her, were dead, and he yearned for the child's life : I counselled them to send her out of Kheybar, to the Beduw. — I daily wondered to see almost no young children in Kheybar ! The villagers answered me, " The children (bizrdn) die in this air ! — it is the will of Ullah." The most pestilent season at Kheybar, which they call the hamim, is the still and sultry month (the summer's heat then entering), when the new date berries are first formed in the trees ; — this is between March and April, and as soon as the corn is carried. — If the valley fever come upon the grown negro people, they do but languish a day or two. Ibrahim' was a prosperous young man of the Arabian mind, and comely manners ; and save for some rasping of the negro gullet when he spoke, you had not remembered his colour, fie was unlettered, and when I praised his boy's reading, he sighed and said, " I have only this child left." Ibrahim was rich, he had four wives, though nearly every wedded man of these villagers leads his life with an only housewife. They live on together, and she is the mother of his children : upon the men's part they are far from the lightness of the Beduins, and the feminine infidelity is little heard of amongst them. Their women are not veiled ; and many are the bonny young faces (almost Ethiopian) of their sex at Kheybar. In their houses there is no separation of the hareem: the Kheybar dwelling is com monly but an upper chamber, and in presence of village guests, or of nomad friends, the negro women come to sit at the hearth, and take their part in the common talk ; and that is often with a loud tongue, and harsh plainness of understanding. If guests lodge in their suffa by night, the hareem go out to sleep with some hareem of the neighbours. — ' Aha ! said Ibrahim, it was not so with him formerly ; his wives had been all years with child, and many were born to him: but he lost their babes again in the hamim. Now his hareem had left off bearing, and he was much in doubt of evil eyes ; there were many witches at Kheybar!' — He would hear the hakim's counsel. — I bade him send his son, in the hot months, to some friendly tribe in the khala. THE HERB-GARDEN III That power or passion which came upon Dakhilullah, Amm Mohammed told me, was es-SulAt, — the Prayer; he might mean the Spirit of Prayer. The same strife of spirit had been in his father before him : the hags fled from the religious sound of his voice : " he could even perceive the odour of witches passing his house, and would hurl down upon them, carrying away the door in his hand." — One day after, Dakhil came of his own accord to help us in the garden ; he wrought till the mid day, but had not much strength: so said his noonday prayers with a devout simplicity, and ate his due of dates and departed. The poor soul desired me to cure his ophthalmia. — When after ward I said to Mohammed, " Your Seer is bleareyed ! " he laughed maliciously. As we opened our well-pit, we found veins of jips, and jiss (which they distinguish, the last is perhaps pipe-clay) under the mould of the valley, with banded clays, which are seen parched and flawed above with the old vulcanic heat. — "Thy lore is good, said Mohammed, [I had spoken of geology,] verily this soil is laid in stages."— Some will take that fat white clay for soap to wash their cotton garments; but at better leisure they use the bruised stalks of the alkaline plant er-rimth. With our well rubbish we built a loose terrace wall, thofira, and sifted (jdrula) mould upon it, using the labourer's palm basket, mudra. Mo hammed would make of this ground a (Medina) garden of pot herbs and fruit trees ; which hitherto were not planted at Kheybar, — not even the sweet-meat palm el-helwa, nor vines [but these may not prosper here] : because the Beduins formerly overran all in their lawless levity. There was an honest vainglory in Amm Mohammed to show himself a citizen and a loyal man, and to be seen in company with the officers of the Dowla : the quondam trooper maintained a horse at Kheybar, chiefly that in the months of the military occupation he might ride, like a sheykhly person, with those great ones. Now he foresaw the brave time when he should bid the Medina officers to this ground, which would be his herb-garden ; where sitting dangle-legs upon our terrace wall, they should partake of his summer fruits. Mohammed was of a metal which I have seen in all countries: strong men and large- bodied, yet infirm soon, with sweet and clear, almost feminine, voices. He was of a mild and cheerful temper, confident, toler ant, kind, inwardly God-fearing, lightly moved: his heart was full of a pleasant humour of humanity. Loving mankind he was a peacemaker, not selfish of his own, true and blithe in friendship, of a ready and provident wit, both simple and sly, eluding enmities ; — an easy nature passing over all hard and 112 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. perplexed matter, content with the natural course of the world, manly and hardy, but not long-breathed in any enterprise. If I reminded Mohammed of our task, which lay whole days abandoned, he answered cheerfully, that when he might see me once safe out of Kheybar, he would bring-in a bevy of stout young villagers, and our long labour would be sped in a few hours. — When our iron would no more bite on the metallic durity of the deeper rock in the well-pit, I brought a mantle- full of palm leaf-buts to fire the stone : they use thus to find the joints of the intractable basalt, which is to be suddenly chilled with water. I struck a spark and blew the flame in a shred of palm-bast; and kindled a raging fire. "Aha! hast thou set on fire jehennem? laughed Amm Mohammed, or to speak it mouthing- like, as the Turks, jehendem." — There was lately a governor of Medina of this mad name, Jehendem Pasha ! As all was burned low, we found nothing to take up the water. " Alas ! laughed he, jehennem has burned in vain : " then, at my bidding, he hastily daubed our basket with clay, and cast on water. Ahmed called his brother laab, a play fellow. Though Mohammed had passed his fiftieth year, he was young in honest glee as one who had not found a trouble in the world. They have an old world's custom here, to labour for each other without wages, besides that which the young men must eat. When one has any need he calls to some likely young man of his acquaintance, ' Come thou and work for me to-day,' — be it to dig, to plough, to sow, to reap, to water, to build. — The work men leave their labour at high noon (when the work-day is ended at Kheybar) and follow him home, where his housewife has made them ready their dinner ; — that should not be of dates, but some of their bread or corn messes. Mohammed had a purpose to build himself a house, since this was not his own wherein he now dwelt. — " Yet, said he, it must cost me some sacks of wheat, to fill so many days their hungry bellies. It is not known, he often said, how well we live at Kheybar, saving that this air is not good. I am better here than at Medina, where we pay the water-carrier to drink water, we pay for fire wood, and one must buy his horse provender." To his house-building he told me he would call only the best workers of the eyyal, and say to them, "I build a beyt, come and make clods with me to-day." These are half-spadefuls of the fenny black earth, rolled in their hands for bricks, and left to harden a few days in the sun; they are then to be turned. When the sun of ten days has baked the crusts, and the white summakha is seen upon them, they may be carried^ HO USE-BUILDING. 1 1 3 for building : the builders have puddled earth for mortar. They lay the foundation of two or three courses of rude stones [v. Vol. I. p. 135; and confer Jer. Ii. 26], and thereupon build clods, two bricks thick, but without any craft or care, to knit them with cross-laying: they dress all rudely to the eye, and it suffices them. When the young men go out for beams, they seek windcast palms in the beleds ; and whereso they find any they take them, since fallen palm timber is only cumber at Kheybar. The balk is girded with ropes, and a score of good fellows will draw it home with a song ; and return for more until they have enough. The stair is made of stones and clay : the suffa floor is a palm deep of stamped earth, upon a matwork of palm branches ; and in the midst is made the square clay hearth, of a span height with a border.' They now want nothing to garnish their houses, but a little matting. The negroes are poor in the abundance of their palm valleys, and of an improvident, churlish, and miserable humour : yet it is said, that in the date harvest they can be open-handed. Many palm yards and seed grounds may be counted to almost every household; but they lie partly unfilled, and there is much indebtedness and poverty amongst them, even in good years. " Mine, said Amm Mohammed, are but ten beleds,- — there is hardly another here who has so few, and many have fifty or sixty : yet none of them fare better than I ; and that is but of a little providence and good husbandry. I thank God, there is always in my house to eat; but the half of them have not oftentimes enough." — I knew a wasteful young man who had been rich, but to-day he was almost undone. He had spent palm grounds and palm grounds to purchase him wives and more wives ; for, as he was a sot, he might not live many weeks in peace with any of them : I saw that the nomad marketers would not trust him now with one real's worth of samn, for payment (to be made in dates) at the coming harvest ! — The sah measure at Kheybar is the good old standard of Medina, the greatest that I have seen in Arabia. The sah may be nigh two pints at Teyma, two and a half at Hayil, at el-Ally nearly three, and at Kheybar, five ; their medega (a small palm basket) is a twelve-sah measure, five medegas are one mejelldd. A skin of dates is called here as at Medina hashiah. There had been a famine in the desert seven years before. That was after four rainless winters, so that there sprang no after rabia; and the cattle of the Beduins died away to the half. Then many poor tribesmen came down to seek some relief in these val leys ; and Amm Mohammed told me that the Kheyabara enter- D. T. II. 8 114 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. tained them until their own began to give. out. He said, "You might see the Beduw, an hour before sunset, creeping up from the street, by twos and threes, to the people's sulfas ; and they would sit silently at a hearth till the supper hour."— -Such a general charity might hardly be procured by public laws in other countries! — An unwilling householder will but say, "Why guest it so often with me, and hinder others' coming, wherefore do I see thee here every day ? seek other houses ! " In all this wealth of land, few of the Kheyabara have a little ready money. It was said of old crooked Salih, the sheykh, whose palm grounds were more than other men's — ' that he had in his chest perhaps 200 or 300 reals.' The greenness and plenty of the Kheybar valleys is a proverb in the desert, and the tribes men make a pretty etymology of the name : " What, say they, is Kheybar but Khey r- el-bar r, the land's wealth." The seats of the Annezy Aarab soon after the conquest of Mosaic Kheybar were a little, says the tradition, above Medina, between the W. el-Humth and the W. er-Rummah [where wander now the W. Aly and Heteym, and part of the Harb nation]. — 'Okilla a slave of Marhab, the Emir of ancient Kheybar, had gathered a remnant of his villagers, and was become their sheykh. One year when the Annezy passed by with their cattle, they pitched by the (friendly) Kheybar valleys, as in a place of much water. A maiden of the Aarab entered Kheybar to see the daughters of the town : and there a young man was wounded with her love, who enticed the gazing damsel and forced her ; — he was the sheykh Okilla's son ! The poor young woman went home weeping; — and she was a sheykh's daughter. This felony was presently reported in the nomads' menzil ! and, ' It was not to be borne that a virgin should suffer violence ! ' said all the Beduw. The Annezy sheykhs sent to require satisfaction from the sheykh of Kheybar; who answered them shortly that the Annezy should no more water there. On the morrow the town sheykh, Okilla, rode to the nomads' menzil, with a few horse men, and defied them. The Beduw set furiously upon them; and Okilla fell, and there were slain many of his people. The Beduw now overran all ; they conquered the villages, and bound themselves by oath not to give their daughters -to the Kheyabara for ever. — 'Thenceforward the Kheyabara took bond women for wives ; and at this day they are become a black people.' — The Beduw left the villagers to husband the palm valleys, for the half fruits with them ; and removed in the wilderness. VILLAGE AND BEDUIN LAND-PARTNERSHIP. II 5 Every possession is reckoned at Kheybar upon the Beduin partnership ; even the villagers' houses are held betwixt them and the absent nomads. At midsummer the Annezy tribes (which remain in the south) descend to gather their part of the date harvest. Every be"led is thus a double inheritance ; there is a Beduin landlord and a black villager partner, and each may say 'it is mine'. The villagers are free husbandmen: they may sell their half-rights to others, they may even neglect their holdings, without contradiction of the Beduwy; and the tribesman cannot put another in his room. If the villager sow the soil, the harvest is all his own; the absent Beduwy has no part therein: yet if the Beduwy (as there be some few impoverished tribesmen) dwell at Kheybar and be come a settler (gatuny), he may do the like, entering to the half with his negro partners and sowing the inheritance. In the home ge"ria were fifteen poor (Bishr) Beduins that did so : they were bankrupts of the desert come to settle upon that little (landed) good which yet remained to them inalienable. These village Beduins are not misseen by the Kheyabara, who willingly lend the poor gatunies their ploughs and plough-oxen, and the husbandman's tools. The absent tribesmen's land-right is over no more than the palms. As these decay the villager should set new plants, and the Beduwy is holden to pay him for every one a real : but if his land-partner be poor and cannot requite him, he may leave their ground unplanted, or he may sow the soil for himself. Nevertheless the Beduin lordship remains in the land, and his nomad partner may, at any time, require the village partner to set palms there, for the half fruit, only requiting his labour : or the villager may plant an old palm ground, and reckon the Beduin's indebtedness in their future harvests. Good village partners will provide against the decay of their plantations ; for where they see any old stem they cherish an offset, that when this fails they may have another palm, in its room. Yet so there is the less order in their beleds, the offset stems grow over-thwartly, and are in their season the sooner to fall. Besides the villagers possess in their singular right certain open lands, which (from antiquity) were never planted with palms ; such are their fields towards Kasr en-Ndby, and that upland bottom of sweet (but not deep) earth, el-Hurda, where are many old wells ; — they say "three hundred", that is v.ery many. We have seen what is their landed wealth ; and if I consented to remain at Kheybar, almost every considerable householder, they promised, would bestow upon me a be"led : and first Amm Mo- 8—2 Il6 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. hammed gave me that ground where we laboured, with its fifteen ayddn, or stems of palms : last year he had bought the villager's right for sixty reals. Sheykh Salih gave me the next beled, but like his liberality, it was not large. Every palm-yard has a high- built wall about it, because formerly (in the season of dates) the Beduins were knavish climbers and pilferers by day and night. The beled wall is built and repaired by the villager's labour ; the Beduin is to pay him for every length of a palm rod, a real. If a Beduwy, for any instant need — as to make an atonement for bloodshed — must sell his inheritance of land, he sells it to some tribesmen, and not to the negro husbands. When landlord tribes or kindreds forsake the country and become Aarab of an other dira, as the Sbaa, Ruwalla and Jellas, the reversion is to the Annezy that remain in the land; and the former rights remain in abeyance. Any stranger at Kheybar may use the idle soil of a be"led in partnership with the villager. The stranger's seed corn is sown in the field, and the villager's is all the husbandry, — ploughing and watering and harvesting ; and the grain will be halved between them. Thus did Ahmed, thus did Siriir, who was of a thriving nature ; the Galla had three good plots sown down this year, and he drank milk of his own little troop of goats : he was the only man of the miserable soldiery that prospered at Kheybar. ' Eigh ! said the ribald, lifting his eyes to heaven, if only his Lord would leave him here other two or three years ! — then would he' be fully at his ease, and a welfaring person.' — It happened (strangely) that this Sirur had been somewhile a soldier of the kella at Medain ; and (as Aman said) the bonds man of Haj Nejm, but he had conveyed himself away from thence : he knew also Teyma and el-Ally. Once he had been beset in the Ally boghr&z by Beduw, but said the smooth scelerat, 'Rubbu, his Lord delivered him': — he was thus an unwilling witness to the truth of all that I said, of those places. — Only with this infamous slave I had forsworn all patience ; it might seem imprudent, but to batter such spirits in breach was often my best defence. Whenever Abdullah entered the coffee-room his audience, and even the Nejumy, rose to the black village governor, and I remained sitting. — Amm Mohammed, when I twitted him, at home, answered cheerfully ' that he did not lout to Abdullah, but to the Dowla.' — If any man were displeased, I answered them not. Abdullah, at such times, sitting silent, and a little confused, waited that some other should take up the word to censure me, as his bully Sirur ;— and no man besides was well affected to the Siruan. Sheykh Salih one afternoon coming in after me, — " Room (cries the bellowing voice, of Siriir) KHEYBAR HUSBANDRY. 1 17 for ^sheykh Salih, rise ! make room, Khalil, for the sheykh"— " Salih, I said, may find another seat." Abdullah, who felt him self a slave, might. not, in such thing, question with the white Nasrany; and Salih mildly let his lame weight down in the next place. _ Sirur murmured, and barked, so I turned and said to him plainly, " I have wandered in many lands, many years, and with a swine such as thou art, I have not met in any place." The timid Hejaz audience were astonished at my words; the most stared into the fire, and mused in their hearts that the Nasrany had not said amiss. Abdullah rolled himself, rose a little from me in his seat, and looked down ; — the Nejumy was present, whom he feared. Siriir made a countenance not to hear, and " What is it ? (he enquired of the next sitters) eigh ! tell me what has Khalil said?" But they, as Arabs, where is matter of contention, held their peace ; and seeing that none favoured him, he found not another word. — " The slave, said Amm Mohammed, as we came home, has not the heart of a chicken !" All their tillage is light. The husbandmen go out after sunrise, when they have eaten, to the plantations. They plough with a pair of their small oxen, and when they have broken a fudddn, or hide of the mouldy earth, in the few hours before high noon, they think it is enough ! Their plough is little more than a heavy sharpened stake, which may stir the soil to the depth of an handbreadth. Another day it will be sown down with the same hasty hands ; there is no dressing, and this is all their care till the harvest, save in their hour in the week of the public water, when they will let in the brook upon their field, and it floods at once all the pans of irrigation. Thus one man's hands may minister to the field labour of a Kheybar household, though their acres be many. In the spring time they marry the palm blossoms, and lop the sere leaf-branches : the villager, armed with a heavy bill, hitches himself upon the scaly palm stem sitting in a sling of palm-bast. — Salih, the sheykh of Kheybar, was a cripple; he sat continually at home, and a slave lad tilled all his possessions. Haseyn's two hands, — the lad was not yet sixteen years of age, — sufficed for nearly all his father's husbandry. In this Kheybar is unlike the Nejd oases, that [saving in the Hurda] here is no well labour ; they may keep holiday all the days of the week and go nearly empty-handed. When it is hot noon they think it time that the people of God should rest from worldly toil, — the sun is already hot over their black heads even in the winter season ; they come home to the street shadows, and eat dates in their suffas. They sit abroad, in the idle afternoons, on the public clay benches ; and some will take part in, and some look upon the others' pastimes, as the bidt: some of Il8 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. the younger sort carry out their long guns to the palms a-birding. — They play biat at Kheybar not with two but with seven rows of seven pits each. The negro women sit in their house-tops platting palm-straws, and often singing at their labour. After the sun's going down the young men blow their double pipe of reeds, mizmdr, through the village ways: and most evenings they gathered in the Saheyn or in the other open place, er-Rahabba. Then the great tambour was fetched, and they kindled a fire of palm leaf-stalks to give them light to the dance. — The young men step counter, lifting their black shanks to the measure, which is beaten to them with loud stirring strokes ; and smiting swords to bucklers they bless the shimmering blades about their shining. black faces. They tread forth, training the shifting feet, and beat the ground ; and winding their bodies, they come on anew, with a boisterous song, — and that is some thousand-times-repeated simple verse. Their sword dance may last an hour or two ; and commonly there stands a bevy, to look on, of the black but comely village lasses, who at the first sound of the tambour have run down from the mothers' suffas : or those maidens dance apart. Many times when I came by them, returning homeward from Amm Moham med, with my flaming palm-torch, the young men redoubled their warlike rumour; and they that had them fired their pistols, there was a sudden brandishing of cutlasses aloft, and with vehement cries, they clattered them on their shields : they all showed me the white teeth, and shouted '' aha, aha, Khalil ! " Many a night they kept this morris dance in the Saheyn, and the uneasy light of their bonfire shining in at our casement, the thunder-dints of the tambour, and the uncivil uproar of the negro voices, wasted our rest, which was our only refresh ment at Kheybar. — Then the poor infirm Aman could not contain his illhumour : " A wildfire, he said, fall upon them ! akhs! who but the Kheyabara might suffer such a trouble of beastly noises ? " Upon the great feast a'yd eth-thaMa there was all day a dinning of the tambour and a dancing through the town, to the Saheyn. Where finding my comrade who sat drooping upon the public benches, "How, I said, always musing ! hast thou not a light foot to lift with the rest in this feast? be merry man whilst thou art alive." The poor Galla smiled a moment and forgot his melancholy ; then he responded, with a reproachful look, "lama Tourk as thou art a Tourk : the Turks hold aloof from the people's levities." Amm Mohammed said to me of the Kheyabara, " They are ahl hdwd and wdhamy, an aery, whimsical people." Even he (a city Moslem) reproved their blowing the mizamir, for the A MYSTERY OF ASIATIC RELIGIONS. 1 19 sound of the shrilling reeds is profane in their grave religious hearing: but the horrid swelling din of the tambour pleases them wonderfully. He said to me, " The tambour is the music- sound [the organ-tones] of the religion of Islam." — Herdsmen and nomad children blow up shawms of green grass stalks in the sweet spring season : the toy is named by them hawwdma. The Nejumy 's third younger brother, who two years ere this had been killed by a ghrazzu of Jeheyna in the way hither from Medina, was nigh the end of his life initiated in that strange mystery of Asiatic religions, which is yet practised by certain derwishes in Mohammedan countries. There is a school of them at Damascus, and I have found certain of them in the W. Barada. They wound themselves, in their fury; and it seems to us, without after hurt ! In festival processions, roused by the religious din of the tambour, and inflamed by the fanatical people's shouting, those unhappy men rip up their bellies, strike skewers through their two cheeks, and stab knives into the fleslry parts of their bodies. All this we may see them do ; and after three days they are whole again in appearance ! Amm Mohammed told me, gravely, ' It might be by a medicine ; it was no trick, — and this he had ascertained from his brother, who had never deceived him.' One day when we were at our garden labour a company of villagers went over the figgera, to gather wood. Dakhilullah and another remained to keep watch from a rock above the Sefsafa, where a rude summer barrack had been built of clay for the Medina soldiery. An hour passed : then suddenly they cried to the Nejumy, ' They saw smoke as of shooting whither the wood gatherers had gone.' Amm Mohammed caught up his matchlock and, leaving his mantle and kerchief with me, bare headed, and in his shirt as he was, and without sandals, the strong man ran out with them to the rescue. Others saw them run, and the alarm was soon in the village. Abdullah the Siruan called his Ageylies to arm and follow him ; every Khey- bary had taken his weapons, and they all hied over the Harra. Also Aman tottered forth, with his dying face, in the wild rocks, under the load of his musket : but Abdullah bade the sick askar return to his rest. Mohammed's beled lay somewhat open ; he had often warned me not to be found there alone, for dread of murderous shots from the beleds about : but if I went towards the town I must meet with men running to battle, with arms in their hands ; besides Amm Mohammed had left his clothing with me, and I thought.it were not for the valiant man to return through the streets unclad. I remained therefore to labour in the 120 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. garden : and in those long hours of silence, I was a worshipper in the temple, and a devout witness of the still life of Nature. And when I paused great herb-eating rats sallied from the four ruinous clay walls : every rat cropped a nettle stalk, and carried back the tall leaf in his mouth to his cave, and returned for more pasture. At the mid-afternoon I heard such a warlike hubbub, that I supposed the enemy must be breaking into our village : the shouting and shots seemed to be in the nlidst of the beleds. — Now came Amm Mohammed out of breath, and he wondered to find me yet there. Seeing his heated looks, I enquired quickly, "What of the battle?" — "It was but a ghrazzu, and we have beaten them off: there was some long shooting, — no man is hurt. And this noise of shooting (in the air) is of the eyyal returning : must they not brave it a little and cool their black blood ere they enter the houses : — and now hie thee ! sheykh Khalil, let us homeward and eat tamr." After supper we went to the soldiers' kahwa; where they chatted of that day's adventure. Abdullah cursed the Beduw and all their father's kin ; 'and he lamented for his tender black feet, which had been bruised upon the ruggedness of the Harra. The Nejumy answered, with his pleasant Turkish adulation, which seemed an irony in so manly and free a mouth, "Poor thou ! I do pity thee, Abdullah ; the sharp lavas made as well my (naked) soles to bleed." When we sat at home I blamed this dissimulation ; but the Nejumy answered smiling, "It is not amiss to smooth him with a fair word, since such is the way of them : slave, and cursed one, and tyrannical fool, though he be, yet is he not here the officer of the Dowla ? " The wood-gatherers had been met by a Bishr ghrazzu, who stripped the more forward of them. Then succour arriving, the Beduw (who saw many long guns among them) held off,'and the villagers ran in to save their asses : there was after this only a distant firing of matchlocks, and the Nomads rode from them. In all the village, only the lame sheykh Salih had stayed at home. Hearing that I remained in the garden, Abdullah said, "You might have been assailed there, 0 Foolhardy ; and if one day thou art killed thus, the blame will be laid upon me : now do no more so, lest I put thee in prison ! — Now sirs, let everyone speak his mind, — and we are the Dowla ! I say, for the time to come how may we bridle these insolencies of the Beduw ? " — Abdullah himself slept upon it, and, at the morrow's coffee-drinking, he cries, "I have found it! and clapped his thigh, ds' Ullah, temmdm, yes, and it please God, perfectly ; — ana werrik, I shall show you, that I know the office of a THE DOWLA OR IBN RASIlfD 9 121 governor at Kheybar ! There will, I say, be twenty horse- riders stationed at Kheybar: this shall be my request when next I write to the Bashat el-Medina ! " Their wood-gathering is often with peril ; since not content, as in the most oases, to burn the sickly reeking palm fuel, the Kheyabara go to seek the sere sammara timber (with asses for carriage and their housewives, who will bear home some upon their heads) far over the Harra. — There was a murmuring now in the town, because Abdullah imposed upon them a contribu tion of this hard-won fuel for himself, and for the soldiery. The Dowla was at Kheybar now five years : I enquired of prudent villagers what comparison they made of the present and their former state. They answered, that though the zikat of Ibn Rashid was a little more than is levied by the Dowla, yet Ibn Rashid's exactors, which were a dozen armed thelul riders, came upon them in the date harvest only: they remained few days, and theirs was a short tyranny; whereas this now resident Dowla is continually grieving them. Ibrahim the Kady added in my ear, Wa sh4ghrol-hum bes en-ndhab, All their busi ness is rapine. — Nevertheless the Dowla defend the villagers from the Beduw, that beforetime maltreated them, binding and beating them, naming them theirs and their fathers' slaves to do all their wild behests, as to bring in forage. They not seldom forcibly entered their clients' houses, to make booty of grain ; Beduins have outraged the negro women, and they behaved themselves in all things inordinately, as masters: and where- so they thrust into any village house, a sheep or else a goat must be slain to their supper. In the date harvest before the Turkish occupation, Misshel the Auajy had sacked Salih the sheykh's house! — Salih was pleased to hear me condemn the churlish inhospitality of that great Beduin sheykh. At the hands of Ibn Rashid's men they fared little better : for whereso the Nejders found any gay sword or matchlock among them, they carried it away 'for the Emir's armoury', enforcing their wills with cruel blows; and the Kheyabara could have no redress at Hayil! — At length the villagers of Umm Kida, who had been sorely vexed and mishandled by them, sent messengers to the Pasha of Medina, beseeching him to receive them into the protection of the Dowla : — and they were heartened to this by their W. Aly partners. That good Pasha — his name is not now in my remembrance — was an uncorrupt and charitable personage, such as there are only few among them. He had lately distributed copies of the koran to all who could read them, in these parts: — the copy which Amm Mohammed possessed was one of them. — 122 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. The Pasha lent a pious ear to the tale of these black villagers : he heard their griefs and the name (Ibn Rashid) of that great sheykh who oppressed them, and where their valleys lay, which they affirmed to be in his lordship's province ; and the good gentleman promised them some relief. — From that time the Turks began to think of the utility of Kheybar, a name which had been hitherto as good as un known in Medina. The summer after the Pasha sent thither some companies of infantry with a squadron of horse, and a troop of Ageyl, — it might be the year 1874. They came in five marches to Kheybar,- where they found none to oppose them. The Beduins descended peaceably, and gathered their dates with the Kheyabara: but in the day of their departure they found watches of the soldiery, set in all the heads of the ways, to levy a toll of half a real upon every outborne camel-load of their own fruits ! The Beduw had never heard in the khala of any duty of theirs toward the Dowla ; besides many of them had not a piece of silver ! The poor nomads spend that little money they bring with them, in the harvest-market, for their clothing and about their other needs. The tribes descended in the second season of the Medina occupation : but seeing the guard lessened they began to con temn them and would not pay the taxes. "Let the Dowla take them, they said, if they would have them." — The Medina government saw that they must increase the summer camp at Kheybar; and the Bishr were now in heart against them, by the setting on of Ibn Rashid. Early therefore in the third summer a regiment, with cavalry, and a troop of Ageyl riders, were sent to Kheybar. Their tents were pitched at the Sefsafa ; also the Hiisn was occupied and repaired by the Ageyl, under this Abdullah Siruan. The date harvest approached, and the Annezy descended from the Harra, the Fukara came first. Their yearly menzil is at es-Sufifuk, under the Asmieh ; and there the principal sheukh, Motlog, Rahyel and Zeyd, have their good clay (summer) houses. They had sworn, by the way, to the Bishr to take part with them, both against the Dowla and against the W. Aly. The Turkish officers rode that night to visit the Fejir in their encampment. The mejlis of the sheykhs and tribesmen assembled immediately in Motlog's clay beyt, "to hear the words of the Dowla." — Motlog and the sheukh answered, " We are come hither to gather the fruits of our own palms ; and if ye be at war with Bishr, we are for neither of you." — " Do ye promise this?" — "We promise you." — When the officers re turned they appointed a station to the W. Aly for the morrow ; WARFARE WITH THE BEDUW. 1 23 bidding them observe the Fejir, and be in readiness if need were to resist them. When the sun was rising the Aarab were seen from the Husn " like locusts" leaping upon the Harra; the Siruan beat a loud alarm upon the tambour. The soldiery at the Sefsafa had slept upon their arms ! — Eighty Ageylies were sent out, as light skirmishers, against the Beduw. When a noise of their shoot ing began to be heard, upon the figgera, the colonel who com manded bade his soldiers (of the line) not to budge from about him. He entered himself the clay chamber, which was his lodging, and locked himself in, and (because his casements were made low to the ground, to let in the freshing air) he lay down flat upon the floor ! — The Beduins came bravely on with their shoutitig and singing ; they were armed with spears and swords, only few had matchlocks. The Ageyl, that had advanced dispersedly over the rugged Harra, fell back before them, until they might all run together, — then they stayed ; and so they returned in a body against the nomads. Thus running upon both sides and shooting, they were long in distant battle ; and the Ageylies had the better. At length one fell upon the side of the Beduw, who was a principal sheykh : then the Aarab ceased firing, their powder also was nearly spent, and they turned to fly. Misshel (their great sheykh) made haste to save himself upon his thelul ; and first drew bridle, they say, at a day's distance. As for the colonel, at the Sefsafa, when the noise of their shooting had somewhile ceased in his ears, he rose and came forth. The coward had heard the scurrilous tongues of his own soldiery infaming him, 'the dog-son vile traitor to the Dowla, that had not sent them to the support of those few, whose lives were so long jeopardied upon the Harra.' — This man is said to have lost a regiment in el- Yemen, and to have pur chased another colonelship for his money. The armed villagers of Kheybar (Amm Mohammed was their captain), in the Husn, had fired with powder against their land partners, till one of them fell wounded; and only then they rammed down lead. — The Fukara held themselves coy; but when they saw Bishr broken and flying, they ran in and made booty of their booths and utensils. Their wild deed was not afterward reproved, nor for such had the Bishr any rancour against them, — they had else lost their stuff to the Dowla ; and in like case they themselves had done the like ! — Much more strange and unnatural was the deed of the Bishr geyatin ! for they took part with the Dowla, and with the black villagers, 124 . TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. against their own nomad brethren. Besides, we have seen, there were certain Ageylies of the same tribe, who fought against their own tribesfolk. One of those traitors fell the same year into his people's hands; but after vehement words they let him go: and Misshel had since sent to say, that any such guilty tribesman might return to him when he would, and nothing should be laid against him : — so easy are the Aarab to forgive every treachery ! for they put all to the account of necessity. Those men having served some years under the government of Medina, the arrears of their pay now amounted to hundreds of reals ; and in this was all the hope of their lives for the time to come. Amm Mohammed's wife's brother, a (Bishr) gatuny, was with the villagers' cattle in W. Jellas ; but as ever he heard the shots he went to join the part of his nomad kinsmen. When it was evening, Amm Mohammed went thither with an armed com pany of the young Kheyabara, to bring home the beasts of the village ; and he led his brother-in-law secretly in again to Kheybar. The -Aarab were now out of heart, and those with him were strong-bodied young negroes, more sturdy, he said, to fight than the Beduw. If Beduins met with him he thought he had only to say, "It is I the Nejumy, and these with me Kheyabara, come to drive our cattle home," and they would let him pass ; they were partners, and this quarrel was only with the tyrannical Dowla. After night-fall, the watch on the Husn heard a sound of distant chanting, in the palms : — some of the Beduw were gathering their dates in W. Zeydieh. Then Amm Mohammed led down a band of villagers to go and take them by surprise. They found the nomads' camels couched without those planta tions; and drew their swords and houghed them. Then the Nejumy and the Kheyabara with (the battle-cry) Ullahu akhbar, ' God is All Might,' leapt over the orchard walls, and fired their pieces. The nomads within the grove, hearing shots and the shout of their enemies rushing upon them, ran to save them selves, and broke out at the further end of the palms. — Moham med and the black villagers returned well laden with the flesh of the enemies' camels : and an hundred Kheybar households supped well at the cost of their Beduin partners :— so ended this warfare of a day ; but that will be long remembered among them. On the morrow the colonel sent to bring in the heads of the fallen desert men whom he called 'rebels to the Dowla'. — Aman had counted eighty heads laid out at the Sefsafa, — a lesson of barbarous rulers to their subject people ! A post rider carried A BETTER ORDER BEGUN AT KHEYBAR. 1 25 their ears, powdered with salt, in a sack, to Medina: — five reals for every pair of ears would be distributed to the poor soldiery. Of the Ageyl two men were fallen : one of them being infirm had been overrun at little distance, — his brain-pan was found shattered by a Beduin mace ; but none saw it. That poor man was an Albanian and Aman's amm, who had paid the price of his childhood to the merchant driver at Jidda: he had early enfranchised him, and a kindly affection remained in the gentle breast of Aman towards his housefather. The poor Galla showed me the grave-heap of his dead "uncle'', and afflicted himself that he could not garnish it, in this deep misery of the stran gers' life at Kheybar. Aman told me he fled in the beginning, when the Ageyl were put to the worse, till he could go no more for weakness : and where first he found an hollow place he cowered down among the rocks, hoping in God to be hidden ; but gazing backward he saw an huge Beduwy with a long lance, that was stealing upon him. Then he fired his musket from the hip and fled affrighted, without looking again. He heard the enemies leaping all about him, whilst he hasted as he could and ran feebly on the Harra, from stone to stone ; and 'the Lord turned away their eyes that they should not see him'. — He said of the colonel, " He was a Stambiily, a cursed man, who cared not though we had all perished; and he was only colonel for his money, for aha! in the Dowla all is now bought and sold!" — They pretend that 'Ibn Rashid sent three hundred men of Shammar to help the Bishr': they found also certain green tubes, where the shooting had been, which 'were Persian cartridges from Ibn Rashid '. Amm Mohammed, a loyal citizen of Medina, thought better of the public security since the occupation : from that time he began to buy palms, and to be established at Kheybar. — The soldiery also are pilferers of orchards; and the villagers say, "We cannot lead armed men to the officers, and if we accuse any soldiers in the camp they will answer, ' Ye are mis taken', and so we are dismissed with a scorn:" the Medina soldiery are mostly Shwam. Amm Mohammed, deriding their Syrian speech, told me his adventure with some of them that climbed over his orchard walls. The clownish fellows, seeing so swarthy a man, clad only in a tunic and kerchief, mistook him for one of the Aarab. Certain of them would have empressed his ass; and the churls were confused when the strong man began to drive them with his drawn sword to their menzil : and there they saw the captain rise to greet him ! — Although he entreated for them, they were led away to be beaten. 126 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. A better order has been established at Kheybar ; gates have been put to the village streets, and every housewife must daily sweep before her own doors, or be beaten by the Siruan ; — and Abdullah told me he had beaten many. The ways were formerly foul with pestilent ordures, in the giddy heat of the summer sun ; and the passing stranger or soldier who had drawn there his breath, was in danger to fall down anon, deadly sick. In the first year ' well nigh all the soldiers died ' of cholera and the valley fever. Amm Mohammed thought that hardly a score of them lived to re-enter the walls of Medina ! and the negro vil lagers now say this proverb with horrid laughter ; " Kheybar is the grave of the asdker." " Kheybar, said the melancholy Anian, in his Albanian Arabic, is kdbr ed-dunnia, the whole world's sepulture." There came a military doctor from Medina, with new remedies, to cure the sick ; but he himself sickened in the morning, and he was laid a yard deep, in his shroud, ere midday, in the subbakha earth — dead at Kheybar ! " I have cleansed the town, quoth Abdullah, and now they see it done, even this people is grateful to me." Kheybar is but one long thelul journey from Medina, yet lying out of common ways even this name, as said, had been scarce known in the Holy City; or it sounded in their ears with a superstitious strangeness, — for who has not heard told in the Haj fables, of the Yahiid Kheybar? At Medina is an iron plated door (it closes now the soldiers' quarters), which passes for the ancient castle-gate of Kheybar : " Our lord Aly, they say, flung forth the leaves from his two hands when he wan the place ; and one of them fell down upon a hill at Medina, but the other fell at Bagdad." It is said likewise of the moun tain Ehad near to el-Medina, whereon is the sepulchre oi Hamzy uncle of the Neby, that of old time this jebel was at Kheybar but it has since flitted to the Holy City: and some of their wise men contend that J. Hamzy was formerly at Bagdad. The rude Moslemin can persuade themselves in this sort: "J. Hamzy stands at Medina; but was formerly in another part; there fore this mountain has removed hither ! " Upon a time I laughed a little with Amm Mohammed, " Your lord Aly threw stiffly ! it is about a score of the longest cannon shots to Medina." — " But this is not all, Khalil, for they say that once our lord Aly stood and lifted the universal world." — "And where then was your lord Aly ? must he not stand out of the world to remove it?" The Nejumy answered, "Now I think upon it, sheykh Khalil, I am well-nigh of thy opinion, that these are but the sayings of vain superstition and not in the religion." I made Amm Mohammed a globe of the clay we FABULOUS OPINIONS OF KHEYBAR. 127 cast up in our digging, and portraied the seas and continents upon it. He was pleased, but could not easily follow my words, since the whole world is flat in their estimation: he let his tools fall and cried, laughing, " Said not the Kheyabara well of thee, sheykh Khalil, that thou art a magician ?— but hyak, let us homeward and eat tamr." _ It is certain that the Jews have at this day a fabulous opinion of Kheybar ; some of them (in the East) have told me that 'the YahM Kheybar are the Beny Rechab'. — And even Orientalists in Europe have asked me " Be there now no Jews at all at Kheybar?" I have known a missionary to the Jews in the Levant who at his first coming thither, if he was not fallen sick, would have set forth, riding on an ass, to pass the great deserts toward Kheybar ; moved with a youthful zeal to convert those fabulous lost sheep to the religion of the Nasara ! But let none any more jeopardy his life for Kheybar ! — I would that these leaves might save the blood of some : and God give me this reward of my labour ! for who will, he may read in them all the tale of Kheybar. Merchants of Kasim have related to me, that "there are descendants of the Yahud Kheybar in Bagdad, who are accounted noble (asily) among the Jews ; there are besides rich traders of them in India:" — but their words were, I found, as strange tales in the ears of the respectable (Bagdad) merchant Jews in Bombay. In the third week of my being in this captivity at Kheybar, the slave-spirited Abdullah wrote to the Pasha of Medina. Since the village governor knew no letters, the black sheykh Salih was his scrivener and wrote after him : " Upon such a day of the last month, when the gates of Kheybar were opened in the morning, we found a stranger without waiting to enter. He told us that a Beduwy with whom he arrived in the night, had left him there and departed. When we asked him what man he was ? he answered ' an Engleysy ' ; and he acknow ledged himself to be a Nasrany. And I not knowing what there might be in this matter have put the stranger in ward, and have seized his baggage, in which we have found some books and a paper from Ibn Rashid. So we remain in your Lordship's obedience, humbly awaiting the commandments of your good Lordship." — " Now well, said Abdullah ; and seal it, Salih. Hast thou heard this that I have written, Khalil ? " — " Write only the truth. When was I found at your gates ? I rode openly into Kheybar." — "Nay, but I must write thus, or the Pasha might lay a blame upon me and say, 'Why didst thou suffer him to enter ? ' — That Heteymy lodged in the 128 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. place all night and he was a gomany! also his thelul lay in the street, and I did not apprehend him: — Oh God! where was then my mind? I might [the thief murmured] have taken his dromedary ! Listen, everyone of you here present ! for the time to come ye are to warn me when any strangers arrive, that if there be anything against them, they may be arrested immediately." Abdullah had in these days seized the cow of an orphan, — for which all the people abhorred him — a poor minor without defence, that he might drink her milk himself: so he wrote another letter to the Pasha, "I have sequestered a cow for arrears of taxes, and will send her unto your lordship ; the beast is worth fifteen reals at Kheybar, and might be sold for fifty at el-Medina." In a third paper he gave up his account of the village tithing to the Dowla : all the government exactions at Kheybar were together 3600 reals. [For this a regiment of soldiers must march every year to (their deaths at) Kheybar!] Abdullah's men being not fully a score were reckoned in his paysheet at forty. If any man died, he drew the deceased's salary himself to the end of his term of service. Once every year he will be called to muster his asakar; but then with some easy deceit, as by hiring or compelling certain of the village, and clothing them for a day or two, he may satisfy the easy passing over of his higher officers; who full of guilty bribes themselves look lightly upon other men's criminal cases. Abdullah added a post script. "It may please your honour to have in remembrance the poor askars that are hungry and naked, and they are looking humbly unto your good Lordship for some relief." In thirty and two months they had not been paid ! — what wonder though such wretches, defrauded by the Ottoman government, become robbers! Now they lifted up their weary hearts to God and the Pasha, that a new klmsna, or 'paymaster's chest of treasure', from Stambiil might be speedily heard of at el-Medina. These were years of wasting warfare in Europe ; of which the rumour was heard confusedly at this unprofitable distance. So Abdullah sealed his letters which had cost him and his empressed clerk three days' labour, until their black temples ached again. These were days for me sooner of dying than of life ; and the felonous Abdullah made no speed to deliver me. The government affairs of the village were treated-of over cups of coffee ; and had Salih not arrived betimes, Abdullah sent for him with authority. The unhappy sheykh with a leg short came then in haste, and the knocking of his staff might be heard through the length of the street, whilst the audience sat in silence, and the angry blood seemed to boil in the black visage of Abdullah. When he came up, 'Why wast thou not THE SIRUAN AT MEDINA. 129 here ere this, sheykh Salih?' he would say, in a voice which made the old man tremble; Salih answered nothing, only rattling his inkstand he began to pluck out his reed pens. The village sheykh had no leisure now to look to his own affairs ; and for all this pain he received yearly from the government of Medina the solemn mockery of a scarlet mantle: but his lot was now cast in with the Dowla which he had welcomed ; and he might lose all, and were even in danger of his head, if Ibn Rashid entered again. It is the custom of these Orientals to sit all day in their coffee halls, with only a resting-while at noon. To pass the day light hours withdrawn from the common converse of men were in their eyes unmanly; and they look for no reasonable fellow ship with the hareem. Women are for the house-service ; and only when his long day is past, will the householder think it time to re-enter to them. Abdullah drank coffee and tobacco in his soldiers' kahwa ; where it often pleased him to entertain his company. with tales of his old prowess and prosperity at Medina: and in his mouth was that round kind of utterance of the Arabic coffee-drinkers, with election of words, and dropping with the sap of human life. Their understanding is like the moon, full upon this side of shining shallow light ; but all is dimness and deadness upon the side of science. He told us what a gallant horseman he had been, — he was wont to toss a javelin to the height, wellah, of the minarets in Medina ; and how he went like a gentleman in the city, and made his daily devout prayers in the hdram ; nor might he ever be used to the rudeness of thelul riding, because nature had shaped him a gentle cavalier. He had ridden once in an expedition almost to el-Hejr; and as they returned he found an hamlet upon a mountain, whose inhabitants till that day, wellah, had not seen stran gers. He had met with wild men when he rode to Yanba, — that was upon the mountain Rodwa ; those hill-folk [Jeheyna] besides a cotton loin-cloth, go naked. One of them an ancient, nearly ninety years of age, ran on before his horse, leaping like a wild goat among the rocks ; and that only of his good will, to be the stranger's guide. He boasted he had bought broken horses for little silver, and sold them soon for much ; so fortunate were his stars at Medina. In the city he had a chest four cubits long, a cubit deep and wide ; and in his best time it was full of reals, and lightly as they came to his hand he spent them again. He had a Galla slave-lad at Medina who went gaily clad, and had sweetmeats and money, so that he wondered ; but upon a day, his infamy being known, Abdullah 130 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. drew a sword and pursued his bondsman in the street and wounded him, and sold him the day after to one of his lovers for five reals. — It seems that amongst them a householder may maim or even slay his bond-servant in his anger and go unpunished, and the law is silent ; for as Moses said, he is his chattel. Sometimes he would speak of his adverse fortunes, that he might show us also his criminal audacity. Upon a time he was brought before the military court for disobedience ; and the Pasha commanded to take away his girdle weapons. — Among them there is not a greater despite than to lay forcible ' hands upon a man's person. As the 'archer' approached, Abdullah drew one of his pistols, and fired, but missed him ; and drawing the other, " This (he said to the Pasha) is for thine own head :" the Governor of Medina answered-, "Is he a man, or a shey- tan ? " Then they disarmed and bound him. " I lay many weeks in the ward, quoth Abdullah, and oh ! what was the horror of that prison, a pit, and the damp ground, and the creeping vermin ! I bribed the gaoler every day, wellah with a real, to leave me a little while unloosed, only that I might rub myself; but when there came a new Pasha, I was shortly in favour again." He told with wonder of some offenders who cast by night into' the city prison, had wound and wrung their limbs quite out of the gyves and escaped ; and one of them, because his foot could not pass the fetter, had cut away the heel, and was fled with his fellows ! — The like is mentioned by Herodotus, of a Greek prisoner who never afterward showed himself to be of a worthy or manly nature : — for will not a rat as desperately deliver herself, leaving even her limb in the trap ? Abdullah carried the ensign and had borne himself well in the Ageyl expeditions from Medina. Twice he boasted he had been enveloped by the enemies, wa fukny rubby, but his Lord delivered him. — He could speak too, with the sen tentious unction of the Oriental towns, of the homely human life. ' There were, he said, two honest men of even fortune^ that one was seen ever alike freshly clad, the other went ill- fa vouredly clad:— and wot ye wherefore, Sirs ? — I shall show you. That one had a good diligent housewife, but the other was the husband of a foolish woman.— And who is the best of women ? I shall tell you,— and mark well these be the words of the N6by, — it is she that can keep silence ! ' He had too some peaceable tales of the men of God, of Islam, as this [the like is read in the Greek Legends of the Eremite Fathers] : — There was an holy man who passed the days of his mortality in adoration: so that he forgate to eat. Then the Lord com- MEDINA TALES. 131 manded ; and the neighbour ants ascending upon his dream ing flesh, continually cast their grains into the saint's mouth and fostered him. Abdullah was sick some days with the valley fever, and his wife also. He had taken her at Kheybar ; the young woman was of a copper colour and daughter of the sheykh's brother. Abdullah desired my remedies, but his conscience durst not trust the Nasrany: he turned therefore for relief to Salih who had an old book of remedies and enchantments. Salih read therein, 'that one should drink a coffee-cupful of butter with pepper in the morning fasting'; he wrote also a charm for Abdullah, to be tied in a knot of his kerchief. — " Is he sick, the meldun ? exclaimed Amm Mohammed, now would God he might die also !" Almost none that were not Beduw asked me for medicines : in the winter-time there is not much fever at Kheybar. In his fever days Abdullah, laying aside the cares of office, would ease his aching brows, in telling us endless Ori ental tales (of Medina): — these are the townspeople's solace, as the public plays are pleasant hours of abandonment to the citizens of Europe. The matter is mostwhat that which was heart's joy to the good old knight in the noble English poet, " 2KB6en ang man fiatfi been in poor estate arrtr tltmhetb up ant" tocXEt^ fortunate." But their long process grows in Euro pean ears (for tediousness) to a confused babble of sounds. He told of the climbing up of the fortunate son from the low degree to wedding with king's daughters ; mingling in his tale many delightful standings by the way, — perils and despairs, gifts of precious jewels, the power of talismans, the finding of hid treasures, and the blissful rencounters, as " tfte jog tljat lastftt) ebermo", of separated affections; the sound of the trumpet and the battle, and thereafter the secure and happy days. — Yet their fables appear to us barbarous and out of joint, and (as all their dedale art) thing which cannot satisfy our con science, inasmuch as they are irrational. Amm Mohammed tasted these tales and the lively invention of Abdullah; and such were pleasant entertainments to the Medina men and full of happy wonder to the Gallas. When they praised his tell ing, "But how much better had it been, said he, if I might have told it you in Turki", (which is an high sounding tongue and spoken with a full mouth). If any nomads were present or geyatin, I saw them sit and weary themselves to listen ; they found no savour in Abdullah's brain-siek matter, neither under stood they very well those quaint terms of townsfolk. The Kheyabara inured to the short tyranny of the Beduins 9—2 132 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. were not broken to this daily yoke of the Dowla. They had no longer sanctuary in their own houses, for Abdullah sum moned them from their hearths at his list ; their hareem were beaten before their faces; — and now his imposition of firewood ! Abdullah sent for the chief murmurers of the village, and looking gallantly, he sought with the unctuous words of Turkish governors to persuade them. "Are not the soldiers quartered by order of the Dowla upon you in this vil lage ? and I sa}', sirs, they look unto you for their fuel, — what else should maintain this kahwa fire ? which is for the honour of Kheybar, and where ye be all welcome. Listen ! — under his smiles he looked dangerous, and spoke this proverb which startled me : — the military authority is what ? It is like a stone, whereupon if anyone fall he will be broken, but upon whom the Dowla shall fall he will be broken in pieces. I speak to you as a friend, the Dowla has a mouth gaping wide [it is a criminal government wiiich devours the subject people], and that cries evermore hdt-hdt-hdt, give ! give ! — And what is this ? 0 ye the Kheyabara, I am mild heretofore ; I have well deserved of you : but if ye provoke me to lay upon you other burdens, ye shall see, and I will show it you ! It had been better for you that you had not complained for the wood, for now I think to tax your growing tobacco. — I have reckoned that taking one field in eight, I shall raise from Kheybar a thou sand reals, and this I have left to you free hitherto. And whatsoever more I may lay upon you, trust me Sirs it will be right well received, and for such I shall be highly commended at Medina" Kheybar is three sheykh's siiks. — Atewy, a sturdy carl, chief of the upper suk under the Husn, answered for him self .and his, ' that they would no longer give the wood.' Abdullah sent for him ; but Atewy would not come. Abdullah imprisoned two of Atewy 's men : Atewy said it should not be so ; and the men of his suk caught up bucklers and cutlasses, and swore to break up the door and release them. Half of the Ageyl askars at Kheybar could not, for sickness, bear the weight of their weapons ; and the strong negroes, when their blood was moved, contemned the Siman's pitiful band of feeble wretches. Abdullah sent out his bully Sirur, with the big brazen voice, to threaten the rioters : but the Galla coward was amazed at their settled countenance, and I saw him sneak home to Abdullah; who hearing that the town was rising, said to the father of his village housewife, "And wilt thou also forsake me ?" The man answered him, " My head is with thy head ! " Abdullah who had often vaunted his forwardness to the THE VILLAGE GOVERNMENT. 133 death in any quarrel of the Dowla, now called his men to arm ; he took down his pair of horseman's pistols from the wall, with the ferocity of the Turkish service, and descended to the street ; determined ' to persuade the rioters, and if no wellah he would shed blood.'— He found the negroes' servile heat somewhat abated: and since they could not contend with 'the Dowla', they behaved themselves peaceably: Abdullah also promised them to release the captives. Abdullah re-entered the kahwa, — and again he summoned Atewy ; who came now, — and beginning some homely excuses, " Well, they cared not, he said, though they gave a little wood for Abdullah's sake, only they would not be compelled." Abdullah, turning to me, said " When ! now hast thou seen, Khalil, what' sheytans are the Kheyabara ! and wast thou not afraid in this hurly-burly ? I am at Kheybar for the Dowla, and these soldiers are under me ; but where wert thou to-day, if I had not been here?"- — "My host's roof had sheltered me, and after that the good will of the people." — 'Now let the Kheyabara, he cried, see to it, and make him no more turmoils ; or by Ullah he would draw on his boots and ride to Medina ! and the Pasha may send you another governor, not easy as I am, but one that will break your backs and devour you : and as for me, wellah, I shall go home with joy to mine own house and children.' I enquired of Mohammed of those three suks (which are three kinships or factions) at Kheybar ; and they are here set down, as he told me, for an example of the Arabian corporate life. [v. Vol. I. p. 479.]— The kindred of the Khutherdn, which are above half the inhabitants of Kheybar, their head is Salih : they are three affinities, el-Kirrdn, which are Salih 's alliance ; the second el-Jerrar, sheykh Auwdd ; — his is an hereditary office, to be arbiter in the village ; the man was unlettered. Black-skinned as the rest, but of almost Arabic lineaments, he was called at Kheybar a Moghreby ; the land of his fathers, he told me, was S4s in Morocco. — The third affinity Nodba, sheykh Ibrahim, whose is the hereditary office in the village to determine the midda, or ransom for manslaughter. The second kindred is el-Muhdllif, under sheykh Atewy, in four affinities, el-Hadeyd, Gudd, Asheyfdt, Sherrdn. The third kindred Amm Mohammed has not recorded, unless it were of those dwelling at Umm Kida, whose inhabitants are named el- Ateyfdt; they are two affinities, the Sell4t, — whose kinships are three, Henndnia, el-Hiara, Afdra — and Mejarid, whose kin ships are Shellali, Ziarra, Tueym. In the Bishr or chief jeriat 134 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. of Kheybar, may be two hundred houses and more ; in Umm Kida eighty houses ; the hamlet el-Asmieh is ten or twelve households. We may reckon at hardly one thousand all the village inhabitants of the valleys of Kheybar. Abdullah, who knew the simple properties of numbers, told them upon his fingers in tens ; but could not easily keep the count, through his broken reckoning rising to thousands. — And devising to deliver a Turkish bill of his stewardship, he said, with a fraudulent smile; 'We may be silent upon such and such little matters, that if the Pasha should find a fault in our num bers we may still have somewhat in hand wherewith to amend it. The unlettered governor made up these dispatches in the public ear, and turning often to his audience he enquired, ' Did they approve him, Sirs?' and only in some very privy matter he went up with sheykh Salih to indite upon his house-terrace. Abdullah hired Dakhil (not the Menhel), one of the best of the black villagers, to carry his government budget, for four reals, to Medina. Dakhil, who only at Kheybar, besides the Nejumy, was a hunter, fared on foot : and because of the danger of the way he went clad (though it was mid-winter) in an old (calico) tunic ; he left his upper garment behind him. Many heavy days must pass over my life at Kheybar, until Dakhil's coming again; the black people meanwhile looked with doubt and evil meaning upon the Nasrany, — because the Pasha might send word to put me to death. Felonous were the Turkish looks of the sot Abdullah, whose robber's mind seemed to be suspended betwixt his sanguinary fanaticism and the dread remembrance of Jidda and Damascus : the brutal Siriir was his privy counsellor. — Gallas have often an extreme hatred of this name, Nasrany : it may be because their border tribes are in perpetual warfare with the Abyssinian Christians. Abdullah had another counsellor whom he called his ' uncle', — Aly, the religious sheykh, crier to prayers, and the village schoolmaster. Looking upon Aly's mannikin visage, full of strange variance, I thought he might be a little lunatic: — of this deformed rankling complexion, and miserable and curious humour, are all their worst fanatics. I enquired of Amm Mohammed, and he remembered that Aly's mother had died out of her mind. Aly was continually breathing in the ass's ears of Abdullah that the Nasrany was adu ed-din, 'enemy of the faith;' and 'it was due to the Lord (said he) that I should perish by the sword of the Moslemin. Let Abdullah kill me ! cries the ape-face ; and if it were he durst not himself, he might suffer the thing to be done. And if there came any hurt of it, yet faithful men before all things must observe their duty to A JIM MOHAMMED, OSTRICH OR CAMEL. 1 35 Ullah.' — The worst was that the village sheykh Salih, other wise an elder of prudent counsel, put-to his word that Aly had reason ! The Nejumy hearing of the counsels of Abdullah cared not to dissemble his disdain. He said of Aly, "The hound, the slave ! and all the value of him [accounting him in his contempt a bondman] is ten reals : and as for the covetous fool and very ass Abdullah, the father of him bought the dam of him for fifty reals!" — But their example heartened the baser spirits of the village, and I heard again they had threatened to shoot at the kafir, as I walked in the (walled) paths of their plantations. Amm Mohammed therefore went no more abroad, when we were together, without his good sword. And despising the black villagers he said, " They are apes, and not children of Adam ; Oh ! which of them durst meddle in my matter ? were it only of a dog or a chicken in my house ! But sheykh Khalil eats with me every day in one dish." The strong man added, 'He would cut him in twain who laid an hand on Khalil ; and if any of them durst sprinkle Khalil with water, he would sprinkle him with his blood ! ' Abdullah, when we sat with him, smiled with all his Turkish smiles upon the Nejumy; and Amm Mohammed smiled as good to his black face again. " But (quoth he) let no man think that I am afraid of the Dowla, nor of sixty Dowlas ; for I may say, Abdullah, as once said the ostrich to the Beduwy, 'If thou come to take camels, am I not a bird ? but comest thou hither a- fowling, behold, Sir! I am a camel' So if the Aarab trouble me I am a Dowlany, a citizen of the illus trious Medina, — where I may bear my sword in the streets [which may only officers and any visiting Beduw], because I have served the Dowla. And, if it go hard with me upon the side of the Dowla, I am Harby, and may betake me to the Ferrd (of the Beny Amr) ; that is my mother's village, in the mountains [upon the middle derb] between the Harameyn: there I have a patrimony and an house. The people of the Ferra are my cousins, and there is no Dowla can fetch me from thence, neither do we know the Dowla ; for the entry is strait as a gateway in the jebel, so that three men might keep it against a multitude." — And thus the Nejumy defended my solitary part, these days and weeks and months at Kheybar ; — one man against a thousand ! Yet dwelling in the midst of barking tongues, with whom he must continue to live, his honest heart must sometimes quail (which was of supple temper, as in all the nomad blood). And so far he gave in to the popular humour that certain times, in the eyes of the people, 136 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. he affected to shun me : for they cried out daily upon him, that he harboured the Nasrany ! — "Ah ! Khalil, he said to me^ thou canst not imagine all their malice !" Neither was this the first time that Mohammed en-Nejiimy had favoured strangers in their trouble. — -A Medina tradesman was stripped and wounded in the wilderness as he journeyed to Kheybar; and he arrived naked. The black villagers are inhospitable; and the Medina citizen sitting on the public benches waited in vain that some householder would call him. At last Ahmed went by; and the stranger, seeing a white man, — one that (in this country) must needs be a fellow citizen of Medina, said to him, "What shall I do, my towns man? of whom might I borrow a few reals in this place, and buy myself clothing?" Ahmed: "At the street's end yonder is sitting a tall white man! ask him:" — that was Moham med. — "Ah! Sir, said the poor tradesman, finding him; thou art so swarthy, that I had well nigh mistaken thee for a Beduwy ! " Amm Mohammed led him kindly to his house and clothed him: and the wounded man sojourned with his benefac tor and Ahmed two or three months, until they could send him to Medina. " And now when I come there, and he hears that I am in the city, said Amm Mohammed, he brings me home, and makes feast and rejoicing." — This human piety of the man was his thank-offering to the good and merciful Providence, that had prospered him and forgiven him the ignorances of his youth ! Another year, — it was in the time of Ibn Rashid's govern ment — when the Nejumy was buying and selling dates and cotton clothing in the harvest-market at Kheybar, some Annezy men came one day haling a naked wretch, with a cord about . his neck, through the village street : it was an Heteymy ; and the Beduins cried furiously against him, that he had with held the khiiwa, ten reals ! and they brought him to see if any man in Kheybar, as he professed to them, would pay for him ; and if no, they would draw him out of the town and kill him. The poor soul pleaded for himself, "The Nejumy will redeem me :" so they came on to the Rahabba, where was at that time Mohammed's lodging, and the Heteymy called loudly upon him. Mohammed saw him to be some man whom he knew not : yet he said to the Annezy, "Loose him." — "We will not let him go, unless we have ten reals for him." — " But I say, loose him, for my sake." — "We will not loose him." — "Then go up Ahmed, and bring me ten reals from the box." " I gave them the money, said Mohammed, and they released the Heteymy. I clothed him, and gave him a waterskin, and THE MAN'S GOODNESS. 137 dates and flour for the journey, and let him go. A week later the poor man returned with ten reals, and driving a fat sheep for me." Mohammed had learned (of a neighbour) at Medina to be a gunsmith, and in his hands was more than the Arabian in genuity ; his humanity was ever ready. A Beduwy in the fruit harvest was bearing a sack of dates upon Mohammed's stairs ; his foot slipped, and the man had a leg broken. Mohammed, with no more than his natural wit, which they call hdwas, set the bone, and took care of him until he recovered ; and now the nomad every year brings him a thankoffering of his samn and dried milk. Mohammed, another time, found one wounded and bleeding to death : he sewed together the lips of his wound with silken threads, and gave him a hot infusion of saffron to drink, the quantity of a fenjeyn, two or three ounces, which he tells me will stay all haemorrhages. The bleeding ceased, and the man recovered. CHAPTEE VI. THE MEDINA LIFE AT KHEYBAR. Amm Mohammed's Kurdish family . His life from his youth. His son Haseyn. His easy true religion. He is a chider at home. Ahmed. A black fox. The kinds of gazelles. The Nejumy a perfect marksman. His marvellous eye-sight. The ignorances of his youth. A transmuter of metals. A brother slain. His burning heart to avenge him. A Beduin marksman slain, by his shot, in an expedition. A running battle. He is wounded. Fiend-like men of the Bashy Baziik. The Muatterin at Damascus. Religious hospitality of the Arabs. Syrian tale of a bear. Mohammedan and Christian cities. Mohammed (in his youth) went in a company, from Medina, to rob a caravan of pilgrims. He saves u, pilgrim's life. The Lahabba of Harb, a kindred of robbers. Tales of the Lahabba. Imperfect Moslems in the Haj. A Christian found at Medina. His martyr's death. A friar in Medina. Another Christian seen by Mohammed in Medina. Yahud and Nasara. Jesus, whose Son ? Mohammed answers tlie salutation of just men, from his tomb. The martyrs' cave at Bedr Honeyn. Dakhil returns not at his time. The Nasrdny's life in doubt. Amm Mohammed's good and Abdullah's .black heart. Dakhil arrives in the night. Atrocious ivords of Abdullah. "The Engleys are friends and not rebels to the Sooltdn." Andalusia of the Arabs. An English letter to the Pasha of Medina. Abdullah's letter. Spitting of some account in their medicine. Amm Mohammed's father was a Kurdy of Upper Syria, from the village Beylan, near Antioch (where their family yet remain); their name is in that language Yelduz, in Arabic Nejumy, [of nejm, star]. The old Nejumy was purveyor in Medina to the Bashy Baziik. He brought up his provision convoys himself by the dangerous passage from Yanba : the good man had wedded an Harb woman, and this delivered him from their nation; moreover he was known upon the road, for his manly hospitable humour, to all the Beduw. He received for his goods the soldiers' bills on their pay (ever in arrear), with some abatement ; which paper he paid to his merchants at the cur rent rate. And he became a substantial trader in the Holy City. He was a stern soldier and severe father ; and dying he left to his three sons, who were Bashy Baziik troopers, no more than the weapons in their right hands and the horses ; — he had six or eight Syrian hackneys in his stable. He left them in THE NEJUMY' S YOUTH. 139 the service of the Dowla, and bade them be valiant : he said that this might well suffice them in the world. All his goods and the house he gave to their mother, besides a maintenance to the other women ; and he appointed a near kinsman to defend her from any recourse against her of his sons. — The horses they sold, and the price was soon wasted in riot by Mohammed, the elder of the young brethren : and then to replenish his purse he fell to the last unthrift of gaming. And having thus in a short novelty misspent himself, his time and his substance, he found himself bare : and he had made his brethren poor. When the Bashy Baziik were disbanded, Mohammed and Ahmed took up a humble service ; they became dustmen of the temple, and carried out the daily sweeping upon asses, for which they had eightpence wages. Besides they hired them selves as journeymen, at sixpence, to trim the palms, to water the soil, to dig, to build walls in the orchards. Weary at length of his illiberal tasks Mohammed turned to his father's old friends, and borrowed of them an hundred reals. He became now a salesman of cotton wares in the siik ; but the daily gain was too little to maintain him, and in the end he was behind the hand more than four hundred reals. With the few crowns which remained in his bag he bought a broken mill-horse, and went with her to Kheybar ; where the beast browsing (without cost to him) in the wet valleys, was bye and bye healed ; and he sold her for the double in Medina. Then he bought a cow at Kheybar, and he sold his cow in the city for double the money. And so going and coming, and beginning to prosper at Kheybar, he was not long after master of a cow, a horse, and a slave ; which he sold in like manner, and more after them : — and he became a dealer in clothing and dates in the summer market at Kheybar. When in time he saw himself increased, he paid off two hundred reals of his old indebtedness. Twelve years he had been in this prosperity, and was now chief of the autumn salesmen (from Medina), and settled at Kheybar : for he had dwelt before partly at el-Hayat and in Medina. The year after the entering of the Dowla Ahmed came to live with him. He could not thrive in the Holy City ; where passing his time in the coffee houses, and making smoke of his little silver, he was fallen so low that Mohammed sent the real which paid for his brother's riding, in a returning hubt, to Kheybar; — where arriving in great languor he could but say, ' His consolation was that his good brother should bury him ! — Mohammed, with the advantage of his summer trading, pur- 140 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. chased every year (the villagers' right in) a beled for forty or fifty reals. He had besides three houses, bought with his money, and a mare worth sixty reals. His kine were seven, and when they had calved, he would sell some, and restore one hundred reals more to his old creditors. A few goats taken up years ago in his traffic with the nomads, were become a troop; an Heteymy client kept them with his own in the khala. Also his brother had prospered : " See, said Mohammed, he lives in his own house ! Ahmed is now a welfaring trader, and has bought himself a beled or two." Haseyn, Amm Mohammed's only son, was bred up by his Harb grandmother at Medina; and his father had only lately sent for him to Kheybar. In another year he would choose for the sixteen years' old lad a Beduwia wife. He chid his son early and late, for so he said, his own father had done by his sons : — he hoped in this untimely marriage to strengthen himself by the early birth of grandsons. The good man said he would make at that time three portions of all that he had, one for himself, one should be Ahmed's, and one for his son Haseyn. The lad's mother died young, and the Nejumy, who had dearly loved her, remained for years unwedded : another wife of his had died earlier ; — they were Medina hareem. When he was formerly at Kheybar, he had some neighbour woman to come in and cook for him, and fetch his water and wood. At length be cause the people blamed his lonely life he took a Beduwia ; but she not long enduring the townsman's hard usage, and im prisoned in the valleys of Kheybar, entreated Mohammed to let her go, and he divorced her: the housewife that he now had was of the same tribe. To strengthen himself, he said, he would purchase a stout negro slave, after the wedding of his boy Haseyn. In the third year he thought to give him his freedom, and a wife, with certain palms for their living : and this freed family would be his servants, and partisans of his children for ever. His was an heart full of human mirth, even in matter of religion. He would say, "They tell of Paradise and of Jehennem, but I ask them : 'How, Sirs, can ye know it? has any man returned to us from such places?'" With all this the Nejiimy was devout, only not a formal man, in his religion. He asked me, " What say they in your belief is chiefly a man's duty to Godward?" — "To love the Lord with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thine own soul." — "But that is easy, Khalil! God knoweth that I love Him ! I would only that He be not weary of my so many times calling upon Him (in my daily prayers) : and truly I would as well to my neighbour as to -8X9 DAILY LIFE. 141 myself!" He prayed at dawn, and at noon, when he had bathed his manly breast in the warm Sefsafa spring, — whereby is a prayer-ground, enclosed from the common, with a border of stones : in the evening he prayed again and it sufficed him ; for he said, 'I am, weary of praying' And most afternoons he spelled out somewhat in his koran, when he sat at home. On Fridays we went to our garden labour as at other times. The fanatics whispered of his little or no (formal) religion ; and because he harboured an adversary of the faith, an enchanter, in his beyt. I have heard his good Beduin wife admonish him thus, smiling, " 0 Mohammed, yet go sometimes to the mesjid, for the people murmur that thou dost not pray!" The Nejumy, though he disdained both them and their malice, remained a little confused ; because to forsake their outward religion, is as much as to be forsaken by all the world of superstitious persons. He exclaimed in his laughing humour, " Every man is justified in his own belief ! — is Ullah I say rajol, a man, that He should punish poor people, only because they heard not in what sort He were pleased to be worshipped ? [the miserable Adam-son's eternal salvation subjected to his feeble intellection, and impos sible invention of the truth divine, in confuse matter of this world's opinion without basis reasonable and intelligible !] then were Ullah a rajol not so good as a good rajol ! but God is All- good ; and therefore I can think that He will show mercy unto all mankind." Mohammed, though so worthy a man and amiable, was a soldier in his own household. When I blamed him he said, " I snib my wife because a woman must be kept in subjection, for else they will begin to despise their husbands." He chided every hour his patient and diligent Beduwia as melaunat ej-jins, 'of cursed kind.' He had a mind to take another wife more than this to his liking ; for, he said, she was not fair ; and in hope of more offspring, though she had thrice borne him children in four or five years, — but two were dead in the sickly air of Kheybar : " a wife, quoth he, should be come of good kin, and be liberal." Son and housewife, he chid them continually ; only to his guest Amm Mohammed was a mild Arabian. Once I saw him — these are the uncivil manners of the town — rise to strike his son ! The Beduwia ran between them to shelter her step-son, though to her the lad was not kind. I caught the Nejumy 's arm, yet his force bruised the poor woman ; — and " wellah, she said, smiling in her tears to see the tempest abated, thy hand Mohammed is heavy, and I think has broken some of my bones." Haseyn bore at all times his father's hard usage with an honest submission. 142 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. We passed-by one day where Haseyn ploughed a field, and, when I praised the son's diligence, Mohammed smiled; but in that remembering his hard custom he said, " Nay, he is idle, he will play with the lads of the village and go a gunning."— Each morning when Haseyn returned to his father's suffa, his father began his chiding : " What ! thou good-for-nothing one, should a young man lie and daze till the sun rise over him?" Hardly then his father suffered him to sit down a moment, to swallow the few dates in his hand; but he rated him forth to his labour, to keep cows in the Hdlhal, to dig, to plough, to bring in the ass, to seek his father's strayed mare, to go about the irrigation. Week, month and year, there was no day when Haseyn might sit at home for an hour ; but he must ever avoid out of his father's sight. Sometimes Mohammed sent him out before the light, fasting, far over the Harra, with some of the village, for wood ; and the lad returned to break his fast at mid-afternoon. If any day his father ' found his son in the village before the sun was set, he pursued him with outrageous words, in the public hearing ; " Graceless ! why come home so soon ? (or, why earnest thou not sooner ?) Ha ! stand not, thSr ! steer, ox, to gape upon me, — enhaj ! remove out of my sight — thou canst run fast to play ; now, irkud ! ijri ! run about thy business. Is it to such as thee I should give a wife to-year ? " Haseyn : " What wouldst thou have me to do, father?" — ''Out of my sight, kbr! Ullah punish that face!" and he would vomit after him such ordures of the lips (from the sink of the soldiers' quarters at Medina), akerdt, kharra, terras, or he dismissed his son with laanat Ullah aleyk, 'God's curse be with thee.' Haseyn returned to the house, to sup, little before nightfall. Then his father would cry: "Ha! unthrift, thou hast done nothing to-day but play in the Halhal ! — he stares upon me like an ox, bdkr!" — "Nay but father I have done as thou badest me." — "Durst thoU answer me, chicken ! now make haste to eat thy supper, sirra, and begone." Haseyn, a lad under age, ate not with his father and the guest; but after them of that which remained, with his father's jara, whom he called, in their manner, his mother's sister, khdlaty. Doubtless Mohammed had loved Haseyn, whilst he was a child, with the feminine affection of the Arabs; and now he thought by hardness to make his son better. But his harsh dealing and cries in the street made the good man to be spoken against in the negro village ; and for this there was some little - coldness betwixt him and his brother Ahmed. But the citizen Ahmed was likewise a chider and striker, and for such his Kheybar wife, Mohammed's housewife's sister, AHMED. 143 had forsaken him : he had a town wife at Medina. Why, I asked, was she not here to keep his house ? Ahmed : " I bring my wife to inhabit here ! only these blacks can live at Kheybar, or else, we had taken it from them long ago !" Ahmed's children died in their youth, and he was unmindful of them : " Ahmed has no feeling heart," said his brother Mohammed. I counselled Amm Mohammed to have a better care for his son's health, and let him be taught letters. "Ay, said his father, I would that he may be able to read in the koran, against the time of his marriage, for then he ought to begin to say his prayers (like a man)." 'Ahmed he would say is half-witted, for he spends all that ever he may get in his buying and selling for kahwa and dokhan. Mohammed [in such he resembled the smiths' caste] used neither. " Is that a wise man, he jested, who will drink coffee and tan his own bowels ? " Yet Ahmed must remember, amongst his brother's kindness, that the same was he- who had made him bare in the beginning: even now the blameworthy brother's guilts were visited upon his head, and the generous sinner went scatheless ! — Mohammed, wallowing in the riot of his ignorant youth at Medina, was requited with the evil which was sown by the enemy of mankind. Years after he cured himself with a violent specific, he called it in Arabic "rats' bane ", which had loosened his teeth ; a piece of it that Mohammed showed me was red lead. Though his strong nature resisted so many evils and the malignity of the Kheybar fevers, the cruel malady (only made inert) remained in him with blackness of the great joints. And Ahmed living with him at Kheybar and extending the indigent hand to his brother's mess, received from Mohammed's beneficent hand the contagion which had wasted him from the state of an hale man to his present infirmity of body. The rude negro villagers resorted to Ahmed, to drink coffee and hear his city wisdom ; and he bore it very impatiently that his brother named him mejniin in the town. " Sheykh Khalil, he said to me, how lookest thou upon sheykh Mohammed?" " I have not found a better man in all." — " But he is fond and childish." When Ahmed sickened to death in the last pesti lence Mohammed brought a bull to the door, and vowed a vow to slaughter him, if the Lord would restore his brother. Ahmed recovered: and then Mohammed killed the bull, his thank- offering, and divided the flesh to their friends ; — and it was much for a poor man ! In these days Mohammed killed his yearly sacrifice of a goat, which he vowed once when Haseyn was sick. He brought up his goat when the beasts came home in the 144 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. evening ; and first taking coals in an earthen censer he put on a crumb of incense, and censed about the victim. I asked where fore he did this ? he answered: "That the sacrifice might be well pleasing to Ullah ; and do ye not so ?" He murmured prayers, turning the goat's head towards Mecca ; and with his sword he cut her throat. When he heard from me that this was not our custom, — every man to kill his own sacrifice, he seemed to muse in himself, that we must be a faint-hearted people. One early morning, his son going about the irrigation had found a fox drowmed in our well. — Haseyn flung it out upon the land ; and when we came thither, and could not at first sight find this beast, " No marvel, quoth Mohammed, for what is more sleighty than a fox ? It may be he stiffened himself, and Haseyn threw him out for dead:" — but we found the hosenny cast under some nettles, dead indeed. From the snout to the brush his fur was of such a swart slate colour as the basalt figgera ! only his belly was whitish. Amm Mohammed drew the unclean carcase out of his ground, holding a foot in a handful of palm lace. I told the good man how, for a fox-brush sheykhs in my beled use to ride furiously, in red mantles, upon horses — the best of them worth the rent of some village — with an hundred yelling curs scouring before them; and leaping over walls and dykes they put their necks and all in adventure : and who is in at the hosenny 's death he is the gallant man. For a moment the subtil Arabian regarded me with his piercing eyes as if he would say, "Makest thou mirth of me!" but soon again relenting to his frolic humour, "Is this, he laughed, the chevying of the fox?" — in which he saw no grace. And the good Medina Moslem seemed to muse in spirit, 'Wherefore had the Lord endowed the Yahiid and Nasara with a superfluity of riches, to so idle uses ? ' The wolf no less, he said, is a sly beast : upon a time, he told me, as he kept his mother's goats at the Ferra in his youth, and a (Harb) maiden was herding upon the hill side with him, he saw two wolves approach in the plain ; then he hid himself, to watch what they would do. At the foot of the rocks the old wolf left his fellow; and the other lay down to await him : that wolf ascended like an expert hunter, pausing, and casting his eyes to all sides. The trooping goats went feed ing at unawares among the higher crags ; and Mohammed saw the wolf take his .advantage of ground and the wind, in such wise that a man might not do better. ' Greylegs ' chose out one of the fattest bucks in the maiden's herd, and winding about a rock he sprang and bit the innocent by the throat : — A PERFECT EYESIGHT. 1 45 Mohammed's shot thrilled the wolf's heart at the instant ; and then he ran in to cut the bleeding goat's throat (that the flesh might be lawful meat). Besides the predatory animals, in the Arabian deserts, before mentioned [v. Vol. I. p. 328], Mohammed spoke of the gbrta, " a cat of the bigness of a fox ; it is neither fahd nor nimmr : this gorta lurks in the long bunch-grass of the Nefud to spring upon passing gazelles." Of another beast he spoke somewhat doubtfully, eth-thurrambdn, — which I take to be a fabulous animal. " It is black and somewhat more of bulk than the fox; he digs up new graves to feed on the dead corses." The Nejumy thought he had seen one, upon a time, lying dead in a ditch. The fruit-eating jackal is not found in the khala. He named the never-drinking small gazelle of the Nefud, el- affery ; and that of the Harra which, drinking water, is also of greater bulk, el-iddimy : a gazelle fawn of three days old, he said, could outstrip any man. There are bedim of great bulk and horn, upon the Harra. Last year Mohammed killed a giant be"dan, the length of whose horns was five spans and an hand- breadth [more than 40 in.], and the flat of the horn a hand- breadth. Four men and himself were weary to bear the wild goat's quarters and the fell home with them. Mohammed was a perfect' marksman. When we came one morning to our well-ground, and he had his long matchlock in his hand, there sat three crows upon a sidr (apple-thorn) tree that cumbered our ears with their unlucky krd-krd. " The cursed ones!" quoth Amm Mohammed, and making ready his gun, he said he would try if his eyesight were failing : as he levelled the crows flew up, but one sat on, — through which he shot his bullet from a wonderful distance. Then he set up a white bone on the clay wall, it was large as the palm of my hand, and he shot his ball through the midst from an hundred paces. He shot again, and his lead pierced the border of the former hole ! Mohammed gave the crow to some Kheya bara, who came to look on ; and the negro villagers kindling a fire of palm sticks roasted their bird whole, and parted it among them. — " Like will to like ! quoth the Nejumy, and for them it is good enough." He had this good shooting of an uncommon eyesight, which was such that very often he could see the stars at noonday : his brother, he said, could see them, and so could many more. He told me he had seen, by moments, three or four little stars about one of the wandering stars, [Jupiter's moons!] I asked then, "Sawest thou never a wandering star horned like the moon?" — "Well, I have seen a star not always round, but like 146 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. a blade hanging in the heaven." — Had this vision been in European star-gazers, the Christian generations had not so long waited for the tube of Galileo ! [to lay the first stone — hewn without hands — of the indestructible building of our sciences], Mohammed saw the moon always very large, and the whole body at once : he was become in his elder years long-sighted. One day Amm Mohammed made gunpowder, and I gave him (from my medicine box) a pound or two of officinal nitre. He prepared his charcoal of the light castor-oil wood, which grows at Kheybar to a tree : when all was well fired he whelmed a pan upon it and smothered the burning. The cake of powder was soon nearly dry, and cross-cutting it he made gross grains with a knife : perhaps they are taught by experience that this kind is safer for their long weak guns, in which they ram down heavy charges. My ' gun-salt ', white as snow, he thought excel lent, and he had never seen so pure a nitre. Amm Mohammed went to prove this new powder at the Sefsafa. — But the sharp- , ringing detonation startled him, and the eye of the touch-hole was blown out. He returned saying, the English "salt" was strong, and he would he had more of it. In so rude a country it is a praise to shoot well. Abdullah the Siruan valued himself upon his fair shooting ; — ' But what was the difference, he told us, to shoot at a living man!' Sometime in an expedition against the Beduw, a Medina personage said to him, ' Canst thou put a ball through that fellow yonder?' "I shot (he told us), but by Ullah I missed him ; for what man's heart will not shrink when he levels at a man, — albe it is an enemy ? — But let us to the housetop, and all try a bout at shooting." A white sheet of paper was set up for his mark at 120 yards, with a rise of sixty feet, under the breast-work of the Hiisn. Abdullah made a trivet of reeds ; and balancing thereupon his long matchlock, with great deliberation, he fired ; but all his shots struck somewhat wide of the mark, and none fell within it ! — Such is the unmask ing of vaunters, who utter their wishes, as if they were already performances, without the alliance of nature. In Amm Mohammed were certain old grudges of conscience; and he enquired of me (whom he took to be book-learned in theology), 'Did I conclude that the Lord had forgiven him the iniquities of his youth V Yet in things, which were not plain to him, he had but a thick-skinned religious judgment. He asked in our talk, 'Could I transmute metals?' adding: "I have seen it done ; it is but the casting in of a , certain powder. A MEDICINE TO TRANSMUTE METALS. 147 How ! sheykh Khalil, a traveller from far countries and have none of it by you?" He told me further, "When I dwelt at el-Hayat [he had wrought there as a gunsmith and swordsmith to the Aarab] an Hindy alighted one day at my door. [It might be one of the Indian pilgrimage; — there are Moslem Hindies, apothecaries, who cast their eyes curiously upon the desert land of Mohammed.] The man told us he sought certain simples which grew only in these diras. When he had sojourned a while in my house, he said to me 'Ya Mohammed !' and I said to him ' Eigh ?' and he said ' Hitherto thou hast borne all our charges, now I would show thee a good turn; hast thou here any copper pan?' I brought him a pot, and he asked for the shears. 'Now, said he, is there no man besides us two in this house ? go and make the door fast.' He shred the copper into a cresset, and I blew the fire : when the metal began to relent, he poured in his medicine, — it was like a little dust. He had his ingots by him and began to cast ; and there came out that bright silver money of India, which they call rupi. The Hindy said, ' Let us part them between us.' " — " But tell me were they silver indeed ?" — "They were well-ringing, and silver-like pieces that would pass; I do not say that they were very silver." — " What have you done ? you two were false moneyers!" — "Khalil, the man did me a pleasure and I did him another : but I grant you if the Dowla had been there that we were both in danger of punishment." The remembrance of their younger brother, who had been slain by robbers as he came in a company from Medina to visit his brethren at Kheybar, was yet a burning anguish in Moham med's breast; — until, with his own robust hands, he might be avenged for the blood ! A ghrazzu of Mdngora, Billi Aarab, and five times their number, had set upon them in the way: the younger Nejiimy, who was in the force of his years, played the lion amongst them, until he fell by a pistol shot. Mongora men come not to Kheybar; therefore Mohammed devised in his heart that in what place he might first meet with any tribesman of theirs he would slay him. A year after he finding one of them, the Nejumy led him out, with some pretence, to a desert place ; and said shortly to him there, " 0 thou cursed one ! now will I slay thee with this sword." — ¦" Akhs ! said the Beduwy, let me speak, Sir, why wilt thou kill me ? did I ever injure thee?" — "But thou diest to-day for the blood of my brother, whom some of you in a ghrazzu have slain, in the way to Kheybar." — " The Lord is my witness ! that I had no hand in it, for I was not among them." — " Yet thy blood shall be for 148 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. his blood, since thou art one of them." — "Nay, hear me, Moham med en-Nejiimy ! and I will tell thee the man's name,- — yea by Him which created us ! for the man is known to me who did it; and he is one under my hand. Spare now my life, and as the Lord liveth I will make satisfaction, in constraining him that is guilty, and in putting-to of mine own, to the estimation of the midda, 800 reals." Mohammed, whose effort is short, could no more find in his cooling mood to slaughter a man that had never displeased him. He said then, that he forgave him his life, upon this promise to send him the blood-money. So they made the covenant, and Mohammed let him go. — " That cursed Belluwy ! I never saw him more (quoth he), but now, — ha ! wheresoever I may meet with any of them, I will kill him." I dissuaded him — " But there is a wild-fire in my heart, which cannot be appeased till I be avenged for the death of my brother." — " Were it not better if you take any of their tribesmen, to bind him until the blood be redeemed ? " But Amm Mohammed could not hear this ; the (South) Arabian custom is not to hold men over to ransom : for either they kill their prisoner outright, or, giving him a girby with water and God's curse, they let him go from them. " Ruhh, they will say, depart thou enemy ! and perish, may it please God, in the khala." They think that a freeman is no chattel and cannot be made a booty. Women are not taken captive in the Arabian warfare, though many times a poor valiant man might come by a fair wife thus, without his spending for bride money. Mohammed answered, "But now I am rich — the Lord be praised therefore, what need have I of money? might I but quench this heart-burning!" — "Why not forgive it freely, that the God of Mercies may forgive thee thy offences." — "Sayest thou this ! — and sheykh Khalil I did a thing in my youth, for which my heart reproaches me ; but thou who seemest to be a man of (religious) learning declare unto me, whether I be guilty of that blood. — The Bashy Bazuk rode [from Medina] against the Ateyba, and I was in the expedition. We took at first much booty: then the Beduw, gathering from all sides [they have many horsemen], began to press upon us, and our troop [the soldiers ride but slowly upon Syrian hackneys] abandoned the cattle. The Aarab coming on and shooting in our backs, there fell always some among us ; but especially there was a marksman who infested us. He rode upon a mare, radif, and his fellow carried him out galloping on our flank and in advance : then that marksman alighted, behind some bush, and awaited the time to fire his shot. When he fired, the horse man, who had halted a little aloof, galloped to take him up: BASHY BAZUK EXPEDITIONS. 149 they galloped further, and the marksman loaded again. At every shot of his there went down horse or rider, and he killed my mare: then the aga bade his own slave take me up on his horse's croup. ' Thou 0 young man, said he, canst shoot, gallop forth with my lad and hide thee ; and when thou seest thy time, shoot that Ateyby, who will else be the death of us all' — ' Wellah Captain, I would not be left on my feet, the troop might pass from me.' — 'That shall not be, only do this which I bid thee.' " We hastened forward, said Mohammed, when those Beduins came by on the horse : we rode to some bushes, and there I dismounted and loaded carefully. The marksman rode beyond and went to shroud himself as before ; he alighted, and I was ready and shot at the instant. His companion who saw him wounded, galloped to take him up, and held him in his arms on the saddle, a little while; and then cast, him down, — he was dead ! and the Arabs left pursuing us." I asked, ' Where fore, if he doubted to kill an enemy in the field, had he taken service with the soldiery?' — "Ah ! it was for t6ma: I was yet young and ignorant." Amm Mohammed had the blood of another such man slaughter on his mind; but he spoke of it without discomfort. In a new raid he pursued a Beduwy lad who was flying on foot, to take his matchlock from him, — which might be worth twelve reals ; the weled, seeing himself overtaken by a horseman of the Dowla, fired back his gun from the hip, and the ball passed through the calf of Mohammed's leg, who 'answered the melaun, as he said, trang' ! — with a pistol shot : the young tribesman fell grovelling, beating his feet, and wallowed snatching the sand in dying throes. Mohammed's leg grew cold, and only then he felt himself to be wounded : he could not dismount, but called a friend to take up the Beduwy's gun for him. Mohammed's father (who was in the expedition) cut off his horseman's boot, which was full of blood, and bound up the hurt : and set him upon a provision camel and brought him home to Medina ; and his wound was whole in forty days. He showed me also that a bone had been shot away of his left wrist ; that was in after years. — Amm Mohammed" was coming up in a convoy of tradesmen from Medina, with ten camel-loads of clothing for Kheybar. As they journeyed, a strong ghrazzu of Harb met with them: then the passengers drove" their beasts at a trot, and they themselves hasting as they could on foot, with their guns, fired back against the enemies. They ran thus many miles in the burning sun, till their strength began to give out and their powder was almost 150 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. spent. The Beduw had by this taken the most of the trades men's, loaded camels. Mohammed had quitted his own and the camel of a companion, when a ball shattered the bone of his left forearm. " I saw him, he said, who shot it ! I fired at the melaun again, and my bullet broke all his hand." — The Aarab called now to the Nejumy (knowing him to be of their kin dred), " What ho ! Mohammed son of our sister ! return without fear, and take that which is thine of these camels." He answered them, "I have delivered mine already," and they, " Go in peace." — I asked " How, being a perfect marksman, he had not, in an hour, killed all the pursuers." — " But know, Khalil, that in this running and fighting we fire almost without taking sight." A market company of Heteym, which lately passed by Khey bar, carrying down samn and cheeses, were " taken " when they were not far from the gates of Medina ! So the Nejumy used to say, " Wellah we hardly reckon him a man, in this country, who has not been wounded ! " I wandered more than two years, in the Beduin marches, and had never mishap : and some of my rafiks have said, ' There was billah a good fortune with Khalil for the journey.' The Bashy Baziik was a rake-hell service, in which good fellows might enrich themselves for the time ; since vessels, money, weapons, stuff, and all was theirs, upon which they might first lay their hands in the nomad tents ; besides they had their part in the (government) booty of the Beduins' cattle. They were a crew, in those days, of reckless poor companions at Medina, that wore their white felt bonnets bounced down upon their jolly coxcombs as shub4b, or 'proper. tall young men,' who were the sword of the Dowla; and 'every one of them, said Amm Mohammed, you might know it by their name, Bashy Baz4k, was his own master.' Few of them knew other father or mother than their captain; they acknowledged none other authority over them. Mohammed told me for an example of their des perate manners, that one morning as they rode, in another foray, in the heat of the year, and his comrades [with the un- forbearing of townsmen] had drunk to the dregs all that remained in their girbies, they hastened to come to a weyrid. It was mid-afternoon when they arrived at the well and dis mounted, and the foremost ran with his cord and leathern bucket to draw water: but as the fellow, in this passion of thirst, took up the precious humour to his lips, " Curse thee ! cries another trooper, there is like to hell in my entrails, and drinkest thou all before me!" — He fired his pistol in the other's breast, and snatched the leather from the dying man : but as he MU ATT ERIN. 151 took it to his mouth the shot of another fiend-like trooper pre vented him, who seized upon the precious inheritance ; and he the third fell in like manner. And in their devilish impatience there fell among them, one after other, seven troopers, contend ing, as beasts without reason, to drink first of the bloody water. Then the captain drove all his men from the well, and made them stand in a row; and drew himself, and calling them to him one by one, he gave them to drink. When the troop returned to Medina no question was made of this hellish butchery. And why ? — "Were not these the Bashy Baziik? when one was dead (said Amm Mohammed), no man enquired for him ; and the most of them were strangers at Medina." — In all the Turkish-Arabic towns, there are certain spirits not framed to the moderation of the civil life, and they fall in each other's fellowship, to loose living and riot. In the lands of Christians such would be haunters of the licensed stews and taverns ; but in the Mohammedan world they must come to their drunkenness and harlotry as law-breakers. The muatterin at Damascus are not accounted public enemies, for honest citizens seldom suffer by misdoing of theirs ; only wayfarers beyond the gates by night must pass betwixt the clay walls of the orchards at their peril. The best are but city roysterers, and the worst are scourges — where the law is weak — for the backs of evil-doers. Muatterin hire themselves (it is some times for the good turn they would do their friends) to take up other men's desperate quarrels, and be their avengers for private wrongs. When muatterin meet with muatterin, there are swelling looks and injurious words, and many times brawls between them, in the daytime. In the first heats of summer, when the mishmish (apricots) are ripening [of the paradise of Damascus], those lawless men go out by night in bands, to disport them selves in the orchards : they will break over the clay walls, and pluck the pleasant fruit to their supper. In such places they solace themselves, in the company of abandoned women, drink ing the fiery alcohol (which is distilled from the lees of the grapes in the Christians' and Jews' houses). They are evil- livers, but Arabs, with a human grace in their unworthiness ; and if a stranger approach, whilst they are eating and drinking, they would bid him sit down and fear not to partake with them. — If muatters overhear muatters, insults will be bandied between them : and commonly they rise from the forbidden drink (with their quarter-staves), to go and set upon each other. — The battle of these ribalds is to win their adversaries' hareem. 152 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. In the hospitality of the Arabs is kinship and assurance, in "their insecure countries. This is the piety of the Arab life, this is the sanctity of the Arabian religion, where we may not look for other. — Returning one day, in Syria, from a journey, I enquired the way of a countryman in the road. It was noon : — the young man, who went by eating bread and cheese, paused and cut a piece of his girdle-cake, with a pleasant look, and pre sented it to the stranger: when I shook the head, he cut a rasher of cheese and put it silently to my mouth ; and only then he thought it a time to speak. — Also if a strange'r enter vine yard or orchard, he is a guest of that field ; and, in the summer months, the goodman, if he be there, will bring some of his fruits to refresh him. There is a merry tale, which is often told in the mountains of Antilibanus, where are many bears, — and I have hunted them at Helbon [whose wine is mentioned in Ezekiel, in the traffic of Damascus]. — The Syrian villagers sleep out in their orchards to keep night watch in the warmer months. A husbandman hear ing a bear rout in the dark, lifted himself hastily into the boughs . of the next tree, which was an almond. The sweet-toothed brute came and climbed into that tree where the trembling man sat ; and put out his paw to gather the delicate green nuts to his mouth. When the Arab saw this bear would become his guest, he cried before his thought, kul ! 'Eat, and welcome!' The bear, that had not perceived him, hearing man's voice, gave back ; the branch snapt under his weight ! — the brute tumbled on his head, and broke his neck bone. After an hour or two the goodman, who saw this bear lie still as stone, in the starlight ! took heart to come down : and finding the brute dead, he cut his throat and plucked the fell over his ears ; which on the morrow he sold to the cobbler for sole-leather [conf. Ezek. xvi. 10], they eat not the flesh. — Wellah, it fell out for the poor man according to the true proverb, which saith, ' spare to speak, spare to speed!' I have known children scold a bear and beat him too as a thief, and drive him with stones from their father's orchard. But a wounded bear is perilous, and (in age) when having lost their teeth, they become flesh-eaters. Who has not noted the human manners in this breechless, hand- footed, and saturnine creature ! A she-bear, with her cub, came down one winter in the deep snow, to the village Bluddn in the same mountains. The people pursued them with their dogs, and caught the young one ; the mother brute, they told me, hurled back stones against them ! I have heard many a strange tale in Damascus of the muatters of former days, and even in our fathers' lifetime, AMM MOHAMMED A COMPANION OF ROBBERS. 153 when — besides certain Franciscan monks suffered to sojourn there — no Frenjy, not disguised, ever came thither. The Nasara might have no redress, even the Resident for the Sultan had little or no authority over them ; and the correction of in tolerable wrongs was by the violent hands of the muatterin. — Yet how sober, and peaceably full of their (not excessive) homely toil, is the life of such a Mohammedan city of 130,000 souls ! And doubtless we exceed them in passionate disorders, as much as we excel them in arts and learning, and are subject to better laws and to the Christian religion. — Mohammed was one of the ruffling young ignorants of Medina, and partaker in their criminal excesses. A companion of his said to him upon a time, " We are nineteen good fel lows going out to waylay the cursed Moghrareba, and I am pledged to bring thee the twentieth, for thou art a strong one and canst shoot." — The wayworn pilgrims marching in Arabia are not in any assurance without the confines of Mecca ! the Ishmaelite nomads doubt not to rob the Haj travelling from most far countries to fulfil the precept of their common religion. Those young evil-doers of Medina stole forth unknown to their parents, one by one, with their arms, at evening. From the meeting place they went on to lurk by the Derb el-Haj, in Wady el-Humth, at a short journey from Medina. The caravan of pilgrim Moors pass through the Hejaz armed, as in a hostile country; for they only deny toll to the Beduw. — Of late years the valorous Moors have burned two Harb villages, be twixt the Harameyn, whose people had robbed them. — Those pilgrims of the white burnus rode by: in the hindward came a few stragglers. Upon these the young men ran down, with the whooping of Arabs. The Moors, who were but three men, turned and fired their guns, and wounded one of them : then the young men betook themselves to the moun tain side. — They fired down, and there fell one of the three Moghrebies ; and his companions fled. The young adventurers pursued them, and took one of them ; but the other, forsaking his camel, outwent them upon his feet. Now they had the three Moghreby men's camels; and braving about their captive, they cried, "This is the melaun that wounded our fellow; by the life of Ullah he shall be dead." Then the poor Moghreby gazing in Mohammed's honest face, cast his arms about his neck, saying, "0 sir, I beseech thee, save my life, and defend me from these." Mohammed: "Ay, fellows, I say, the slain Moor is full satisfaction for this one 154 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. of ours wounded;" — but they not consenting, he said to them, "I have granted him protection: — hie! Moghreby, — and I go, now, to see this man safe till he may come to his people." — When they were again in sight of the caravan the Moor said to him, " Come no further, lest some evil betide thee amongst them : now bless thee Ullah and His Apostle." Mo hammed : " How ! I have saved thee from my fellows, and canst thou not quit me from thine ?" — "Go, good sir; I may very well deliver thee from my friends, but not from the fellowship of him that is slain." When Mohammed returned to his companions they had divided the booty ! and they all denied him his part, crying out upon him, " But thou wast against us ! and thou hast taken away our revenge." — "Well, part it among ye, and the Lord be judge between us!" — Mohammed had not slipped his match lock from the leathern case. Amm Mohammed said, there soon fell a judgment upon those loose companions: for seven of them died in the pesti lence which the returning Haj brought (two months later) from Mecca. The rest perished in their young age, and they all came to evil ending ; and to-day. there remained not one of them. — Such accidents, falling in with the people's super stition, we hear told in testimony of the divine authority of every religion ! The Moors who journey by land from the furthest Occident are eleven months on their religious voyage to Mecca! and only in certain years [that was when France had disarmed the Algerians] have they paid any scot to the malignant Arabians. El-Auf (a great clan of Harb) are bitterly accused of outrages made upon the pilgrims marching betwixt the Harameyn, al though their sheykhs receive a yearly surra from the govern ment caravans of Syria and Egypt. The Beduin inhabitants of that flaming wilderness are more miserable than beggars. Of the Aufy sub-tribe Lahabba it is said, that such is their cursed calling by inheritance !- — to rob the Haj caravans. ' They have no camels, for in that fearful country they could not maintain them : their booths are in the mountains, where they possess only a few goats. Every year they descend at the Haj season ; and they hope, of that they may lay their hands on in those few days, to find themselves and their inhuman households till the time be come about again. Lahabbies taken in the manner excuse themselves, saying, 'they fear Ullah, that the trade is come down to them from their fathers: and how else might they live in this dira, wherein the Lord hath cast them? — they and their wives and little ones! They do but TALES OF THE LAHABBA ROBBERS. 1 55 take somewhat from the pilgrims for their necessity, and, wellah it is an alms.' These robbers have been many times denounced, by the Turkish officers, to the Bab el- Aly [the high ingate — after the Oriental speech — to the Sultan's government, which we call the Porte, and ridiculously the Sublime Porte] ; but the answer is always one, — 'That although the detriment be such as they have set forth, yet are those offenders neighbours of the Rasiil, and the sword ought not to be drawn between Moslemin, within hearing of the Neby.' The Haj tales of the Lahabba are as many as of the Yahiid Kheybar. This is of Abdullah the Siruan : — " There was an old Lahabby, not less praised for his prudence than for his legerdemain ; and there was a young man that would be the best among them : — ' What, said he, is this gaffer good for anymore?' The greybeard answered, 'I choose thee, young man, for my rafik, to rob at the next Haj ; it shall be seen then whether of us twain is the better man.' — At length the time was come : and the Haj lay encamped at evening before them. ' Partner (quoth the old man), their watch is yet awake; abide we till midnight, when this people will be in their first sleep.' " — They went down, and the elder bade the young man choose a tent. And there the grejbeard entering boldly, brought out what he would, and laid it on the younger man's shoulders, and bade him come again quickly. — Then the grey beard whispered, 'Whether of us twain is the better man?' — ' I durst say I am as good as thou, Partner.' The old shrew whispered, ' Well, go we to supper ; here is rice in the hajjies' pot ; put forth thy hand, bismillah ! ' When they had eaten enough, the grey-beard rouned to him, ' Now tell me whether of us twain is the better man.' — ' In all this I doubt not but I am as good as thou, Partner.' Then the old man caught up the pan, and let it fall on a stone ! — and with the clangour those weary sleepers — the pilgrims lie down mistrusting all things, with their weapons under their heads — awakened in dread. The young robber was nimble ; but some of their outstretched hands have caught him in the dark, and he was pulled down among them. — That old fox lay abroad on his breast (as the Beduins slumber) and breathed deep in the moonlight ! ' It was some poor old man, they said, as they saw him, — one of the wretched people of this country, who come begging in the Haj menzil to eat some poor morsel among them.' As for that younger thief, they beat him well, and bound him with their girdles to the tent-pole, till morning. When the old man 156 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. saw that the pilgrims slumbered again, he came and loosed his partner's bonds, and whispered, ' Tell me, young man, which is the better of us twain ?' The other answered (so soon as they were without) 'Ay, wellah, my father, thou art the better man.' " — Abdullah ended with a proverb, which might be said in English, ' The young may the old outrun but not outread.' Amm Mohammed laughed and said : " But I could tell you that the hajjaj be not all such novices. There was a Moghreby too hard for them ; wellah in his first coming down he out witted the Beduw. One night, when his companions were sleeping, he felt a draught of air ; and the tent skirt was lifted beside him. He opened his eyes, and saw a man put forth some of their baggage ; and the thief whispered to another with out, ' Hist ! away with this, and come quickly, and I shall have more ready' — That Moghreby felt to his knife, and lay still and drew the long breaths of a sleeper : but when he saw him stoop he rose behind the thief and fetched him a mortal stroke ! The Moor hacked the robber in pieces ; and put the limbs and his head in a sack, and stuffed an old camel-cloth upon them. When the other returned the Moghreby spoke under his breath, 'Have a care, partner, for this sack is heavy.' The Beduwy staggered forth, till he could cast his load in a safe place ; and seeing the daylight almost come he durst return no more. — He said to himself, ' but I marvel what my fellow has put in this last sack;' and loosing the cords, he found the bloody poll of his rafik in the sack's mouth ! " In this yearly torrent, of superstitious human life setting into the Hejaz there are some imperfect Moslems ; certain up- landish Turkomans are not circumcised ! A poor man of their nation served Amm Mohammed's father in Medina. His wife, that had borne him two children in the Holy City, as one day he changed his apparel, was aware of the reproach. She cried, 'Harrow, and wealaway ! ' and ran to tell his master, the old Nejumy: who sent for his offending servant, and bade one go call a barber. And " Taal yd melaun, come hither thou cursed one (cries the stern soldier), Oh ! what is this that I hear of thee ?" And he of the razors arriving the old Nejumy bade him do his office, in God's Holy Name. When I smiled at his tale, Mohammed said, "Thou wouldst have laughed, hadst thou been there ! for my father was a right merry man." Dakhil, the messenger, might ere this have returned again from Medina. Because he came not yet, the Siruan and Amm Mohammed thought it foreboded me no good; and I remem bered the fanatical words of the Turkish Emir of the Haj at A CHRISTIAN IN MEDINA, MARTYR. 157 el-Hejr. My life was now in the power of such men, in parts where the hap of an European traveller were for ever beyond the enquiry of his friends. Amm Mohammed told me my matter would be examined by the Pasha in council, which sits twice in the week ; and that men of years and grave citizens would be my judges. I heard a strange tale from the Nejumy and from Aman, that last year a Christian came to Medina ! and when the people asked him, " Who art thou, Sir ? " he responded " I am a Nasrany." — "And what dost thou then in the (illustrious) Medina ? is not this the City of the Apostle ?" — " How ! say ye that the town is el-Medina ? — -I would go to Kheybar ; and is not this Kheybar?" — "Oho! he would to Kheybar! — Kheybar where? — where, 0 man, is Kheybar? UsHHUD, testify! and say thou, Ullah the only God, and His messenger is Moham med, or this people will kill thee." — " I may not say as ye say, because I am a Nasrany." — " Let the man alone now, cried some, and bring him without violence before the Pasha ; for all should be done according to law, and not tumultuously, although he have deserved to die." The disciple of Jesu was cast into prison, in Mohammed's City; but the "Sheykh of the religion" went to the Pasha, and pleaded for the life of the Messihi stranger, and bade the governor remember Jidda and Damascus ! " If aught befall this man, said he, a firman might be sent down from Stambul to bring us all to the answer, for our heads." The Pasha was likeminded, and commanded that an escort of soldiers should be ready, to convey the Nasrany to the port-town, Yanba ; which is six marches from Medina. The Christian was brought through the City again, and passed the gates of Medina with his guard. But when first they were come to a desert place, one of the rake-hell askars said to him, " Ushhud ! Nasrany hound ! confess the faith of Islam, thou shalt not dare to say nay; say it cursed one, or else wellahi ! " and the fellow levelled his musket. The Christian answered them, "Ye have heard the Pasha's injunctions, my friends, to convey me peaceably to Yanba." — "Die then kafir! — to whom should I obey? know, that in killing thee I shall obey my Lord: Ushhud! and I will not take thy life." — "Ye have a religion, so have I, ye serve God, and I serve Him ; live in your religion, and let me live in mine." — "And what should that be? Yahudy! Thou hast no religion!" "Friends (said the Christian), let us be going ; and speak to this man that he leave his railing words." But he : "Not a footstep! pronounce, 0 hound, the testimony of the Moslemin! or else this is thy 158 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. dying place, thou misbelieving Nasrany;" and the soldier set his musket to the Christian's breast. "Ushhud (he yells) Yahudy! kelb! kafir! Sheytan!" — and the stranger not answer ing, he fired and killed him [>}< 1877]. — When the Pasha heard this tiding, he sent the soldier to prison ; and there, said Aman and Amm Mohammed, the askar yet lies, awaiting the response to the letter which the Pasha had written to Stambul ; whether it were the Sultan's pleasure to release him, or else to put him to death. " And this, said they, holds Abdullah's hand, and makes him dread : and they will not dare do anything against thee, fearing to bring themselves in question for thy life." — But who was the Christian Martyr? That Child of Light, in comparison with their darkness, was swarthy, " a black man, they said, but not abd, a negro :" — we have seen that Sicilian seamen and Neapolitan coral fishers may be mistaken on the Moorish coast for black men. -[Vol. I. p. 127]. Mohammed told me that once he met with an alien at Medina, who, when he asked him 'What man art thou?' answered 'A Nasrany.' — 'Then tell no more so and take better' heed to thyself; I will not betray thee, and now the Lord be with thee.' " For what had I to do with his being a Nas rany? is it not betwixt a man and his God what he is.?" 'Another time Mohammed had seen [one calling himself] a Christian rdhab or friar feasted up and down the Apostle's city, in his monk's frock. The rahab told them, he was come down from Jerusalem, to pray at the sepulchre of Neby Mo hammed ! "I have heard, the Nejumy added, that our Lord Mohammed, finding certain r4habs dwelling in the desert, in continual fasting and prayers and in chanting the Word of God, left a commandment, that no man should molest them." Amm Mohammed often spoke, with a joyous liberality, to the village fanatics of their prophet's dealing thus with the rahabs: his humanity would that we were not inhumanly divided, and he found in this where our religions had kissed each other. "But tell me, sheykh Khalil, were I in your beled, and I said, 'I am a Moslem,' would they strip me and beat me, and perhaps put me to death ? But what and if I changed my religion, and became a Nasrany?" Mohammed said now, 'He must learn the English tongue whilst Khalil stayed with him, for who can foresee the years to come, this world is so tickle, and it might one day serve him.' I told him that the Nasara would make much of him for his strength and good shooting, his strenuous mind, his mirth and manly sincerity. " But sheykh Khalil, tell me, when I come to your bilad will "JESUS FROM THE SPIRIT OF ULLAH." 159 they give me a maiden to wife ?" He marvelled to hear that the Arabic tongue was unknown (to the people) in our distant countries. Ahmed enquired, as we were sitting at coffee in his suffa, "Are there Yahiid among you ? And speak they evil of your prophet?" — "I have heard they say that the Messih (here Ah med answered 'Upon whom be peace') was bom of fornica tion ! yet so they break not the laws we suffer them to dwell among us." — " Oh ! oh ! (Ahmed gazed ghastly, his hands moved, as if they felt for his sword) tell me, they say it not openly ! our religion commands to slay him outright, who blasphemeth thus, or the Lord would be wroth with us." Ahmed was a sickly man of a good nature, crossed in many things, and some part of his heart was full of anger. When I came in he ever welcomed me and said mildly, giving me the cushion, ' koowy, lean on it and be easy;' and if I sat silent, he would add, iherrij, speak to us, sheykh Khalil' He was both liberal and fanatic ; and though he must spell as he read, he affected some erudition in human and divine learning: it is that unwritten life-wisdom of the coffee-hearths which every day enters into the large ears of the Arabs. "Though the Nasara, he said, do not pray as we, yet is their religion a wor shipping of Ullah. There was not one prophet only in the world, but a multitude, — some say three hundred ; and as many prophets as there were in old time, so many be the ways unto Ullah. We are the Moslemin ; but let us not be hard with men of another religion more than God, for even of the Nasara there be some just men and perfect in their belief, which was taught to them by the holy prophet Aysa." But another day, when he had found the places in the koran, Ahmed questioned me maliciously, "Who, he said, was Aysa's father?" I answered, "Sayest thou, the father of the Messih ? this is, as doctors write, a mystery which no tongue can unfold : which is to say he had none in our common under standing, except ye would say Ullah, that is the author of all being, or this which you pronounce yourselves, Aysa from the spirit of Ullah." — Mohammed made me a sign with the eyes that I should say no further, dreading some sudden excan- descence in his brother ; since in their gross hearing I had ut tered blasphemy. When to his other saws I responded in their manner seelimt, 'I grant it you;' "Eigh! I thought (Ahmed answered) that Khalil had said islimt, I become a Moslem, and I would God it were so. Eigh ! Khalil, why is there any difference betwixt us ? and for this thy life is in danger daily, here 160 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. and everywhere ? — but then would we send thee whithersoever thou wouldest go, in peace ; we will also accompany thee to el-Medina, to visit the sepulchre of the apostle of Ullah." — Another time he said, ' that when a man of perfect righteous life, praying in the Medina Haram, is come to the place in his devotion, where the Moslems reverently salute the sepulchre saying, Peace be with thee, 0 thou Messenger of Ullah, the Nel>y has been heard to respond out of his tomb, Upon te be peace'! Aman told me of a yearly miracle in the cave at Bedr Honeyn, where lie buried the " martyrs" that fell in the Neby's first battle with the (unbelieving) citizens of Mecca. "On a certain day, when the people go thither on pilgrimage, they hear as it were a blissful murmur within of the martyrs' voices. And they only may enter in who have preserved their lives pure from grievous crimes : but the polluted, and wrong doers, he whispered, such as this blackhearted Abdullah es- Siruan who afflicts you here ! — be not able to pass ; for the passage straitens before them, and in the midst they stick fast ; neither may they hear the voices of those blessed ones." — Aman musing, as many poor religious men among them, with a per fect natural conscience, deplored the criminal corruption which is now in all the Sultan's service. An hundred times such humble faithful servants of the Dowla have said and sighed in my hearing, "Alas ! the Sooltan knows not that they rob him : his officers abuse their trust, and because it comes not to his ear there is no redress." The delay of Abdullah's messenger to Medina, was a cloud big with discomfort to me in this darkness of Kheybar. One morning I said to Amm Mohammed at our well-labour, " What shall I do if ill news arrive to-day ? Though you put this sword in my hands, I could not fight against three hundred." — " Sit we down, said the good man, let us consider, Khalil : and now thou hast said a word, so truly, it has made my heart ache, and I cannot labour more ; h'yak, let us home to the house," — though half an hour was not yet spent. — He was very silent, when we sat again in his suffa : and " Look, he said, Khalil, if there come an evil tiding from the Pasha, I will redeem thee from Abdullah — at a price, wellah as a man buys a slave ; it shall be with my mare, she is worth sixty reals, and Abdullah covets her. He is a melaun, a very cursed one, Khalil ; — and then I will mount thee with some Beduins, men of my trust, and let thee go."—" I like not the felon looks of Abdullah."— "I will go and sound him to-day; I shall know his mind, for he will "THE ENGLEYS OF THE SULTAN'S ALLEGIANCE." 1 6 1 not hide anything from me. And Khalil, if I see the danger instant I will steal thee away, and put thee in a covert place of the Harra, where none may find thee ; and leave with thee a girby and dates, that thou mayest be there some days in security, till news be come from Medina, and I can send for thee, or else I may come to thee myself." The day passed heavily : after supper the good man rose, and taking his sword and his mantle, and leaving me in the upper chamber, he said he would go and 'feel the pulse of the melaun': he was abroad an hour. The strong man entered again with the resolute looks of his friendly worth: and sitting down as after a battle, he said, "Khalil, there is no present danger ; and Abdullah has spoken a good word for thee to-day, — ' Khalil, it seems, does not fear Ullah ; he mis doubts me, and yet I have said it already, — if the Pasha write to me to cut off Khalil's head, that I will mount him upon a thelul and let him go ; and we will set our seals to paper, and I will take witness of all the people of Kheybar, — to what? that Khalil broke out of the prison and escaped. — Tell Khalil I have not forgotten es-Sham and Jidda, and that I am not afraid of a Pasha, who as he came in yesterday may be recalled to-morrow, but of Stambul, and wellah for my own life.' " The post arrived in the night. Mohammed heard of it, and went over privily to Dakhil's house to enquire the news. " There is only this, said the messenger, that the Pasha sends now for his books." On the morrow I was summoned to Abdullah, who bade sheykh .Salih read me the Medina governor's letter, where only was written shortly, " Send all the stranger's books, and the paper which he brought with him from Ibn Rashid ; you are to send the cow also." The Siruan bade me go with his hostess to a closet where my bags lay, and bring out the books and papers, and leave not one remaining. This I did, only asking him to spare my loose papers, since the Pasha had not expressly demanded them, — but he would not. I said, " I will also write to the Pasha ; and here is my English passport which I will send with the rest." "No!" he cried, to my astonish ment, with a voice of savage rage ; and 'for another word he would break his chibuk over my head', he cursed me, and cursed "the Engleys, and the father of the Engleys". — The villain would have struck me, but he feared the Nejumy and Dakhil, who were present. "Ha, it is thus, I exclaimed, that thou playest with my life!" Then an hideous tempest burst from the slave's black mouth ; " This Nasrany ! he yelled, who lives to-day only by my benefit, will chop words with me ; Oh D. t. ii. 11 1 62 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. wherefore with my pistol, wherefore, I say, did I not blow out his brains at the first ? — wellah as ever I saw thee ! " Amm Mohammed as we came home said," Abdullah is a melaun indeed, and, but we had been there, thou hadst not escaped him to-day." — How much more brutish I thought in my heart had been the abandonment of the Levantine con sulate ! that, with a light heart, had betrayed my life to so many cruel deaths ! Even Amm Mohammed heard me with impatience, when I said to him that we were not subject to the Sultan.— -The Sultan, who is Khdlif (calif), successor to the apostle of Ullah, is the only lawful lord, they think, of the whole world ; and all who yield him no obedience are dsyin, revolted peoples and rebels. The good man was sorry to hear words savouring, it seemed to him, of sedition, in the mouth of Khalil. He enquired, had we learned yet in our (outlying) countries to maintain bands of trained soldiery, such as are the askars of the Sooltan ? I answered, that our arts had armed and instructed the Ottoman service, and that without us they would be naked. " It is very well, he responded, that the Engleys, since they be not asyin, should labour for the Sooltan." When I named the countries of the West, he enquired if there were not Moslemin living in some of them. I told him, that long ago a rabble of Moghrebies had invaded and possessed themselves of the florid country of Andal4s. — Andalusia was a glorious province of Islam : the Arabian plant grew in the Titanic soil of Europe to more excellent temper and stature ; and there were many bulbitl voices among them, in that land of the setting sun, gladdened with the genial wine. Yet the Arabs decayed in the fruition of that golden soil, and the robust nephews of them whom their forefathers had dispos sessed, descending from the mountains, reconquered their own country. As I said this, " Wellah guwiyin ! then they must be a strong people, answered Amm Mohammed. Thou, Khalil, hast visited many lands; and wander where thou wilt, since it is thy list, only no more in the Peninsula of the Arabs (Jezirat el-Arab). Thou hast seen already that which may suffice thee ; and what a lawless waste land it is ! and perilous even for us who were born there ; and what is this people's ignorance and their intolerance of every other religion. Where wilt thou be when God have delivered thee out of these troubles ? that if ever I come into those parts I might seek thee. Tell me where to send my letter, if ever I would write to thee ; and if I inscribe it Sheykh Khalil, Beled el-Engleys, will that find thee?" LETTER TO THE PASHA OF MEDINA. 1 63 " Here is paper, a reed, and ink : Abdullah would not have thee write to the Pasha, but write thou, and I will send the letter by Dakhil who will not deny me, and he returns to morrow. See in writing to the Pasha that thou lift him up with many high-sounding praises." — " I shall write but plainly, after my conscience." — "Then thou art mejniin, and that con science is not good, which makes thee afraid to help thyself in a danger." — "Tell me, is the Pasha a young man of sudden counsels, or a spent old magistrate of Stambiil ?" — " He is a grey-beard of equitable mind, a reformer of the official service, and for such he is unwelcome to the ill-deserving. Yet I would have thee praise him, for thus must we do to obtain anything ; the more is the pity." I wrote with my pencil in English, — - for Mohammed told me there are interpreters at Medina. I related my coming down with the Haj, from Syria, to visit Medain Salih ; and, that I had since lived with the Beduw, till I went, after a year, to Hayil ; from whence Ibn Rashid, at my request, had sent me hither. I complained to the Pasha-governor of this wrongful detention at Kheybar, in spite of my passport from a Waly of Syria; also certain Beduins of the Dowla coming in, who knew me, had witnessed to the truth of all that I said. I demanded therefore that I might proceed upon my journey and be sent forward with sure persons. I was sitting in the soldiers' kahwa, when Abdullah wrote his new letter to the Pasha, "My humble duty to your lord ship : I send now the stranger's books and papers. I did send the cow to your lordship by some Aarab going down to Medina ; but the cow broke from them, and ran back to Khey bar : she is now sick, and therefore I may not yet send her." — " Hast thou written all this, sheykh Salih ? — he will not be much longer, please Ullah, Bashat el-Medina ; for they say another is coming." No man hearing his fable could forbear laughing; only the Siruan looked sadly upon it, for the cow yielded him every day a bowlful of milk, in this low time at Kheybar. Abdullah set his seal to the letters, and delivered them to Dakhil, who departed before noon. Amm Mohammed, as he was going, put a piece of silver (from me) in Dakhil's hand, and cast my letter, with my British passport, into the worthy man's budget, upon his back, who feigned thus that he did not see it: the manly villager was not loath to aid a stranger (and a public guest,) whom he saw oppressed in his village by the criminal tyranny of Abdullah. His inditing the letter to Medina had unsettled Abdullah's brains, so that he fell again into his fever : " Help me quickly ! he cries, where is thy book, sheykh Salih; and you Beduins 1 64 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. sitting here, have ye not some good remedies in the desert ?" Salih pored over his wise book, till he found him a new caudle and enchantment. — Another time I saw Salih busy to cure a mangy thelul; he sat with a bowl of water before him, and mumbling thereover he spat in it, and mumbled solemnly and spat many times ; and after a half hour of this work the water was taken to the sick beast to drink.— Spitting (a despiteful civil defilement) we have seen to be some great matter in their medicine. — Is it, that they spit thus against the malicious jan? Parents bid their young children spit upon them: an Arabian father will often softly say to the infant son in his arms, " Spit upon baliu ! spit, my darling." CHAPTEE VII. GALLA-LAND. MEDINA LORE. The Abyssinian Empire. Galla-land. Perpetual warfare of (heathen) Gallas and (Christian) Abyssinians. A renegade Frank or Traveller at Mecca and Medina. Subia .drink. A hospitable widow (at Tayif). "The Nasara are an offspring of the Sea." Wady Bishy. Muharram's death. The Nasrany accused. Sale of Muharram's goods. Aly, the (deadly) enemy of the Nasrany. The Ferrd. El-Audzim. Tlieglf. The Nejiimy in Hdyil. A Boman invasion of ancient Arabia. Aelius Gallus sent by Augustus, with an army, to rob the riches of A. Felix. Season of the Haj. Alarms. Tidings from the War. Palm plait. Quern stones wrought by the Arabs. New alarms. Antique building on the Harra. Yanba. The Kheybar valleys. Harrats of Medina. The Hdllial. The H&rda. Clay summer-houses of W. Aly Beduins. The Kheyabara abstain from certain meats. Another Ageyly's death. — Was his grave 'violated by the witches'? Tales of thejdn. A man wedded with a jin wife at Medina. Many night hours when we could not sleep, I spent in discoursing with my sick Galla comrade, the poor friendly- minded Aman. When I enquired of the great land of the Gallas, "El-Hdbash, quoth he, is the greatest empire of the world; for who is there a Sooltan to be compared with the Sooltan of el-Habash ! " — " Well, wre found but a little king, on this side, when the Engleys took his beggarly town, Mdgdala." — Aman bethought him, that in his childhood when he was brought down with the slave drove they had gone by this Magdala. ' That king, he said, could be no more than a governor or pasha, for the great Sooltan, whose capital is at the distance of a year's journey, where he inhabits a palace of ivory. The governors and lieutenants of his many provinces gather an imperial tribute, — that is at no certain time; but as it were once in three or four years.' This fable is as much an article of faith with all the Gallas, as the legend which underlies our most beliefs ; and may rise in their half-rational conscience of a sort of inarticulate argu ment: — 'Every soil is subject to rulers, there is therefore a Ruler of Galla-land, — Galla-land the greatest country in all 166 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. the world ; but the Sultan of the greatest land is the greatest Sultan : also a Sultan inhabits richly, therefore that greatest Sultan inhabits the riches of the (African) world, and his palace is all of ivory!' Aman said, 'The country is not settled in vil lages ; but every man's house is a round dwelling of sticks and stubble, large and well framed, in the midst of his ground, which he hastaken up of the hill lands about him. Such faggot- work may stand many years [; but is continually in danger to be consumed by fire, in a moment]. They break and sow as much soil as they please ; and their grain is not measured for the abundance. They have great wealth of kine, so that he is called a poor man whose stock is only two or three hundred. Their oxen are big-bodied, and have great horns: the Gallas milk only so many of their cattle as may suffice them for drinking and for butter; they drink beer also, which they make of their plenty of corn. Though it be a high and hilly land, a loin-cloth [as anciently in the Egyptian and Ethiopian countries] is their only garment ; but such is the equal « temper of the air that they need none other. The hot summer never grieves them ; in the winter they feel no more than a whole some freshness. In their country are lions, but Ullah's mercy has slaked the raging of those terrible wild beasts ; for the lions sicken every other day with fever, and else they would destroy the world ! The lions slaughter many of their cattle ; but to man kind they do no hurt or rarely. A man seeing a lion in the path should hold his way evenly without faintness of heart, and so pass by him ; not turning his eyes to watch the lion, for that would waken his anger. There are elephants and giraffes ; " their horses are of great stature.'— I have heard from the slave drivers that a horse may be purchased in the Galla country for (the value of) a real ! 'In Galla-land there is no use of money; the people, he said, have no need to buy anything : they receive foreign trifles from the slave dealers, as beads and the little round in-folding tin mirrors. Such are chiefly the wares which the drivers bring with them, — besides salt, which only fails them in that largess of heaven which is in their country. A brick of salt, the load of a light porter, is the price of a slave among them. That salt is dug at Suakim (by the Red Sea, nearly in face of Jidda), six months distant. The Gallas are hospitable to stran gers, who may pass, where they will, through their country. When there is warfare between neighbour tribes, the stranger is safe in what district he is; but if he would pass beyond he must cross the infested border, at his peril, to another tribe ; and he will again be in surety among them. The Galla JIDDA THE STAPLE OF AFRICAN SLAVERY. 167 country is very open and peaceable ; and at what cottage the stranger may alight he is received to their plenteous hospi tality. They ask him whether he would drink of their ale or of their milk ? Some beast is slaughtered, and they will give him the flesh, which he can cook for himself [since the Gallas are raw-flesh eaters]. ' They have wild coffee trees in their country, great as oaks ; and that coffee is the best : the bean is very large. They take up the fallen berries from the ground, and roast them with samn. Coffee is but for the elders' drinking, and that, sel dom: they think it becomes not their young men to use the .. pithless caudle drink. The women make butter, rocking theyVr milk in the shells of great gourds : they store all their drink in such vessels. Grain-gold may be seen in the sand of the torrents ; but there are none who gather it. Among them [as in Arabia] is a smiths' caste ; the Galla people mingle not with them in wedlock. The smiths receive payment for their labour in cattle.' I did not ascertain from Aman what is their religion : 'he could not tell ; they pray, he said, and he thought that they turn themselves toward Mecca.' He could not re member that they had any books among them. Aman had been stolen, one afternoon as he kept his father's neat, by men from a neighbour tribe. The raiders went the same night to lodge in a cottage, where lived a widow woman. When the good woman had asked the captive boy of his parent age, she said to the guests, that the child's kindred were her - acquaintance, and she would redeem him with an hundred oxen ; but they would not. A few days later he was sold to the slave dealer: and began to journey in the drove of boys and girls, to be sold far off in a strange land. These children with the captive young men and maidens march six months, barefoot, to the Red Sea: the distance may be 1200 miles. Every night they come to a station of the slave-drivers, where they sup of flesh meat and the country beer. Besides the aching weariness of that immense foot-journey, they had not been mishandled. ' Of what nation were the slave drivers ? ' — this he could not answer: they were white men, and in his opinion Mos lemin; but not Arabians, since they were not at home at Jidda, which was then, and is now, the staple town of African slavery, for the Turkish Empire : — Jidda where are Frankish consuls! But you shall find these worthies, in the pallid soli tude of their palaces, affecting (great Heaven !) the simplicity of new-born babes, — they will tell you, they are not aware of it ! But "I say again, in your ingenuous ears, Jidda is the staple 1 68 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. town of the Turkish slavery, OR ALL the MoSLEMiN ARE LIARS. — At length they came down to the flood of the Nile, which lay in a great deep of the mountains, and were ferried over upon a float of reeds and blown goat-skins. Their journey, he said, is so long because of the hollowness of the country. For they often pass valley deeps, where, from one brow, the other seems not very far off; yet in descending and ascending they march a day or two to come thither. Their aged men in Galla-land use to say, that 'the Nile comes streaming to them in deep crooked valleys, from bare and unknown country many months distant.' "Aman, when I am free, go we to Galla-land! it will not be there as here, where for one cow we would give our left hands ! " The poor Galla had raised himself upon his elbow, with a melancholy distraction, and smiling he seemed to see his country again : he told me his own name in the Galla tongue, when he was a child, in his Galla home. I asked if no anger was left in his heart, against those who had stolen and sold his life to servitude in the ends of the earth. " Yet one thing, sheykh Khalil, has recompensed me, — that I remained not in ignorance with the heathen ! — Oh the wonderful provi dence of Ullah ! whereby I am come to ' this country of the Apostle, and to the knowledge of the religion ! Ah, mightest thou be partaker of the same! — yet I know that all is of the Lord's will, and this also shall be, in God's good time!" He told me that few Gallas ever return to their land when they have recovered their freedom. — " And wilt thou return, Aman ? " " Ah ! he said, my body is grown now to another temper of the air, and to another manner of living." There is continual warfare on the Galla border with the (hither) Abyssinians ; and therefore the Abyssinians suffer none to go over with their fire-arms to the Gallas. The Gallas are war like, and armed with spear and shield they run furiously upon their enemies in battle. — In the Gallas is a certain haughty gentleness of bearing, even in land of their bondage. Aman told me the tale of his life, which slave and freed-man he had passed in the Hejaz. He was sometime at Jidda, a custom-house watchman on board ships lying in the road ; the most are great barques carrying Bengal rice, with crews of that country under English captains. Aman spoke with good remem brance of the hearty hospitality of the " Nasara " seamen. One day, he watched upon a steamship newly arrived from India, and among her passengers was a "Nasrany", who "sat weeping, weep ing, and his friends could not appease him". Aman, when he saw A RENEGADE. 1 69 his time, enquired the cause ; and the stranger answered him afflictedly, " Eigh me ! I have asked of the Lord, that I might visit the City of His Holy House, and become a Moslem : is not Mecca, yonder ? Help me, thou good Moslem, that I may repair thither, and pray in the sacred places ! — but ah ! these detain me." When it was dark Aman hailed a wherry; and privily he sent this stranger to land, and charged the boatman for him. The Jidda waterman set his fare on shore; and saw him mounted upon an ass, for Mecca, — one of those which are driven at a run, in a night-time, the forty and five miles or more be twixt the port town and the Holy City. — When the new day was dawning, the "Frenjy" entered Mecca! Some citizens, the first he met, looking earnestly upon the stranger stayed to ask him, " Sir, what brings thee hither ? — being it seems a Nasrany ! " He answered them, "I was a Christian, and I have required it of the Lord, — that I might enter this Holy City and become a Moslem ! " Then they led him, with joy, to their houses, and circumcised the man : and that renegade or traveller was years after dwelling in Mecca and in Medina. — Aman thought his godfathers had made a collection for him ; and that he was be come a tradesman in the siik. — Who may interpret this and the like strange tales ? which we may often hear related among them! Aman drank the strong drink which was served out with his rations on shipboard ; and in his soldiering life he made (secretly) with his comrade, a spirituous water, letting boiled rice ferment : the name of it is subia, and in the Hejaz heat they think it very refreshing. But the unhappy man thus con tinually wounding his conscience, in the end had corroded his infirm health also, past remedy. — When first he received the long arrears of his pay, he went to the slave dealers in Jidda, and bought himself a maiden, of his own people, to wife, for fifty dollars. — They had but a daughter between them : and another time when he removed from Mecca to Jidda the child fell from the camel's back ; and of that hurt she died. Aman seemed not in the remembrance to feel a father's pity ! His wife wasted all that ever he brought home, and after that he put her away : then she gained her living as a seamstress, but died within a while; — -"the Lord, he said, have mercy upon her!" — When next he received his arrears, he remained one year idle at Mecca, drinking and smoking away his slender thrift in the coffee houses, until nothing was left ; and then he entered this Ageyl service. The best moments of his life, up and down in the Hejaz, I 70 TRA VELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. he had passed at Tayif. " Eigh ! how beautiful (he said) is et- Tayif!" He spoke with reverent affection of the Great-sherif [he died about this time], a prince of a nature which called forth the perfect good will of all who served him. Aman told with wonder of the sherif's garden [the only garden in Desert Arabia !] at Tayif, and of a lion there in a cage, that was meek only to the sherif. All the Great-sherifs' wives, he said, were Galla women ! He spoke also of a certain beneficent widow at Tayif, whose bountiful house stands by the wayside ; where she receives all passengers to the Arabian hospitality. Since his old " uncle " was dead, Aman had few more hopes- for this life, — he was now a broken man at the middle age ; and yet he hoped in his " brother". This was no brother by nature, but a negro once his fellow servant : and such are by the benign custom of the Arabian household accounted brethren. He heard that his negro brother, now a freed-man, was living at Jerusa lem ; and he had a mind to go up to Syria and seek him, if the Lord would enable him. Aman was dying of a slow consumption and a vesical malady, of the great African continent, little known in our European art of medicine : — and who is infirm at Khey bar, he is likely to die. This year there remained only millet for sick persons' diet : " The [foster] God forgive me, said poor Aman, that I said it is as wood to eat." With the pensive looks of them who see the pit before their feet, in the midst of their days, he sat silent, wrapt in his mantle, all day in the sun, and drank tobacco. — One's life is full of harms, who is a sickly man, and his fainting heart of impotent ire, which alienates, alas! even the short human kindness of the few friends about him. At night the poor Galla had no covering from the cold; then he rose every hour and blew the fire and drank tobacco. The wives of the Kheyabara were very charitable to the poor soldiery : it is a hospitable duty of the Arabian hareem towards all lone strangers among them. For who else should fill a man's girby at the spring, or grind his corn for him, and bring in firewood ? None offer them silver for this service, be cause it is of their hospitality. Only a good wife serving some welfaring stranger, as Ahmed, is requited once or twice in the year with a new gown-cloth and a real or two, which he may be willing to give her. Our neighbour's wife, a goodly young negress, served the sick Aman, only of her womanly pity, and she sat ofttimes to watch by him in our suffa. Then Jummdr (this was her name) gazed upon me with great startling eyes ; such a strangeness and terror seemed to her to be in this name 'Nasrany'! One day she said, at length, Andakom hareem, fi? 'be there women in your land?" — "Ullah! (yes forsooth)/ "THE NASARA ARE BORN OF THE SEA." 171 mothers, daughters and wives ; — am I not the son of a woman : or dost thou take me, silly woman, for weled eth-thib, a son of the wolf?" — " Yes, yes, I thought so : but wellah, Khalil, be the Nasara born as we ? ye rise not then — out of the sea !" — When I told this tale to Amm Mohammed he laughed at their fond ness. " So they would make thee, Khalil, another kind of God's creature, the sea's offspring ! this foolish people babble without understanding themselves when they say SEA : their 'sea' is they could not tell what kind of monster ! " And Jummar meeting us soon after in the street, must hang her bonny floe head to the loud mirth of Amm Mohammed: for whom I was hereafter weled eth-thib, and if I were any time unready at his dish, he would say pleasantly, "Khalil, thou art not then weled eth-thib!" A bystander said one day, as I was rolling up a flag of rock from our mine, Ma fi hail, 'there is no strength. Mohammed answered, " Nevertheless we have done somewhat, for there helped me the son of the wolf." " I am no wolfling, I ex claimed, but weyladak, a son of thine." '' Wellah ! answered the good man, surprised and smiling, thou art my son indeed." Kurds, Albanians, Gallas, Arabs, Negroes, Nasrany, we were many nations at Kheybar. One day a Beduwy oaf said at Abdullah's hearth, " It is wonderful to see so many diversities of mankind ! but what be the Nasara ? — for since they are not of Islam, they cannot be of the children of Adam." I answered, " There was a prophet named Noah, in whose time God drowned the world ; but Noah with his sons Sem, Ham, Yafet, and their wives, floated in a vessel : they are the fathers of mankind. The Kurdies, the Turks, the Engleys, are of Yafet ; you Arabs are children of Sem ; and you the Kheyabara, are of Ham, and this Bishy." — "Akhs ! (exclaimed the fellow) and thou speak such a word again — !" Abdullah: "Be not sorry, for I also (thy captain) am of Ham." The Bishy, a negro Ageyly, was called by the name of his country (in el-Ydmen) the W. Bishy [in the opinion of some Oriental scholars "the river Pison" of the Hebrew scriptures, v. Die alte Geographie Arabiens]. It is from thence that the sherif of Mecca draws the most of his (negro) band of soldiery, — called therefore el-Bishy, and they are such as the Ageyl. This Ydmany spoke nearly the Hejaz vulgar, in which is not a little base metal ; so that it sounds churlish-like in the dainty ears of the inhabitants of Nejd. We heard again that Muharram lay sick ; and said Abdullah, " Go to him, Khalil ; he was much helped by your former medicines." — I found Muharram bedrid, with a small quick pulse : it was the second day he had eaten nothing'; he had fever and 172 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. visceral pains, and would not spend for necessary things. I per suaded him to boil a chicken, and drink the broth with rice, if he could not eat; and gave him six grains of rhubarb with one of laudanum powder, and a little quinine, to be taken in the morning. The day after I was not called. I had been upon the Harra with Amm Mohammed, and was sitting at night in our chamber with Aman: we talked late, for, the winter chillness entering at our open casement, we could not soon sleep. About midnight we were startled by an untimely voice; one called loudly in the corner of our place, to other askars who lodged there, ' Abdullah bade them come to him.' All was horror at Kheybar, and I thought the post might be arrived from Medina, with an order for my execution. I spoke to Aman, who sat up blowing the embers, to lean out of the casement and enquire of them what it was. Aman looking out said, Ey khdbar, yd, 'Ho, there, what tidings?' They answered him somewhat, and said Aman, withdrawing his head, " Ullah yurhamhu, 'May the Lord have mercy upon him,' — they say Muharram is dead, and they are sent to provide for his burial, and for the custody of his goods." — " I have lately given him medicines ! and what if this graceless people now say, ' Khalil killed him'; if any of them come now, we will make fast the door, and do thou lend me thy musket." — " Khalil, said the infirm man sitting at the fire, trust in the Lord, and if thou have done no evil, fear not: what hast thou to do with this people ? they are hounds, apes, oxen, and their hareem are witches : but lie down again and sleep." I went in the morning to the soldiers' kahwa and found only the Siruan, who then arrived from Muharram's funeral. "What is this ? Khalil, cries he, Muharram is dead, and they say it was thy medicines : now, if thou know not the medicines, give no more to any man. — They say that you have killed him, and they tell me Muharram said this before he died. [I after wards ascertained from his comrades that the unhappy man had not spoken at all of my medicines.] Mohammed el-Kurdy says that after you had given him the medicine you rinsed your hands in warm water." I exclaimed in my haste, "Mo hammed lies ! " — a perilous word. In the time of my being in Syria, a substantial Christian was violently drawn by the Mo hammedan people of Tripoli, where he lived, before the kady, only for this word, uttered in the common hearing ; and he had but spoken it of his false Moslem servant, whose name was Mohammed. The magistrate sent him, in the packet boat, to be judged at Beyriit; but we heard that in his night passage, of MUHARRAM'S DEATH. 173 a few hours, the Christian had been secretly thrust overboard ! — Abdullah looked at me with eyes which said 'It is death to blaspheme the Ne"by ! ' — " Mohammed, I answered, the Kurdy, lies, for he was not present." — "I cannot tell, Khalil, Abdullah said at last with gloomy looks, the man is dead ; then give no more medicines to any creature ; " and the askars now enter ing, he said to them, " Khalil is an angry man, for this cause of Muharram ; — speak we of other matter." There came up Mohammed the Kurdy and the Egyptian: they had brought over the dead and buried man's goods, who yesterday at this time was living amongst them ! — his pallet, his clothes, his red cap, his water-skin. Abdullah sat down to the sale of them ; also, 2|- reals were said to be owing for the corpse- washing and burying. Abdullah enquired, 'What of Muharram's money? for all that he had must be sent to his heirs; and has he not a son in Albania?' The dead man's comrades swore stoutly, that they found not above ten reals in his girdle. Sir4r : "He had more than fifty! Muharram was rich." The like said others of them (Aman knew that he had as much as seventy reals). Abdullah: "Well, I will not enter into nice reckon ings ; — enough, if we cannot tell what has become of his money. — Who will buy this broidered coat," that is worth ten reals at Medina?" One cried " Half a real." Sir4r : " Three quarters!" A villager: "I will give two kriish more." Abdullah: "Then none of you shall have this ; I reserve it for his heirs. What comes next ? a pack of cards : — (and he said with his Turkish smiles) Muharram whilst he lived won the most of his money thus, mesquin ! — who will give anything ? — I think these were made in Khalil's country. The picture upon them [a river, a ¦ wood, and a German church] is what, Khalil ? Will none buy ? — then Khalil shall have them." — " I would not touch them." They were bidding for the sorry old gamester's wretched blanket and pallet, and contending for his stained linen when I left them. If a deceased person be named in the presence of pious Mohammedans they will respond, 'May the Lord have mercy upon him !' but meeting with Ahmed in the path by the burial ground, he said, " Muharram is gone, and he owed me two reals, may Ullah confound him!" — I was worn to an extremity; and now the malevolent barked against my life for the charity which I had shown to Muharram ! Every day Aly the ass brayed in the ass's ears of Abdullah, 'It was high time to put to death the adversary of the religion, also his delaying [to kill me] was sinful : ' and he alleged against me the death of Muharram. I saw the Siruan's irresolute black looks grow 174 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. daily more dangerous : " Ullah knows, I said to the Nejumy, what may be brooding in his black heart: a time may come when, the slave's head turning, he will fire his pistols on me." — "Thou earnest here as a friend of the Dowla, and what cause had this ass-in-office to meddle at all in thy matter, and to make thee this torment ? Wellah if he did me such wrong, since there is none other remedy in our country, I would kill him and escape to the Ferra" Amm Mohammed declared publicly ' His own trust in sheykh Khalil to be such that if I bade him drink even a thing venomous, he would drink it;' and the like said Aman, who did not cease to use my remedies. The better sort of Kheyabara now said, that 'Muharram was not dead of my medicines, but come to the end of his days, he departed by the decree of Ullah.' Amm Mohammed told me that the summer heat is very burdenous in the Ferra. The Harb villagers there are black skinned : they dwell in such clay houses as these at Kheybar : the place is built upon an height, in a palm oasis. Thither in his youth he went oftentimes on foot with his brethren, from Medina. The sun beating on that sandy soil is almost insufferable : upon a time, as they went together, he saw Ahmed totter ; and his brother fell down presently in a swoon. Mohammed drew him to the shadow of an acacia, and sprinkled a little water on his face from the girby; and he came to himself. El-Ferra was anciently, he said, of the Audzim, Heteym. — Surely that is a nation of antiquity in Arabia (where they are now found dwelling so widely dispersed): and they remain, in some seats, from times before the now inhabiting Arabs ! The last of the Audzim of the Ferra was one of the richest possessors of palms ; Amm Mohammed remembered him. That Heteymy ever an swered to the importunity of his Harb villagers, who would buy his land, "Shall I sell mine inheritance !" In the end — to live in more rest — the old fox said to them, "Ye see, I have an only daughter ! now who is he of your young men that would be the son-in-law of me el-Azimy 1 and he shall inherit my land." Of the nearly extinct Auazim there are yet three or four nomad households which encamp with the Beny Rashid [Heteym]. Some in scorn account the Auazim, Solubba. To this name Azim, plural Auazim, responds Hazim. Hazim is a fendy of Harb, but their foes revile them as Solubbies ; and according to the tradition they are intruded strangers. In this country, west wards, is a kindred of Jeheyna, el-Thegif, who are snibbed as Yahiid: — this may mean that they are of the pre-Islamite A DOW L AT EXPEDITION TO ER-RIATH. 175 Aarab. There is a doggerel rime at Medina, Ullah yulaan Thegif, kidddm teg4f, " God curse (those Jews) the Thegif afore thou stand still." It is said of a small jummaa among the W. Sleyman of Bishr, that they are Solubba ; but they intermarry with the rest. In the south there remain certain welfaring Heteym in the Tehama below Mecca. Amm Mohammed had not seen el-Ally or Teyma. The Arabs are great wanderers, but not out of the way (of their interest). Now that he was a rich-poor man, and at rest, he promised his heart to visit them, were it only to see their country. Mohammed had once ridden to Hayil, when he was sojourning at el-Hayat : he mounted with Beduins. The first day they made small account of him, a townling [and a smith], but his manly sufficiency was bye and bye better known to them. They alighted at one of the outlying hamlets of Sham mar; in which place were but two houses, and only two old men at home, who came forth to receive them. The Nejumy said to his host, " How may ye dwell thus, in the midst of the1 khala?" — "God be thanked we live here without dread, under Ibn Rashid ; our sons herd the goats upon the mountains, and go far out for wood." Each householder killed a goat, and Mohammed commended their hospitality. In Hayil, he was known to many : some of his acquaintance called him daily to breakfast and to supper ; and he was bidden from kahwa to kahwa. As he sat in a friend's house, Bunder entered impetuously, with his bevy of companions and slaves — all the young princes are thus attended — to see the stranger. "What djneby, foreigner, is that?" enquired Bunder, — and with out awaiting his answer the raw young man turned the back and flung forth again. Mohammed had ridden westward, in the Bashy Baziik expe ditions as far as Yanba ; he had ridden in Nejd with Turkish troops to the Wahaby capital, er-Riath. That was for some quarrel of the sherif of Mecca : they lay encamped before the Nejd city fifteen days, and if Ibn Saud had not yielded their demands, they would have besieged him. The army marched over the khala, with cannon, and provision camels ; and he said they found water in the Beduin wells for all the cattle, and to fill their girbies. The Arabian deserts may be passed by armies strong enough to disperse the resistance of the frenetic but unwarlike inhabitants; but they should not be soldiers who cannot endure much and live of a little. The rulers of Egypt made war twenty years in Arabia; and they failed finally because they came with great cost to possess so poor a country. The Roman army sent by Augustus under Aelius Gallus to make 176 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. a prey of the chimerical riches of Arabia Felix was 11,000 men, Italians and allies. They marched painfully over the waterless wastes six months! wilfully misled, as they supposed, by the Nabateans of Petra, their allies. In the end of their long marches they took Nejran by assault : six camps further southward they met with a great multitude of the barbarous people assembled against them, at a brookside. In the battle there fell many thousands of the Arabs ! and of the Romans and allies two soldiers. The Arabians fought, as men unwont to handle weapons, with slings, swords and lances and two- edged hatchets. The Romans, at their furthest, were only two marches from the frankincense country. In returning upwards the general led the feeble remnant of his soldiery, in no more than sixty marches, to the port of el-Hejr. The rest perished of misery in the long and terrible way of the wilderness : only seven Romans had fallen in battle ! — Surely , the knightly Roman poet deserved better than to be after- - ward disgraced, because he had not fulfilled the dreams of Caesar's avarice ! Europeans, deceived by the Arabs' loquacity, have in every age a fantastic opinion of this unknown calamitous country. Those Italians looking upon that dire waste of Nature in Arabia, and grudging because they must carry water upon camels, laid all to the perfidy of their guides. The Roman general found the inhabitants of the land 'A people unwarlike, half of them helping their living by merchandise, and half of them by robbing' [such they are now]. Those ancient Arabs wore a cap, v. Vol. I. pp. 160, 562, and let their locks grow to the full length : the most of them cut the beard, leaving the upper lip, others went unshaven. — "The nomads living in tents of hair-cloth are troublesome borderers," says Pliny, [as they are to-day !] Strabo writing from the mouth of Gallus him self, who was his friend and Prefect of Egypt, describes so well the Arabian desert, that it cannot be bettered. "It is a sandy waste, with only few palms and pits of water: the thorn [acacia] and the tamarisk grow there; the wandering Arabs lodge in tents, and are camel graziers." The season was come about of the Haj returning: their rumour (as all in Arabia) was full of woes and alarms! In a sudden (tropical) rain a quarter of Mecca had been damaged by the rushing torrent ; and the pestilence was among the Hajaj : also the Great-sherif of Mecca, journeying with the pilgrimage to Medina, was deceased in the way. — At this word el-wdba ! Abdullah paled in his black skin, and the Nejumy TIDINGS OF AN ARMISTICE. 177 spoke under his breath : " The death, they said, will be soon at Kheybar!" Amm Mohammed gave his counsel at the village governor's kahwa mejlis, ' that none should dread in his heart, but let every man go about his daily tasks and leave their care unto Ullah.' Abdullah: "And here is Khalil, an hakim: your opinion, Khalil." — "There might be a quarantine." — " As' Ullah sahihh, — the sooth by God, and it shall be done ; ye wot where, sirs? — under Atwa yonder." Moreover the Moors had fallen out amongst themselves at Mecca, for the inheritance of those who were dead in the plague, — which had begun among them. Finally the Moghrareba marched out, two or three days be fore the departure of the Syrian and the Egyptian caravans, for Medina. When they arrived the Pasha forbade them to enter; he said, they might come another year to visit the Ne"by. But the truculent Moghrebies sent this word to the Turkish gover nor, "Let us visit the Neby in peace, and else will we visit him by the sword. Art thou a Nasrany? thou that for- biddest pilgrims to visit the Ndby ! " — The Pasha yielded to their importunity, sooner than any occasion should be given. The Moors entered tumultuously, and the citizens remained shut in their houses ; dreading that in few hours the cholera would be begun among them. It was also reported from the north that the Jurdy had been detained by the Fukara at el- Akhdar. — And thus there is no year, in Arabia, not full of a multitude of alarms ! Some returning marketers from Medina brought us word of an armistice in the great jehad of the Religion waged with the Nasara: The fallen of Medina in the war were fifteen men. They were soldiers of the faith serving of their free will, for there is no military conscription in the Harameyn. Amm Mohammed told me that in the beginning many had offered themselves : they issued from the gates (every man bearing his shroud) and encamped without the city; and had bound themselves with an oath never to re-enter, but it were with the victory of the Moslemin. — The like was seen in the beginning of the Crimean war; when many young men enrolled them selves, and Mohammed, persuaded by a fellow of his, would have gone along with them ; but as they were ready to sail a sickness hindered him: and the ship in which his friends had put to sea foundered in her voyage ! Now I listened with pain to the talk in Abdullah's kahwa ; where they spoke of the Christians' cruelties against Moham medan captives. ' The Nasara had shut up many Moslems in a house, .and, heaping firewood about the walls, they burned them D. T. 11. 12 178 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. living : — the Nasara use also to dig a hole in a field and lay-in powder, and so they blow up a great heap of the Moslemin.' — "Sheykh Khalil, said Amm Mohammed, I have wondered at nothing more than to see in thee a quiet and peaceable be haviour ; for we hear that the Nasara are all violent men of nature, and great strikers." A party of the village hareem went down in an hubt to sell their palm-leaf plait in Medina. It is in long rolls that may be stitched into matting ; and of such they make their baskets. For this work they must crop the tender unfolding leaf-stalks in the heads of the palm stems. They tie the stripped leaflets in bundles, and steep them when they would use them. The plucking is not without damage to the trees : a palm thus checked will bear, they say, but the half of her natural fruits (eight months later) ; that were an autumn loss (for the small trees at Kheybar) of twenty piastres. And all the plait from one stem (two days' labour) is worth only three piastres or six pence! — But it is a custom: the half loss falls upon the absent Beduwy; and the village housewives, whose hands cannot be idle, think they have gotten somewhat by this diligent unthrift. For it is their own money, and therewith they may buy them selves some light cloak, mishlah, and a new gown-cloth. The Kheybar palms are without number ; in other Arabian oases and at Medina, but one frond (it is said) may be plucked in eyery palm head. The kinds of palms are many in every oasis, and they know each kind by the aspect : the tender fronds only in certain kinds are good for their palm matting. The plait from Kheybar is in some estimation at Medina: the salesmen receive much of it in payment for their wares in the autumn fair. They draw as well many camel-loads of date-stones from Kheybar, which are worth five kriish the sah at Medina, nearly twopence a pint ! — Date-stones are steeped and ground for camels' food in all that most barren and sun-stricken lowland of the Hejaz : they are cast away in Nejd. The bonny wife of Hamddn, a neighbour of ours, came in from the returning hubt. I was sitting with her husband and some neighbours in the house, and saw that she saluted them every man with a salaam and a hearty buss : it is their honest custom, and among the Beduw of these parts the wedded women will kiss the men of their acquaintance after an absence, and receive a manly kiss of them again ; and the husbands looking on take it not amiss, for they are brethren. — Other Aarab 1 have seen (in Sinai) so precious, that if a woman meet an uncle's son in the desert, he and she standing off from each other at their MILL-STONES. 1 79 arms' length, with a solemn countenance, they do but touch together the tips of their fingers. When she had bestowed a good smack upon Amm Mohammed, " Eigh ! saw you not, said he, my mother in the city, and how fares the old lady ? " — " She is well and sends thy wife and Haseyn this packet of sweet meats (seeds and raisins). But 0 Mohammed! she was aghast to hear of a Nasrany living with her son in his house; 'akhs! said thy mother to us, what do ye tell me ye women of Khey bar ? that a Nasrany is dwelling with my son Mohammed ? Speak to Mohammed to be quit of him as soon as ever he may ; for what should a Nasrany bring us but the displeasure of Ullah?'" Amm Mohammed answered, with little reverence, " Sheykh Khalil, hast thou heard the old woman's words ? but we are brethren, we have eaten together, and these Beduw are altogether superstitious." His aged mother came sometimes in the summer caravans from Medina to visit her sons, and pass a few weeks with Mohammed at Kheybar. There was not a smith in the oasis: the Nejumy since the beginning of his prosperity had given up his old tasks. Only from time to time some Solubbies come, riding upon their asses, from the Heteym menzils ; and what tinning and metal work they find at Kheybar, they have it away with them to bring it again after other days. There is nothing wrought here besides quern-stones, which every household can make for them selves. I have seen it a labour of two daylights, to beat down the basalt block, and fashion it with another hard stone. The Fejir in their sand-rock dira beat them out of sandstone, and some poor Fukara tribesmen bring such querns with them to sell in the autumn fair at Kheybar. So I have seen Towwara Beduins carry ing down pairs of granite quern-stones, which they had wrought in their own Sinai mountains, to Egypt. Granite and lava mill-stones are made by the B. Atieh Beduins in the Aueyrid Harra. [v. Vol. I. p. 197.] After the water-skins a pair of mill stones is the most necessary husbandry in an Arabian house hold. To grind their corn is the housewives' labour ; and the dull rumour of the running mill-stones is as it were a comfortable voice of food in an Arabian village, when in the long sunny hours there is often none other human sound. The drone of mill-stones may be heard before the daylight in the nomad menzils ; where what for the weighty carriage, and because it is so little they have ever to grind, the quern is only found in a few sheykhly households. Many neighbours therefore borrow the use of one mill, and the first must begin at early hours. I have seen the wandering Aarab in the long summer, 12 2 180 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. when they had nothing left, abandon their heavy querns in some place where another day they might find them again. It is then they say, " The people are hungry, we have no more food ; such and such sheykhs have forsaken their mill-stones." — The Arab housewives can make savoury messes of any grain, seething it and putting thereto only a little salt and samn, much better than the poor of European countries ! In the Arabs of the desert is a natural ability for beating out what shapes they would in stone. We have seen the Beduins fashion their best pipe-heads (aorfy) thus, — and in like manner their stone coffee-pestles are wrought ; they work also great beads of stone, and drill the ball with a nail for a club-stick head : some which I have seen were perfect globes of white marble, from the northern deserts "about Jauf". — I saw such ganna heads formed by them of another matter, el- elk; and that is they say the juice of a low-growing shrub in the Nefud, el-mdtti : it may be a kind of caoutchouc. A company of young men of the village had gone out to cut wild forage, and sell dates to the ascending Haj at Stoora. — Now two of them arrived late in an evening (before the time); and of the twain one 'had lost his right mind, and the other refused to speak till the morrow'. The villagers were in suspense of mind until he should find his tongue, saying under their breaths — since there is no. end of mischances in these countries — ' that some great evil was betided to the young men, their eyyal had been slain by hostile Beduw ' ; and there wanted little that night of a public wailing. As for him who returned to them lunatic they said, " Wellah there be grounds whereupon if a man sleep, the jan will enter into him." In the morning, the village sorrow had vanished as the clouds of yesterday, and such are the most of the alarms of the Arabs ! — The heart slenderly nourished, under that sunstricken climate, can be little robust in Arabian bodies. The absent at Stoora were in good plight, the Haj passed by; and after few days we were delivered from the dread of the waba. Marketers go down with the nomad hubts from Kheybar. to Medina in five marches. They journey till high noon, and alight to loose out their cattle to pasture; but in ascending empty, they make but three marches. The way to the city is reckoned twelve or fourteen thelul hours; Amm Mohammed had often passed it on foot, in two summer days. The villagers are guests in Medina, for the night, in houses of their ac quaintance. Setting out from Kheybar they pass over more than thirty miles of the Harra lavas, whose south-west border RUINS OF GREAT DAMS NEAR KHEYBAR. 181 comes down to the W. el-Humth. By the way are seen ruins of stone buildings (from the times before Mohammed) ; the people call them Jews' houses, and there are many like them about Medina. Not many hours' distant from Kheybar, there are certain ruins of great dams — B6ny el-Bint, the maiden's building, is in W. Thammud, an upper head of the Kheybar wadidn; and el-Hassid is in the wady bottom, of like name, of these valleys. The dam of W. Hassid, the 'harvest valley', is built up of great courses receding stepwise : the lower stones are huge, but some of them have been borne out from their beds and carried down with the wild rage of winter torrents. There are sluices in the upper courses, for the issue of the falling irrigation water. The dam-head is of such width that two horsemen riding over might pass each other : — thus Amm Mo hammed, somewhat magnifying his matter. Once in his younger years another strenuous man of Medina invited him to be his partner, to settle upon the good bottom under the old dam : they would bring in a colony of their friends, and buy their peace of the (Harb) Aarab [Mohammed's kindred] with an easy khiiwa. But they went no further than the words, for Mohammed would not spill his best years in an uncertain adventure. By the way, over the (wide Rodwa) mountain from Medina to Yanba, Aman and other friends told me they had seen many scored inscriptions. In the Rodwa there is good building-stone. The descent is an hour or two on this side Yanba-at-the-Palms, from whence to the port town, Yanba-at-the-Sea, is a night's journey: the villagers mount at sunset, for dread of robbers, and are at the seaside before the day breaks. The Jeheyna of the Rodwa are compared by the Medina passengers to monkeys. " They wear no more than an apron before and behind them upon a string." Yanba-at-the-Palms is such as Kheybar, several villages lying nigh together, in a natural bottom : they are inhabited by settlers of the two Beduin nations, Harb and Jeheyna. A street divides the villages Jar and H6sn, which with the next standing hamlet el-Buthenah are of the B. Ibra him or Bardhimma, Jeheyna. Sweygy or Suaka, and the next hamlet Imbarak are settlements of Harb. Hosn and Jar had been now four years at feud with those of Suaka, for the right of sheep pastures. In those parts is an antique site Kseyberra. The Sherif of Suaka is a considerable personage : he has his residence at the sea-port, and receives a yearly surra for the Egyptian pilgrimage. BISHR The Kheybar valleys. KHEYBAR TOPOGRAPHY. 183 Amm Mohammed who in his hunting had gone over all the vulcanic field about, made me this topography [p. 182] of the Kheybar valleys, which are commonly said to be " seven, lying side by side in the Harra." The manly man's hand was new to the subtleties of chorography, and his map is rude. The trunk valley is W. el-Gdras, and lower down, where straitened to ,a deep channel, it is called (beginning from Ghradir et-Teyr, 'the birds' pool ') et-Tubj, and lower W. es-Sulsilla, until it goes out in the great valley bottom of the Hejaz, Wady el-Humth, by Hedieh, at the Haj -road kella. The Tubj is, in some places, so straitened betwixt mountain rocks, that a thelul rider cannot pass ; and when the winter rains run down there is sometimes a roaring head of waters. In most bays of the valley are ruined sites and wells of ancient hamlets. In the side wadies are great pools with thickets of cane reeds, and wild bottoms grown up with dom palms and sidr trees. W. Koora descends to the W. el-Humth, a little above Sujwa kella upon the Haj road. Further by the Derb in the same valley bottom at a day's journey from Medina is a place called Mleylieh, where are "graves of the Beny Helal," obscurely set out to a wonderful length with ranges of great stones. Amm Mohammed told me, 'that in one of his passages, he stayed with certain in the caravan to measure a skeleton which the wash ing of the winter freshet had laid bare, of some of those antique heroes : they found the length to be twenty paces.' The site may be an alluvial bottom, with silted bones of great (perhaps living and extinct) animals, and the common waifs of water- borne blocks. — Henakieh is a negro village, of forty houses, with a small guard of soldiery from Medina : to the well-water is ten to fifteen fathoms ; yet some buried springs and old broken conduits have been lately found there and repaired. It seems that the place — upon the W. el-Humth — is of several small palm groves, lying nigh together. Amm Mohammed made me then a rude topography of the vulcanic country which lies about Medina. He said [v. the large Map] " Harrat el-Andbis begins an hour west of the town; Harrat el-Auwdli at the like distance south-west ; Harrat Aba Rasheyd or Goreytha lies southwards and eastwards; and Labat el-Ag4l is eastward. All these Harras (Hardr or Ahrdr) are one, — the Harrat el-Medina." It lasts two or three journeys, say the Beduw, to the southward, and is a lava country with many hillian: and it approaches (but there is space of sand plains between them) the main Harra, which, under several names as Harrat B. Abdillah and Harrat el-Kisshub (or Kesshub, or Kusshub) is that vast vulcanic train, which comes down 1 84 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. southward to the Mecca country, and abuts upon the Wady Fatima. — Below Kheybar, towards W. el-Humth, are certain tams {ghradrdn) in the wilderness [v. Vol. I. p. 544] ; and in them are many great fish, 'which drop samn, they are so fat', say the Arabs: some of the Kheyabara have nets, and they use to lie out a summer night to take them. The Siruan had bound Amm Mohammed for me, since there was grown this fast friendship between us, saying, " I leave him in thy hands, and of thee I shall require him again ;"¦ — and whenever the Nejumy went abroad I was with him. The villagers have many small kine, which are driven every morn- . ing three miles over the figgera, to be herded in a large bottom of wet pasture, the Hdlhal, a part of W. Jellas. I went one day thither with Amm Mohammed, to dig up off-sets in the thickets of unhusbanded young palms. The midst of the valley is a quagmire and springs grown up with canes. The sward is not grass, though it seem such, but a minute herb of rushes. This is the pasture of their beasts ; though the brackish rush grass, swelling in the cud, is unwholesome for any but the home-born cattle. The small Yemen kine, which may be had at Medina for the price of a good sheep, will die here : even the cattle of el-Hayat, bred in a drier upland and valued at twelve to fifteen reals, may not thrive at Kheybar ; and therefore a good Kheybar cow is worth thirty reals. In the season of their pas sage plenty of water-fowl are seen in the Halhal, and in summer time partridges. In these thickets of dry canes the village herd- boys cut their double pipes, mizamir. Almost daily some head of their stock is lost in the thicket, and must be abandoned when they drive the beasts home at evening ; yet they doubt not to find it on the morrow. The village housewives come barefoot hither in the hot sun to gather palm sticks (for firing). Mohammed cut down some young palm stems, and we dined of the heart or pith-wood, jummdr, which is very whole some ; the rude villagers bring it home for a sweetmeat, and call it, in their negro gibes, ' Kheybar cheese.' Warm was the winter sun in this place, and in the thirsty heat Amm Mohammed shewed me a pit of water; — but it was full of swimming vermin and I would not drink. " Khalil, said he, we are not so nice," and with bismillah ! he laid himself down upon his manly breast and drank a hearty draught. In the beginning of the Halhal we found scored upon a rock in ancient Arabic letters the words Mahdl el- Wdi, which was interpreted by our . (unlettered) coffee-hearth scholars 'the cattle marches'. A little apart from the way is a site upon the figgera yet named S4k er-Ruiudlla. There is a spring of their name in Medina ; THE HURDA. 185 Henaldeh pertained of old to that Annezy tribe (now far in the north) : and ' there be even now some households of their line age '. Besides kine there are no great cattle at Kheybar ; the few goats were herded under the palms by children or geyatin. Another day we went upon- the Harra for wood. Amm Mohammed, in his hunting, had seen some sere sammara trees ; they were five miles distant. We passed the figgera in the chill of the winter morning and descended to the W. Jellas; and Haseyn came driving the pack-ass. In the bottom were wide plashes of ice-cold water. " It will cut your limbs, said Moham med, you cannot cross the water." I found it so indeed ; but they were hardened to these extremities, and the lad helped me over upon his half-drowned beast. Mohammed rode forward upon his mare, and Haseyn drove on under me with mighty strokes, for his father beckoned impatiently. To linger in such places they think perilous, and at every blow the poor lad shrieked to his jdhash some of the infamous injuries which his father commonly bestowed upon himself; until we came to the acacia trees. We hurled heavy Harra stones against those dry trunks, and the tree-skeletons fell before us in ruins: — then dashing stones upon them we beat the timber bones into lengths, and charged our ass and departed. We held another way homeward, by a dry upland bottom, where I saw ancient walling of field enclosures, under red trachyte bergs, Umm R4kaba, to the Hiirda. The Hiirda is good corn land, the many ancient wells are sunk ten feet to the basalt rock ; the water comes up sweet and light to drink, but is lukewarm. Here Mohammed had bought a well and com plot of late, and yesterday he sent hither two lads from the town, to drive his two oxen, saying to them, "Go and help Haseyn in the Hiirda." They labour with diligence, and eat no more than the dates of him who bids them ; at night they lie down wrapped in their cloaks upon the damp earth, by a great fire of sammara in a booth of boughs, with the cattle. They remain thus three days out, and the lads drive day and night, by turns. The land-holders send their yokes of oxen to this three-days' labour every fifteen days. In the Kheybar valley is a spring Ayn Selelim; and there says their tradition was the orchard of a Jew Ibn Sellem, who converting to the new religion of Medina, whilst Kheybar yet stood, was named Abdullah Ibn Selldm. — In that place, the Moghreby eyesalver had told them, might be found the buried synagogue. One day I said to the Nejumy, " Let us go thither this fresh morning." He answered : ' That although he dreaded 1 86 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. the neighbours' tongues, yet he would not disappoint me.' Our path lay in the width of the Kheybar valley: and where we passed under a berg of red shaly trachyte, I saw a solitary great clay house ; which was a ground-room only. Mohammed told me, ' it had been the summer house of a rich Beduwy. But when the new building was ended, and the hospitable nomad first passed the threshold with his friends, the lintel fell upon his neck, and he perished by this sudden bitter death ! ' At the Ayn Selelim are clay buildings — the summer houses of Allayda, sheukh of the Welad Aly. All these tent- dwellers' houses are ground-floors only, with very many little casements to let in the freshing air, [and such as we see the Beduin summer houses in the few low palm valleys of Sinai]. I visited Motlog's beyt; there was a good house for the sheykh's family, and a long pentice for the mejlis, like a nomad tent, and turned from the sun. — The sickly heat is more tolerable by day in clay dwell ings than in the worsted booths of the Aarab. These Beduin summer houses were more cleanly than the village houses. The water of the spring is pure and light, and putting in the thermometer I found 82° F. I showed the glass tube to Amm Mohammed who, when he had examined it, said with astonishment, "Ah ! Khalil, we are grashimin, rude and igno rant ! " Then seeing some goat-herd children coming down to gaze upon us he said hastily, " Speed thee Khalil, or they will report it in the village [that we were seen seeking for trea sure], and we shall not soon have rest of this walking a mile." — " Is there a valiant man in awe of foolish tongues ! it were too mean labour, to conciliate the vile and unjust." — "Yet here is a mad world of these negroes." And truly there is nearly no Arab that durst descend alone into the tide, and set his face to contradict the multitude. — In this Mohammed the Ne'by did show a marvellous spiritual courage among Arabs! — But the Nejumy boldly defended my life. My Galla comrade had been put by Abdullah in the room of the deceased Muharram at Umm Kida ; — for Aman, the freed- man of an Albanian petty officer, was accounted of among them as an Albanian deputy petty officer. I returned now at night to an empty house. Abdullah was a cursed man, I might be murdered whilst I slept ; and he would write to the Pasha, ' The Nasrany, it may please your lordship, was found slain such a morning in his lodging, and by persons unknown.' In all the Kheybar cottages is a ladder and open trap to the housetop; and you may walk from end to end of all the house-rows by their terrace roofs, and descend by day or by night at the trap, into what house-chamber you please : thus neighbours visit neigh- A SOLDIER'S GRAVE. 187 hours. I could not pass the night at the Nejiimy's; for they had but their suffa, so that his son Haseyn went to sleep abroad in a hired chamber with other young men in the like case. Some householders spread matting over their trap, in the winter night ; but this may be lifted without rumour, and they go always barefoot. There were evil doers not far off, for one night a neighbour's chickens which roosted upon our house terrace had been stolen ; the thief, Aman thought, must be our former Galla comrade : it was a stranger, doubtless, for these black villagers eat no more of their poultry than the eggs ! — This is a superstition of the Kheyabara, for which they cannot themselves render a reason ; and besides they will not eat leeks ! Another day whilst I sat in Ahmed's house there came up Mohammed the Kurdy to coffee. The Kurdy spoke to us with a mocking scorn of Muharram's death : — in his fatal after noon, " the sick man said, ' Go Mohammed to Abdullah, for I feel that I am dying and I have somewhat to say to him.' — 'Ana nejjdb, am I thy post-runner? if it please thee to die, what is that to us ?' — the Egyptian lay sick. In the beginning of the night Muharram was sitting up ; we heard a guggle in his throat, — he sank backward and was dead ! We sent word to Abdullah: who sent over two of the askars, and we made them a supper of the niggard's goods. All Muharram's stores of rice and samn went to the pot ; and we sat feasting in presence of our lord [saint] Muharram, who could not forbid this honest wasting of his substance." — " The niggard's goods are for the fire" (shall be burned in hell), responded those present. I ques tioned the Kurdy Mohammed, and he denied before them ; and the Egyptian denied it, that my medicines had been so much as mentioned, or cause at all in Muharram's death. — The Kurdy said of the jebal in the horizon of Kheybar, that they were but as cottages in comparison with the mighty mountains of his own country. The sick Ageyly of Boreyda died soon after; but I had ceased from the first to give him medicines. ' He found the Nasrany 's remedies (minute doses of rhubarb) so horrible, he said, that he would no more of them.' In one day he died and was buried. But when the morrow dawned we heard in the village, that the soldier's grave had been violated in the night ! — Certain who went by very early had seen the print of women's feet round about the new-made grave. 'And who had done this thing ?' asked all the people. " Who, they an swered themselves, but the cursed witches ! They have taken up the body, to pluck out the heart of him for their hellish 1 88 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. orgies." I passed by later with Amm Mohammed to our garden labour, and as they had said, so it seemed indeed ! if the prints which we saw were not the footsteps of elvish children. — Aman carried a good fat cat to a neighbour woman of ours, and he told me with loathing, that she had eaten it greedily, though she was well-faring, and had store of all things in her beyt ; she was said to be one of the witches ! In the long evenings with the Nejumy I learned much of their superstitious lore of the jins, which is current at Medina. " The jan are sore afraid of me," quoth Amm Mohammed. An half of the jan or jeniin, inhabiting the seven stages under the earth, are malicious (heathen) spirits, kuffar, or kafiriin; and an half are accounted Moslemin." — Mohammed said, 'A chest of his father's, in which was some embroidered clothing, had been stolen when he was a young man. They sent for the conjuror, Mundel, to reveal to them the guilty persons. The Mundel is in his dark science a broker, or mean, betwixt the children of Adam and the jan. - — "Who here, said the wise man, is sure of heart and strong ? " " Mohammed my son is a stout lad," answered the elder Nejumy. — The Mundel poured water in a bowl and bade Mohammed sit-to, he must look fixedly in it, and the Mundel said over his first spells, "Now, what seest thou?" (quoth he). — Mohammed : " Wellah, I see no more than this basin and water (the Mundel still spelling on his beads): yet now it is as if I saw through a casement, and a sea is under me ; and be neath I see a wide plain, and now I see upon the plain as it were the haj arriving ! — They have pitched the pavilion of the Pasha, — I can see the Pasha sitting with his friends." — Mundel : " Say to him, ' 0 Sooltan of the jan ! the doctor Such-an-one [the Mundel naming himself] salutes thee, and bids thee enquire, if in thy company be any jin who was by when the coffer was stolen from Yeldiizely Haseyn; and, if he were a witness of the theft, that he name the persons.'" — The Sultan of the jan an swered, " I have at the instant enquired of all my company ; none was present, and no one has heard any tiding." — The Mundel spelled on his beads, and he said again, "What seest thou now, young man?" — Mohammed: "The former company has passed by, and another like company is now arriving." — "Say: '0 Sooltan of the jan ', as before." The Sooltan of the jins responded, " I have at the instant enquired of all these ; and there is none here who has seen aught, or heard tidings." Mundel : " Say yet, ' Is any absent V" It was answered, " There is none absent." The Mundel spelled on his beads and said, THE JAN: A MAGICAL TRANCE. 189 " What seest thou now?" Mohammed: "The second company have passed from my sight ; a third company is arriving." — "Say: 'Sooltan of the jan ', as before." The Sultan an swered, "I have asked of them all at the instant, and there is none here." — "Say again, 'Are all your people present?'" — " I have enquired and there is one absent, — he is in India." — Mundel : " Say, ' Let him be brought hither and examined.' " The Sultan of the jan spake in his company, "Which of you will bring our fellow of such a name, that is in India?" A jin answered, " I, in four days, will bring him." The Sultan said, "It is a long time." Another said, "I, in three days." A third said, " I, in two only," and a fourth, " I will bring him in a day." — " The time, quoth the Sultan, is long." — Here Amm Mohammed said a word beside the play, " Perceivest thou not, sheykh Khalil ? that it was but a malice in them to ask so many days." — -So said a jin, " Give me three hours ;" at the last one said, " I will bring him in a moment." — The Sultan responded : "Bring him." — "Then I saw him, said Amm Mohammed, led in like an old man ; he was grey-headed, and he went lame." The Sultan of the jan questioned him, " Hast thou seen any thing, or is there aught come to thy knowledge of this theft ? " He answered, "Ay, for as I lay in the likeness of a dog upon the dung-hill which is before such an house, about the middle of the night, I saw a man come with the chest upon his back ; he entered at the next door, and two women followed him." The jinny revealed also the persons and their names. — The Mundel sent to call them ; — and they were known in the town as ill-livers. They arrived anon ; but being ques tioned of the theft they denied all knowledge upon their religion, and departed. Then the Mundel took three girbies, and blew them up, and he cast them from him ! — In a little while the three persons came again running; that man before the women, and all of them holding their bellies, which were swollen to bursting. " Oh me ! I beseech thee, cries the man. Sir, the chest is with me, only . release me out of this pain and I will restore it immediately!" his women also pitifully acknowledged their guilt. — Then the Mundel spelled upon his beads backward, to reverse the enchantment, and said to Mohammed, "What seest thou?" — "I see the great plain only ; — and now but this basin and the water in it." — Mundel : " Look up young man ! rise, and walk about, whilst these wicked persons bring the stolen chest and'the wares." Amm Mohammed told this tale as if he had believed it all true ; and said further that for a while he could perceive nearly 190 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. an half part of all who bear the form of mankind to be jins ; and many an house cat and many a street dog he saw then to be jan: the influence little by little decayed in him and he might discern them no more. Amm Mohammed startled a little when I said, "Well, tell me, what is the speech of your jan, and the fashion of their clothing ?" He answered (astutely smiling) after a moment, "It is plain that they are clad and that they speak like the Moslemin." — I questioned Aman of the jan ; he looked sadly upon it, and said; "I will tell thee a thing, sheykh Khalil, which happened at Jidda within my knowledge. A bondservant, a familiar of mine, sat by a well side to wash his clothing. He cast away the first water and went with his dish to the well, to draw more ; and in that, as he leaned over the brink his money fell from him. The young man looked after his fallen silver; — and, as he gazed, he suddenly shrieked and fell head foremost into the well ! A seller of coffee, who saw him fall in, left his tray and ran to the pit ; and whilst he looked he too fell therein. A seller of herbs ran-to ; he came to the well's mouth, and as he looked down he fell in also ; so did another, and likewise a fifth person. — When many had gathered to the cry, there spoke a seafaring man among them, ' Give me a line here ! and I will go down myself into the well and fetch them up.' They stopped his ears with cotton [lest the demons, by those ingates, should enter into the man], and giving him an incense-pot burn ing in his hand, they lowered him over the brink : but when he was at the half depth [wells there at the sea-bord are not fully two fathoms to the water] he cried to be taken up. The people drew up that seaman in haste ; and, he told them, when he could fetch his breath, that he saw the deep of the well gaping and shutting ! — They had sent to call a certain Moghreby ; who now arrived, bringing with him a magical writ ing, — which he flung into the well, and there ascended a smoke. After that the Moor said : 'Khdlas, it was ended, and now he would go down himself They bound him under the arms, and he descended without fear, and put a cord about the drowned bodies ; and one after another they were taken up. They were all dead, save only the bondman, who yet breathed weakly: he lived through that night, without sense or speech, and then died. That he was not dead already he owed it to a ring, said Aman, with a turquoise set in it. [The virtue of this stone is to disperse malign spiritual influence ; so you see blue beads hanged about the necks of cattle in the border countries.] — But the pit wherein these persons had ended their lives was filled up, the same day, by an order of the Pasha-governor." A JINN I A WEDDED IN THE UPPER WORLD. 191 I enquired of Amm Mohammed, "How sayest thou the jan be a-dread of thee! canst thou lay thy strong hand upon demons?" — " Wellah they are afraid of me, sheykh Khalil ! last year a jin entered into this woman my wife, one evening, and we were sit ting here as we sit now; I and the woman and Haseyn. I saw it come in her eyes, that were fixed, all in a moment, and she lamented with a labouring in her throat. [I looked over to the poor wife ! who, answered me again with a look of patience.] Then I took down the pistol [commonly such few fire-arms of theirs hang loaded upon the chamber- wall] and I fired it at the side of her head, — and cried to the jin, 'Aha melaun, cursed one, where be'st thou now?' The jin answered me (by the woman's mouth), 'In the head of her, in her eye.' — ' By which part enteredst thou into her?' — 'At her great toe.' — ' Then by the same, I say unto thee, depart out of her.' I spoke this word terribly and the devil left her": but first Mohammed made the jin promise him to molest his wife no more. — " Is the devil afraid of shot ? " — " Thou art too simple, it is the smell of the sulphur ; wellah they cannot abide it." This poor woman had great white rolling eyes and little joy in them. I have heard Haseyn say to her, " Hu! hu! thou with those eyes of thine, sit further off ! thou shalt not look so upon me." — "Among the jan [he had seen them being under the spell, in Medina] be such diversities, said Amm Mohammed, as in the children of Adam. They are long or short, gross or lean, whole or infirm, fair or foul ; there be rich and poor among them, and good and evil natures, — the evil are adversaries of mankind. They are male and female, children, grown persons and aged folk; they come to their lives' end and die as the Adamies." — " Certain of them, he said, are very honourable persons : there be jins of renown even in the upper world. There is a family, the Beyt es-Shereyfa, at el-Medina, now in the third generation, which descend from a jinnia, or jin-woman. Their grandsire was a caravan carrier between the Harameyn. This man rode always at a little distance behind his camel train, that, if anything were fallen from the loads, he might recover it. As they journeyed upon a time he heard a voice, that saluted him : — ' Salaam aleyk, said a jin (for such he was) in the form of an old man ; I trow thou goest to Mecca.' — 'Ay.' — 'Give then this letter to my son ; thou wilt find him — a black hound, lying before the stall of the butcher, in such a street. Hold this letter to his eyes, and he will rise, and do thou follow him.' " The carrier thrust the letter into the bosom of his tunic, and rode further. When they came to Mecca he went about 192 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. his commissions. Afterward he returned to his lodging, to put on his holiday apparel ; and then he would go to pass his time in the coffee-houses. In this there fell out the letter; and he thought as he went down the suk he would deliver it. — He found all things as the jin foretold ; and he followed the dog. This dog led him through a ruinous quarter, and entered a forsaken house; and there the dog stood up as a comely young man ; and said to the caravaner, ' I perceive thou hadst this letter from my father; he writes to me of certain silver : before you set out come hither to receive my answer.' — 'We depart to-morrow from such a khan; and thou mayst see me there.' " The loaded camel-train was in the way, and the caravaner had mounted his thelul, when the young jin met him, and said, 'This is the letter for my father, and (tossing him a bundle) here is that silver of which the old man spake ; tell him for me, It is verily all that I have been able to gather in this place.' The carrier thrust the bundle into his bags with the letter, and set forward. "In the midst of the way that old elf-man stood again in his sight, and said, ' Salaam aleyk ! — Sawest thou my son, and hast thou brought me aught from him?' — 'Here is that thy son sends thee.' ' Thou art my guest to-day,' quoth the old jin. — ' But how then might I overtake my camels ? ' — The old jin knocked with his stick upon the ground, and it yawned before them; and he went down leading the carrier's thelul, and the carrier with him, under the earth, till they came to a city ; where the grey-beard jin brought him through the street to his own house. They entered ; and within doors there sat the jin's wife, and their two daughters ! — and the jin- man sat down in his hall to make the guest coffee. Before it was evening the carrier saw the jin host slaughter his thelul ! he saw his own beast's flesh cast into the pot ; and it was after ward served for their suppers! — 'Alas! he said in himself, for now I may no more overtake my kafily.' "On the morrow, the jin said to him, 'Rise if thou wouldst depart, and let us go on together;' — and he led him his slain thelul alive ! ' I would give thee also a gift, said the old elf, as they came forth ; now choose thee, what thing wouldst thou of all that thou sawest in my house ? ' The carrier answered boldly, 'One of thy two daughters.' — 'I pray thee ask a new request.' — 'Nay, wellah, and else I will have nothing.' — 'At your coming-by again, I will bring thee to her.' — 'What is the bride-money ?' — ' I require but this of thee, that thou keep a precept, which is easy in itself, but uneasy to a hasty man : — THE JUST KADY OF THE JAN. 193 I say if _ thy wife seem to do some outrage in thy sight, thou shalt abide it, for it is no more than the appearance.' So the old elf brought the caravaner above ground, and dismissed him ; and the man beginning to ride was aware, as he looked up, of the walls of Medina ! "In the way returning again he received his bride, and brought her home to Medina. There they lived seven years in happy wedlock, and she had borne him two sons : — then upon a day, she caught a knife and ran with shrieks to one of their babes as it were to kill him. The poor carrier saw it, and sprang to save their child ; — but in that the elf-mother and her babe vanished for ever ! Of their elder son are descended the Medina family (above named) : he was the father of those now living." Amm Mohammed said, "The jan may be dis cerned from the children of Adam only by a strangeness of the eyes; — the opening of their eyelids is sidelong-like with the nose." The Nejumy spoke also of a certain just kady of the jan whose name was very honourable (above ground) at Medina; and of his funeral in the Haram, in his own time ! " One day when the Imam had ended the noon prayer before the people, he lifted up his voice crying, Rahamna wa rahamkom Ullah, es-suldt aly el-jenneysat el-hdthera, ' Be merciful unto us, be merciful to you, Ullah ! our prayers for the funeral which is here present !'¦ — A bier may be borne into the Haram (to be prayed over) at any hour of the day ; and if it be at mid-day, the hearty response of the multitude of worshippers is heard they affirm with a wonderful resonance, in that vast building. The people looked to all sides and marvelled, — they saw nothing ! — The Imam answered them, '0 Moslemin, I see a corse borne in; and know that this is the bier of the just kady of the jan, — he deceased to-day.' Wellah when the people heard his name they all prayed over him, because that jin kady was reputed a just person : — wouldst thou hear a tale of his justice ? " There was a certain muderris or studied man in Medina, [that is one passing well seen in their old poetasters, the inept Arabic science, and solemn farrago of the koran]. One night when the great learned man was going to rest, he heard a friend's voice in the street bidding him come down quickly ; so he took his mantle and went forth. His friend said then, 'Come with me I pray thee.' — When they were past the wall of the town, the learned man perceived that this was a jin in his friend's likeness ! Some more gathered to them, and he saw well that all these were jan. — They bade him stay, and said the jan, ' We be here to slay thee.' — ' Wherefore, Sirs, alas !'— D. T. II. 13 194 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. ' Because thou hast killed our fellow to-day.' — ' If I have slain any companion of yours unwittingly, let me be judged by your laws ; I appeal to the kady.' The jan answered, 'We were come out to slay thee, but because thou hast appealed to the kady, we will lead thee to the kady.' They went then all together before the kady and accused him; 'This adamy has slain to-day one of the people, and we are his kindred and fellowship : he slew him as our kinsman lay sleeping in such a palm ground, in the likeness of a serpent.' — ' Yea, truly, 0 honourable kady, I struck at a serpent there and killed him ; and is not, I pray thee, every perilous vermin slain by man, if he have a weapon or stone ? but by the Lord ! I knew him not to be a jin.' The kady answered, 'I find in him no cause ; but the fault lay in the little prudence of your friend that dead is : for ye be not ignorant that the snake more than all beasts is abhorred by the Beny Adam."' CHAPTER VIII. DELIVERANCE FROM KHEYBAR. Amm Mohammed's wild brother-in-law. Tlie messenger arrives from Medina. The Nasrany procures that the water is increased at Klieybar. Ayn er-Reyih. Abu Middeyn, a derwish traveller. A letter from tlie Pasha of Medina. Violence of Abdullah. Might one forsake tlie name of his religion, for a time ? Amm Mohammed would persuade the Nasrany to dwell with him at Kheybar. Abu Bakkar. ' AU is shame in Islam.' The Engleys in India, and at Aden. The Nasrdny's Arabic books are stolen by a Colonel at Medina. Return of the camel- thief. Heteym cheeses. Wedduk. Tlie villagers of el-Hdyat. Humanity which loves not to be requited. ' God sends the cold to every one after his cloth.' Mutinous villagers beaten by Abdullah. Deyik es-sfidr. Departure from Kheybar. Hamed. Love and death. Amm Mohammed's farewell. Journey over the Harra. Come to Heteym tents. Habdra fowl. Stormy March wind. Tlie Hejjur mountains. . Eagles. Meet with Heteym. 'The Nasara inhabit in a city closed with iron.' Solubbies from near Mecca. Tlie rafiks seeking for water. Certain deep and steyned wells "were made by the jan." Blustering weather. The Harra craters. " God give tliat young man (Ibn Bashid ) long life I " We looked again for Dakhil returning from Medina. I spoke to Mohammed to send one to meet him in the way : that were there tidings out against my life (which Dakhil would not hide from us), the messenger might bring us word with speed, and I would take to the Harra. " The Siruan shall be disappointed, answered my fatherly friend, if they would at tempt anything against thy life ! Wellah if Dakhil bring an evil word, I have one here ready, who is bound to me, a Beduwy ; and by him I will send thee away in safety." — This was his housewife's brother, a wild grinning wretch, without natural conscience, a notorious camel robber and an homicide. Their father had been a considerable Bishr sheykh ; but in the end they had lost their cattle. This wretch's was the Beduin right of the Halhal, but that yielded him no advantage, and he was become a gatiiny at Kheybar ; where his hope was to help him self by cattle-lifting in the next hostile marches. — Last year see- mo- some poor stranger in the summer market with a few ells of 13—2 196 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. new-bought calico (for a shirt-cloth) in his hand, he vehemently coveted it for himself. Then he followed that strange tribes man upon the Harra, and came upon him in the path and murdered him ; and took his cotton, and returned to the village laughing : — he was not afraid of the blood of a stranger ! The wild wretch sat by grinning when Amm Mohammed told me the tale ; but the housewife said, sighing, " Alas ! my brother is a kafir, so light-headed that he dreads not Ullah." The Nejumy answered, "Yet the melaun helped our low plight last year (when there was a dearth at Kheybar) ; he stole sheep and camels, and we feasted many times : — should we leave all the fat to our enemies, and we ourselves perish with' hunger? Sheykh Khalil, say was this lawful for us or haram ?" I thought if, in the next days, I should be a fugitive upon the vast lava-field, without shelter from the sun, without known landmarks, with water for less than three days, and infirm in body, what hope had I to live ? — A day later Dakhil arrived from Medina, and then (that which I had dreaded) Amm Mo hammed was abroad, to hunt gazelles, upon the Harra ; nor had he given me warning overnight, — thus leaving his guest (the Arabs' remiss understanding), in the moment of danger, with out defence. The Nejumy absent, I could not in a great peril have escaped their barbarous wild hands ; but after some sharp reckoning with the most forward of them I must have fallen in this subbakha soil, without remedy. Ahmed was too 'religious' to maintain the part of a misbeliever against any mandate from Medina : even though I should sit in his chamber, I thought he would not refuse to undo to the messengers from Abd ullah. I sat therefore in Mohammed's suffa, where at the worst I might keep the door until heaven should bring the good man home. — But in this there arrived an hubt of Heteym, clients of his, from the Harra ; and they brought their cheeses and samn to the Nejiimy's house, that he might sell the wares for them. Buyers of the black village neighbours came up with them, and Mohammed's door was set open. I looked each moment for the last summons to Abdullah, until nigh mid-day; when Amm Mohammed returned from the Harra, whence he had seen the nomads, far off, descending to Kheybar. — Then the Nejumy sat down among us, and receiving a driving- stick from one of the nomads, he struck their goods and cried, "Who buys this for so much ?" and he set a just price between them : and taking his reed-pen and paper he recorded their bargains, which were for measures of dates to be delivered (six months later) in the harvest. After an hour, Amm Mohammed A SPRING OF WATER INCREASED. 197 was again at leisure; then having shut his door, he said he would go to Abdullah and learn the news. He returned to tell me that the Pasha wrote thus, "We have now much business with the Haj ; at their departure we will examine and send again the books: in the meanwhile you are to treat the Engleysy honourably and with hospitality." I was summoned to Abdullah in the afternoon : Amm Moham med went with me, and he carried his sword, which is a strong argument in a valiant hand to persuade men to moderation in these lawless countries. Abdullah repeated that part of the governor's order concerning the books ; of the rest he said nothing. — I afterwards found Dakhil in the street ; he told me he had been privately called to the Pasha, who enquired of him, ' What did I wandering in this country, and whether the Nasrany spoke" Arabic?' (he spoke it very well himself). Dakhil found him well disposed towards me : he heard also in Medina that at the coming of the Haj, Mohammed Said Pasha being asked by the Pasha-governor if he knew me, responded, ' He had seen me at Damascus, and that I came down among the Haj to Medain Salih ; and he wondered to hear that I was in captivity at Kheybar, a man known to be an Engleysy and who had no guilt towards the Dowla, other than to have been always too adventurous to wander in the (dangerous) nomadic countries.' The few weeks of winter had passed by, and the teeming spring heat was come, in which all things renew themselves : the hamim month would soon be upon us, when my languish ing life, which the Nejumy compared to a flickering lamp- wick, was likely (he said) to fail at Kheybar. Two months already I had endured this black captivity of Abdullah ; the third moon was now rising in her horns, which I hoped in Heaven would see me finally delivered. The autumn green corn was grown to the yellowing ear; another score of days — so the Lord de livered them from the locust — and they would gather in their wheat-harvest. I desired to leave them richer in water at Kheybar. Twenty paces wide of the strong Sefsafa spring was a knot of tall rushes ; there I hoped to find a new fountain of water. The next land-holders hearkened gladly to my saw, for water is mother of corn and dates, in the oases ; and the sheykh's brother responded that to-morrow he would bring' eyyal to open the ground. — Under the first spade-stroke we found wet earth, and oozing joints of the basalt rock: then they left their labour, saying we should not speed, because it was begun on a 198 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. Sunday. They remembered also my words that, in case we found a spring of water, they should give me a milch cow. On the morrow a greater working party assembled. It might be they were in doubt of the cow and would let the work lie until the Nasrany 's departure, for they struck but a stroke or two in my broken ground ; and then went, with crowbars, to try their strength about the old well-head, and see if they might not enlarge it. The iron bit in the flaws of the rock ; and stiffly straining and leaning, many together, upon their crowbars, they sprung and rent up the intractable basalt. Others who looked on, whilst the labourers took breath, would bear a hand in it : among them the Nejumy showed his manly pith and stirred a mighty quarter of basalt. When it came to mid-day they forsook their day's labour. Three forenoons they wrought thus with the zeal of novices : in the second they sacrificed a goat, and sprinkled her blood upon the rock. I had not seen Arabs labour thus in fellowship. In the Arabs are indigent cor roded minds full of speech-wisdom ; in the negroes' more pros perous bodies are hearts more robust. They also fired the rock, jpt^and by the third day the labourers had drawn out many huge ' ; stones : now the old well-head was become like a great bath of -'¦ ;'!''¦'. tepid water, and they began to call it el-hammam. We had '""«•' struck a side vein, which increased the old current of water by -« half as much again, — a benefit for ever to the husbandmen of the valley. The tepid springs of Kheybar savour upon the tongue of sulphur, with a milky smoothness, save the Ayn er-Reyih, which is tasteless. Yellow frogs inhabit these springs, besides the little silver-green fishes. Green filmy webs of water-weed are wrapped about the channels of the lukewarm brooks, in which- lie little black turreted snails, like those of W. Thirba and el-Ally [and Palmyra]. I took up the straws of caddis-worms and showed them to Amm Mohammed: he considered the build ing of those shell-pipes made without hands, and said; "Oh the marvellous works of God ; they are perfect without end ! and well thou sayest, 'that the Kheyabara are not housed as these little vermin ! ' " I had nearly outworn the spite of fortune at Kheybar; and might now spend the sunny hours, without fear, sitting by the spring Ayn er-Reyih, a pleasant place little without the palms, and where only the eye has any comfort in all the blackness of Kheybar. Oh, what bliss to the thirsty soul is in that sweet light water, welling soft and warm as milk, [86° F.] from the rock ! And I heard the subtle harmony of Nature, which the profane, cannot hear, in that happy stillness ABU MIDDEYN. 199 and solitude. Small bright dragon-flies, azure, dun and ver milion, sported over the cistern water ruffled by a morning breath from the figgera, and hemmed in the solemn lava rock. The silver fishes glance beneath, and white shells lie at the bottom of this water world. I have watched there the young of the tihdb shining like scaly glass and speckled : this fairest of saurians lay sunning, at the brink, upon a stone ; and oft- times moving upon them and shooting out the tongue he snatched hie prey of flies without ever missing. — Glad were we when Jummar had filled our girby of this sweet water. The irrigation rights of every plot of land are inscribed in the sheykhs' register of the village; — the week-day and the hours when the owner with foot and spade may. dam off and draw to himself the public water. Amongst these rude Arabian villagers are no clocks nor watches, — nor anything almost of civil artifice in their houses. They take their wit in the day time, by the shadowing-round of a little wand set upon the channel brink. — This is that dial of which we read in Job : 'a servant earnestly desireth the shadow... our days on the earth are a shadow.' In the night they make account of time more loosely. The village gates are then shut; but the waterers may pass out to their orchards from some of the next-lying houses. Amm Mohammed tells me that the husbandmen at Medina use a metal cup, pierced with a very fine eye, — so that the cup set floating in a basin may sink justly at the hour's end. Among the Kheyabara was one Abu Middeyn (Father-two- pecks), a walker about the world. Because the negro villager's purse was light and little his understanding, he had played the derwish on his two feet, and beaten the soil of distant lands. And finally the forwandered man had returned from Persia ! I asked him how long was he out ? — Answer .- " I left my new wedded wife with child, and the first I met when . I came home, was mine own boy ; he was already of age to shift • for himself, — and wellah I did not know him !" This worthy was a privy hemp-smoker (as are many wandering derwishes) in the negro village; and he comforted his slow spirits by eating-in corn like a head of cattle, wherefore the gibers of Kheybar had surnamed him, Father-of-pecks-twain. — One of those days in a great coffee company Two-pecks began to question the Nasrany, that he might himself seem to allow before them all, or else solemnly to refute my pretended travels: but no man lent his idle ears to the saws of Abu Middeyn. 20O TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. One afternoon when I went to present myself to the village tyrant, I saw six carrion beasts, that had been theluls, couched before Abdullah's door ! the brutes stretched their long necks faintly upon the ground, and their mangy chines were hump- less. Such could be none other than some unpaid soldiers' jades from Medina; and I withdrew hastily to the Nejumy. — Certain Ageylies had been sent by the Pasha ; and the men had ridden the seventy miles hither in five days ! — Such being the Ageyl, whose forays formerly — some of them have boasted to me — " made the world cold !" they are now not seldom worsted by the tribesmen of the desert. In a late expedition of theirs from Medina, we heard that 'forty were fallen, their baggage had been taken, and the rest hardly saved themselves. ' — I went back to learn their tidings, and meeting with Abdullah in the street, he said, " Good news, Khalil ! thy books are come again, and the Pasha writes, ' send him to Ibn Rashid '." On the morrow, Abdullah summoned me; he sat at coffee in our neighbour Hamdan's house. — 'This letter is for thee, said he, (giving me a paper) from the Pasha's own hand.' And opening the sheet, which was folded in our manner, I found a letter from the Pasha of Medina ! written [imperfectly], as follows, in the French language ; with the date of the Christian year, and signed in the end with his name, — Sdbry. [Ad literam] Le 11 Janvier 1878 [Medine] D'apres l'avertissement de l'autorite local, nous sommes sache votre arrivee a Khaiber, a cette occasion je suis oblige de faire venir les lettres de recommendation et les autres papiers a votre charge. En etudiant a peine possible les livres de compte, les papiers volants et les cartes, enfm parmi ceux qui sont arrivaient-ici, jai disserne que votre idee de voyage, corriger la carte, de savoir les conditions d'etat, et de trouver les monuments antiques de l'Arabie centrale dans le but de publier au monde je suis bien satisfaisant a votre etude utile pour l'univers dans ce point, et c'est un bon parti pour vous aussi ; mais vous avez connu certainement jusqu' aujourd'hui parmi aux alantours des populations que vous trouve, il y a taut des Bedouins temeraire, tant que vous avez le recommendion de quelque personnages, je ne regarde. que ce votre voyage est dangereux parmi les Bedouins sus-indique ; c'est pour cela je m'oblige de vous informe a votre retour a un moment plutot possible aupres de Cheih d'Ibni-Rechite a I'abri de tout danger, et vous trouvrez ci-join tous vos les lettres qu'il §tait chez-nous, et la recommendation au dite Cheih de ma part, et de la prenez le chemin dans ces jours a votre destination. SABRI THE NASRANY IS SET FREE. 201 " And now, I said to Abdullah, where is that money which pertains to me, — six lira !" The black village governor startled, changed his Turkish countenance, and looking felly, he said " We will see to it." The six Ageylies had ridden from Medina, by the Pasha's order, only to bring up my books, and they treated me with regard. They brought word, that the Pasha would send other twenty-five Ageylies to Hayil for this cause. The chief of the six, a Wahaby of East Nejd, was a travelled man, without fanaticism ; he offered himself to accompany me whithersoever I would, and he knew, he said, all the ways, in those parts and far southward in Arabia. The day after when nothing had been restored to me, I found Abdullah drinking coffee in sheykh Salih's house. "Why, I said, hast thou not restored my things ? " — " I will restore them at thy departure."- — " Have you any right to detain them ?" " Say no more (exclaimed the villain, who had spent my money) — a Nasrany to speak to me thus ! — or I will give thee a buffet." — "If thou strike me, it will be at thy peril. My hosts, how may this lieutenant of a dozen soldiery rule a village, who cannot rule himself? one who neither regards the word of the Pasha of Medina, nor fears the Sultan, nor dreads Ullah himself. Salih the sheykh of Kheybar, hear how this coward threatens to strike a guest in thy house ; and will ye suffer it my hosts ? " — Abdullah rose and struck me brutally in the face. — " Salih, I said to them, and you that sit here, are you free men ? I am one man, infirm and a stranger, who have suffered so long, and unjustly, — you all have seen it ! at this slave's hands, that it might have whitened my beard : if I should hereafter remember to complain of him, it is likely he will lose his office." Auwad, the kady who was a friend, and sat by me, began some conciliating speech. ' Abdullah, he said, was to blame : Khalil was also to blame. There is danger in such differences ; let there be no more said betwixt you both.' Abdullah: "Now, shall I send thee to prison?" — -"I tell thee, that I am not under thy jurisdiction;" and I rose to leave them. " Sit down, he cries, and brutally snatched my cloak, and this askar — he looked through the case ment and called up one of his men that passed by — shall lead thee to prison." I went down with him, and, passing Amm Mohammed's entry, I went in there, and the fellow left me. The door was locked, but the Beduin housewife, hearing my voice, ran down to open : when I had spoken of the matter, she left me sitting in the house, and, taking the key with her, the good woman ran to call her husband who was in the palms. Mohammed returned presently, and we went out to the planta- 202 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. tions together : but finding the chief of the riders from Medina, in the street, I told him, ' since I could not be safe here that I would ride with them to the gate of the city. It were no new thing that an Englishman should come thither ; was there not a cistern, without the northern gate, named Birket el-EngleysyV Mohammed asked ' What had the Pasha written ? he would hear me read his letter in the Nasrany language ' : and he stood to listen with great admiration. 'Pitta-pitta-pitta ! is such their speech ? ' laughed he ; and this was his new mirth in the next coffee meetings. But I found the good man weak as water in the end of these evils : he had I know not what secret understanding now with the enemy Abdullah, and, contrary to his former words, he was unwilling that I should receive my things until my departure] The Ageylies stayed other days, and Abdullah Tvas weary of entertaining them. I gave the Wahaby a letter to the Pasha ; which, as soon as they came again to town, he delivered. Kheybar, in the gibing humour of these black villagers, is jezirat, 'an island': it is hard to come hither, it is not easy to depart. Until the spring season there are no Aarab upon the vast enclosing Harra: Kheybar lies upon no com mon way, and only in the date-harvest is there any resort of Beduins to their wadian and villages. In all the vulcanic country about there were now no more than a few booths of Heteym, and the nearest were a journey distant. — But none of those timid and oppressed nomads durst for any silver con vey the Nasrany again to Hayil, — so aghast are they all of the displeasure of ibn Rashid. I thought now to go to the (Harra) - village el-Hayat, which lies in the way of them that pass be tween Ibn Rashid's country and Medina: and I might there find carriage to the Jebel. The Nejumy blamed my plain speaking : I had no wit, he said, to be a traveller! "If thou say among the Moslemin that thou art a Moslem, will your people kill thee when you return home ? — art thou afraid of this, Khalil ?" So at the next coffee meetings he said, " I have found a man that will not befriend himself! I can in no wise persuade sheykh Khalil: but if all the Moslemin were like faithful in the religion, I say, the world would not be able to resist us. A young salesman of my acquaintance did not so — some of you may know him at Medina — when he was lately for his affairs at el-Meshed, where all the people are Shias. The evening he arrived, as he stood in the street, some of the townspeople that went by seeing this stranger, began to question him in their SUNNIS AND SHIAS. 203 [outlandish northern] speech, 'Shu bitek4n ent 'what be'st thou ?' [in the Arabian tongue it were, Ent min? ydfuldn] be'st thou sunni or shiay ? The melaun answered them, 'Sirs I am a shiiy.' ' Then welcome, said they, dear brother!' — and the best of them led him home to sup with him, and to lodge. On the morrow another good man lent him a wife of his own, and bade her serve their strange brother in the time of his sojourning among them ; — and this was three months' space : and after that the pleasant young man took his leave of them, and came laughing again to Medina ; and he lives there as good a Moslem as before ! And wellah I have played the shiiy myself in my youth ! — Ye have all seen how the [schismatic] shias are hustled by the [catholic] Haj in the Harameyn. One year a company of Persian pilgrims gave my father money that they might lodge (by themselves) in his palm ground. When I went to their tents, they said to me, 'O Haj Mohammed, be'st thou shiiy or sunni?' 'Eigh! Sirs, I answered, I am a shiiy' — ' Ah ! forgive our asking, dear brother Mohammed; and dine with us to-day:' and so at every meal they called for Haj Mohammed; and when they drunk the sweet chai I drank it with them. One afternoon a Beduwy passed by and spat, as we sat supping ! — wellah, all the Per sians rose from the mess, and they cried out, ' Take that dish away ! Oh ! take it away, Haj Mohammed ; it is spoiled by the beastly Beduwy man's spitting.'— But who (he added) can imagine any evil of Khalil ? for when we go out together, he leaves in one house his cloak or his driving-stick, and in another his agal ! he forgets his pipe, and his sandals, in other several houses. The strange negligence of the man ! ye would say he is sometimes out of memory of the things about him ! — Is this the spy, is this that magician ? but I am sorry that Khalil is so soon to leave us, for he is a sheykh in questions of religion, and besides a peaceable man." The Nejumy family regarded me with affection : my medi cines helped (and they believed had saved) their infant daughter; I was now like a son in the house, wullah in-ak mithil weledna yd Khalil, said they both. Mohammed exhorted me, to dwell with him at Kheybar, 'where first after long travels, I had found good friends. I should be no more molested among them for my religion ; in the summer market I might be his sales man, to sit at a stall of mantles and kerchiefs and measure out cubits of calico for the silver of the poor Beduw. He would buy me then a great-eyed Galla maiden to wife.' — There are none more comely women in the Arabs' peninsula; they are gracious in the simplest garments, and commonly of a well tern- 204 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. pered nature ; and, notwithstanding that which is told of the hither Habash countries, there is a becoming modesty in their heathen blood. — This was the good Nejumy, a man most worthy to have been born in a happier country ! They looked for more warfare to come upon them : in the meanwhile Ibn Rashid treated secretly at Medina, for the re covery of Kheybar. One Abu Bakkar, a chief personage, commanding the Ageyl at Medina, rode lately to Hayil to confer with the Emir ; and he had returned with a saddle-bag full of reals, the Emir's (pretended) tribute to the Sultan, and as much in the other — a gift of the subtle prince's three days' old friendship — for himself. Abu Bakkar was Bab-el-Aarab, 'gate for the affairs of the Nomads,' at Medina; he had been post-master, until he succeeded his father in the higher office: his mother was a Beduwia. This Abu Bakkar was he who, from the departure of a Pasha-governor until the coming in of the new, commanded at Medina. He was leader of the Ageyl expeditions against the Aarab; and in the field he guided them himself. This valiant half-Beduin townsman had taken a wife or a by- wife from every one of the tribes about — a score or more: in this sort he made all the next Aarab his parentage and allies. Abu Bakkar came every summer with the soldiery to Khey bar: and he gives the word at the due time, to villagers and Beduw, to begin the date-gathering,— crying, eflah! He was friendly with the Nejumy; who, good man, used this favour of the great in maintaining the cause of the oppressed. For Amm Mohammed's strong arm was a staff to the weak, and he was father of the poor in the negro village: the hungry and the improvident were welcome to his daily mess. After my departure he would go down and plead Dakhilullah's cause at Medina, he might find thereto a little money, — "which must be given to the judges"! When I answered "What justice can there be in such justices ?" he said sorrowfully, "El-Islam kul- luhu a4b, all is shame in islam." Mohammed asked, " What were the Engleys good for ? " I answered, " They are good rulers." — " Ha ! and what rule they ? since they be not rebels (but friends) to the Sooltan?" — "In these parts of the world they rule India; an empire greater than all the Sultan's Dowlat, and the principal beled of the Moslemin." — "Eigh ! I remember I once heard an Hindy say, in the Haj, ' God continue the hak4mat (government of) el- Engleys ; for a man may walk in what part he will of el-Hind, with a bundle of silver ; but here in these holy countries even the pilgrims are in danger of robbers !' " — Amm Mohammed THEIR OPINION OF ADEN. 205 contemned the Hindies, " They have no heart, he said, and I make no account of the Engleys, for ruling over never so many of them : I myself have put to flight a score oiIIin4d," — and he told me the tale. "It was in my ignorant youth : one morning in the Haj season, going out under the walls (of Medina), to my father's orchard, I saw a company of Hiniid sitting before me upon a hillock, — sixteen persons : there sat a young maiden in the midst of them — very richly attired ! for they were some principal persons. Then I shouted, and lifting my lance, began to leap and run, against them ; the Hindies cried out, and all rising together they fled to save their lives ! — leaving the maiden alone ; and the last to forsake her was a young man — he perchance that was betrothed to be her husband." The gentle damsel held forth her delicate hands, beseeching him by signs to take only her ornaments : she drew off her rings, and gave them to the (Beduin-like) robber ; — Mohammed had already plucked off her rich bracelets ! But the young prodigal looking upon her girlish beauty and her distress, felt a gentleness rising in his heart and he left her [unstained]. — For such godless work the Arabs have little or no contrition ; this worthy man, whom God had established, even now in his religious years, felt none. — It may seem to them that all world's good is kheyr Ullah, howbeit diversely holden, in several men's hands; and that the same (whether by subtilty, or warlike endeavour) might well enough be assumed by another. Amm Mohammed understanding from me that the Engleys have a naval station in the peninsula of the Aarab, his bearded chin fell with a sort of national amazement ! Some word of this being spoken in the soldiers' kahwa, there would no man be lieve me. — None of them had not heard of Adden (Aden) : " But there be, said they, the askars of the Sultan, and not Nasranies;" and they derided my folly. — " Think 'st thou that the Sooltan would suffer any kafirs to dwell in. the [sacred] Land of the Aarab ? — the Engleys were never at Adden." But some answered, " Khalil is a travelled man, who ^speaks truth and is seldom ' mistaken : if the Engleys be at Adden, then is not Adden on this side the sea, but upon that further (African) part." The Bishy coming in [W. Bisha lies 120 leagues nigher our Arabian station] confirmed the Nasrany's tale, saying, "Ay, Adden is under the hakiimat el-Engleys." Then they all cried out, " It must be by permission of the Sooltan ! because the Engleys are profitable to the Dowla, and not rebellious." Twelve days after I had written to the Pasha came his 206 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. rescript to Abdullah, with a returning hubt, bidding him ' be ware how he behaved himself towards the Engleysy, and to send me without delay to Ibn Rashid; and if no Beduins could be found to accompany me, to send with me some of the Ageyl : he was to restore my property immediately, and if anything were missing he must write word again.' The black village governor was now in dread for himself; he went about the village to raise that which he had spent of my robbed liras: and I heard with pain, that (for this) he had sold the orphan's cow. He summoned me at night to deliver me mine own. The packet of books and papers, received a fortnight before from Medina, was sealed with the pasha's signet: when opened a koran was missing and an Arabic psalter ! I had promised them to Amm Mohammed ; and where was the camel bag ? Abdullah murmured in his black throat ' Whose could be this infamous theft ?' and sent one for Dakhil the post. — Dakhil told us that ' Come to Medina he went, with the things on his back, to the government palace ; but meeting with a principal officer — one whom they all knew — that personage led him away to drink coffee in his house. " Now let me see, quoth the officer, what hast thou brought ? and, if that Nasrany's head should be cut off, some thing may as well remain with me, before all goes up to the Pasha." — The great man compelled me, said Dakhil, so I let him have the books ; and when he saw the Persian camel- bag, ' This too, he said, may remain with me." ' — " Ullah curse the father of him ! " exclaimed Abdullah : and, many of the askars' voices answered about him, "Ullah curse him!" I asked, "Is it a poor man, who has done this?" Abdullah: "Poor! he is rich, the Lord curse him ! It is our colonel, Khalil, at Medina ; where he lives in a great house, and receives a great govern ment salary, besides all the [dishonest] private gains of his office." — " The Lord curse him !" exclaimed the Nejumy. " The Lord curse him ! answered Aman (the most gentle minded of them all), he has broken the nam4s of the Dowla ! " Abdullah : "Ah! Khalil, he is one of the great ones at Medina, and gomdny! (a very enemy). Now what can we do, shall we send again to Medina ? " A villager" lately arrived from thence said, " The colonel is not now in Medina, we heard a little before our coming away that he had set out for Mecca." — So must other days be consumed at Kheybar for this Turkish villain's wrong ! in the meanwhile Sabry Pasha might be recalled from Medina ! I sat by the Nejiimy's evening fire, and boiled tea, which he and his nomad jara had learned to drink with me, when CAMEL STEALING. 207 we heard one call below stairs ; the joyous housewife ran down in haste, and brought up her brother, who had been long out cattle lifting, with another gatuny. The wretch came in jaded, and grinning the teeth : and when he had eaten a morsel, he began to tell us his adventure ; — ' That come in the Jeheyna dira they found a troop of camels, and only a child to keep them. They drove off the cattle, and drove them all that day at a run, and the night after; until a little before dawn, when, having yet a day and a half to Kheybar, they fell at unawares among tents ! — it was a menzil of Harb. The hounds barked furiously at the rushing of camels, the Aarab ran from their beyts, with their arms. He and his rafik alighting hastily, forsook the robbed cattle, and saving no more than their matchlocks, they betook themselves to the side of a moun tain. From thence they shot down against their pursuers, and those shot up at them. The Harb bye and bye went home to kahwa; and the geyatin escaped to Kheybar on foot with their weary lives ! ' The next day Amm Mohammed called his robber brother- in-law to supper. The jaded wretch soon rose from the dish to kindle his pipe, and immediately went home to sleep. — Mohammed's wife returned later from milking their few goats; and as she came lighting herself upon the stairs, with a flaming palm-branch, his keen eye discerned a trouble in her looks. — "Eigh! woman, he asked, what tidings?" She answered with a sorrowful alacrity, in the Semitic wise, " Well ! [a first word of good augury] it may please Ullah : my brother is very sick, and has a flux of the bowels, and is lying in great pain, as if he were to die, and we cannot tell what to do for him : — it is [the poor woman cast down her eyes] as if my brother had been poisoned ; when he rose from eating he left us, and before he was come home the pains took him ! " — Mohammed re sponded with good humour, " This is a folly, woman, who has poisoned the melaun ? I am well, and sheykh Khalil is well ; and Haseyn and thou have eaten after us of the same mess, — but thy brother is sick of his cattle stealing ! Light us forth, and if he be ailing we will bring him hither, and sheykh Khalil shall cure him with some medicine." We found him easier ; and led him back with us. I gave him grains of laudanum powder, which he swallowed without any mistrusting. — I saw then a remedy of theirs, for the colic pain, which might sometime save life after drugs have failed. The patient lay groaning on his back, and his sister kneaded the belly smoothly with her housemother's hands [they may be as well anointed with warm oil] ; she gave him also a broth to 208 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. drink of sour milk with a head of (thiim) garlic beaten in it. At midnight we sent him away well again : then I said to Amm Mohammed, " It were easier to die once than to suffer heart ache continually." — "The melaun has been twinged thus often times ; and who is there afraid of sheykh Khalil ? if thou bid me, little father Khalil, I would drink poison." — The restless Beduwy was gone, the third morrow, on foot over the Harra, to seek hospitality (and eat flesh-meat) at el-Hayat, — forty miles distant. The Siruan asked a medicine for a chill; and I brought him camphor. " Eigh ! said Abdullah, is not this kafdr of the dead, wherewith they sprinkle the shrouds as they are borne to the -burial ? — five drops of this tincture will cut off a man's off spring. What hast thou done to drink of it, Amm Moham med ! " The good man answered, " Have I not Haseyn, and the little bint ? Wellah if sheykh Khalil have made me from this time childless, I am content, because Khalil has done it." The black audience were aghast; "Reach me, I said to them, that bottle and I will drink twice five drops." But they murmured, " Akhs ! and was this one of the medicines of Khalil?" There came down Heteymies with unpressed cheeses to sell in the village. — Abdullah had imagined how he might eat of the sweet-cheeses of the poor nomads, and not pay for them. He commanded the Ageylies to warn him of any hubt bring ing cheeses; and when they arrived he sent out his black swaggering Siriir to ask a cheese from them, as a present for (himself) the governor, "And else I will lay a tax, tell them, upon all cheeses which pass the gates ; one in eight shall well be mine, on behalf of the Dowla." The poor nomads, hearing that tiding, loaded again upon their beasts, and drove forth, saying, ' Wellah they would return no more.' -— The black villagers sat with heavy looks on the street benches: and the Nejumy spared not to say among them, "Is this he, the son of an ass, whom they send us to govern Kheybar ? worse and worse ! and Abdullah is more and more fool every day. What Aarab will come any more, I say, to Kheybar ? from whence then may the people have samn and cheeses ? but now they must eat their bread and their porridge hdf (without sauce). Is this the Dowla administered by Abu Aly (Abdullah)? It was better in Ibn Rashid's time ! " — It is samn put to their coarse meal and dates which makes the oasis diet wholesome: thoughto flesh-meat eaters it may seem that they use it inordinately, when one in a holiday will eat with his dates almost the third NOMAD CHEESE-MAKERS. 209 of a pound of precious samn. Butter thus swallowed is a sin gular refreshment to the wasted body; they say, "It sweats through the bones to the inward marrow, for there is nothing so subtle as samn. A girby may hold water, but no butter skin (akka, madun, jurn, med'hunna) may hold clarified butter, but it be inwardly daubed with thick date syrup." Samn is the health of man in the deadly khala; the best samn has the odour of the blossoming vine. — The negroes gladly anoint their black skins Avith butter. The rude unpressed Heteym cheeses, of the milk of their ewes and goats, are little more than clots of curds, and with salt they may last sweet a month. Cheeses are not made in any tribes, of my acquaintance, in Nejd. 'It is not their custom, they say, they might drink more milk than they have : ' it may be in their eyes also an ignoble traffic. Yet I have found a tribe of cheese-makers in my Arabian travels, and they are el-Koreysh, the kinsmen of Mohammed: they carry their pleasant white cheeses to et-Tdyif, and to Mecca. The Sabeans, or ' disciples of St John ', beside the Persian Gulf, are makers of a cheese kind in filaments: [they are praised besides as silver smiths and sword-smiths]. A market party of Heteym brought the quarters of a fat naga that had been lost in the calving ; and Amm Mohammed bought of them the hump (to sell the lard again by measure), it might be almost an hundred weight of massy white marrow fat, without lean or sinews : cut into gobbets they filled a vast cauldron. This was set upon the fire to be boiled down to the grease, wedduk ; which is better they say than samn to anoint their poor diet. When it had boiled enough, the pot was set down to cool upon the clay floor, but the lard yet seethed and bubbled up. " Who, I said, is now the magician ? that can boil without fire !" " Ay, laughed his good Beduwia, Mo hammed he is the sahar." The Nejumy answered, "Khalil knows not what a virtue is in wedduk ; woman, should I tell him the tale of the Solubby ?"—" Yes, tell it to Khalil." — " There was a Solubby and his wife, and besides him she had a lemman, a shrew that could pleasure her mother in the same kind : but the goodman kept his counsel, and showed them a simple countenance. One morrow the Solubby, taking down his matchlock, said to his faithless jara, ' Woman, I go a hunting : from the brow of yonder hill thou mayest see a tolh tree that stands alone in the khala ; — thereat the tribesmen use to enquire of a spirit, which answers them truly. Hearest thou! in the morning load upon the ass, and remove thither and build our beyt, and there await me. If I have any luck I P. T. II. 14 2IO TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. shall come again the third day:' so he left them. — The next noon, when they approached the place, the young woman ran forward, — so her heart was on fire to tell the acacia. ' Say 0 blissful thorn! she cries, how may I be rid of my silly old husband? and at the least, that my lemman might be all mine.' That old Solubby lay lurking upon his breast in the bushes ; and he answered her in another voice, 'Woman, feed him with wedduk, till forty days be out; and after that he shall nor hear nor see.' The goodman came home; and she larded his mess with wedduk, forty days. On the morrow when she brought his breakfast, he spread his hands and felt for the bowl: when he rose, he stumbled and fell among the gear. — They saw that his eyes were set and staring! and he fared as one that heard them not ; though they cried at his ear, he was not aware of them. In the hot midday [when the nomads slumber], her lem man came creeping to them from bush to bush ; and he made the young woman a sign. ' 0 stand up, thou ! said the two women, and enter boldly; for the goodman has lost both his seeing and hearing :' then the lemman came to them in the booth. But when the poor Solubby saw their shameful sin, he caught his spear ; and suddenly pierced them both through and killed them." The day was at hand which should deliver me from Kheybar. Dakhil the post was willing to convey me to Hayil, for two of my gold pieces : but that would leave me with less than eighty shillings — too little to bring me to some friendly soil, out of the midst of Arabia. Eyad, a Bishr Ageyly, proffered to carry me on his sick thelul for five reals to Hayil. I thought to go first (from this famine at Kheybar) to buy victual at el-Hayat; their oasis had not been wasted by locusts. Those negro Nejd villagers are hospitable, and that which the Ara bians think is more than all to the welfare of their tribes and towns, the sheykh was a just and honourable person. — The Nejiimy's wife's brother had returned from thence after the three days' hospitality: and being there, with two or three more loitering Beduwies like himself, he told us that each day a householder had called them; and "every host killed a bull to their supper!" "It is true, said the Nejumy; a bull there is not worth many reals." — " The villagers of Hayat are be come a whiter people of late years ! quoth the Beduwy ; this is through their often marriages with poor women of Heteym and Jeheyna." — Eyad, a Beduwy, and by military adoption a townsman of Medina, was one who had drunk very nigh the dregs, of the LAST DAYS AT KHEYBAR. 211 mischiefs and vility of one and the other life. A Beduwy (mild by nature to the guest) he had not given his voice for my cap tivity ; but in the rest he was a lukewarm adulator of Abdullah. — All my papers were come again, save only the safe-conduct of Ibn Rashid, which they had detained ! The slave-hearted Abdullah began now to call me 'Uncle Khalil'; for he thought, 'What, if the Nasrany afterward remembered his wrongs, and he had this power with the Dowla — ' ? How pitiful a behaviour might I have seen from him if our lots had been reversed at Kheybar ! He promised me provision for the way, and half the Ageyly's wages to Hayil ; but I rejected them both. Amm Mohammed was displeased because I would not receive from him more than two handfuls of dates : — he was low him self till the harvest, and there remained not a strike of corn in the village. I divided my medicines with the good man, and bought him a tunic and a new gun-stock : these with other reals of mine (which, since they were loose in my pockets, Abdullah had not taken from me), already spent for corn and samn in his house, might suffice that Amm Mohammed should not be barer at my departure, for all the great-hearted goodness which he had shown me in my long tribulation at Kheybar. He said, "Nay, Khalil, but leave me happy with the remem brance, and take it not away from me by requiting me ! only this I desire of thee that thou sometimes say, ' The Lord remember him for good.' Am I not thy abu, art not thou my son, be we not brethren? and thou art poor in the midst of a land which thou hast seen to be all hostile to thee. Also Ahmed would not suffer it ; what will my brother say ? and there would be talk amongst the Kheyabara." I answered, "I shall say nothing:" then he consented. So I ever used the Arabian hospitality to my possibility: yet now I sinned in so doing, against that charitable integrity, the human affection, which was in Amm Mohammed; and which, like the waxen powder upon summer fruits, is deflowered under any rude handling. When he received my gift, it seemed to him that I had taken away his good works ! The new year had advanced to the midst of March, the days were warm soon after the sunrising ; at noon I found in the open shadow 78° F. The altitude of Kheybar is, according to my aneroid readings, 2800 feet. Medina, making comparison of the corn and date harvests, which every year are ripened there a few days later, may lie a little higher. Medina is en compassed by windy mountains, the winter is colder there, and rich citizens ruffle it in fur cloaks, when a poor man is easy in 14 — 9. 2 12 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. his bare shirt at Kheybar. The midwinter days, at my first coming, were heavy with the latter autumn heat, and the night hours sultry with a stagnant air till morning. After Christmas the winter nights were cool, then chill, and we had a week of nights (as it seemed to us) of extreme cold (but without frost). The Arabs, whose clothing is half nakedness, lie without beds upon palm matting on the cold floor, — in which they seem to us more witless than many beasts ! only few have any piece of tent cloth to spread under them. Many poor improvident souls, and many hareem, have not so much as a mantle to wry- in their shivering bodies ; they can but roll themselves in (cold) palm mat. Amm Mohammed said: "God sendeth to every one the cold after his cloth, and the man that is nearly naked feels it not more than another who is well clad." One early morning (by my account the 11th of Feb.), when it seemed most cold, I found 51° F.; yet some winters he had seen a film of ice upon plashes of the fenny valley. The winter air is still and warm in the sun, the heaven of a clear whitish blue, overcast with light clouds. — The time was now come to marry the palms; the soft white blossoming shoots of the new fruit-stalks, told, were risen in the crowns of the beautiful food stems. The Kheybar valleys are reckoned neither to the- Hejaz nor. to Nejd; they are a kind of middle ground, — yet Kheybar is an Hejaz village. The higher grounds of the Harra above' appertain to Nejd ; the lower desert of the W. el-Humth beyond the Hejjur mountains is called, by the Nejd Bishr, Tehdma [hot plain land]; — this is not that seabord Tehama beside the Red Sea. Abdullah had purchased other camel-bags for me, from a salesman who arrived from Medina. I agreed with Eyad ; and on the morrow we should depart from Kheybar. — When that blissful day dawned, my rafik found it was the 21st of the moon Sdfr, and not lucky to begin our journey ; we might set out, he said, the next morning. I saw then two men brought before Abdullah from Umm Kida, for resisting the forced cleansing and sweeping in their siik. Abdullah made them lie upon their breasts, in a public alley, and then, before weeping women, and the village neigh bours, — and though the sheykhs entreated for them, he beat them, with green palm rods ; and they cried out mainly, till their negro blood was sprinkled on the ground. Amm Moham med went by driving his kine to the common gathering-place of their cattle without the gates : his half-Beduin (gentle) heart swelled to see this bestial (and in his eyes inhuman) spectacle ! VILLAGERS BEATEN WITH PALM RODS. 213 And with loud seditious voice as he returned, he named Abu Aly " very ass, and Yahudy " ! to all whom he found in the village street. The new sun rising, this was the hour of my deliverance from the long deyik es-sudr, the straitness of the breast in af fliction, at Kheybar. Eyad said that all his hire must be paid him ere the setting out; because he would leave it with his wife. In a menzil of the Aarab, I had not doubted, a Beduwy is commonly a trusty rafik; but Eyad was a rotten one, and therefore I had covenanted to pay him a third in departing, a third at el-Hayat, and a third at our arriving in Hayil Abd ullah sought to persuade me with deceitful reasons,; but now I refused Eyad, who I foresaw from this beginning would be a dangerous companion. Abdullah: "Let us not strive, we may find some other, and in all things, I would fain content Khalil." Afterwards he said, "I vouch for Eyad, and if he fail in anything, the fault be upon my head! Eyad is an askar of mine, the Dowla has a long arm, and for any misdeed I might cut off his head. Eyad's arrears of pay are now five or six hundred reals, and he durst not disobey the Dowla. Say which way you would take to Hayil, and to that I will bind him. You may rest here a day and there a day, at your own liking, and drink whey, where you find Beduins; and to this Eyad is willing because his thelul is feeble. Wouldst thou as much as fifteen days for the journey ? — I will give him twenty- six to go and come." The Nejiimy, who stood as a looker-on to-day among us, was loud and raw in his words; and gave his counsel so fondly be fore them all, and manifestly to my hurt ! that I turned from him with a heartache. The traveller should sail with every fair wind in these fanatical countries, and pass forth before good- will grow cold : I made Eyad swear before them all to be faithful to me, and counted the five reals in his hand. Abdullah had now a request that an Ageyly Bishr lad, Merjdn, should go in our company. I knew him to be of a shallow humour, a sower of trouble, and likely by recounting my vicissitudes at Kheybar to the Aarab in the way, to hinder my passage. Abdullah : ' He asks it of your kindness, that he might visit an only sister and his little brother at Hayil; whom he has not seen these many years.' I granted, and had ever afterward to repent :— there is an impolitic humanity, which is visited upon us. The Jew-like Southern Annezy are the wrorst natured (saving the Kahtan) of all the tribes, t marked with discomfort of 214 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. heart the craven adulation of Eyad, in his leavetaking of these wretches. Although I had suffered wrongs, I said to them (to the manifest joy of the guilty Abdullah) the last word of Peace. — My comrade Aman came along with me. The Nejumy was gone before to find his mare; he would meet us by the way and ride on a mile with me. We went by a great stone and there I mounted : Aman took my hand feebly in his dying hand, and prayed aloud that the Lord would bring me safely to my jour ney's end. The poor Galla earnestly charged Eyad to have a care of me, and we set forward. One Hamed, a clownish young man of the village, came along with us. The Nejumy sent him to bring in some goats of his, which he had at pasture with the next Heteym. Hamed's father (Amm Mohammed told me) had been one of the richest at Khey bar; "But it is gone from them, and now this fellow, to fill his. hungry belly, must lend himself to every man's service; I choose him because he never says me nay. — His brother loved a young woman of the village, but a sheykh spoke for her ; and though he was a man in years, her father gave her to him : the sheykh was Ibrahim's father. One day when the young negro found the old wiver in the palms, and he saw no man nigh, he ran to him and broke his pan, with his mace. The sheykh not coming home there was a stir in the village ; and they sought for him in the plantations. The dead was not found till the second morrow ; his corse lay under sticks and straw, which the man-slayer had cast over him. For a day or two every man asked other, ' Who has done this ?' In the end a child went to the sheykh Salih and said, "I will show it thee for a reward:" and the sheykh promised him. The child said, " It was such an one, I saw him slay the sheykh ; and when he hid him he saw me, and I fled without ever looking back, and ran on to the village.' — The blood-ransom was grievous ; but the unhappy father chose to forsake nearly all his land, for his son's life: he made it over to Ibrahim, the son of the slain; and there was little left for his old age." I asked, if the enriched Ibrahim might live now out of dread of the ruffling young brethren, since he enjoyed their patrimony ? "Ay, he answered, they are good friends: and the young men are beholden to him, because he accepted the blood-money, for else a brother must have died." At little distance the Nejumy met us, — he was on foot. He said, his mare had strayed in the palms ; and if he might find her, he would ride down to the Tubj, to cut male palm blossoms of the half- wild stems there, to marry them with his female trees at home. One husband stem (to be known by the doubly robust growth) may suffice among ten female palms. — DEPART FROM KHEYBAR. 215 "Now God be with thee, my father Mohammed, and requite thee." — " God speed thee Khalil," and he took my hand. Amm Mohammed went back to his own, we passed further ; and the world, and death, and the inhumanity of religions parted us for ever! We beat the pad-footed thelul over the fenny ground, and the last brooks and plashes. And then I came up from the pestilent Kheybar wadian, and the intolerable captivity of the Dowla, to a blissful free air on the brow of the Harra ! In the next hour we went by many of the vaults, of wild basalt stones [v. above p. 102], which I have supposed to be barrows. After ten miles' march we saw a nomad woman standing far off upon a lava rock, and two booths of Heteym. My Beduin rafiks showed me the heads of a mountain southward, el-Baitha, that they said stands a little short of Medina. It was afternoon, we halted and loosed out the thelul to pasture, and sat down till it should be evening. When the sun was setting we walked towards the tents : but the broken- headed Eyad left me with Hamed and his loaded thelul, and went with Merjan to guest it at the other beyt. The house holder of the booth where I was, came home with the flocks and camels ; he was a beardless young man. They brought us buttermilk, and we heard the voice of a negress calling in the woman's apartment, Hamed ! yd Hamd ! She was from the village, and was staying with these nomad friends in the desert, to refresh herself with le"ban. It was presently dark, but the young man went abroad again with the ass to bring in water. He returned after two hours and, without my know ledge, they sacrificed a goat: it was for this he had fetched water. The young Heteymy called me — the adulation of an abject race — Towil el-amr. After the hospitality Eyad entered, "Khalil, he said, hast thou reserved no morsels for me that am thy rafik?" — "Would a rafik have forsaken me?" He now counselled to hold a more westerly course, according to the tidings they had heard in the other tent, ' that we might come every day to menzils of the Aarab, and find milk and refreshment ; whereas, if I visited el- Hayat, all the way northward to Hayil from thence was now bare of Beduins.' — I should thus miss el-Hayat, and had no provisions : also I assented to them in evil hour ! it had been better to have yielded nothing to such treacherous rafiks. We departed at sunrise, having upon our right hand, in the ' White Harra ' (el-Abiath) a distant mountain, which they like wise named el-Baitha [other than that in the Hejaz, nigh 216 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. Medina]. In that jebel, quoth my rafiks, are the highest shdebdn (seyl-strands) of W. er-Rummah; but all on this side seyls down to the (great Hejaz) Wady el-Humth. We passed by sharp glassy lavas ; " — hub," said my companions. A pair of great lapwing like fowl, habdra, fluttered before us ; I have seldom seen them in the deserts [and only at this season] : they have whitish and dun-speckled feathers. Their eggs (brown and rose, black speck led) I have found in May, laid two together upon the bare wilder ness gravel [near Maan] ; they were great as turkey-eggs, and well tasting : the birds might be a kind of bustards. " Their flesh is nesh as cotton between the teeth," quoth the Bishr Sybarite Eyad. Merjan and Eyad lured to them, whistling ; they drew off their long gun-leathers, and stole under the habaras ; but as Beduins will not cast away lead in the air, they returned bye and bye as they went. I never saw the Arabs' gunning help them to any game : only the Nejumy used to shoot at, (and he could strike down) flying partridges. From hence the vulcanic field about us was a wilderness of sharp lava stones, where few or no cattle paths [Bishr, jadda] appeared; and nomads go on foot among the rocking blocks un willingly. A heavy toppling stone split the horny thickness of Hamed's great toe. I alighted that he might ride ; but the negro borrowed a knife and, with a savage resolution, shred away his flesh, and went on walking. In the evening halt, he seared the bloody wound, and said, it would be well enough, for the next marches. As we journeyed the March wind blustered up against us from the north ; and the dry herbage and scudding stems of sere desert bushes, were driven before the blast. Our way was uncertain, and without shelter or water ; the height of this lava-plain is 3,400 feet. Merjan- — the lad was tormented with a throbbing ague-cake (idhal), after the Kheybar fever, shouted in the afternoon that he saw a flock ; and then all beside his patience he shrieked back curses, because* we did not follow him: the flock was but a troop of gazelles. "Fen el- Aarab, they said at last, the nomads where ? — neffera! deceitful words ; but this is the manner of the Heteyman ! they misled us last night, Ullah send them confusion." The negro had drunk out nearly all in my small waterskin: towards evening he untied the neck and would have made a full end of it himself at a draught; but I said to him, "Nay, for we have gone and thirsted all the day, and no man shall have more than other." The Beduins cried out upon him, " And thinkest thou that we be yet in the Saheyn? this is the khala and no swaggering-place of the Kheyabara." Finally, when the sun set, we found a hollow ground and sidr trees to bear off the night wind, which blew so MARCH WIND. 217 fast and pierced our slender clothing : they rent down the sere white arms of a dead acacia, for our evening fire. Then knead ing flour of the little water which remained to us, we made hasty bread under the embers. The March night was cold. We departed when the day dawned, and held under the sandstone mountain Gurs: and oh, joy! this sun being fairly risen, the abhorred land-marks of Kheybar appeared no more. We passed other vaulted cells and old dry walling upon the waste Harra, and an ancient burying-place. "See, said Eyad, these graves of the auellin, how they lie heaped over with stones !" We marched in the vulcanic field — 'a land whose stones are iron', and always fasting, till the mid-afternoon, when we found in some black sand-beds footprints of camels. At first my rafiks said the traces were of a rahla five to ten days old ; but taking up the jella, they thought it might be of five days ago. The droppings led us over the Harra north-westward, to wards the outlying plutonic coasts of J. Hejjiir. — Footprints in the desert, are slowly blotted by insensible wind causing the sand corns to slide ; they might otherwise remain perfectly until the next rain. — In a monument lately opened in Egypt, fresh prints of the workmen's soles were found in the fine powder of the floor ; and they were of an hundred men's ages past ! The Beduins went to an hollow ground, to seek a little ponded rain, and there they filled the girby. That water was full "of wiggling white vermin; and we drank — giving God thanks — through a lap of our kerchiefs. [We may see the flaggy hare-lips of the camel fenced with a border of bristles, bent inwardly; and through this brush the brute strains all that he drinks of the foul desert waters !] The Beduin rafiks climbed upon every high rock to look for the nomads : we went on till the sun set, and then alighted in a low ground with acacia trees and bushes; there we found a dar of the nomads lately forsaken. We were here nigh the borders of the Harra. As the morrow's sun rose we set forward, and the camel drop pings led us toward the Thullan Hejjiir. We came bye and fcye to the Harra side, and the lava-border is here like the ice- brink of a glacier ; where we descended it was twenty feet in height, and a little beside us eight or ten fathoms. Beyond the Harra we passed forth upon barren steeps of plutonic gravel, furrowed by the secular rains and ascending toward the horrid wilderness of mountains, Jebal Hejjiir. A napping gazelle-buck, started from a bush before us ; and standing an instant at gaze, he had fallen then to the shot of an European, — but the Beduins are always unready. As we journeyed I saw an hole, a yard deep, digged in the desert earth ; the rafiks answered me, ' It was for 2l8 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. a mejd4r (one sick of the small-pox)! — They would kindle a fire in it, and after raking out the embers the sick is seated in the hot sand : such may be a salutary sweating-bath. The Ara bians dread extremely the homicide disease; and the calamity of a great sheykh of the Annezy in Kasim was yet fresh in men's memories. — His tribesfolk removed from him in haste; and his own kindred and even his household forsook him ! Leaving the sandstone platform mountain el-Kh'tdm upon the right hand, we came to the desolate mountains, whose knees and lower crags about us were traps, brown, yellow, grey, slate-colour, red and purple. Small black eagles, el-agab, lay upon the wing above us, gliding like the shadows, which their outstretched wings cast upon the rocky coasts. Crows and rakhams hovered in the lower air, over a forsaken dar of the nomads : their embers were yet warm, they had removed this morning. The Beduin companions crept out with their long matchlocks, hoping to shoot a crow, and have a pair of shank- bones for pipe-stems. I asked them if there had fallen a hair or feather to their shot in the time of their lives ? They protest ed, " Ay wellah, Khalil ; and the gatta many times." Not long after we espied the Aarab and their camels. We came up with them a little after noon, when they first halted to encamp. The sheykh, seeing strangers approach, had remained a little in the hindward; and he was known to my companions. These nomads were Ferddessa, Ibn Simry, Heteym. We sat down together, and a weled milked two of the sheykh's nagas, for us strangers. This sheykh, when he knew me to be the Nasrany, began to bluster, although I was a guest at his milk- bowl. "What! heathen man, he cries ; what ! Nasrany, wherefore comest thou hither? Dost thou not fear the Aarab's knife? Or thinkest thou, O Jew-man, that it cannot carve thy throat ? — which will be seen one day. 0 ye his rafiks, will they not cut the wezand of him ? Where go ye now — to Hayil ? but Ibn Rashid will kill him if this (man) come thither again." — The Heteym are not so civil-minded as the right Beduw ; they are often rough towards their guests, where the Beduw are gentle-natured. When I saw the man was a good blunt spirit, I derided his ignorance till he was ashamed ; and in this sort you may easily defeat the malicious simplicity of the Arabs. We drove on our beast to their camp, and sat down before a beyt. The householder bye and bye brought us forth a bowl of leban and another of mereesy ; we loosed out the thelul to pas ture, and sat by our baggage in the wind and beating sun till evening ; when the host bade us enter, ancLwe found a supper set ready for us, of boiled rice. He had been one in the Heteymy HETEYM CAMPS. 219 hubt which was lately taken by a foray of Jeheyna near the walls of Medina. Upon the morrow this host removed with his kindred, and we became guests of another beyt ; for we would repose this day over in their menzil, where I counted thirty tents. When I gave a sick person rhubarb, his friends were much pleased for " By the smack, said they, it should be a good medicine indeed." A few persons came to us to enquire the news: but not many men were at home by day in the Heteymy menzil : for these nomads are diligent cattle-keepers, more than the Beduw. I heard some complain of Ibn Rashid, — 'It was he that weakened the Aarab;' Eyad answered them, "Ay billah it is he who weakens the tribes." I asked, " How is this ? without him were there any safety in the desert ? — the tribes would be perpetually riding upon each other." Eydd: "It is Ibn Rashid that weakens the Aarab, for before a kabila is subdued to him he has brought them almost to nothing: after that, he makes them to live in peace." These southern Heteym are taxed by Ibn Rashid ; and, since the Dowla is at Kheybar, they are taxed as well by the government of Medina. The Siruan had been round among them with Amm Mohammed, to collect the tithe, not long before my coming to Kheybar. The most of the Heteyman yield a khua to all the powerful about them ; and being thus released from their hostility, they are com monly more thriving than the Beduw of the same diras. Their theluls are the best, no Beduin tribes have so good a strain ; (we shall see that best of all are the theluls of their kindred the Sherarat). The Heteym are commonly more robust than the hunger-bitten Beduw, and their women are often beautiful. They questioned roughly in the booth, "What are the Nasara, what is their religion?" One among them said: "I will tell you the sooth in this as I heard it [in Medina, or in the civil north countries]: The Nasara inhabit a city closed with iron and encompassed by the sea!" Eydd: "Talk not so boister ously, lest ye offend Khalil ; and he is one that with a word might make this tent to fall about our ears." " Eigh ! they an swered, could he so indeed ? " I found in their menzil two lives blighted by the morbus gallicus. I enquired from whence had they that malady? They answered, "From el-Medina." At daybreak the nomad people removed. We followed with them westward, in these mountains; and ascended through a cragged passage, where there seemed to be no footing for camels. Hamed, who had left us, came limping by with one whom he had found to guide him : " Farewell, I said, akhu Hamda." The Kheybar villain looked up pleased and confused, 2 20 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. because I had named him (as one of the valiant) by his sister, and he wished me God speed. We were stayed in the midst by some friends, that would milk for us ere we departed from among them. Infinite seemed to me the horrid maze of these desolate and thirsty mountains ! Their name Jebal Hejjiir may be interpreted the stony mountains : — they are of the Welad Aly and Bishr, — and by their allowance of these Heteym. In the valley deeps they find, most years, the rabia and good pasture bushes. These coasts seyl by W. Hejjiir to the W. el- Humth. We were now much westward of our way. The nomads removed southward; and leaving them we descended, in an hour, to a wady bottom of sand, where we found another Heteym menzil, thirty booths, of Sueyder, Ibn Simry. The district (of a kind of middle traps), they name YeterSha: Eyad's Aarab seldom visited this part of their dira; and he had been here but once before. These mountains seyl, they say, by W. Khafutha, one of the Kheybar valleys. Merjan found here some of his own kindred, a household or two of his Bishr clan Bejaija or Bejqida. — There are many poor families of Beduin tribesmen living (for their more welfare) in the peaceable society of the Heteym. A man, that was his cousin, laid hands on the thelul, and drew her towards his hospitable beyt. — Our hosts of yesterday sent word of my be ing in the dira to a sick sheykh of theirs, Ibn Heyzdn, who had been hurt by a spear-thrust in a ghrazzu. Amm Mohammed lately sold some ointment of mine to the sick man's friends in Kheybar, which had been found excellent; and his acquaint ance desired that I should ride to see him. I consented to wait here one day, until the return of their messenger. When I took out my medicine book and long brass Arabic inkhorn, men and women gathered about me ; it was marvels to them to see me write and read. They whispered, " He sees the invisible ; — at least thou seest more than we poor folk ! — it is written there!" The host had two comely daughters ; they won dered to look upon the stranger's white skin. The young women's demeanour was easy, with a maidenly modesty ; but their eye- glances melted the heart of the beardless lad Merjan, their cousin, who had already a girl-wife at Kheybar. These nomad hareem in Nejd were veiled with the face-clout, but only from the mouth downward ; they wore a silver ring in the right nostril, and a braided forelock hanging upon the temples. The good- man went abroad with his hatchet, and we saw them no more till sunset, when he and his wife came dragging-in great lopped boughs of tolh trees: — where we see the trail of boughs in the khala, it is a sign of the nomad menzils. Of these they made a A SOLUBBY HOUSEHOLD. 221 sheep-pen before the beyt ; and the small cattle were driven in and folded for the night. They call it hathira; "Shammar, they said, have another name," [serifat]. The host now set before us a great dish of rice. Eyad was treacherous, and always imagining, since he had his wages, how he might forsake me: the fellow would not willingly go to Hayil " Khalil, shall I leave thee here ? wellah the thelul is not in plight for a long journey." — "Restore then three reals and I will let thee go." — "' Ah ! how may I, Khalil ? you saw that I left the money at home." — " Then borrow it here." — " Bless me ! which of these Aarab has any money, or would lend me one real ? " — " All this I said at Kheybar, that thou wouldst betray me ; Eyad, thou shalt carry me to Hayil, as thou art bounden." — " But here lies no way to Hayil, we are come out of the path ; these Aarab have their faces towards the Auajy, let us go on with them, it is but two marches, and I will leave thee there." — The ill-faith of the Arabs is a gulf to cast in the truth of the unwary ! there is nothing to hope for in man, amongst them ; and their heaven is too far off, or without sense of human miseries. Now I heard from this wretch's mouth my own arguments, which he had bravely contradicted at Kheybar ! On the morrow Eyad would set out with the rising sun: I said, we will remain here to-day, as thou didst desire yesternight and obtain of me. But he loaded ! and then the villanous rafik came with his stick, and — it was that he had learned in the Turkish service — threatened to beat me, if I did not remove : but he yielded immediately. In this menzil I found a Solubby household from W. es- Suffera, which is spoken of for its excessive heat, in the Hejaz, not much north of Mecca. They were here above three hundred miles from home ; but that seems no great dis tance to the land-wrandering Solubba. The man told me that when summer was in they would go to pitch, alone, at some water in the wilderness : and (having no cattle) they must live then partly of venison. " You have now asked me for an eye- medicine, can you go hunting with blear eyes?" — "It is the young men (el-eyydl) that hunt ; and I remain at home." — I went further by a tent where the Heteymy housewife was boiling down her ldban, in a great cauldron, to mereesy. I sat down to see it : her pot sputtered, and she asked me, could I follow the spats with my eyes upward? "For I have heard say, that the Nasara cannot look up to heaven." Harshly she chid 'my un belief and my enmity to Ullah ' ; and I answered her nothing. Then she took up a ladleful of her mereesy paste, poured samn on it, in a bowl, and bade the stranger eat, saying cheerfully, 222 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. "Ah ! why dost thou continue without the religion ? and have the Lord against thee and the people also ; only pray as we and all the people will be thy kindred." — Such were the nomads' daily words to me in these deserts. The morning after, when the messenger had not returned, we loaded betimes. The sun was rising as we rode forth ; and at the camp's end another Bishr householder bade us alight, for he had made ready for us — no common morrow's hospitality ; but his dish of rice should have been our supper last evening. Whilst we were eating, a poor woman came crying to me, ' to cure her daughter and stay here, — we should be her guests ; and she pretended she would give the hakim a camel when her child was well' Eyad was now as iniquitously bent that I should remain, as yesterday that I should remove ; but I mounted and rode forth : we began our journey without water. The guest must not stretch the nomad hospitality, we could not ask them to fill our small girby with the common juice of the earth ; yet when hosts send to a weyrid they will send also the guest's water-skin to be filled with their own girbies. We journeyed an hour or two, over the pathless mountains, to a brow from whence we overlooked an empty plain, lying before us to the north. Only Merjan had been here once in his child hood ; he knew there were waterpits yonder, — and we must find them, since we had nothing to drink. We descended and saw old footprints of small cattle; and hoped they might lead to the watering. In that soil of plutonic grit were many glittering morsels of clear crystal. Merjan, looking upon the landmarks, thought bye and bye that we had passed the water; and my rafiks said they would return upon the thelul to seek it. They bade me sit down here and await them : but I thought the evil in their hearts might persuade them, ere they had ridden a mile, to leave me to perish wretchedly. — Now couching the thelul, they unloaded my bags. " The way is weary, they said, to go back upon our feet, it may be long to find the themeyil ; and a man might see further from the back of the thelul." — "I will look for the water with you." — "Nay, but we will return to thee soon." — "Well go, but leave with me thy matchlock, Eyad; and else we shall not part so." He laid down his gun unwillingly, and they mounted and rode from me. They were out an hour and a half: then, to my comfort, I saw them returning, and they brought water. — Eyad now complained that I had mistrusted him ! ' And wellah no man before had taken his gun from him; but this is Khalil!' — "Being honest rafiks, you shall find me courteous ;— but tell me, you fired upon your own tribesmen ? " — " Ay, billah ! EYAD AND MERJAN. 223 I an Auajy shot against the Auajy, and if I dealt so with mine own kinsmen, what would I not do unto thee?" — "How then might I trust thee?" Merjdn: " Thou sayest well, Khalil, and this Eyad is a light-headed coxcomb." Among the Aarab, friends will bite at friends thus, betwixt their earnest and game, and it is well taken. Eydd : " Come, let us sit down now and drink tobacco ; for we will not journey all by day, but partly, where more danger is, in the night-time. Go Merjan, gather stalks, and let us bake our bread here against the evening, when it were not well to kindle a fire." The lad rose and went cheerfully; for such is the duty of the younger among wayfaring companions in the khala. Merjan put in my hand a paper, which he took from his gunner's belt, to read for him. It was a bill of his govern ment service : " To Merjan the Bejaijy, Ageyly, is due for one year and certain months so many reals, less seventy reals to cost of thelul. "—"And your thelul, Merjan^ ?"—" She is dead, and they [namely his fraudulent Colonel, who devours poor men thus, when they enroll themselves and have no dromedary] have written against me seventy reals, for a dying thelul ! she was worth wellah less than ten, — so there remains for me to receive only fifteen reals; and when, God knoweth." — "It is a sorry service." — "Ay, and too iniquitous, but I think this year to make an end of it." — " You might as well serve Ibn Rashid, who pays his rajajil a crown less by the month, four real-Mejidies, but that is never in arrear, besides a house and rations." — " Ay, this I think to do when I may be quit of the Dowla." An idle hour passed, and we again set forward ; the land was a sandy plain, bordered north-eastward by distant moun tains. In the midst, between hills, is a summer watering place of the Auajy, Yemmen. There are ancient ten-fathom wells, and well steyned, the work, they say, of the jan. — We have passed again from the plutonic rocks to the (here dark-coloured) red sandstones. A black crater hill appeared now, far in front upon the Harra, J. Ethnan. This sandy wilderness is of the Auajy ; ' white ' soil, in which springs the best pasture, and I saw about us almost a thicket of green bushes !— yet the two- third parts of kinds which are not to the sustenance of any creature: we found there fresh foot-prints of ostriches. "Let us hasten, they said, [over this open country]," and Eyad besought me to look in my books, and forecast the peril of our adventure; 'for wellah yudayyik s4dry, his breast was straitened, since I had made him lay down his matchlock by me.' 224 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. We halted an hour after the stars were shining, in a low place, under a solitary great bush ; and couched the thelul before us, to shelter our bodies from the chill night wind, now rising to a hurricane, which pierced through their light Hejaz clothing. The Beduin rafiks, to comfort themselves with fire, forgot their daylight fears: they felt round in the dark ness for a few sticks. And digging there with my hands, I found jella in the sand, — it was the old miibrak, or night lair, of a camel; and doubtless some former passenger had alighted to sleep at our inn of this great desert bush : the beast's dung had been buried by the wind, two or three years. Merjan gathered his mantle full : the precious fuel soon glowed with a red heat in our sandy hearth, and I boiled tea, which they had not tasted till now. The windy cold lasted all night, the blast was outrageous. Hardly at dawn could they, with stiffened fingers, kindle a new fire : the rafiks sat on, — there was not warmth in their half naked bodies to march against this wild wind. — A puff whirling about our bush scattered the dying embers, "Akhs ! cries Eyad, the sot, Ullah yuldan abu ha'l hub4b, condemn the father of this blustering blast ; and he added, Ullah yusullat aly ha'l hattab, God punish this firewood." We rose at last ; and the Beduin rafiks bathed their bodies yet a moment in the heat, spread ing their loose tunics over the dying embers! The baffling March blast raged in our teeth, carrying the sandy grit into our eyes. The companions staggered forward on foot, — we marched north-eastward : after two hours, they halted to kindle another fire. I saw the sky always overcast with thin clouds. Before noon the storm abated ; and the wind chopping round blew mildly in the afternoon, from the contrary part ! We approached then the black border of the Harra, under the high crater-hill Ethnan. Ethnan stands solitary, in a field of sharp cinder-like and rifted lavas; the nomads say that this great hilla is inaccessible. Sometimes, after winter rain, they see a light reeking vapour about the volcano head: and the like is seen in winter mornings over certain deep rifts in the Harra, — 'the smell of it is like the breath of warm water.' This was con firmed to me by Amm Mohammed. In that part there is a (land-mark) valley-ground which lies through the Harra towards el-Hayat, W. Mukheyat. My small waterskin might hardly satisfy the thirst of three men in one summer's march, and this was the second journey ; we drank therefore only a little towards the afternoon, and had nothing to eat. But my mind was full to see so many seamed, guttered and naked cinder-hills of craters in the horrid black lavas OLD CRATERS OF THE KHEYBAR HARRA. 225 before us. The sense of this word hilla, hillaya, is according to Amm Mohammed, 'that which appears evidently,' — and he told me, there is a kind of dates of that name at Medina. Eyad said thus, " Halla is the Harra-hill of black powder and slaggy matter ; hellayey is a little Harra-hill ; hilli or hellowat (others say hillidn) are the Harra-hills together." — We marched towards the same hillies which I had passed with Ghroceyb. When the sun was near setting the rafiks descried, and greeted (devoutly) the new moon. The stars were shining when we halted amidst the hillian, the eighth evening of our march from Kheybar. They thought it perilous to kindle a fire here, and we had nothing to eat ; — there should be water, they said, not far off. Eyad rose to seek it, but in the night-time he could not find it again. — "I have been absent, he murmured, twelve years!" He knew his landmarks in the morning ; then he went out, and brought again our girby full of puddle water. The eye of the sun was risen (as they said) 'a spear's length,' on height, when feeling our selves refreshed with the muddy bever, Ave set forward in haste. They held a course eastward over the lava country, to Th4rghrud : that is a hamlet of one household upon the wells of an antique settlement at the further border of the Harra. Eydd : "It was found in the last generation by one who went up and down, like thyself, yujassas, spying out the country:" and he said I should see Thurghrud in exchange for el-Hayat. We went on by a long seyl and black sand- bed in the lavas, where was sprung a little rabia : and driving the wretched thelul to these green borders we let her graze forward, or gathering the herbs in our hands as we marched, we thrust them into her jaws. Where there greAv an acacia I commonly found a little herbage, springing under the north side of the tree ; that is where the lattice of minute leaves casts a thin shadowing over the sun-stricken land, and the little autumn moisture is last dried up. I was in advance and saw camels' footprints ! Calling the rafiks I enquired if these were not of yesterday : — they said they were three days old. They could not tell me if the traces were of a ghrazzu, — that is, these Beduin Ageylies did not distinguish whether they were the smaller footprints of theluls, passing lightly with riders, or of grazing camels ! But seeing the footing of camel- calves I could imagine that this was a drove moving between the pastures. It happened as in the former case when we found the traces of ibn Simry's cattle, that a stranger judged nigher the truth than his Beduin company. The footprints lay always before us, and near mid-day, when they were in r>. t. 11. 15 226 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A, some doubt whether we should not turn and avoid them, we saw a camel troop pasturing in a green place, far in front. The herders lay slumbering upon their faces in the green grass, and they were not aware of us, till our voice startled them with the fear of the desert. They rose hastily and with dread, seeing our shining arms ; but hearing the words of peace (salaam aleyk) they took heart. When EyM afterward related this adventure, " Had they been g6m, he said, we should have taken wellah all that sight of cattle ! and left not one of them." So sitting down with them we asked the elder herdsman, ' How he durst lead his camels hither ?' He answered, " Ullah yetowil 4mr ha'l weled ! God give that young man [the Emir Ibn Rashid] long life, under whose rule we may herd the cattle without fear. It is not nowadays as it was ten years yore, but I and my little brother may drive the 'bil to pasture all this land over." He sent the child to milk for us ; and wayworn, hungry and thirsting, we swallowed every man three or four pints at a draught : only Merjan, because of his ague cake, could not drink much milk. The lads, that were Heteymies, had been some days out from the menzil, and their camels were jezzin. They carried but their sticks and cloaks, and a bowl between them, and none other provision or arms. When hungry or thirsting they draw a naga's udder, and drink their fill. They showed us where we might seek the nomads in front, and we left them. CHAPTER IX. DESERT JOURNEY TO HAYIL. THE NASRANY IS DRIVEN FROM THENCE. Eydda ibn Ajjueyn, seen again. Uncivil Heteym hosts. Ghroceyb. Sdlih, seen again. Nomad names of horses. Strife with the rafiks. A desolate night in the khdla. Z&l. Come to tents and good entertainment. A rautha in the desert. Hunters' roast. The Tih, or phantom thelul in the Sherardt country. Eydd, his person. M&thir, a poor Bishry. Braitshdn, a Shammar sheykh. An Heteymy' s blasphemy. Poor Beduins' religious simplicity. A Beduin boy seeking a herdsman's place. The first hamlet in J. Shammar. Another grange in the desert. 'Between the dog and the wolf.' The village el-Kasr. Tidings that the Emir is absent from Hdyil. Beny Temim. Hdyil in sight. Gofar. Come to Hdyil, the second time. Aneybar left deputy for Ibn Rashid in the town. The Nasrany is received with ill-will and fanaticism. Aneybar is now an adversary. A Medina Sherif in Hdyil. A Yemeny stranger who had seen the Nasrany in Egypt. Tidings of the war, which is ended. Tlie great sheykh of el- Ajman. The Sherif. The townspeople's fanaticism in the morning; a heavy liour. Depart, the second time, with care from Hdyil. Come again to Gofar. B. Temim and Shammar. We came in the afternoon to a sandstone platform standing like an island with cliffs in the basaltic Harra; the rafiks thought we were at fault, as they looked far over the vulcanic land and could not see the Aarab. From another high ground they thought they saw a camel-herd upon a mountain far off : yet looking with my glass I could not perceive them ! We marched thither, and saw a nomad sitting upon a lava brow, keeping his camels. The man rose and came to meet us ; and " What ho! he cries, Khalil, comest thou hither again?" The voice I knew, and now I saw it was Eyada ibn Ajjueyn, the Heteymy sheykh, from whose menzil I had departed with Ghroceyb to cross the Harra, to Kheybar ! Eyada saluted me, but looked askance upon my rafiks, and they were strange with him and silent. This is the custom of the desert, when nomads meeting with nomads are in doubt of each other whether friends or foemen. We all sat down ; 15—2 228 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. and said the robust Heteymy, "Khalil what are these with thee?" — "Ask them thyself." — "Well lads, what tribesmen be ye, — that come I suppose from Kheybar ? " They answered, " We are Ageyl and the Bashat el-Medina has sent us to convey Khalil to Ibn Rashid." — "But I see well that ye are Beduw, and I say what Beduw ?" — Eyad answered, " Yd Fuldn, O Some one — for yet I heard not thy name, we said it not hitherto, because there might be some debate betwixt our tribes." — "Oho! is that your dread? but fear nothing [at a need he had made light of them both], eigh, Khalil ! what are they ? — Well then, said he, I suppose ye be all thirsty ; I shall milk for thee, Khalil, and then for these, if they would drink!" When my rafiks had drunk, Eyad answered, "Now I may tell thee we are of Bishr." — "It is well enough, we are friends; and Khalil thou art I hear a Nasrany, but how didst thou see Kheybar?" — "A cursed place." — "Why wouldest thou go thither, did I not warn thee?"- — "Where is Ghroceyb?" — " He is not far off, he is well ; and Ghroceyb said thou wast a good rafik, save that thou and he fell out nigh Kheybar, I wot never how, and thou wouldst have taken his thelul." — "This is his wild talk." — "It is likely, for Khalil (he spoke to my rafiks) is an honest man; the medicines our hareem bought of him, and those of Kasim's Aarab, they say, have been effectual. How found ye him ? is he a good rafik ?" — " Ay, this ought we to say, though the man be a Nasrany ! but billah it is the Moslems many times that should be named Nasara." — "And where will ye lodge to-night?" — "We were looking for the Aarab, but tell us where should we seek their beyts."' — "Yonder (he said, rising up and showing us with his finger), take the low way, on this hand ; and so ye linger not you may be at their menzil about the sunsetting. I may perhaps go thither myself in the evening, and to-morrow ride with you to Hayil." — We wondered to find this welfaring sheykh keeping his own camels! We journeyed on by cragged places, near the east border of the Harra; and the sun was going down when we found the nomads' booths pitched in a hollow ground. These also were a ferij (dim. feraij, and pi ferjdn), or partition, of Heteym. A ferij is thus a nomad hamlet ; and commonly the households in a ferij are nigh kindred. The most nomad tribes in Nejd are dispe'rsed~thus three parts of the year, till the lowest summer season; then they come together and pitch a great standing menzil about some principal watering of their dira. We dismounted before the sheykh's tent ; and found a gay Turkey carpet within, the uncomely behaviour of Heteym, and EYADA AND SALIH AGAIN. 229 a miserable hospitality. They set before us a bowl of milk- shards, that can only be well broken between mill-stones. Yet later, these uncivil hosts, who were fanatical young men, brought us in from the camel-milking nearly two pailfuls of that perfect refreshment in the desert : — EyMa came not. These hosts had heard of the Nasrany, and of my journey with Ghroceyb, and knew their kinsman's tale, 'that (though a good rafik) Khalil would have taken the thelul, when they were nigh Kheybar.' Another said, 'It was a dangerous pas sage, and Ghroceyb returning had been in peril of his life ; for as he rode again over the Harra there fell a heavy rain. Then he held westward to go about the worst of the lava country ; and as he was passing by a sandy seyl, a head of water came down upon him: his thelul foundered, and his matchlock fell from him : Ghroceyb hardly saved himself to land, and drew out the thelul, and found his gun again.' On the morrow we rode two hours, and came to another hamlet of Heteym. — This day we would give to repose, and went to alight at a beyt ; and by singular adventure that was Salih' s ! he who had forsaken me in these parts when I came down (now three months ago) from Hayil As the man stepped out to meet us, I called him by his name, and he wondered to see me. He was girded in his gunner's belt, to go on foot with a companion to el-Hayat, two marches distant, to have new stocks put, by a good sany (who they heard was come thither), to their long guns. Salih and EyM were tribesmen, of one fendy, and of old acquaintance. The booth beside him was of that elder Heteymy, the third companion in our autumn journey. The man coming in soon after saluted me with a hearty counte nance; and Salih forewent his day's journey to the village for his guests' sake. This part of the vulcanic country is named Hebrdn, of a red sandstone berg standing in the midst of the lavas: northward I saw again the mountains Bushra or Buthra. Hav ing drunk of their le"ban, we gave the hours to repose. The elder Heteymy 's wife asked me for a little meal, and I gave her an handful, which was all I had ; she sprinkled it in her cauldron of boiling samn and invited me to the skimming. The housewife poured off the now clarified samn into her butter-skin; the sweet lees of flour and butter she served before us. I had returned safe, therefore I said nothing ; I could not have greeted Salih with the Scandinavian urbanity, "Thanks for the last time:" but his wife asked me, "Is Salih good, Khalil?" They had a child of six years old; the little boy, 230 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. naked as a worm, lay cowering from the cold in his mother's arms; — and he had been thus naked all the Avinter, at an altitude (here) of four thousand feet ! It is a wonder they may outlive such evil days. A man came in who was clothed as I never saw another nomad, for he had upon him a home-spun mantle of tent-cloth ; but the wind blew through his heavy carpet garment. I found a piece of calico for the poor mother, to make her child a little coat. When the evening was come Salih set before us a boiled kid, and we fared well. After supper he asked me were I now appeased? — mesquin! he might be afraid of my evil remem brance and of my magical books. He agreed with EyM and Merjan that they, in coming-by again from Hayil, should re turn to him, and then all go down together to Kheybar ; where he would sell his samn for dates, to be received at the harvest. Though one of the hostile Bishr, he was by adoption an Heteymy, and with Eyad would be safe at Kheybar. — But how might they find these three booths in the wilderness after many days ? Salih gave them the shdr thus ; " The fourth day we remove (when I come again from el-Hayat), to such a ground: when the cattle have eaten the herb thereabout, we shall remove to such other; after ten or twelve days seek for us betAveen such and such landmarks, and drinking of such waters." — He spoke to ears Avhich knew the names of all bergs and rocks and seyls and hollow grounds in that vast wilder ness : EyM had wandered there in his youth. There came in some young men from the neighbour tents to our evening fire. And said one, " Khalil is a travelled man from far countries ; this is his life to wander through the world ! and wellah I think it is the best: but he who travels has need of money. Had I silver I would do like him, I would visit foreign nations to learn their speech, and see how they lead their lives in many strange lands : for ah ! what is our life ? — we are like the sheep in the khala. I would set forth to morrow with Khalil, if he would take me with him : ay, wellah, Khalil, I will be thy true rafik!" Another said, "Thou hast seen the world, tell us where is the best life ?" — " In the houses of hair." — " Nay, nay ! this is a land of misery, and the Aarab are mesquins." Another answered, " Yet the Aarab are a valiant folk, there be none like them in the world ! How seest thou the horses of the Aarab ? wellah, be they not as birds ? " The Heteym have few or no horses ; I asked their names. " I will tell thee some, said a good lad : — Saera (of sally), el-B4ma, er-Raheydin, es-Sh4el, Umm es-Sghrar (mother of the little one), Sabigdt (that outrunneth), H^ha, Agerra, Saafa, DIFFIC ULT RAFlKS. 2 3 1 — some of- them are names of mares [in their ditties] of the Beny Helal; — Shottifa, el-Jimerieh, es-Shuggera" (the bay mare, — the most Nejd horses are of this colour and chestnut reds ; grey is seldom and yet more seldom the black-haired). All these are names of mares; the desert men make almost no account of stallions among their cattle. I asked them to tell me the names of their asses. — These were: Deghreyma, ed- Deheysa, ej-Jdmmera, el-Khiyba, el-Kowwd, ed-Ddma, el- Wdgilla, el-Minsilla, Sowra, el-Girthieh, eth-Thumrdn, es-Shaara (shag-haired), en-Nejjilla, er-Rukhsa, el-Lahd, el-Hennaba, es- Sudda, el-Girmella, el-Khosdba, Hubbdra [these also are mares' names]. " Oh me ! — cries EyM the ass, all beside his patience, what folly is this in Khalil ? — thou our rafik, to hearken to such ninneries ! — wellah all the people will scorn both thee and us! They told me also these names of the fendies of Heteym: Ibn Barrdk, Ibn Jelladdn, Ibn Damm4k (min el-Khluieh — they are snibbed as Solubbies), Ibn Simra or eth- Thiabba, el-Mothd- bara, el-Feradissa, Ibn Hayzdn, el-Khiardt, el-Nodmsy, el- Gabid. When the morrow's light wakened us we arose and departed. We passed by the berg Hebran, and came to a vast niggera, or sunken bay in the lavas : EyM brought me to see the place, which they name Baedi, as a natural wonder. This is the summer water station of those Sbaa households which wander in the south with Misshel ; when the Auajy pitch at Baitha Nethil In the basalt floor, littered with the old jella of the nomads' camels, are two ancient well-pits. Wild doves flew up from them, as we came and looked in ; they are the birds of the desert waters, even of such as be bitter and baneful to the Arabs. We sat to rest out a pleasant hour in the cliff's shadow (for we thought the Aarab beyond could not be far off) : and there a plot of nettles seemed to my eyes a garden in the desert ! — those green neighbours and homely in heritors, in every land, of human nature. We rested our fill; then I remounted, and they walked for ward. Merjan was weary and angry in the midst of our long journey. I said to him, as we went out, "Step on, lad, or let me pass, you linger under the feet of the thelul ? " He murmured, and turning, with a malignant look, levelled his matchlock at my breast. So I said, "Reach me that gun, and I will hang it at the saddle-bow, this will be better for thee:" I spoke to Eyad to take his matchlock from him and hang it at the peak. Eyad promised for the lad, " He should never offend me again : for give him now, Khalil — because I already alighted — I also must bear with him, and this is ever his nature, full of teen." "Enough, 232 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. and pass over now ; — but if I see the like again, weled, I shall teach thee thy error. EyM, was there ever Beduwy who threatened death to his rafik ? "— " No, by Ullah." " But this (man), cries the splenetic lad, is a Nasrany, — with a Nasrany who need keep any law ? is not this an enemy of Ullah ? " At that word I wrested his gun from him, and gave it to EyM ; and laying my driving-stick upon the lad (since this is the only discipline they know at Medina), I swinged him soundly, in a moment, and made all his back smart. EyM from be hind caught my arms ; and the lad, set free, came and kicked me in villanous manner, and making a weapon of his heavy head-cord, he struck at me in the face: then he caught up a huge stone and was coming on to break my head, but in this I loosed myself from EyM. "We have all done foolishly (exclaimed EyM), eigh ! what will be said when this is told another day ? — here ! take thy gun, Merjan, but go out of Khalil's sight ; and Khalil be friends with us, and mount again. Ullah ! we were almost at mischief; and Merjan is the most narrow-souled of all that ever I saw, and he was always thus." We moved on in silence ; I said only that at the next menzil we would leave Merjan. He was cause, also, that we suffered thirst in the way; since we must divide with him a third of my small herdsman's girby. Worse than all was that the peevish lad continually corrupted the little good nature in Eyad, with his fanatical whisperings, and drew him from me. I repented of my misplaced humanity towards him, and of my yielding to such rafiks to take another way. Yet it had been as good to wink at the lad's offence, if in so doing I should not have seemed to be afraid of them. The Turkish argument of the rod might bring such spirits to better knowledge ; but it is well to be at peace with the Arabs upon any reasonable conditions, that being of a feminine humour, they are kind friends and implacable enemies. The Harra is here like a rolling tide of basalt: the long bilges often rise about pit-like lava bottoms, or niggeras, which lie full of blown sand. Soon after this we came to the edge of the lava-field ; where upon our right hand, a path descended to Thurghrud, half a journey distant. " Come, I said, We are to go thither." . But Eyad answered, "The way lies now over difficult lavas ! and, Khalil, we ought to have held eastward from the morning : yet I will go thither for thy sake, although we cannot arrive this. night, and we have nothing to eat." Merjan cried to EyM not to yield, that he himself would not go out of the way to Thurghrud. Eydd : " If we go forward, we may be with Aarab EY AD FINDS WATER. 233 to-night : so Salih said truly, they are encamped under yonder mountain." This seemed the best rede for weary men : I gave EyM the word to lead forward. We descended then from the Harra side into a plain country of granite grit, without blade or bush. ' Yet here in good years, said Eyad, they find pasture ; but now the land is mahal, because no autumn rain had fallen in these parts.' — So we marched some miles, and passed by the (granitic) Thullan Buthra. " — But where are we come ! exclaimed the rafiks, gazing about them : there can be no Aarab in this khala ; could Salih have a mind to deceive us ? " The sun set over our forlorn march ; and we halted in the sandy bed of a seyl to sleep. They hobbled the thelitl's forelegs, and loosed her out in the moon light ; but there was no pasture. We were fasting since yester day, and had nothing to eat, and no water. They found a great waif root, and therewith we made a good fire ; the deep ground covered us, under mountains which are named Ethmdd (pi. of Thammad). The silent night in the dark khala knit again our human imbecility and misery, at the evening fire, and accorded the day's broken fellowship. Merjan forgot his spite ; but shoAving me some sAvelling wheals, " Dealest thou thus, he said, with thy friend, Khalil ? the chill is come, and with it the smart." — " The fault was thine ; and I bid you remember that on the road there is neither Moslem nor Nasrany, but we are rufakd, akhudn, fellows and brethren." — " Well, Khalil, let us speak no more of it." Merjan went out — our last care in the night — to bring in the weary and empty thelul ; he couched her to bear off the night wind, and we closed our eyes. The new day rising, we stood up in our sandy beds and were ready to depart. We marched some hours through that dead plain country ; and came among pale granite hills, Avhere only the silver-voiced siskin, Umm Sdlema, flitted in the rocky solitude before us. We had no water, and EyM went on climbing amongst the bergs at our right hand. Towards noon he made a sign and shouted, 'that Merjan come to him with our girby'. — They brought down the skin full of water, which EyM had found in the hollow of a rock, overlaid with a flat stone ; the work, they supposed, of some Solubby (hunter). — Rubbing milk-shards in the water, we drank mereesy and refreshed our selves. The height of the country is 4600 feet. We journeyed all day in this poor plight ; the same gritty barrenness of plain-land encumbered with granitic and basalt bergs lay always before us. Once only we found some last year's footprints of a rdhla. 234 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. They watched the horizon, and went on looking earnestly for the Aarab : at half-afternoon Merjan, who was very clear sighted, cried out "I see zdl!" — z61 (pi. azzudl), is the looming, in the eye of aught which may not be plainly distinguished ; so a blind patient has said to me, "I see the zol of the sun." EyM gazed earnestly and answered, 'He thought billah he did see somewhat.' — Azzual in the desert are discerned moving in the farthest offing, but whether wild creatures or cattle, or Aarab, it cannot be told. When EyM and Merjan had watched awhile, they said, "We see two men riding on one thelul ! " Then they pulled off hastily their gun-leathers, struck fire, and blew the matches, and put powder to the touch- holes of their long pieces. I saw in EyM a sort of haste and trouble! "Why thus?" I asked. — "But they have seen us, and now they come hither ! " — My two rafiks went out, singing and leaping to the encounter, and left me with the thelul; my secret arms put me out of all doubt. Bye and bye they returned saying, that when those riders saw the glance of their guns they held off. — " But let us not linger (they cried) in this neighbourhood:" they mounted the thelul together and rode from me. I followed weakly on foot, and it came into my mind, that they would forsake me. The day's light faded, the sun at length kissed the horizon, and our hope went down with the sun : we must lodge again without food or human comfort in the khala. The Beduin rafiks climbed upon all rocks to look far out over the desert, and I rode in the plain between them. The thelul went fasting in the mahal this second day; but now the wilder ness began to amend. The sun was sinking when Merjan shouted, 'He had seen a flock'. Then EyM mounted with me, and urging his thelul we made haste to arrive in the short twilight ere it should be dark night: we trotted a mile, and Merjan ran beside us. We soon saw a great flock trooping down in a rocky bay of the mountain in front. A maiden and a lad were herding them ; and unlike all that I had seen till now there were no goats in that nomad flock. The brethren may have heard the clatter of our riding in the loose stones, or caught a sight of three men coming, for they had turned their backs! Such meetings are never without dread in the khala: if we had been land-lopers they were taken tardy ; we had bound them, and driven off the slow-footed flock all that night. Perchance such thoughts were in Eyad, for he had not yet saluted them ; and I first hailed the lad, — ' Salaam aleyk!' He hearing it was peace, turned friendly ; and EyM asked him " Fen el-madziba, where is the place of entertainment?" — we had not seen the A NIGHTS HOSPITALITY IN HARB TENTS. 235 booths. The young Beduwy answered us, with a cheerful alacrity, " It is not far off." We knew not what tribesmen they were. The young man left his sister with the flock, and led on before us. It was past prayer time, and none had said his devotion : — they kneeled down now on the sand in the glooming, but (as strangers) not together, and I rode by them ; — a neglect of religion which is not marked in the weary wayfarer, for one must dismount to say his formal prayers. It was dusk when we came to their menzil ; and there were but three booths. It had been agreed amongst us that my rafiks should not name me Nasrany. Gently the host received us into his tent and spread down a gay Turkey carpet in the men's sitting place, — it was doubtless his own and his housewife's only bedding. Then he brought a vast bowl, full of le'ban, and bade us slack our thirst : so he left us aAvhile (to prepare the guest-meal). When I asked my rafiks, what Aarab were these, EyM whispered, "By their speech they should be Harb." — "And what Harb?" — "We cannot tell yet." Merjan said in my ear, " Repentest thou now to have brought me with thee, Khalil ? did not my eyes lead thee to this night's entertainment? and thou hadst else lodged again in the khala." The host came again, and insisted gently, asking, might he take our water, for they had none. My rafiks forbade him with their desert courtesy, knowing it was therewith that he would boil the guest -meal, for us; but the goodman prevailed: his sacrifice of hospitality, a yearling lamb, had been slain already. Now upon both parts the Beduins told their tribes : these were Beny Salem, of Harb in Nejd ; but their native dira is upon the sultdny or highway betwixt the Harameyn. It was my first coming to tents of that Beduin nation ; and I had not seen nomad hosts of this noble behaviour. The smiling householder filled again and again his great milk-bowl before us, as he saw it drawn low :— we drank for the thirst of two days, which could not soon be allayed. Seeing me drink deepest of three, the kind host, maazib, exhorted me with ighrtebig! 'take thy evening drink,' and he piously lifted the bowl to my lips. " Drink ! said he, for here is the good of Ullah, the Lord be praised, and no lack ! and coming from the southward, ye have passed much weary country." Eydd: "Wellah it is all mahal, and last night we were khliia (lone men without human shelter in the khala) ; this is the second day, till this evening we found you." — " El-hamd illah ! the Lord be praised therefore," answered .the good householder. Eyad told them of the ghrazzu. "And Khalil, said our host, what is he? — a Meshedy? 236 . TRAVELS. IN ARABIA DESERT A. (citizen of the town of Aly's violent death or "martyrdom", Mished Aly, before mentioned); methinks his speech, rdtn, and his hue be like theirs." — "Ay, ay, (answered my rafiks), a Mdshedy, an hakim, he is now returning to Hayil." — "An uncle's son of his was here very lately, a worthy man ; he came from Hayil, to sell clothing among the Aarab, — and, Khalil, dost thou not know him ? he was. as like to thee, billah, as if ye were brethren." We lay down to rest ourselves. An hour or two later this generous maazib and the shepherd, his brother, bore in a mighty charger of rice, and the steaming mutton heaped upon it ; their hospitality of the desert was more than one man might carry. — The nomad dish is set upon the carpet, or else on a piece of tent- cloth, that no fallen morsels might be trodden down in the earth: — and if they see but a little milk spilled (in this everlasting dearth and indigence of all things), any born Arabians will be out of countenance. I have heard some sentence of their Ndby blam ing spilt milk. — The kind maazib called upon us, saying, G4m ! hljakom Ullah wa en-Neby, eflah! 'rise, take your meat, and the Lord give you life, and His Prophet.' We answered, kneeling about the dish, Ullah h4-ik, ' May the Lord give thee life ' : — the host left us to eat. But first EyM laid aside three of the best pieces, " for the maazib, and his wives ; they have kept back nothing, he said, for themselves." The nomad house mothers do always withhold somewhat for themselves and their children, but EyM, the fine Beduin gentleman, savoured of the town, rather than of the honest simplicity of the desert. "Ah ! nay, what is this ye do ? it needeth not, quoth the return ing host, wellah we have enough ; eflah ! only eat ! put your hands to it." "Prithee sit down with us," says EyM. "Sit down with us, 0 maazib, said we all ; without thee we cannot eat." " Ebbeden, nay I pray you, never." — Who among Beduins is first satisfied he holds his hand still at the dish; where as the oasis dweller and the townling, rises and going aside by himself to wash his hands, puts the hungry and slow eaters out of countenance. A Beduwy at the dish, if he have seen the town, will rend off some of the best morsels, and lay them ready to a friend's hand: — Eyad showed me now this token of a friendly mind. The Beduw are nimble eaters; their fingers are expert to rend the meat, and they swallow their few handfuls of boiled rice or corn with that bird-like celerity which is in all their deeds. In supping with them, being a weak and slow eater, when I had asked their indulgence, I made no case of this usage; since to enable nature in the worship of the Creator "USTIBBA!" 237 is more than every apefaced devising of human hypocrisy. If any man called me I held that he did it in sincerity ; and the Arabs commended that honest plainness in a stranger among them. There is no second giving of thanks to the heavenly Providence ; but rising after meat we bless the man, saying (in this dira) Unaam Ullah aleyk, ' the Lord be gracious unto thee,' yd maazib. The dish is borne out, the underset cloth is drawn, and the bowl is fetched to us : we drink and return to our sitting place at the hearth. Although welfaring and bountiful the goodman had no coffee ; — coffee Arabs are seldom of this hospitality. The guest (we have seen) should depart when the morrow breaks ; and the host sends him away fasting, to journey all that day in the khala. But if they be his friends, and it is the season of milk, a good householder will detain the last night's guests, till his jara have poured them out a draught. Our Beny Salem maazib was of no half-hearted hospitality, and when we rose to depart he gently delayed us. " My wife, he said, is rocking the semila, have patience till the butter come, that she may pour you out a little le"ban ; you twain are Beduw, but this Me'shedy is not, as we, one wont to walk all day in the wilderness and taste nothing." — The second spring-time was come about of my sojourning in Arabia; the desert land flowed again with milk, and I saw with bowings down of the soul to the divine Nature, this new sweet rabia. "Ustibbah! (cries the good man, with the hollow-voiced franchise of the dry desert) take thy morning drink." — I speak many times of the Arabian hospitality, since of this I have been often questioned in Europe ; and for a memorial of worthy persons. The hospitality of the worsted booths, — the gentle entertainment of passengers and strangers in a land full of misery and fear, we have seen to be religious. I have heard also this saying in the mouths of town Arabians, — " It is for the report which passing strangers may sow of them in the country : for the hosts beyond will be sure to ask of their guests, ' Where lodged ye the last night ; and were ye well entertained ?' " We journeyed now in a plain desert of gritty sand, which is called Shaaba; beset with a Avorld of trappy and smooth basalt bergs, so 'that we could not see far to any part : all this soil seyls down to the W. er-Rummah. We journeyed an hour and came by a wide rautha. Rautha is any bottom, in the desert, which is a sinking place of ponded winter rain : the streaming showers carry down fine sediment from the upper ground, and the soil is a crusted clay and loam. Rautha may signify garden, — and 238 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. such is their cheerful aspect of green shrubs in the khala: the plural is ridth, [which is also the name of the Wahaby metropolis in East Nejd]. I asked EyM, "Is not this soil as good and large as the Teyma oasis ? wherefore then has it not been settled?" — "I suppose, he answered, that there is no water, or some wells had been found in it, of the auelin." Gd likewise or khdb'ra is a naked clay bottom in the desert, where shallow water is ponded after heavy rain. Khdbra (or Khubbera) is the ancient name of a principal oasis in the NefM of Kasim : — I came there later. Eyad with a stone-cast killed a hare ; and none can better handle a stone than the Aarab : we halted and they made a fire of sticks. The southern Aarab have seldom a knife, EyM borrowed my penknife to cut the throat of his venison ; and then he cast in the hare as it was. When their stubble fire was burned out, EyM took up his hare, roasted whole in the skin, and broke and divided it; and we found it tender and savoury meat. This is the hunters' kitchen : they stay not to pluck, to flay, to bowel, nor for any tools or vessel ; but that is well dressed which comes forth, for hungry men. In the hollow of the carcase the Beduwy found a little blood; this he licked up greedily, with some of the ferih or cud, and mur mured the mocking desert proverb 'I am Shurma (Cleft-lips) quoth the hare.' They do thus in ignorance ; Amm Mohammed had done the like in his youth, and had not considered that the blood is forbidden. I said to him, " When a beast is killed, although ye let some blood at the throat, does not nearly all the gore remain in the body ? — and this you eat ! " He answered in a frank wonder, " Yes, thou sayest sooth ! the gore is left in the body, — and we eat it in the flesh ! well then I can see no difference." The desert hare is small, and the delicate body parted among three made us but a slender breakfast. EyM in the same place found the gallery (with two holes) of a jerboa ; it is the edible spring-rat of the droughty wilderness, a little underground creature, not weighing two ounces, with very long hinder legs and a very long tufted tail, silken pelt, arid white belly [v. Vol. I. p. 326] ; in form she resembles the pouched rats of Australia. Eyad digged up the mine with his camel stick and, snatching the feeble prey, he slit her throat with a twig, and threw it on the embers ; a moment after he offered us morsels, but we would not taste. The jerboa and the wabar ruminate, say the hunters ; Amm Mohammed told me, that they are often shot with the cud in the mouth. We loosed out the thelul, and sat on in this pleasant place of pasture. Merjan lifted the shidM to relieve her, and " Look !• THE TIH. 239 laughed he, if her hump be not risen?" — The constraint of the saddle, and our diligence in feeding her in the slow marches, made the sick beast to seem rather the better. Seeing her old brandmark was the dubb4s [v. Vol. I. p. 125], I enquired ' Have you robbed her then from the Heteym ? ' EyM was amazed that I should know a wasm ! and he boasted that she was of the best blood of the Bendt (daughters of) et-Ti (or Tih) ; he had bought her from Heteym, a foal, for forty reals: she could then outstrip the most theluls. Now she was a carrion riding beast of the Ageyl; and such was Eyad's avarice that he had sent her down twice, freighted like a pack camel, with the Kheybar women's palm-plait to Medina; for which the Beduins there laughed him to scorn. — The Ti or Tih is a fabulous wild hurr, or dromedary male, in the Sherarat wilderness. 'He has only three ribs, they say, and runs with prodigious swiftness ; he may outstrip any horse.' The Sherarat are said to let their dromedaries stray in the desert, that haply they may be covered by the Tih ; and they pretend to discern his offspring by the token of the three ribs. The theluls of the Sherarat [an 'alien' Arabian kindred] are praised above other in Western Arabia: Ibn Rashid's armed band are mounted upon the light and fleet Sherdries. — Very excellent also, though of little stature, are the (Howeytat) dromedaries in the Nefud of el-Arish. EyM seemed to be a man of very honourable presence, with his comely Jew-like visage, and well-set full black beard ; he went well clad, and with the gallant carriage of the sheykhs of the desert. Busy-eyed he was, and a distracted gazer : his speech was less honest than smooth and well sounding. I en quired ' Wherefore he wore not the horns ? — the Beduin love locks should well become his manly [Annezy] beauty.' Eydd : "I have done with such young men's vanities, since my horn upon this side was shot away, and a second ball cropt the horn on my other ; — but that warning was not lost to me ! Ay billah ! I am out of taste of the Beduin life : one day we abound with the good of Ullah, but on the morrow our halal may be taken by an enemies' ghrazzu ! And if a man have not then good friends, to bring together somewhat for him again, wellah he must go a-begging." EyM had been bred out of his own tribe, among Shammar, and in this dira where we now came. His father was a substan tial sheykh, one who rode upon his own mare ; and young EyM rode upon a stallion. One day a strong foray of Heteym robbed the camels of his menzil, and EyM among the rest galloped to meet them. The Heteyman (nomads well nourished with milk) are strong-bodied and manly fighters; they are besides well 240 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. armed, more than the Beduw, and many are marksmen. EyM bore before his lance two thelul riders ; and whilst he tilted in among the foemen, Avho were all thelul riders, a bullet and a second ball cropt his braided locks ; he lost also his horse, and not his young life. "Eyad, thou playedest the lion!" — "Aha! and canst thou think what said the Heteym? — 'By Ullah let that young rider of the horse come to us when he will, and lie Avith our hareem, that they may bring forth valiant sons.' " — He thought, since we saw him, that EyMa ibn Ajjueyn had been in that raid with them. " And when thou hast thy arrears, those hundreds of reals, wilt thou buy thee other halal ? we shall see thee prosperous and a sheykh again ?" — " Prosperous, and a sheykh, it might well be, were I another ; but my head is broken, and I do this or that many times of a_ wrong judgment and fondly : — but become a Beduwy again, nay ! I love no more such hazards : I will buy and sell at Hayil. If I sell shirt-cloth and cloaks and mandils (kerchiefs) in the suk, all the Beduw will come to me ; moreover, being a Beduwy, I shall know how to trade with them for camels and small cattle. Besides I will be Ibn Rashid's man (one of his rajajil) and receive a salary from him every month, always sure, and ride in the ghrazzus, and in every one take something!" — "We shall see thee then a shopkeeper ! — but the best life, man, is to be a Beduwy." Merjan : " Well said Khalil, the best life is with the Beduw." Eydd : " But I will none of it, and 'all is not Khuthera and Tunis';" — he could not expound to me his town-learned proverb. — Muthir, a Bishr gatuny, was a patient of mine at Kheybar. Though now most poor he had been sometime a substantial Beduwy ; like EyM he had wandered with Shammar. In one year, when a murrain was in Nejd, all his camels perished : then the poor man buried his tent and laid up the stuff with his date merchant (in a desert village), and left his wife, saying that he would go to that which remained to him, — his inherit ance of palms at Kheybar. Afterward he heard that his jara was dead. Now seven years were gone over him, and he had no more heart to return and require his deposit ; and he said his buried tent must be rotten. The greenness of all this empty land was a short harsh grass like wild barley with empty ears. This whilst tender is good pasture for the cattle ; but later they may hardly eat it, for it pricks their throats. I saw none other springing herb of the fresh season. We set forward; and after mid-day we came to six Shammar booths. The sheykh, a young man, Braitshdn, was known to NOMADS' RELIGIOUS SIMPLICITY. 241 Eyad. My rafiks rejoiced to see his coffee-pots in the ashpit ; for they had not tasted kahwa (this fortnight) since Ave set out from Kheybar. The beyt was large and lofty ; which is the Shammar and Annezy building wise. A mare grazed in sight ; a sign that this was not a poor sheykh's household. The men who came in from the neighbour tents were also known to Eyad ; and I was not unknoAA'n, for one said presently, " Is not this Khalil, the Nasrany?" — he had seen me at Hayil. We should pass this day among them, and my rafiks loosed out the thelul to pasture. In the afternoon an old man led us to his booth to drink more coffee ; he had a son an Ageyly at Medina. " I was lately there, said he, and I found my lad and his comrade eating their victuals hdf, without samn ! — it is an ill service that cannot pay a man his bread." They mused seeing the Nasrany. amongst them :— ' Khalil, an adversary of Ullah, and yet like another man!' EyM answered them in mirth, " So it seems that one might live well enough although he Avere a kafir !" And he told a tale, Avhich is current for a marvel in the tribes, — for when is there heard a blasphemy in any Semitic man's mouth. ? [yet v. Job xxi. 15]. '' Ibn Namus (sheykh of the Noamsy) had ridden all one night, with a strong ghrazzu ; and they alighted at dawn to pray [such devout robbers they are !] The men Avere yet on their knees when one of them said, ' But to what effect is all this long Aveariness of prayers, this year after year's pray-praying ? — so many prayers and every day pattering prayers, and I am never the better ; it is but casting away breath : eigh ! how long must I plough with my nose this dust of the khala ? — And now forsooth, 0 my Lord ! I say unto Thee, except Thou give me a thelul to-day with a girby, I would as it were beat Thee with this camel stick ! ' — It happened ere the sun set that the Heteymy's booty, of cattle which they took the same day, was a thelul and two girbies ; so he said at the evening fire, ' Now ye may know, felloAvs, ye who blamed me when I prayed at dawn, how my Lord was adread of me to-day '!" The man we have seen, was no BeduAvy but of the Heteyman. — Often the tongue of some poor Beduwy may slide, in matter of religion, and his simplicity will be long remembered in the idle talk of the khala. So one having solemnly pronounced the Emir's name, Ibn Rashid, a tribesman cries out " Sully Ullah aleyhu wa yusellim," — saluting him as one of the greater prophets. — I knew a Syrian missionary in one of the villages beyond Jordan, who said upon a time to a ragged (B. Sokhr) tribesman in mockery of the elvish simplicity of the common sort of Beduw, "Hast heard thou?— this wonderful tiding in the world? — T) T TT 16 242 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. that the Lord is come down lately to Damascus?" Beduwy: "The Lord is come down, at es-Sham ! — the Lord be praised ! but speakest thou sooth? — is my Lord descended from heaven!" — "Thither all the people flow unto Him! and goest thou not up to visit thy Lord !"— " Eigh! I would fain go and see Him; but look Sir, at this! Sham is above seven journeys from hence, and how might I leave the cattle in the (open) wilderness ? " Whilst we sat a stranger boy came in from the khala : he trudged barefoot through the heat, from ferij to ferij. Poor and adventurous, he carried but a club-stick in his hand and neither food nor water. From menzil to menzil of nomads was not many hours in this spring wilderness; and he could- well find the way, for he was a Shammary. This boy of thirteen or fourteen years was seeking a herdsman's place ; and his be- • haviour was prudent, as haply an affectionate mother had ) schooled his young heart. If any one asked him of that his ' (weighty) enterprise, he studied a moment, and then gave ' answer with a manly gruffness, in few and wise words. We asked him what should be his hire ? he said, " The accustomed wages,— four she-goats at the year's end, and a cloak and a tunic," (that were about two guineas' worth). There is no expressed covenant for the hireling's meat, — the herdsmen carry a bowl with them and drink their fill of milk : this is not ill treatment. I found, making ciphers in the sand, that the lad might come to the possession in his twentieth year of fifty head of goats, or four camels. We heard that Ibn Rashid was not at Hayil. " The Emir, they said, is ghrazzai (upon an expedition) in the north with the rajajil ; the princes [as Hamiid, Sleyman] are with him, and they lie encamped at Heyennieh", — that is a place of wells. in the NefM, towards Jauf. The Shammar princes have fortified it with a block-house ; and a man or two are left in garrison, who are to shoot out at hostile ghrazzus : so that none shall draw Avater there, to pass over, contrary to the will of Ibn Rashid. We heard that Aneybar was left deputy at Hayil. — The sky was overcast whilst we sat, and a heavy shower fell suddenly. The sun soon shone forth again, and the hareem ran joyfully from the tents to fill their girbies, under the streaming granite rocks. The sheykh bade replenish the coffee pots, and give us a bowl of that sweet water to drink. — Braitshan's mother boiled us a supper-dish of temmn: the nomad hospitality of milk was here scant, — but this is commonly seen in a coffee sheykh's beyt. TOBACCO TIPPLERS. 243 Departing betimes on the morrow we journeyed in a coun try now perfectly known to EyM. The next hollow ground was like a bed of colocynth gourds, they are in colour and bigness as oranges. We marched two hours and came to a troop of camels: the herds were two young men of Shammar. They asked of the land backward, by which we had passed, 'Was the rabia sprung, and which and which plants for pasture had we seen there ?' Then one of them went to a milch naga to milk for us ; but the other, looking upon me, said, "Is not this Khalil, the Nasrany?" [he too had seen me in Hayil] ! We were here abreast of the first outlying set tlements of the Jebel; and now looking on our left hand, we had a pleasant sight, between two rising grounds, of green corn plots. My rafiks said, "It is Gussa, a corn hamlet, and you may see some of their women yonder; they come abroad to gather green fodder for the well camels." A young man turned from beside them, with a grass-hook in his hand; and ran hither to enquire tidings of us passengers. — Nor he nor might those women be easily discerned from Beduw ! After the first word he asked us for a galliun of tobacco ; — " But come, he said, with me to our kasiir ; ye shall find dates and coffee, and there rest yourselves." He trussed on his neck what gathered herbs he had in his cloak, and ran before us to the settlement. We found their kasiir to be poor low cottages of a single chamber. — Gussa is a [new] desert grange of the Emir, inhabited only three months in the year, for the watering of the corn fields (here from six-fathom square well-pits sunk in the hard earth), till the harvest ; then the husbandmen will go home to their vil lages : the site is in a small wady. Here were but six households of fifteen or twenty persons, seldom visited by tarkies (terdgy). Aly our host set before us dates with some of his spring butter and leban : I wondered at his alacrity to welcome us, — as if we had been of old acquaint ance ! Then he told them, that ' Last night he dreamed of a tarkiy, which should bring them tobacco !' — Even here one knew me ! and said, "Is not this Khalil, the Nasrany ? and he has a paper from Ibn Rashid, that none may molest him ; I myself saw it sealed by the Emir." " How sweet, they exclaimed, is dokhan when we taste it again ! — wellah we are sherarib (tobacco tip plers)." I said, " Ye have land, why then do ye not sow it ?" — "Well, we bib it ; but to sow tobacco, and see the plant growing in our fields, that were an unseely thing, makr4ha! " When we left them near midday, they counselled us to pass by Agella, another like 'dira,' or outlying com settlement; we might arrive there ere nightfall. — Beyond their cornfields, I saw young 16—2 244 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. palms set in the seyl-strand: but wanting water, many were already sere. Commonly the sappy herb is seen to spring in any hole (that was perhaps the burrow of some wild creature) in the hard khala, though the Avaste soil be all bare : and the Gussa husbandmen had planted in like wise their palms that could not be watered ; the ownership was betwixt them and the Beduw. As they had shown us we held our way, through a grey and russet granite country, with more often basalt than the former trap rocks. EyM showed me landmarks, eastward, of the wells es-Sdkf a summer water-station of Shammar. Under a granite hill I saw lower courses of two cell-heaps, like those in the Harras ; and in another place eight or more breast-high wild flagstones of granite, set up in a row. — There was in heathen times an idol's house in these forlorn mountains. Seeing the discoloured head of a granite berg above us, the rafiks climbed there to look for water; and finding some they filled our girby. When the sun was setting we came to a hollow path, which was likely to lead to Agella. The wilder ness was again mahal, a rising wind ruffled about us, and clouds covered the stars with darkness which seemed to bereave the earth from under our footsteps. My companions would seek now some sheltered place, and slumber till morning; but I encouraged them to go forward, to find the settlement to night. We journeyed yet two hours, and I saw some house building, though my companions answered me, it was a white rock : we heard voices and barking dogs soon after, and passed before a solitary nomad booth. We Avere come to the " dirat " el-Agella. Here were but two cabins of single ground-chambers and wells, and cornplots. The wind was high, we shouted under the first of the house-walls ; and a man came forth who bade us good evening. He fetched us fuel, and we kindled a fire in the lee of his house, and warmed ourselves : then our host brought us dates and butter and l^ban, and said, ' He was sorry he could not lodge us within doors, and the hour was late to cook anything.' Afterward, taking up his empty vessels, he left us to sleep. We had gone, they said, by a small settlement, Hdfirat Zeyl4l ; my companions had not been here before. Hayil was now not far off, EyM said ; " To-morrow, we will set forward in the jenemma, that is betwixt the dog and the wolf, — which is so soon, Khalil, as thou mayest distinguish between . a hound and the wolf, (in the dawning)." — The northern blast (of this last night in March) was keen and rude, and when the day broke, we rose shivering ; they would THE OASIS IS BEST OR THE DESERT LIFE? 245 not remove now till the Avarm sun was someAvhat risen. Yet we had rested through this night better than our hosts ; for as Ave lay awake in the cold, we heard the shrieking of their well- Avheels till the morning light. Merjan: "Have the husband men or the Beduw the better life ? speak, Khalil, for we know that thou Avast brought up among the Beduw." — "I Avould sell my palms, if I had any, to buy camels, and dwell with the nomads." — " And I," said he. As we set forward the ajjdj or sand-bearing wind encumber ed our eyes. A boy came along with us returning to el-Kasr, Avhich we should pass to-day : — so may any person join himself to Avhat travelling company he will in the open Arabic countries. The wilderness eastward is a plain full of granite bergs, whose heads are often trappy basalt; more seldom they are crumbling needles of slaty trap rock. Before noon, we were in sight of el- Kasr, under Ajja, which Merjan in his loghra pronounced Ejja : we had passed from the mahal, and a spring greenness was here / upon the face of the desert. There are circuits of the common' soil about the desert villages where no nomads may drive their cattle upon pain of being accused to the Emir : such toAvnship rights are called h'md [confer Numb. xxxv. 2 — 5]. We saw here a young man of el-Kasr, riding round upon an ass to gather fuel, and to cut fodder for his well camels. Now he crossed -to us and cried welcome, and alighted ; that was to pull out a sour milkskin from his wallet — of Avhich he poured us out to drink, saying, "You passengers may be thirsty?" Then taking forth dates, he spread them on the ground before us, and bade us break our fasts-: so remounting cheerfully, he said, "We shall meet again this evening in the village." The rafiks loosed out the thelul, and we lay down in the sand of a seyl Avithout shadow from the sun, to repose awhile. The Ageylies chatted; and when the village boy heard say between their talk, that there was a Dowlat at Medina, — "El- Medina! cries he, kus umm-ha!" — EyM and Merjan looked up like saints, with beatific visages ! and told him, with a re ligious awe, 'He had made himself a kafir ! for kneAV he not that el- Medina is one of the two sanctuaries?' They added that word of the sighing Mohammedan piety, " Ullah, ammr-ha, the Lord build up Medina " — I have heard some Beduwy put thereto 'm4brak theMl en-N&by, the couching place of the pro phet's dromedary,' [Christians in the Arabic border-lands will say in their sleeve, Ullah yuharrak-ha, ' The Lord consume her with fire ! '] It was new lore to the poor lad, who answered half aghast, that 'he meant not to speak anything amiss, and he took refuge in Ullah.' He drew out parched locusts from his scrip, 246 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. and fell to eat again : locust clouds had passed over the Jebel, he said, two months before, but the damage had been light. The tdla, or new fruit-stalks of their palms, were not yet put forth ; we saw also their corn standing green : so that the harvest in Jebel Shammar may be nearly three weeks later than at Kheybar and Medina. " At half-afternoon we made forward towards the (orchard) walls of el-Kasr, fortified with the lighthouse-like towers of a former age. EyM said, ' And if we set out betimes on the morrow, we might arrive in Hayil, hd'l hazza, about this time.' The vil lagers were now at rest in their houses, in the hottest of the day, and no man stirring. We went astray in the outer blind lanes of the clay village, with broken walls and cavernous ground of filthy sunny dust. Europeans look upon the Arabic squalor with loathing : to our senses it is heathenish. Some children brought us into the town. At the midst is a small open place with a well-conduit, where we watered the theliil : that water is sweet, but lukewarm, as all ground-water in Arabia. Then we went to sit down, where the high western wall cast already a little shadow, in the public view ; looking that some householder would call us. Men stood in their cottage thresholds to look at us Beduins: then one approached, — it seems these villagers take the charge in turn, and we stood up to meet him. He enquired, " What be ye, and whence come ye, and whither will ye ?" we sat down after our answer, and he left us. He came again and said ' sum ! ' and we rose and followed him. The villager led us into his cottage yard; here we sat on the earth, and he brought us dates, with a little butter and thin whey: when we had eaten he returned, and we were called to the village Kahwa. Here also they knew me, for some had seen me in Hayil. These morose peasants cumbered me with religious questions; till I was most weary of their insane fanaticism. El-Kasr, that is Kasr el-Asheruwdt, is a village of two hundred and fifty to three hundred souls ; the large graveyard, without the place, is a wilderness of wild headstones of many gene rations. Their wells are sunk to a depth (the Beduins say) of thirty fathoms! We now heard sure tidings of the Emir; his camp had been removed to Hazzel, that is an aed or jau (watering place made in hollow ground) not distant, eastwards, from Shekaky in the Ruwalla country (where was this year a plentiful rabia), ' and all Shammar was with him and the Emir's cattle.' They were not many days out from Hayil, and the coming again of the Prince and his people would not be for some other IBN RASHID ENCAMPS IN THE KHALA. 247 weeks. These are the pastoral, and warlike spring excursions of the Shammar Princes. A month or two they lie thus in tents like the Beduw; but the end of their loitering idleness is a vehement activity : for as ever their cattle are murubba, they will mount upon some great ghrazzu, with the rajajil and a clowd of Beduw, and ride swiftly to surprise their enemies ; and after that they come again (commonly with a booty) to Hayil. — All the desert above Kasr was, they told us, mahal The rabia Avas this year upon the western side of Ajja; and the Emir's troops of mares and horses had been sent to graze about Mogug. EyM enquired, 'If anything had been heard of the twenty Ageyl riders from Medina ! ' The villagers of Kasr are Beny Temim : theirs is a very ancient name in Arabia. They were of old time Beduins and villagers, and their settled tribesmen were partly of the nomad life ; now they are only villagers. They are more robust than the Beduin neighbours, but churlish, and of little hospitality. In the evening these villagers talked tediously with us strangers, and made no kahwa. Upon a side of their public coffee hall was a raised bank of clay gravel, the manem or travellers' bed stead, a very harsh and stony lodging to those who come in from the austere delicacy of the desert ; where in nearly every place is some softness of the pure sand. The nights, which we had found cold in the open Avildemess, were here warm in the shelter of walls. — When we departed ere day, I saw many of these Arabian peasants sleeping abroad in their mantles ; they lay stretched like hounds in the dust of the village street. At sunrise we saw the twin heads of the Sumra Hayil. EyM responded to all men's questions; "We go with this Khalil to Hayil, at the commandment of the Bashat el-Medina ; and are bearers of his sealed letter to Ibn Rashid ; but we know not what is in the writing, — which may be to cut off all our heads!' — also I said in my heart, 'The Turks are treacherous ! ' — But should I break the Pasha's seal ? No ! I would sooner hope for a fair event of that hazard. This sealed letter of the governor of Medina, was opened after my returning from Arabia, at a British Consulate ; and it contained no more than his commending me to ' The Sheykh ' Ibn Rashid, and the request that he would send me forward on my journey. I walked in the mornings two hours, and as much at after noon, that my companions might ride; and to spare their sickly thelul I climbed to the saddle, as she stood, like a Beduwy: but the humanity which I showed them, to my possibility, hardened their ungenerous hearts. Seeing them weary, and 248 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. EyM complaining that his soles were worn to the quick, I went on walking barefoot to Gofar, and bade them ride still. — There I beheld once more (oh ! blissful sight,) the plum trees and almond trees blossoming in an Arabian oasis. We met with no one in the long main street; the men were now in the fields, or sleeping out the heat of the day in their houses. We went by the Mandkh, and I knew it well ; but my companions, who had not been this way of late years, were gone on, and so we lost our break fast. When I called they would not hear ; they went to knock at a door far beyond. They sat down at last in the street's end, but we saw no man. "Let us to Hayil, and mount thou, Khalil!" said the rafiks. We went on through the ruins of the northern quarter, where I showed them the road; and come near the desert side, I took the next way, but they trod in another. I called them, they called to me, and I went on riding. Upon this EyM's light head turning, whether it were he had not tasted tobacco this day, or because he was weary and fasting, he began to curse me ; and came running like a madman, ' to take the thelul' When I told him I would not suffer it, he stood aloof and cursed on, and seemed to have lost his under standing. A mile beyond he returned to a better mind, and acknowledged to me, that 'until he had drunk tobacco of a morning his heart burned within him, the brain rose in his pan, and he felt like a fiend.' — It were as easy to contain such a spirit as to bind water ! I rode not a little pensively, this third time, in the beaten way to Hayil; and noted again (with abhorrence, of race) at every few hours' end their " kneeling places "; — those little bays of stones set out in the desert soil, where Avayfarers overtaken by the canonical hours may patter the formal prayer of their religion. ¦ — -About midway we met the morning passengers from Hayil : and looking upon me Avith the implacable eyes of their fanaticism, every one ¦ who went by uttered the same hard words to my companions, 'Why bring ye him again ?' Ambar, Aneybar's brother, came next, riding upon an ass in a company; he went to Gofar, where he had land and palms. But the Avorthy Galla libertine greeted us with a pleasant good humour, — I was less it might be in disgrace of the princely household than of the fanatical populace. We saw soon above the brow of the desert the Avhite toAver-head of the great donjon of the castle, and said Merjan, "Some think that the younger children of Telal be yet alive therein. They see the world from their tower, and they are unseen." Upon our right hand lay the palms in the desert, es-Sherafa, founded by Metaab: — so we rode on into the town. EMPTY HAYIL. 249 We entered Hayil near the time of the afternoon prayers. Because the Emir was absent, there Avas no business ! the most shops were shut. The long market street was silent ; and their town seemed a dead and empty place. I saw the renegade Abdullah sitting at a shop door ; then Ibrahim and a few more of my acquaintance, and lastly the schoolmaster. The unsavoury pedant stood and cried with many deceitful gestures, "Now, welcome ! and blessed be the Lord ! — Khalil is a Moslem !" (for else he guessed I had not been so foolhardy as to re-enter Ibn Rashid's town.) At the street's end I met with Aneybar, lieutenant now in (empty) Hayil for the Emir; he came from the Kasr carrying in his hand a gold-hilted back-sword : the great man saluted me cheerfully and passed by. I went to alight before the castle, in the empty Me'shab, which was wont to be full of the couching theluls of visiting Beduins : but in these days since Ibn Rashid was ghrazzai, there came no , more Beduins to the town. About half the men of Hayil were, ' now in the field with Ibn Rashid ; for, besides his salaried rajajil, even the salesmen of the suk are the Prince's servants, to ride Avith him. This custom of military service has dis couraged many traders of the East Nejd provinces, who had otherwise been willing to try their fortunes in Hayil Some malignants of the castle ran together at the news, that the Nasrany was come again. I saw them stand in the tower gate, with the old coffee-server; "Heigh! (they cried) it is he indeed ! now it may please Ullah he will be put to death." — Whilst I was in this astonishment, Aneybar returned ; he had but walked some steps to find his wit. "Salaam aleyk!" "AleykSm es-salaam," he answered me again, betwixt good will and wondering, and cast back the head ; for they have all learned to strut like the Emirs. Aneybar gave me his right hand with a lordly grace : there was the old peace of bread and salt betwixt us. — "From whence, Khalil? and ye twain with him what be ye ? — well go to the coffee hall ! and there we will hear more." Aly el-Ayid went by us, coming from his house, and saluted me heartily. When we were seated with Aneybar in the great kahwa, he asked again, "And you Beduw with him, what be ye?" EyM responded with a craven humility: "We are Heteym." — "Nay ye are not Heteym." — "Tell them, I said, both what ye be, and who sent you hither." Eydd: "We are Ageyl from Medina, and the Pasha sent us to Kheybar to convey this Khalil, with a letter to Ibn Rashid." — " Well, Ageyl, and what tribesmen?" — "We must acknowledge we are Beduins, we are Auajy." Aneybar: "And, Khalil, where are your letters ? " — 250 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. I gave him a letter from Abdullah es-Siruan, and the Pasha's sealed letter. Aneybar, who had not learned to read gave them to a secretary, a sober and friendly man, who perus ing the unflattering titles " To the sheykh Ibn Rashid" re turned them to me unopened. — Mufarrij, the steward, now came in; he took me friendly by the hand, and cried, "Sum!" and led us to the mothif. There a dish was set before us of Ibn Rashid's rusty tribute dates, and — their spring hospitality— a bowl of small camel leban. One of the kitchen servers showed me a piece of ancient copper money, which bore the image of an eagle ; it had been found at Hayil, and was Roman. The makhzan was assigned us in which I had formerly lodged; and my rafiks left me to visit their friends in the town. Children soon gathered to the threshold and took courage to revile me. Also there came to me the princely child Abd el- Aziz, the orphan of Metaab : I saw him fairly grown in these three months ; he swaggered now like his uncle with a lofty but not disdainful look, and he resembles the Emir Mohammed. The princely child stood and silently regarded me, he clapt a hand to his little sword, but would not insult the stranger; so he said: "Why returned, Khalil Nasrany?" — "Because I hoped it would be pleasant to thine uncle, my darling." — " Nay, Khalil ! nay, Khalil ! the Emir says thou art not to remain here." I saw Zeyd the gate-keeper leading Merjan by the hand; and he enquired of the lad, who was of a vindictive nature, of all that had happened to me since the day I arrived at Kheybar. Such questions and answers could only be to my hurt: it was a danger I had foreseen, amongst ungenerous Arabs. We found Aneybar in the coffee-hall at evening: "Khalil, he said, we cannot send thee forward, and thou must depart to-morrow." — "Well, send me to the Emir in the North with the Medina letter, if I may not abide his coming in Hayil." — " Here rest to-night, and in the morning (he shot his one palm from the other) depart ! — Thou stay here, Khalil. ! the people threatened thee to-day, thou sawest how they pressed on thee at your entering."- — •" None pressed upon me, many saluted me." — " Life of Ullah ! but I durst not suffer thee to remain in Hayil, where so many are ready to kill thee, and I must answer to the Emir : sleep here this night, and please Ullah without mishap, and mount when we see the morning light." — Whilst we were speaking there came in a messenger, who arrived from the Emir in the northern wilderness: "And how does the Emir, exclaimed Aneybar with an affected heartiness of voice ; and where left you him encamped ?" The messenger, a worthy AN OLD GENTLEMAN BEGGAR OF MEDINA. 25 1 man of the middle age, saluted me, without any religious mislikmg, he was of the strangers at Hayil from the East provinces. Aneybar: "Thou hast heard, Khalil? and he showed me these three pauses of his malicious wit, on his fingers, To-morrow !— The light !— Depart ! "—" Whither ? " — - " From whence thou earnest; — to Kheybar: art thou of the din (their religion) ? " — " No, I am not." — " And therefore the Arabs are impatient of thy life : wouldst thou be of the din, thou mightest live always amongst them." — " Then send me tomorrow, at my proper charge, towards el-Kasim." They were displeased when I mentioned the Dowla: Aney bar answered hardly, " What Dowla ! here is the land of the Aarab, and the dominion of Ibn Rashid. — He says Kasim : but there are no Beduw in the town (to convey him). Khalil ! we durst not ourselves be seen in Kasim," and he made me a shrewd sign, sawing with the forefinger upon his black throat. — "Think not to deceive me, Aneybar; is not a sister of the Emir of Boreyda, a wife of Mohammed ibn Rashid ? and are not they your allies?" — "Ullah! (exclaimed some of them), he knows everything." — Aneybar: "Well! Avell! but it cannot be, Khalil: how sayest thou, sherif?" — This was an old gentleman-beggar, with grey eyes, some fortieth in descent from the Ndby, clad like a Turkish citizen, and who had arrived to-day from Medina, where he dwelt. His was an adventurous and gainful trade of hypocrisy : three months or four in a year he dwelt at home ; in the rest he rode, or passed the seas into every far land of the Mohammedan world. In each country he took up a new concubine ; and whereso he passed he glosed so fructuously, and showed them his large letters patent from kings and princes, and was of that honourable presence, that he was bidden to the best houses, as becometh a religious sheykh of the Holy City, and a nephew of the apostle of Ullah : so he received their pious alms and returned to the illuminated Medina. Bokhara was a villegiatura for this holy man in his circuit, and so were all the cities beyond as far as Casbul. In Mohammedan India, he went a begging long enough to learn the vulgar language. Last year he visited Stambul, and followed the [not] glorious Mohammedan arms in Europe ; and the Sultan of Islam had bestowed upon him his imperial firman. — He showed me the dedale engrossed document, Avith the sign manual of the Calif upon a half fathom of court paper. And with this broad charter he was soon to- go again upon an Indian voyage. — When Aneybar had asked his counsel, " Wellah yd el- Mohaf4th (answered this hollow spirit), and I say the same, 252 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. it cannot be ; for what has this man to do in el-Kasim ? and what does he wandering up and down in all the land; (he added under his breath), wa yiktub el-bildd, and he writes up the country." Aneybar: "Well, to-morrow, Khalil, depart; and thou EyM carry him back to Kheybar." — Eydd : " But it Avould be said there, 'Why hast thou brought him again'? wellah I durst not do it, Aneybar." Aneybar mused a little. I answered them, " You hear his wrords ; and if this rafik were willing, yet so feeble is their thelul, you have seen it yourselves, that she could not carry me." — Eydd: "Wellah! she is not able." — " Besides, I said, if you cast me back into hazards, the Dowla may require my blood, and you must every year enter some of their towns as Bagdad and Medina : and when you send to India with your horses, will you not be in the power of my -fellow citizens?" — The Sherif: "He says truth, I have been there, and I know the Engleys and their Dowla: now let me speak to this man in a tongue which he will understand,— he spoke somewhat in Hindostani — what ! an Engleysy under stand not the language of el-Hind?" — Aneybar: "Thou EyM (one of our subject Beduins) ! it is not permitted thee to say nay; I command you upon your heads to convey Khalil to Kheybar ; and you are to depart to-morrow. — Heigh-ho ! it should be the hour of prayer!" Some said, They had heard the ithin already: Aneybar rose, the Sherif rose solemnly and all the rest; and they went out to say their last prayers in the great mesjid. In the next makhzan lodged a stranger, newly come from the wars : and I heard from him the first sure tidings,— ' that the Moslemin had the worse ; but the jehM being now at an end, they returned home. The Muskovs were big, he said, and manly bodies Avith great beards.' But, of all that he saw in the land of Europe, most strange seemed to him the sheep of the Nasara, ' that they had tails like camels ' [and not the huge tallow laps of the Arabian stock]. He had come lately to Hayil in com pany with the great sheykh of el-Ajman. That sheykh of Aarab had been taken captive by the Turks, in their occupation of el-Hasa, and banished to the confines of Russia. There he was seven years in durance ; and his Beduin kindred in Arabia had (in the last two years) slain the year's-mind for him, — supposing him to be deceased ! But when the valorous (unlettered) man in a strange land heard the cry to warfare for the religion, he made his humble petition to the Sultan ; and liberty was granted him to bear a lance to the jehad in the Avorship of Ullah and the Apostle. — This Beduin duke was wounded, in the arm. At the armistice the Sultan bade him ask a reward; and he an- The great sheykh of ajmAn. 253 swered, "That I might return to my province, Hdjjar !" — In Ramathan he landed Avith this companion at Jidda: they visited Mecca and Medina, and from Medina they rode to Hayil. Here Mohammed ibn Rashid received him kindly, and dismissed him with his princely gift of three theluls and a saddle-bag full of silver reals. The noble Arabian was now gone home to his coun try; and we heard that he had submitted himself to the Wahaby. That stranger, his rafik, who had but one mocking eye, which seemed to look askance, said to me he had seen me three years before in Alexandria, and spoken with me ! [I think it was true, — that one day meeting with him, in the street I had enquired the way of him.] To my ear the Arabian speech sounded mincing and affected-like upon his tongue. He said he Avas from el-Ye'men, but what he was indeed (in this time of trouble) I might not further enquire. When I asked him of the sherif from Medina, he answered with an incredulous scorn (which might have become an Euro pean), " He is no sherif, I know him well, but a beggar come all the way hither, from Medina, with a box of candles (which they have not in these parts) for Ibn Rashid, only to beg of him four or five reals, and receive a change of clothing. He does this every few years, though he has a good house at Medina; he runs through all the world a-begging." — "But wherefore, if he have to live ?" — "It is onlv his avarice." The Sherif came, after prayers, to visit me, and his way faring companion, clad in their long city coats, wide girdles, superfluous slops, and red caps wound about with great calico turbans. They asked, 'Was there any water?' We were all thirsty from the journey, which is like a fever in Arabia; and I Avent out to ask a little water, for my guests, at the Kasr gate. It was shut: "What wouldst thou, Khalil?" I heard a voice say in the dark, and I knew it was Aneybar ; he was sitting there on Hamud's clay settle. I asked, "Why made he this ado about my coming again to Hayil ? and seeing that I came with a letter from the Pasha of Medina?" — "Tell us not of pashas, here is Ibn Rashid's government : to-morrow depart, there is no more to say;" and he turned to a com panion, who answered him, "Ay to-morrow early! away with the cursed Nasrany." I asked Aneybar who was his coun sellor, since I could not see him: but he answered not. — The unsavoury schoolmaster Avent by, and when he knew our voices, "Akhs ! quoth he, I saluted thee to-day, seeing thee arrive, as I supposed, a Moslem, but now thou wilt be slain." Aneybar was not a bad man, or fanatical, but he had a bonds- 254 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. man's heart, and the good was easily corrupted in him, by the despiteful reasons of others. I went on to knock at the door of Aly el-Ayid and ask a little water. His wife opened with "Welcome Khalil." — "And where is Aly ? " — " My husband is gone out to sleep in the (ripening) cornfields, he must watch all night;" she bade me enter, but I excused myself. She was young and pleasant, of modest demeanour, and had many tall children. When I was formerly at Hayil, I often visited them, and she sat unveiled, before the hakim, Avith her husband ; and he would have it so, be cause I was a Nasrany. She brought me water and I returned to my makhzan. The sherif's companion had been in the Bagdad caravan; afterwards he lay sick in a hospital at Medina : he met lately with the sherif, all ready to go upon his northern journey, and they joined company. Some nomads riding to Hayil, had carried them upon their camels for two reals each, but far ways about, so that they arrived full of weariness and impatience. When they returned to their makhzan I said I would go over presently to visit them. — Eydd, "Is not the sherif going to el-M^shed? we will give him money to take thee with him, and let us see what the morning will bring forth ; look, Khalil ! I will not forsake thee." — When we entered, the sherif drew me out the Sultan's diploma; he found his goggle spectacles, and when he had set them solemnly astride on his nose, the old fox took up his candle end and began to read forth. He showed us his other documents and letters man datory, from princes and pashas, ' Only, quoth he, there lacked him one from the Engleys ! ' — He would have me write him a thing, that he might have entrance to the Consulate of our nation at Bagdad; and he hoped there to obtain a certificate to further him in his Indian voyage. " Reach me the inkhorn, look in the bags, companion," quoth the iniquitous shrew ; who oppressed me here, and would that I should lift him up abroad ! — " Lend me that reed, and I will not fail thee, — what good deeds of thine shall I record ? wilt thou persuade Aneybar ?" — "Ugh!" (he would as lief that I perished in this wilderness, as to thrive himself in India). Eydd : " Sherif, since thou art going to Mashed, take with thee Khalil, and we will give thee four reals; also Khalil shall deliver thee a writing for the Engleys." — " Ugh ! said the old shrew, four reals, four only, ugh ! we may consider of it to morrow. He added this miserable proverb — the Lord may work much mercy before the morning : and — this is the only word I know of their speech, besides bret (bread), — el-Engleys weri- THE SHERIF'S BEGGING TRAVELS. 255 gud." I asked, " Did they take thee too for a spy in the Indian country?" — "Ay, and there only can I blame their govern ment : I went no whither in all India, but I was watched ! and for such it is that I would obtain a certificate, another time, from a Konsulato." — " And did any threaten thee because of thy religion?"— "Nay, that I will say for them."— "Be they not just to all without difference ?" — " They are just, out of doubt ; and (he said to EyM) I will tell thee a tale. One day as I journeyed in el-Hind, I hastened, I and a concubine of mine, to come to a town not far beyond to lodge : but the night falling on us short of the place, I turned aside, where I saw a military station ; because I feared for the woman, and if we should lie abroad, we were in danger of robbers. The [sepoy] sentinel would not suffer me to pass the gate, "The sun, he said is set:" then in my anger I struck him. [This is very unlike the Arabian comity ; but the holy parasite was town-bred and not wont to suffer contradiction so far from home.] The soldier reported to the guard, and their officer sent for me ; he was an Engleysy, — they are all yellow haired, and such as this Khalil. When I told him my quality and spread my firmans before him, which ye have seen, the officer commanded to make ready for us a lodging and supper, and to give me twenty-five rupees; and he said to me, "You may lodge here one month, and receive daily rations." — "I would thou might persuade this people in Hayil to show some humanity to strangers!" — "Ha! (answered the sherif, as a citizen despising them), they are Beduw ! " and the false old man began to be merry. "Bokhara, he told me, is a city greater than Damascus; the Emir, who — he added mocking — would be called S4ltdn, had a wide and good country ; but now (he murmured) the Musk6v are there!"— "Well, tell us of the jehM."— "I myself was at the wars, and am only lately come home to Medina;" where he said, he had heard of me (detained) at Kheybar, when my matter was before the council. — "But, eigh ! the Nasara had the upper hand ; and they have taken a province." — "Akhs ! cries Eyad, tell us, sherif, have the Nasara conquered any beled of the Sooltan? to whom Ullah send the victory! — Can the Nasara prevail against the Moslemin ? The sherif answered with the Mohammedan solemnity, and cast a sigh, "Amr Ullah, amr Ullah ! it was God's ordinance." — Eydd : " Ha ! sherif, what thinkest thou, will the Nasara come on hither ?" — That is unlikely !" Eyad's busy broken head was full of a malicious subtlety : I said therefore, " Sherif, thinkest thou that this land would be worth to them a cup of coffee?"— "Well, it is all 256 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. ch61, steppes, an open desolation ; aye, what profit might they have in it !" "And the Engleys ?" — " They were of our part." — "EyM you hear 'this from the sherif's mouth \"—Eydd: "But the Nasara take the Sultan's provinces, says the sherif: and the Engleys are Nasara ! " When the morning sun rose I had as lief that my night had continued for ever. There was no going forward for me, nor going backward, and I was spent with fatigues. — We went over to the great coffee-hall Aneybar sat there, and beside him was the old dry-hearted sherif, who drank his morrow's cup with an holy serenity. " EyM affirms, I said, that he cannot, he dare not, and that he will not convey me again to Kheybar." — " To Kheybar thou goest, and that presently." EyM was leading away his sick thelul to pasture under Ajja, but the Moghre'by gatekeeper withheld him by force. That Moor's heart, as at my former departure from Hayil, was full of brutality. " Come, Zeyd, I said to him, be we not both Western men and like countrymen among these Beduw?" — " Only become a Moslem, and we would all love thee; but we know thee to be a most hardened Nasrany. — Khalil comes (he said to the bystanders) to dare us ! a Nasrany, here in the land of the Moslemin ! Was it not enough that we once sent thee away in safety, and comest thou hither again !" Round was this burly man's head, with a brutish visage ; he had a thick neck, unlike the shot-up growth of the slender Nejd Arabians ; the rest of him an unwieldy carcase, and half a cart-load of tripes. In the absence of the princely family, my soul was in the hand of this cyclops of the Me'shab. I sat to talk peaceably with him, and the brute-man many times lifted his stick to smite the kafir ; but it was hard for Zeyd, to whom I had some time shown a good turn, to chafe himself against me. The opinions of the Arabs are ever divided, and among three is com monly one mediator : — it were blameworthy to defend the cause of an adversary of Ullah; and yet some of the people of Hayil that now gathered about us with mild words were a mean for me. The one-eyed stranger stood by, he durst not affront the storm ; but Avhen Zeyd left me for a moment, he whispered in my ear, that I should put them off, whom he called in con tempt 'beasts without understanding, Beduw!' — "Only seem thou to consent with them, lest they kill thee ; say ' Mohammed is the apostle of Ullah,' and afterward, when thou art come into sure countries, hold it or leave it at thine own liking. This is not to sin before God, when force oppresses us, and there is no deliverance !" THE nasr Any in fanatic hayil. 257 Loitering persons and knavish boys pressed upon me with insolent tongues: but Ibrahim of Hayil, he who before so friendly accompanied me out of the town, was ready again to befriend me, and cried to them, " Back with you ! for shame, so to thrust upon the man ! 0 fools, have ye not seen him be fore ?" Amongst them came that Abdullah of the broken arm, the boy-brother of Hamiid. I saw him grown taller, and noAv he wore a little back-sword ; which he pulled out against me, and cried, "O thou cursed Nasrany, that wilt not leave thy miscreance!" — The one-eyed stranger whispered, "Content them! it is but waste of breath to reason with them. Do ye — he said to the people — stand back ! I would speak with this man ; and we may yet see some happy event, it may please Ullah." He whispered in my ear, " Eigh ! there will be some mischief; only say thou wilt be a Moslem, and quit thyself of them. Show thyself noAv a prudent man, and let me not see thee die for a word; afterward, when thou hast escaped their hands, settin sena, sixty years to them, and yulaan Ullah abu-hum, the Lord confound the father of them all! Now, hast thou consented? — ho ! ye people, to the mesjid ! go and prepare the muzayyin : Khalil is a Moslem ! "¦ — The lookers-on turned and were going, then stood still; they believed not his smooth words of that obstinate misbeliever. But when I said to them, " No need to go ! " — " Aha ! they cried, the accursed Nasrany, Ullah curse his parentage !" — Zeyd (the porter) : "But I am thinking we shall make this (man) a Moslem and circumcise him; go in one of you and fetch me a knife from the Kasr:" but none moved, for the people dreaded the Emir and Hamiid (reputed my friend). "Come, Khalil, for one thing, said Zeyd, we will be friends with thee ; say, there is none God but the Lord and His apostle is Mohammed : and art thou poor we will also enrich thee." — "I count your silver as the dust of this me'shab: — but which of you miserable Arabs would give a man anything ? Though ye gave me this castle, and the beyt el-mdl, the pits and the sacks of hoarded silver which ye say to be there in, I could not change my faith." — "Akhs — akhs — akhs — akhs!" was uttered from a multitude of throats : I had contemned, in one breath, the right way in religion and the helped riches of this world ! and with horrid outcries they detested the antichrist. — " Eigh Nasrany! said a voice, and what found you at Khey bar, ha?" — "Plenty of dates 0 man, and fever." — "The more is the pity, cried they all, that he died not there; but akhs ! these cursed Nasranies, they never die, nor sicken as other men : and surely if this (man) were not a Nasrany, he had been dead long D. T. II. 17 258 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. ago." — "Ullah curse the father of him!" murmured many a ferocious voice. Zeyd the porter lifted his huge fist; but Aney bar appeared coming from the siik, and Ibrahim cries, " Hold there ! and strike not Khalil." — Aneybar : " What ado is here, and (to Zeyd) why is not the Nasrany mounted ? — did I not tell thee ?" — " His Beduw were not ready ; one of them is gone to bid his kinsfolk farewell, and I gave the other leave to go and buy somewhat in the siik." — Aneybar: "And you people will ye not go your ways ? — Sheytdn ! what has any of you to do with the Nasrany ; Ullah send a punishment upon you all, and upon him also." I said to Aneybar, "Let Eyad take new wages of me and threaten him, lest he forsake me." — "And what received he before?" — "Five reals." — "Then give him other five reals. [Two or three had sufficed for the return journey ; but this was his malice, to make me bare in a hostile land.] When the thelul is come, mount, — and Zeyd see thou that the payment is made ;" and loftily the Galla strode from me. — Cruel was the slave's levity; and when I had nothing left for their cupidity how might I save myself out of this dreadful country ? — Zeyd : "Give those five reals, ha! make haste, or by God — !" — and with an ugh ! of his bestial anger he thrust anew his huge fist upon my breast. I left all to the counsel of the moment, for a last need I was well armed ; but with a blow, putting to his great strength, he might have slain me. — Ibrahim drew me from them. "Hold! he said, I have the five reals, where is that EyM, and I will count them in his hand. Khalil, rid thyself with this and come away, and I am Avith you." I gave him the silver. Ibrahim led on, Avith the bridle of the thelul in his hand, through the market street, and left me at a shop door whilst he Avent to seek Aneybar. Loitering persons gathered at the threshold where I sat; the worst was that wretched young Abdullah el-Abeyd ; when he had lost his breath with cursing, he drew his little sword again: but the bystanders blamed him, and I entered the makhzan. The tradesman, who was a Meshedy, asked for my gallivtn and bade me be seated ; he filled it with hameydy, that honey like tobacco and peaceable remedy of human life. "What tidings, quoth he, in the world ? — We have news that the Queen of the Engleys is deceased ; and now her son is king in her room." Whilst I sat pensive, to hear his words ! a strong young swordsman, who remained in Hayil, came suddenly in and sat down. I remembered his comely wooden face, the fellow was called a Moghreby, and was not very happy in his wits. He drew and felt doAvn the edge of his blade : so TYRANNY OF ANEYBAR. 259 said Hands-without-head — as are so many among them, and sware by Ullah : " Yesterday, when Khalil entered, I was run ning with this sword to kill him, but some withheld me ! " The tradesman responded, " What has he done to be slain by thee ?" Swordsman : " And I am glad that I did it not : " — he seemed now little less rash to favour me, than before to have murdered me. Aneybar, who this while strode unquietly up and down, in the side streets, (he would not be seen to attend upon the Nasrany), appeared now with Ibrahim at the door. The Galla deputy of Ibn Rashid entered and sat down, with a mighty rattling of his sword of office in the scabbard, and laid the blade over his knees. Ibrahim requested him to insist no more upon the iniquitous payment out of Khalil's empty purse, or at least to make it less. "No, five reals!" (exclaimed the slave in authority,) he looked very fiercely upon it, and clattered the sword. " God will require it of thee ; and give me a schedule of safe conduct, Aneybar." He granted, the tradesman reached him an hand-breadth of paper, and Ibrahim wrote, ' No man to molest this Nasrany.' Aneybar inked his signet of brass, and sealed it solemnly, Aneybar Ibn Rashid. " The sherif (I said) is going to Bagdad, he will pass by the camp of the Emir : and there are some Beduw at the gate — I have now heard it, that are willing to convey me to the North, for three reals. If thou compel me to go with EyM, thou knowest that I cannot but be cast away : treachery 0 Aneybar is punished even in this world ! May not a stranger pass by your Prince's country ? be reasonable, that I may depart from you to-day peaceably, and say, the Lord remember thee for good." The Galla sat arrogantly rattling the gay back-sAvord in his lap, with a countenance composed to the princely awe ; and at every word of mine he clapped his black hand to the hilt. When I ceased he found no answer, but to cry with tyranny, "Have done, or else by God — "! and he showed me a hand- breadth or two of his steel out of the scabbard. "What! he exclaimed, wilt thou not yet be afraid ? " Now EyM entered, and Ibrahim counted the money in his hand: Aneybar delivered the paper to Eyad. — "The Emir gave his passport to me." — "But I will not let thee have it, mount! and Ibrahim thou canst see him out of the town." At the end of the siik the old parasite seyyid or sherif was sitting square-legged before a threshold, in the dust of the street. " Out, I said in passing, with thy reeds and paper ; and I will give thee a writing?" The old fox in a turban winced, and he murmured some koran wisdom between his broken 17—2 260 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. teeth. — There trotted by us a Beduwy upon a robust thelul. " I was then coming to you, cried the man ; and I will convey the Nasrany to el-Irak for five reals." Eydd : " Well, and if it be with Aneybar 's allowance, I will give up the five reals, which I have ; and so shall we all have done well, and Khalil may depart in peace. Khalil sit here by the thelul, whilst I and this Beduwy go back to Aneybar, and make the accord, if it be possible; wellah! I am sorry for thy sake." — A former acquaint- ance, a foreigner from el-Hasa, came by and stayed to speak with me ; the man was one of the many industrious strangers in Hayil, where he sewed cotton quilts for the richer households. " This people, quoth he, are untaught ! all things are in the power of Ullah : and now farewell, Khalil, and God give thee a good ending of this adventure." EyM returned saying, Aneybar would not be entreated, and that he had reviled the poor Beduwy. " Up, let us hasten from them ; and as for Merjan, I know not what is become of him. I will carry thee to Gofar, and leave thee there. — No, wellah Khalil, I am not treacherous, but I durst not, I cannot, return with thee to Kheybar : at Gofar I will leave thee, or else with the Aarab." — " If thou betray me, betray me at the houses of hair? and not in the settlements; but you shall render the silver." — "Nay, I have eaten it ; yet I will do the best that I may for thee." We journeyed in the beaten path towards Gofar; and after going a mile, " Let us wait, quoth Eyad, and see if this Merjan be not coming." At length we saw it was he who approached us with a bundle on his head, — he brought temmn and dates, which his sister (wedded in the town) had given him. EyM drew out a leathern budget, in which was some victual for the way that he had received from the Mothif, (without my know ledge) : it was but a little barley meal and dates of ill kind, in all to the value of about one shilling. We sat down, Merjan spread his good dates, and we breakfasted ; thus eating together I hoped they might yet be friendly, though only misfortunes could be before me with such unlucky rafiks. I might have journeyed with either of them but not with both together. EyM had caught some fanatical suspicion in Hayil, from the mouth of the old Medina sherif! — that the Nasara encroached continually upon the dominion of the Sultan, and thatKhalil's nation, although not enemies, were not well-wishers, in their hearts, to the religion of Islam. When I would mount ; "Nay, said EyM, beginning to swagger, the returning shall not be as our coming; I will ride myself." I said no more ; and cast thus again into the wilderness I must give them line. — My companions boasted, as we went, of COME TO GOFAR. 261 promises made to them both in Hayil — Aneybar had said, that Avould they return hither sometime, from serving the Dowla, they might be of Ibn Rashid's (armed) service ; — EyM an horse man of the Emir's riders, and Merjan one of the rajajil. Two womem coming out from Hayil overtook us, as they went to Gofar. "The Lord be praised (said the poor creatures, with a womanly kindness) that it was not worse. Ah ! thou, — is not thy name Khalil ? — they in yonder town are jabdbara, men of tyrannous violence, that will cut off a man's head for a light displeasure. Eigh me ! did not he so that is now Emir, unto all his brother's children ? Thou art well come from them, they are hard and cruel, kasyin. And what is this that the people cry, 'Out upon the Nasrdny !' The Nasara be better than the Moslemin." Eydd: "It is they themselves that are the Nasara, wellah, khubithin, full of malignity." "It is the Meshahada that I hate, said Merjan, may Ullah confound them." It happened that a serving boy in the public kitchen, one of the patients whom I treated (freely) at my former sojourning in Hayil, was Merjan's brother. The Meshahadies he said had been of Aney bar 's counsel against me. — Who has travelled in Phoenician and Samaritan Syria may call to mind the inhumanity [the last wretchedness and worldly wickedness of irrational religions, — that man should not eat and drink with his brother !] of those Persian or Assyrian colonists, the Metdwali. Forsaking the road we went now towards the east-building of Gofar: — the east and west settlements lie upon two veins of ground-water, a mile or more asunder. The western oasis, where passes the common way, is the greater ; but Eyad went to find some former acquaintance in the other with whom we might lodge. Here also Ave passed by forsaken palm-grounds and ruinous orchard houses, till we came to the inhabited; and they halted before the friend's dar. EyM and Merjan sat down to see if the good man (of an inhospitable race, the B. Temim), would come forth to welcome us. Children gathered to look on, and when some of them knew me, they began to fleer at the Nasrany. Merjan cursed them, as only Semites can find it in their hearts, and ran upon the little mouthing knaves with his camel-stick ; but now our host coming down his alley saluted Eyad, and called us to the house. His son bore in my bags to the kahwa : and they strewed down green garden stalks before the thelul and wild herbage. A bare dish of dates was set before us ; and the good-man made us thin coffee :' bye and bye his neighbours entered. All these were B. Temim, peasant-like bodies in whom is no natural urbanity; but they are lumpish drudgers, living honestly 262 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. of their own — and that is with a sparing hand. When I said to one of them, " I see you all big of bone and stature, unlike the (slender) inhabitants of Hayil ! " — He answered, dispraising them, "The Shammar are Beduw!" Whilst we sat, there came in three swarthy strangers, who riding by to Hayil alighted here also to drink coffee. — They carried up their zika to the Prince's treasury ; for being few and distant Aarab, his exactors were not come to them these two years : they Avere of Harb, and their wandering ground was nigh Medina. They mounted again immediately; and from Hayil they would ride continually to Ibn Rashid in the northern Avilderness. My rafiks left me alone without a word ! I brought in there fore the thelul furnitures, lest they should lead away their beast and forsake me. Eyad and Merjan feared no more that they must give account for me; and their wildness rising at every word, I foresaw hoAV next to desperate, must be my further passage with them: happily for my weary life the milk-season was now in the land. — The water veins upon which their double oasis is founded flow, they say, from Ajja. The water height in their eight-fathom wells falls about a fathom in the long summer season. These B. Temimy hosts showed a dull countenance towards 'the adversary of Ullah '. Yet the story of my former being in Hayil was well known to them : they even told me of my old naga, the Khueyra, that she had lately calved: — I would she were yet mine ! for her much milk which might sustain a man's life in full health in the desert. The naga of any good hump has rich milk; if her hump be low she has less and lean milk. The B. Temim are very ancient in these districts : yet an elder nation, the B. Tadmir, they say, inhabited the land before them. They name their jid or patriarch Temim; he was brother of Wail jid of the Annezy and Maazy [Vol. I. p. 229]. — My rafiks came again at evening with treacherous looks. CHAPTEK X. THE SHAMMAR AND HARB DESERTS IN NEJD. Herding supper of milk. A flight of cranes. An evil desert journey, and night, with treacherous rafiks. Aly of Gussa again. Braitshdn 's booths again. " Arabs love the smooth speaking ." Another evil journey. A menzil of Heteym ; and parting from the treacherous rafiks. Nomad thirst for tobacco. A beautiful Heteym woman. Solubba. Maatulc and Noweyr. "Nasara" pas sengers. Life of these Heteym. Burial of the Nasrdny's books. Journey to the Harb, eastward. Gazelles. Camel milk bitter of wormwood. Heteym menzils. Come to Harb Aarab. False rumour of a foray of the Wahaby. El-Auf. An Harb sheykh. An Harb bride. Khdlaf ibn Nahal's great booth. Khdlaf's words. Seleymy villagers. Mount again and alight by night at tents. Motlog and Tollog. Come anew to Ibn Ndhal's tent. Ibn Ndhal, a merchant Beduin. His wealth. A rich man rides in u, ghrazzu, to steal one camel, and is slain. Tollog's inhospitable ferij. Wander to another menzil. "Poor Aly." An Ageyly descried. A new face. A tent of poor acquaintance. At daybreak we departed from Gofar : this by my reckoning was the first week in April. EyM loosed out our sick thelul to pasture; and they drove her slowly forward in the desert plain till the sun went down behind Ajja, when we halted under bergs of grey granite. These rocks are fretted into bosses and caves, more than the granite of Sinai : the heads of the granite crags are commonly trap rock. EyM, kindling a fire, heated his iron ramrod, and branded their mangy thelul — I had gone all day on foot ; and the Ageylies threatened every hour to cast down my bags, though now light as Merjan's temmn, which she also carried. We marched four miles further, and espied a camp fire; and coming to the place we found a ruckling troop of camels couched for the night, in the open khala. The herd-lad and his brother sat sheltering in the hollow bank of a seyl, and a watch-fire of sticks was burning before them. The hounds of the Aarab follow not with the herds, the lads could not see be yond their fire-light, and our salaam startled them: then falling on our knees we sat down by them, — and with that wrord Ave 264 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. were acquainted. The lads made some of their nagas stand up, and they milked full bowls and frothing over for us. We heard a night-fowl shriek, where we had left our bags with the thelul : my rafiks rose and ran back Avith their sticks, for the bird (which they called sirr4k, a thief) might, they said, steal something. When we had thus supped, we lay down upon the pleasant seyl sand to sleep. As the new day lightened Ave set forward. A little further we saw a flock of some great sea-fowl grazing before us, upon their tall shanks in the wilderness. — I mused that (here in Nejd) they were but a long flight on their great waggle wings from the far seabord ; a morrow's sun might see them beyond this burning dust of Arabia ! At first my light-headed rafiks mistook them for sheep-flocks, although only black fleeces be seen in these parts of Nejd: then having kindled their gun-matches, they went creeping out to approach them ; but bye and bye I saw the great fowl flag their wings over the wide desert, and the gunners returning. — I asked " from whence are these birds?" — "Wellah from Mecca," [that is from the middle Red Sea bord.] This soil was waste gravel, baked hard in the everlasting drought, and glowing under the soles of our bare feet ; the air Avas like a flame in the sun. An infirm traveller were best to ride always in the climate of Arabia : now by the cruelty of my companions, I went always on foot; and they themselves would ride. And marching in haste, I must keep them in view, or else they had forsaken the Nasrany: my plight was such that I thought, after a few days of such efforts, I should rest for ever. So it drew to the burning midst of the after noon, when, what for the throes in my chest, I thought that the heart would burst. The hot blood at length spouted from my nostrils : I called to the rafiks who went riding together before me to halt, that I might lie down awhile, but they would not hear. Then I took up stones, to receive the dropping gore, lest I should come with a bloody shirt to the next Aarab : besides it might work some alteration in my rafiks' envenomed spirits ! — in this haste there fell blood on my hands. When I overtook them, they seeing my bloody hands drew bridle in astonishment ! Merjdn : '' Now is not this a kafir !" — " Are ye not more than kafirs, that abandon the rafik in the way ? " They passed on now more slowly, and I went by the side of the thelul. — "If, I added, ye abandon the rafik, what honourable man will hereafter receive you into their tents ?" Merjan answered, " There is keeping of faith betwixt the Mos lemin, but not with an enemy of Ullah ! " THE RAFIKS. 265 They halted bye and bye and EyM dismounted: Merjan who Avas still sitting upon the thelul's back struck fire with a flint : I thought it might be for their galliuns, since they had bought a little sweet hameydy, with my money, at Hayil: but Eyad kindled the cord of his matchlock. I said, "This is Avhat?" They answered, " A hare ! " — " Where is your hare ? I say, show me this hare!" EyM had yet to put priming to the eye of his piece ; they stumbled in their words, and remained confused. I said to them, " Did I seem to you like this hare ? by the life of Him who created us, in what instant you show me a gun's mouth, I will lay dead your hare's carcases upon this earth : put out the match!" he did so. The cool of the evening approached ; we marched on slowly in silence, and doubtless they rolled it in their hollow hearts what might signify that vehement Avord of the Nasrany. " Look, I said to them, rizel- leyn ! you two vile dastards, I tell you plainly, that in what moment you drive me to an extremity ye are but dead dogs ; and I will take this carrion thelul !" My adventure in such too unhappy case had been nearly desperate ; nigher than the Syrian borders I saw no certain relief. Syria were a great mark to shoot at, and terribly far off; and yet upon a good thelul, fresh watered — for extremities make men bold, and the often escaping from dangers — I had not despaired to come forth ; and one watering in the midway, — if I might once find water, had saved both thelul and rider. — Or should I ride towards Teyma; two hundred miles from hence? — But seeing the great landmarks from this side, how might I know them again ! — and if I found any Aarab westward, yet these would be Bishr, the men's tribesmen. Should I ride eastward in unknown diras ? or hold over the fearful Nefud sand billows to seek the Sherarat ? Whithersoever I rode I was likely to faint before I came to any human relief; and might not strange Aarab sooner kill the stranger, seeing one arrive thus, than receive me ? My eyes were dim with the suffered ophthalmia, and not knowing where to look for them, how in the vastness of the desert landscape should I descry any Aarab ? If I came by the mercy of God to any wells, I might drink drop by drop, by some artifice, but not water the thelul Taking up stones I chafed my blood-stained hands, hoping to wash them when we should come to the Aarab; but this was the time of the spring pasture, when the great cattle are jezzin, and oft-times the nomads have no water by them, because there is le"ban to drink. EyM thought the game turned against him! when we came to a menzil, I might complain of them and he Avould have a scorn. — "Watch, said he, and when any camel 266 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. stales, run thou and rinse the hands ; for wellah seeing blood on thy hands, there will none of the Aarab eat with thee." — The urine of camels has been sometimes even drunk by town cara vaners in their impatience of thirst. I knew certain of the Medanite tradesmen to the Sherarat, who coming up at mid summer from the W. Sirhan, and finding the pool dry (above Maan) where they looked to have watered, filled their bowl thus, and let in it a little blood from the camel's ear. I have told the tale to some Beduins ; who answered me, " But to drink this could not help a man, wellah he would die the sooner, it must so wring his bowels." It was evening, and now we went again by el-Agella. When the sun was setting, we saw another camel troop not far off. The herdsmen trotting round upon some of their lighter beasts were driving-in the great cattle to a sheltered place be tween two hills ; for this night closed starless over our heads with falling weather. When we came to them the young men had halted their camels and were hissing to them to kneel, — ikh-kh-kh! The great brutes fall stiffly, with a sob, upon one or both their knees, and underdoubling the crooked hind legs, they sit ponderously down upon their haunches. Then shuffling forward one and the other fore-knee, with a grating of the harsh gravel under their vast carcase-weight, they settle them selves, and with these pains are at rest : the fore bulk-weight is sustained upon the zSra ; so they lie still and chaw their cud, till the morning sun. The camel leaves a strange (reptile like) print (of his knees, of the z6ra and of the sharp hind quar ters), which may be seen in the hard wilderness soil after even a year or two. The smell of the camel is muskish and a little dog-like, the hinder parts being crusted with urine ; yet is the camel more beautiful in our eyes than the gazelles, because man sees in this creature his whole welfare, in the khala. [v. Vol. I. p. 220.] The good herding lads milked for us largely: we drunk deep and far into the night ; and of every sup is made ere morning sweet blood, light flesh and stiff sinews. The rain beat on our backs as we sat about their watch-fire of sticks on the pure sand of the desert; it lightened and thundered. When we were weary we went apart, where we had left our bags, and lay down in our cloaks, in the night Avind and the rain. I lay so long musing of the morrow, that my companions might think me sleeping. They rested in the shelter of the next crag, where I heard them say — my quick hearing helping me in these dangers like the keen eyesight of the nomads — that later in NIGHT RAIN AND TROUBLE. 267 the night they would lift their things on the thelul and be gone. I let them turn over to sleep : then I rose and went to the place where the fire had been. The herdsmen lay sleeping in the rain; and I thought I would tell the good lads my trouble. Their sister was herding with them, but in presence of strange menfolk she had sat all this evening obscurely in the rain, and far from the cheerful fire. Now she was warming herself at the dying embers, and cast a little cry as she saw me coming, for all is fear in the desert. ' Peace ! I said to her, and I would speak with her bre thren.' She took the elder by the shoulder, and rolling him, he wakened immediately, for in this weather he was not well asleep. They all sat up, and the young men, rubbing their faces asked, " Oh, what — ? and wherefore would not the stranger let them rest, and why was I not gone to sleep with my rafiks ?" These were manly lads but rude ; they had not discerned that I was so much a stranger. I told them, that those with me were Annezy, Ageylies, who had money to carry me to Kheybar; but their purpose was to forsake me, and perhaps they would abandon me this night." — " Look you (said they, holding their mouths for yawning), we are poor young serving men, and have not much understanding in such things; but if we see them do thee a wrong, we will be for thee. Go now and lie down again, lest they miss thee; and fear nothing, for we are nigh thee." About two hours before the day Eyad and Merjan rose, whispering, and they loaded the things on the couching thelul ; then with a little spurn they raised her silently. "Lead out (I heard Eyad whisper), and we will come again for the guns." I lay still, and when they were passed forth a few steps I rose to disappoint them : I went with their two match locks in my hands to the herdsmen's place, and awaked the lads. The treacherous rafiks returning in the dark could not find their arms : then they came over where I sat now with the herdsmen. — " Ah ! said they, Khalil had of them an unjust suspicion; they did but remove a little to find shelter, for where they lay the wind and rain annoyed them." Their filed tongues prevailed with the poor herding lads, whose careless stars were unused to these nice cases; and heartless in the rain, they consented with the stronger part, — that Khalil had misconstrued the others' simple meaning. "Well, take, they said, your match-locks, and go sleep again, all of you ; and be content Khalil. And do ye give him no more occasion, said these upland judges: — and wellah we have not napped all this long night !" 268 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. I went forward with the Ageylies, when we saw the morning light ; Eyad rode. We had not gone a mile when he threatened to abandon me there in the khala; he now threatened openly to shoot me, and raised his camel-stick to strike me ; but I laid hand on the thelul's bridle, and for such another word, I said, I would give him a fall. Merjan had no part in this violence ; he walked wide of us, for being of various humour, in the last hour he had fallen out with EyM. [In their friendly discoursing, the asseverations of these Bishr clansmen (in every clause) were in such sort; — Merjan: Wellah, yd ibn ammy, of a truth, my cousin ! Eydd: Ullah hadik, the Lord direct thee! — Wa hydt rukbdtak, by the life of thy neck! — Weysh aleyk, do as thou wilt, what hinders.] — "Well, Khalil, let be now, said Eyad, and I swear to thee a menzil of the Aarab is not far off, if the herding lads told us truly." We marched an hour and found a troop of camels. Whilst their herdsmen milked for us, we met that Aly, who had enter tained us before at Gussa ! he was here again abroad to gather- forage. He told us a Avife of his lay sick with fever: "and have you not a remedy, Khalil, for the entha" (female)? Eydd : " Khalil has kanakina, the best of medicines for the fever, I have seen it at Medina, and if a man but drink a little he is well anon: what is the cost, Khalil?" — "Area!" Aly: " I thought you would give it me, what is a little medicine, it costs thee nothing, and I will give thee fourpence ; did I not that day regale you with dates ?" Yet because the young wife was dear to him, Aly said he would go on to the Beduins' menzil, and take up a grown lamb for the payment. We came to a ferij of Shammar about nine in the morning. EyM remembered some of those Aarab, and he was remem bered by them: we heard also that Braitshan's booths were now at half an hour's distance from hence upon our right hand. This Shammar host brought us to breakfast the best dates of the Jebel villages, clear as cornelians, with a bowl of his spring lelban. Leaving there our baggage, without any mistrust (as amongst Aarab), we went over to Braitshan's ferij, — my rafiks hoping there to drink kahwa. A few locusts were flying and alighting in this herbage. Sitting with Braitshan in the afternoon, when EyM had walked to another booth, and Merjan was with the theliil, I spoke to him of my treacherous companions, and to Ferrah, an honest old man whom we had found here before. " What is, I asked, your counsel ? and I have entered to-day under your roof." They ALY AND BRAITSHAN AGAIN. 269 answered each other gravely, " Seeing that Khalil has required of us the protection, we ought to maintain his right." But within a while they repented of their good disposition, lest it should be said, that they had taken part with the Nasrany against a 'Mislim'; and they ended with these words, 'They could not go betwixt khuidn (companions in the journey).' They said to EyM, when he arrived, 'That since he had carried only my light bags, and I was come down from H&yil upon my feet, and he had received five reals to convey me to Kheybar, and that in every place he threatened to aban don me ; let him render three reals, and leave me with the Aarab, and take the other two for his hire, and go his way' EyM answered, " If I am to blame, it is because of the feeble ness of my thelul." — " Then, why, I exclaimed, didst thou take five reals to carry a passenger upon the mangy carrion?" The Beduins laughed; yet some said, I should not use so sharp words with my wayfellow, — "Khalil, the Aarab love the fair speaking." I knew this was true, and that my plain right would seem less in their shallow eyes than the rafiks' smooth words. — Eydd : " Well, be it thus." " Thou hast heard his promise, said they, return with kh4ak, thy way-brother, and all shall be well." — Empty words of Arabs! the sun set; my rafiks departed, and I soon followed them. Our Shammar host had killed the sacrifice of hospitality : his mutton was served in a great trencher, upon temmn boiled in the broth. But the man sat aloof, and took no part in our evening talk ; whether displeased to see a kafir under his tent-cloth, or because he misliked my Annezy rafiks. I told Aly he might have the kanakina, a gift, so he helped me to my right with EyM ; ' He would,' he answered. — I wondered to see him so much at his ease in the booths of the Aarab ! but his parents were Beduw, and Aly left an orphan at Gussa, had been bred up there. He bought of them on credit a good yearling ram to give me : they call it here tully, and the ewe lamb rokhal. Aly brought me his tully on the morrow, when we were ready to depart; and said, "See, 0 Khalil, my present!" — "I looked for the fulfilment of your last night's words ; and, since you make them void, I ought not to help him in a little thing, who recks not though I perish !" The fellow, who weighed not my grief, held himself scorned by the Nasrany: my bags were laid upon the thelul, and he gazed after us and mur mured. The dewless aurora Avas rising from those waste hills, without the voice of any living creature in a weary wilderness ; and I followed forth the riders, EyM and Merjan. 270 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. The gravel stones were sharp ; the soil in the sun soon glowed as an hearth under my bare feet; the naked pistol (hidden under my tunic) hanged heavily upon my panting chest ; the air was breathless, and we had nothing to drink. It was hard for me to follow on foot, notwithstanding the weak pace of their thelul : a little spurn of a rider's heel and she had trotted out of my sight ! Hard is this human patience ! showing myself armed, I might compel them to deliver the dromedary ; but who would not afterward be afraid to become my rafik ? If I provoked them, they (supposing me unarmed), might come upon me with their weapons; and must I then take their poor lives? — but were that just? — in this faintness of body and spirit I could not tell ; I thought that a man should forsake life rather than justice, and pollute his soul with outrage. I went training and bearing on my camel- stick, — a new fatigue — to leave a furrow in the hard gravel soil ; lest if those vile spirited rafiks rode finally out of my sight, I should be lost in the khala. I thought that I might come again, upon this trace, to Braitshan's booths, and the Aarab. I saw the sun mount to high noon; and hoped from every new brow to descry pasturing camels, or some menzil of the Nomads. An hour further I saw camels that Avent up slowly through a hollow ground to the watering. There I came up to my rafiks: they had stayed to speak with the herdsmen, who asked of the desert behind us. The Nomads living in the open wilder ness are greedy of tidings ; and if herdsmen see passengers go by peaceably in the desert they will run and cry after them, 'What news, ho ! — Tell us of the soil, that ye have passed through ? — Which Aarab be there ? — Where lodge they now ? — Of which waters drink they ? — And, the face of them is whitherward ? — Which herbs have ye seen ? and what is the soil betwixt them and us? found ye any bald places (mahal)? — With whom lodged ye last night ? — heard ye there any new thing, or as ye came by the way?" Commonly the desert man delivers himself after this sort with a loud suddenness of tongue, as he is heated with running; and then only (when he is nigher hand) will he say more softly, ' Peace be with thee.' — The passengers are sure to receive him mildly; and they condescend to all his asking, with Wellah Fuldn ! ' Indeed thou Such-an-one.' And at every meeting with herdmen they say over, with a set face, the same things, in the same words, ending with the formal tua ent sdlim, 'and thou being in peace.' — The tribesman hardly bids the strangers farewell, when he has turned the back ; or he stands off, erect and indifferent, and lets pass the tarkieh. COME TO HETEYM. 271 I stayed now my hand upon the thelul ; and from the next high grounds we saw a green plain before us. Our thirst was great, and EyM showed with his finger certain crags which lay beyond ; ' We should find pools in them, he said (after the late showers): but I marked in the ground [better than the inept Beduin rafiks] that no rain had fallen here in these days. We found only red pond-Avater, — so foul that the thirst ing thelul refused to drink. I saw there the forsaken site of a winter encampment : the signs are shallow trenching, and great stones laid about the old steads of their beyts. Now we espied camels, which had been hidden by the hollow soil, and then a worsted village ! My rafiks considered the low build ing of those tents, and said, " They must be of Harb !" As we approached they exclaimed, " But see how their beyts be stretched nigh together ! they are certainly Heteym." We met with an herdsman of theirs driving his camels to water, and hailed him — " Peace ! and ho ! what Aarab be those yonder?" — The man answered with an unwonted frankness, "I (am an) Harby dwelling with this ferij, and they are Heteym." — EyM began to doubt ! for were they of Kasim's Heteym (enemies of the Dowla at Kheybar), he thought he were in danger. Yet now they could not go back; if he turned from them his mangy thelul might be quickly overtaken. The Ageylies rode on therefore with the formal countenance of guests that arrive at a nomad menzil. The loud dogs of the encamp ment leapt out against us with hideous affray ; and as we came marching by the beyts, the men and the hareem who sat within, only moving their eyes, silently regarded us passing strangers. We halted before the greater booth in the row, Avhich was of ten or twelve tents. EyM and Merjan alighted, set down the packs and tied up the knee of the thelul. Then we walked together, with the solemnity of guests, to the open half of the tent, which is the men's apartment ; here at the right hand looking forth : it is not always on the same side among the people of the desert. We entered, and this was the sheykh's beyt. Five or six men were sitting within on the sand, with an earnest de meanour (and that was because some of them knew me) ! They rose to receive us, looking silently upon me, as if they would say, "Art not thou that NasrMy?" The nomad guest — far from his own — enters the strange beyt of hospitality, with demure looks, in which should appear some gentle token of his own manly worth. We sat down in the booth, but these uncivil hosts — Heteymies — kept their uneasy silence. They made it strange with us; and my rafiks beat their 272 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. camel-sticks upon the sand and looked down : the Heteymies gazed side-long and lowering upon us. At length, despising their mumming, and inwardly burning with thirst, I said to the sly fellow who sat beside me, a comely ill-blooded Heteymy and the host's brother, " Eskiny md, give me a little water to drink." He rose unwillingly; and fetched a bowl of foul clay- water. When I only sipped this unwholesome bever: "Rueyht (he said maliciously), hast allayed thy thirst ? " My companions asked for the water, and the bowl was sent round. " Drink ! said the Heteymies, for there is water enough." At length there was set before us a bowl of mereesy shards and a little leban: then first they broke their unlucky silence. "I think we should know thee (quoth he of the puddle water) ; art not thou the Nasrany that came to Kasim's from Ibn Rashid ?" They had alighted yesterday : they call the ground Aul, of those crags with water. The (granitic) landscape is named Ghrdlfa; and Sfd, of a plutonic mountain, which appeared eastward over the plain seven miles distant ; and they must send thither to fetch their water. The altitude was here 4600 feet. The flocks were driven in at the going down of the sun; and bye and bye we saw Maatuk — that was our host's name — struggling to master a young ram. EyM sent Merjan with the words of course, "Go and withhold him." Merjan made as though he would help the ram, saying, with the Arabs' smooth (effeminate) dissimulation, ' It should not be, nay by Ullah we would never suffer it.' " Oho ! young man, let-nite alone, an swered the Heteymy, may I not do as "I please with mine own ? " , and he drew his slaughter-sheep to the woman's side. — Two hours later Maatuk bore in the boiled ram brittled, upon a vast trencher of temmn. He staggered under the load and caught his breath, for the hospitable man was asthmatic. EyM said when we were sitting alone, "Khalil we leave thee here, and el-Kasim lies behind yonder mountains; these are good folk, and they will send thee thither." — " But how may ye, having no water-skin, pass over to the Auajy?" — "Well, we will put in to Thurghrud for a girby." — "Ullah remember your treachery, the Aarab will blame you who abandon your rafik, also the Pasha will punish you ; and as you have robbed me of those few reals he may confiscate some of your arrears." — " Oh say not so, Khalil ! in this do not afflict me ; and at our departure complain not : let not the hosts hear your words, or they will not bring you forward upon your journey." When the rest were sleeping I saw Maatuk go forth; — I PARTING WITH THE FALSE RAFlKS. 273 thought this host must be good, although an Heteymy. I went to him and said I would speak with him. — " Shall we sit down here then, and say on," — for the Arabs think they may the better take counsel in their weak heads when sitting easily upon the beled. I told him hoAV the rafiks had made me journey hitherto on my feet (an hundred miles) from Hayil ; how often they had threatened in the midst of the khala to forsake me, and even to kill me : should I march any longer with them ? — no ! I was to-day a guest in his tent ; I asked hiin to judge between us, and after that to send me safely to el-Kasim. — " All this will I do ; though I cannot myself send thee to el-Kasim, but to some Harb whose tents are not far from us, eastward ; and we may find there someone to carry thee thither. Now, when the morning is light and you see these fellows ready to set forward, then say to me, dakhilak, and we shall be for thee, and if they resist we will detain their thelul." — " Give thy hand, and swear to me." — "Ay, I swear, said he, wullah, wullah ! " but he drew back his hand ; for how should they keep touch with a Nasrany ! — But in the night time whilst I slept my companions also held their council with Maatuk : and that was as between men of the same reli gion, and Maatuk betrayed me for his pipeful of sweet hameydy tobacco. When it was day those rafiks laid my bags upon the thelul, and I saw Eyad give to Maatuk a little golden hameydy, for which the Heteymy thanked him benignly. Then, taking up their mantles and matchlocks, they raised the thelul with a spurn: Merjan having the bridle in his hand led forth, with nesel- lim dleyk. As they made the first steps, I said to Maatuk, "My host detain them, and ana dakhil-ak ! — do justly." — " Ugh ! go with them, answered Maatuk (making it strange), what justice wouldst thou have, Nasrany ? " — " Where be thy last night's promises ? Is there no keeping faith, Heteymy ? listen ! I will not go with them." But I saw that my contention would be vain ; for there was some intelligence between them. When EyM and Merjan were almost out of sight, the men in the tent cried to me, " Hasten after them and your bags, or they will be quite gone." — " I am your dakhil, and you are for sworn ; but I will remain here." — " No ! " — and now they began to thrust me (they were Heteym). Maatuk caught up a tent- stake, and came on against me ; his brother, the sly villain, ran upon me from the backward with a cutlass. " Ha ! exclaimed Maatuk, I shall beat out his brains." — "Kill him — till him!" cried other frenetic voices (they were young men of Harb and Annezy dwelling in this ferij). "Let me alone, cries his brother, and I will chop off the head of a cursed Nasrany." n t tt. 18 274 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. ''I cannot, I said to them, contend with so many, though ye be but dastards; put down your weapons. And pray good woman ! [to Maatuk's wife who looked to me womanly over her curtain, and upbraided their violence] pour me out a little lelian; and let me go from this cursed place." — "Ah ! what wrong, she said to them, ye do to chase away the stranger ! it is harram, and, Maatuk, he is thy dakhil : " she hastened to pour me out to drink. " Drink ! said she, and handed over the bowl, drink ! and. may it do thee good;" and in this she murmured a sweet proverb of their dira, widd el-ghrarib ahlhu, " the desire of the stranger is to his own people ; speed the stranger home." " Up, I said, Maatuk, and come with me to call the Agey lies back, my strength is lost, and alone I cannot overtake them." — " I come, and wellah will do thee right with them." When we had gone hastily a mile, I said: "I can follow no further, and must sit down here ; go and call them if thou will." Great is their natural humanity: this Heteymy, who was himself infirm, bade me rest ; and he limped as fast as he might go and shouted after them, — he beckoned to my late rafiks ! and they tardily returned to us. " Maatuk, I said, this is the end of my journey to-day: EyM shall give me here Aneybar 's schedule of safe conduct, and he shall restore me three reals ; also, none of you chop words with me, for I am a weary man, whom ye have driven to extremities." — Maatuk (to EyM): "What say you to this? it seems your rafik is too weary to go any more, will ye carry him then on the thelul ? " — " We will not carry him ; we can only sometimes ride upon her ourselves ; yet I will carry him — it is but half a day — to Thiirghrud, and leave him there !" This I rejected. Maatuk: " Well, he shall stay with us ; and I will send Khalil forward to the Harb Avith Ibn Ndhal, for his money. Now then I say restore his money, let it be two reals, and the paper from Ibn Rashid, — what, man ! it is his own." — Eydd : '' I am willing to give up the paper to Khalil, so he write me a discharge, which may acquit me before the Pasha ; but I will not restore a real of the silver, I have spent it, — what, man ! wouldst thou have my clothes ? " — Maatuk : " We shall not let thee depart so ! give Khalil one real, and lay down the schedule." — Eydd: "Well, I accept": he took out a crown, and, " This is all I have left, said he ; let Khalil give me fourpence, for this is fourpence more than the mejidie." — "You may think yourselves well escaped for fourpence, which is mine own : take that silver, Maatuk, arrab4n (earnest-money) of the three reals for conveying me as thou said'st to the Harb." He received it, but the distrustful wretch made me give him immediately the other two. I recovered IBN NAlIAL. 275 thus Aneybar 's safe-conduct, and that was much for my safety in the wild country. EyM insisted for his written discharge, and I wrote, " Eyad, the Ageyly, of Bejaida, Bishr, bound for five reals by Abdullah Siruan, lieutenant at Kheybar, to convey me to Hayil, and engaged there by Aneybar, Ibn Rashid's deputy, for which he received other five, to carry me again to Kheybar, here treacherously abandons me at Aul, under Sfa, in the Shammar dira." The Ageylies took the seal from my hand, and set it to themselves twenty times, to make this instru ment more sure: then Maatuk made them turn back to the menzil with my baggage. So Eyad and Merjan departed; yet not without some men's crying out upon them from the tents, for their untruth to the rafik. These Heteymies were heavy-hearted fanatics, without the urbanity of Beduins: and Maatuk had sold me for a little tobacco. For an hour or two he embalmed his brain with the reeking drug ; after that he said, " Khalil, dakhil-ak, hast thou not, I beseech thee, a little dokhan ? ah ! say not that thou hast none ; give me but a little, and I will restore to thee those three reals, and carry thee on my thelul to Ibn Nahal" — "I have no dokhan, though you cut off my head." — "Khalil, yet fill my galliiin once, and I will forgive thee all ! " — Had I bought a little tobacco at Hayil, I had sped well One Annezy and three Harb beyts were in this Heteymy ferij. Some of those strangers asked me in the afternoon, what tribesmen were the rafiks that had forsaken me. I answered, "Auajy and Bejaijy of Bishr." — "Hadst thou said this before to us, they had not parted so ! we had seized their thelul, for they are gSm, and we have not eaten with them." Said one : " Whilst they talked I thought the speech of the younger sounded thus, ay billah it was Bejaijy." — "You might overtake them." — "Which way went they?" — "To Baitha Nethil, and from thence they will cross to the Auajy." Eyad had this charge, from Kheybar to fetch the Siruan's and the Bishy 's theluls. [Although those Beduw were enemies of the Dowla, the Ageyl dromedaries had been privately put out to pasture among them.] In that quarter of the wilderness Avas sprung (this year) a plentiful rabia, after the autumnal rains [Vol. I. p. 562, 575], "so that the camels might lie down with their fills at noonday." — " How now ? (said one to another) wilt thou be my rafik if the 'bil come home this evening ? shall we take our theluls and ride after them : they will journey slowly with their mangy beast ; if the Lord will we may overtake them, and cut their throats." — "Look (I said) I have told you their path, go and 18—2 276 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. take the thelul if you be able, but you shall not do them any hurt." I was in thought of their riding till the nightfall : but the camels came not. Of Ibn Nahal's Aarab they had no late tidings. They spoke much in my hearing of Ibn Nahal ; and said the hareem — that were the best hearted in this encampment, " His tent is large, so large! and he is rich, so rich, — ouf! all is there liberality: and when thou comest to his tent say, 'Send me, O Ibn Nahal, to el-Kasim', and he will send thee." Maatuk and his evil-eyed brother were comely; and their sister — she dwelt in Maatuk's beyt— was one of the goodliest works of nature ; only (such are commonly the Heteyman) not well coloured. She went freshly clad ; and her beauty could not be hid by the lurid face-clout: yet in these her flowering years of womanhood she remained unwedded ! The thin-witted young Annezy man of the North, who sat all day in the sheykh's beyt, fetched a long breath as oft as she appeared — as it were a dream of their religion — in our sight; and plucking my mantle he would say, "Sawest thou the like ere now !" This sheykhess, when she heard their wonted ohs! and ahs! cast upon them her flagrant great eyes, and smiled without any disdain. — She, being in stature as a goddess, yet would there no Beduwy match with her (an Heteymia) in the way of honourable marriage ! But dissolute Beduins will mingle their blood out of wedlock with the beautiful Heteymias ; and I have heard the comely ribald Eyad mock on thus, making his voice small like a woman's, — "Then will she come and say humbly to the man, 'Marry me, for I am with child, and shield me from the blame.'" There was an Heteymy in this menzil who returned after an absence: I enquired, 'Where had he been in the mean while ? ' — " Wellah, at el-Hayat ; it is but one long day upon the thelul, and I have wedded there a (black) wife." — "Wherefore thus?" — "Wellah I wished for her." — "And what was the bride money?" — "I have spent nothing." — "Or gave she thee anything ? " — " Ay billah ! some palms." — " She has paid for thee!" "Well, why not?"— "Will not thy children be black like slaves, abid 1 " — " She is blackish-red, her children will be reddish." — "And what hast thou to do with village wives?" — "Eigh! I shall visit her now and then; and when I come there go home to mine own house:" — and cries the half-Avitted nomad, "Read, Khalil, if this thing which I have done be lawful or unlawful?" [The negro village el-Hayat is in the S.-E. borders of the (Kheybar) Harra; and a journey from thence toward Medina is the palm hamlet Howeyat. The (Annezy) Beduin landlords in both settlements (v. p. 28) were "SPEED THE STRANGER HOME." 277 finally expulsed by Abeyd ibn Rashid ; because not conforming themselves to the will of the Emir, they had received their Ateyba neighbours — who Avere his enemies — as their dakhils, and would have protected them against him.] The camels were azab, Maatuk's thelul was with them ; and till their coming home we could not set out for Ibn Nahal. Some Solubba rode-in one morrow on their asses; and our people gave them pots and kettles (which are always of brass), to carry away, for tinning. I found two young Solubbies gelding an ass behind the tents! — (the Aarab have only entire horses). The gipsies said laughing, 'This beast was an ass overmuch, and they had made him chaste!' I found an old Solubby sitting in Maatuk's tent, a sturdy greybeard; his grim little eyes were fastened upon me. I said to him, "What wouldst thou?" — "I was thinking, that if I met with thee alone in the khala, I would kill thee." — "Wherefore, old tinker?" — "For thy clothing and for any small things that might be with thee, Nasrany; — if the wolf found thee in the wilderness, wert thou not afraid ? " — The Solubba offend no man, and none do them hurt [v. Vol. I. p. 281]. I enquired of these : " Is it true that ye eat the sheep or camel which is dead of itself?" • — "We eat it, and how else might we that have no cattle eat meat in the menzils of the Aarab ! Wellah, Khalil, is this halal or harram?" A day or two after Maatuk was for no more going to Ibn Nahal ; he said, " Shall I carry thee to el-Hayat ? or else I might leave thee at Semira or at Seleyma." But I answered, "To Ibn Nahal;" and his good wife Noweyr, poor woman, looking over her tent cloth, spoke for me every day; "Oh! said she, ye are not good, and Maatuk, Maatuk ! why hinder Khalil ? perform thy promise, and widd el-ghrarib beledhu aan el-djnaby (it is a refrain of the Nomad maidens 'speed the stranger on his way to his own people ' ; or be it, 'the heart of the stranger is in his own country, and not in a strange land'.") The good hareem her neighbours answered with that pious word of fanati cal Arabia, ' We have a religion, and they have a religion ; every man is justified in his own religion.' Noweyr was one of those good women that bring the blessing to an household. Sometimes I saw her clay-pale face in their tent, without the veil : though not in prosperous health she was daily absent in the khala, from the forenoon till the mid-afternoon ; and when I asked her wherefore she wearied herself thus ? she said, and sighed, " I must fetch water from the Sfa to-day, and to-morrow visit the camels ; and else Maatuk beats me." Maatuk's hospi tality was more than any Beduwy had showed me : NoAveyr gave 278 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. me to drink of her leban ; and he bade me reach up my hand when I was hungry to take of her new mereesy shards, which were spread to dry in the sun upon their worsted roof. If the camels came home he milked a great bowlful for the stranger, saying, it was his sadaka, or meritorious human kind ness, for God's sake. In these evenings I have seen the sport ing goats skip and stand, often two and three together, upon the camels' steep chines : and the great beasts, that lay chaw ing the cud in the open moonlight, took no more heed of them than cattle in our fields, when crows or starlings light upon them. Maatuk was afraid to further me, because of Ibn Rashid : and they told me a strange tale. A year or two ago these Heteym carried on their camels some strangers, whom they called "Nasara" ! — I know not whither. The Emir hearing of it, could hardly be entreated not to punish them cruelly, and take their cattle.— "Ay, this is true, 0 Khalil!" added Noweyr.— "But what Nasranies! and from whence?" — "Wellah, they could not tell, the strangers were Nasara, as they heard." The Arabs are barren-minded in the emptiness of the desert life, and retchless of all that pertains not to their living. "Nasara," might signify in their mouths no more than " aliens not of the orthodox belief." Maatuk : " Ibn Rashid is not thy friend, and the country is dangerous ; abide with me, Khalil, till the Haj come and return again, next spring." — "How might I live those many months? is there food in the khala?" — "You may keep my camels." — "But how under the flaming sun, in the long summer season ?" — "When it is hot thou canst sit in my booth, and drink leban ; and I will give thee a wife." — Hearing his words, I rejoiced, that the Aarab no longer looked upon me as some rich stranger amongst them ! When he pro- nouced ' wife,' the worthy man caught his breath ! — could he offer a bint of Heteym to so white a man ? so he said further, "I will give thee an Harbia." " Years ago, quoth Maatuk,- there came into our parts a Moghreby [like Khalil], — wellah we told little by him ; but the man bought and sold, and within a while we saw him thriving. He lived with Harb, and took a wife of their daughters ; and the Moor had flocks and camels, all gotten at the first and increased of his traffic in samn and clothing. Now he is dead, his sons dwell with Harb, and they are well-faring." We sat in the tent, and they questioned me, 'Where is thy nation?' I shewed them the setting sun, and said we might sail thither in our shipping, sefn. — " Shipping (they said one to another) is zy'mat; but 0 Khalil, it is there, in the West, we have heard to be SET OUT TO FIND IBN NAHAL. 279 the Kafir Nation ! and that from thence the great danger shall come upon el-Islam: beyond how many floods dwell ye, we heard seven ; and hoAV many thelul journeys be ye behind the Sooltan ?" — Coffee-drinking, though the Heteyman be wel- faring more than the neighbour Beduins, is hardly seen, even in sheykhs' tents, amongst them : there was none in Maatuk's ferij. Aarab of Ibn Rashid, their only enemies are the Ateyba ; and pointing to the eastward, "All the peril, said Maatuk, is from thence !" — These Heteym (unlike their kindred inhabiting nearer Medina) are never cheesemakers. He is a free man that may carry all his worldly possession upon one of his shoulders : now I secretly cast away the super fluous weight of my books, ere a final effort to pass out of Arabia, and (saving Die alte Geographie Arabiens, and Zehme's Arabien seit hundert Jahren) gave them honourable burial in a thdb's hole ; heaped in sand, and laid thereon a great stone. — In this or another generation, some wallowing camel or the streaming winter rain may discover to them that dark work of the Nasrany. Six days the Nomad tents were standing at Aul, to-morrow they would dislodge; and Maatuk now con sented to carry the stranger to Ibn Nahal : for Noweyr, lifting her pale face above the woman's curtain, many times daily ex horted him, saying, " Eigh, Maatuk ! detain not Khalil against his liking ; speed the stranger home." Their camels were come ; and when the morning broke, 'Art thou ready, quoth Maatuk, and I will bring the thelul : but in faith I know not where Ibn Nahal may be found." Noweyr put a small skin of samn in her husband's wallet; to be, she said, for the stranger. We mounted, Maatuk's sly brother brought us on our journey; and hissed his last counsels in my rafik's ear, which were not certainly to the advantage of the Nasrany: — "Aye! aye!" quoth Maatuk. We rode on a hurr, or dromedary male (little used in these countries), and which is somewhat rougher riding. By this the sun was an hour high ; and we held over the desert toward the Sfa mountain. After two hours we saw another menzil of Heteym, sheykh Ibn Damm4k, and their camels pasturing in the plain. Maatuk called the herdsman to us to tell and take the news ; but they had heard nothing lately of Ibn Nahal The waste beyond was nearly mahal: we rode by some granite blocks, disposed baywise, and the head laid south-east ward, as it were towards Mecca: it might be taken in these days for a praying place. But Maatuk answered, "Such works are of the ancients in these diras, — the B. Taamir." We saw a very 280 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. great thob's burrow, and my rafik alighted to know 'if the edible monster were at home :' and in that, singing cheerfully, he startled a troop of gazelles. Maatuk shrilled through his teeth and the beautiful deer bounded easily before us ; then he yelled like a wild man, and they bent themselves to their utmost flight. The scudding gazelles stood still anon, in the hard desert plain of gravel, and gazed back like timid damsels, to know what had made them afraid. — In Syria, I have seen mares " that had outstripped gazelles " ; but whether this were spoken in the ordinary figure of their Oriental speech, which we call a falsehood, I have not ascertained. The no mads take the fawns with their greyhounds, which are so swift, that I have seen them overrun the small desert hare almost in a moment. I asked Maatuk, Where was his matchlock ? — He lost it, he answered, to a ghrazzu of Ateyba — that was a year ' ago; and now he rode but Avith that short cutlass, wherewith his brother had once threatened the Nasrany. He sang in their braying-wise [which one of their ancient poets, Antara, compared to the hum of flies !] as we passed over the desert at a trot, and quavering his voice (i-i-i-i) to the wooden jolting of the thelul saddle. Maatuk told me (Avith a sheykh's pride), that those Beduin households in his ferij had been with him several years. In the midsummer time all the ferjan of the Ibn Barrak Heteym (under the sheykh Kasim) assemble and pitch to gether near the Wady er-Rummah, " where, said he, one may find water, under the sand, at the depth of this camel stick." — Wide we have seen to be the dispersion of the Heteym : there are some of the B. Rashid far in the North, near Kuweyt ! Now before us appeared a steep granite mountain, Genna; and far upon our left hand lay the watering Bendna, between - mountains. We came after mid-day to a great troop of He teym camels : but here Avas the worst grazing ground (saving the Sinai country) that I ever beheld in the wilderness; for there was nothing sprung besides a little wormwood. The herd boys milked their nagas for us; but that milk with the froth was like wormwood for bitterness [and such is the goats' milk in this pasture]. The weleds enquired in their headlong manner, "El-khdbar? weysh el-ell4m1 What tidings from your parts, what news is there?" — "Well, it may please Ullah." — "And such and such Aarab, beyond and beside you, where be they now? where is such a sheykh encamped, and of Avhat waters drink they ? is there word of any ghrazzus ? And the country which you have passed through ? — say is it bare and empty, or such that it may satisfy the cattle ? Which herbs, saw ye in it, 0 Maatuk ? What is heard of the Emir ? and where left MEET WITH THE HARB, NEAR SELEYMY. 281 ye your households ? — auh ! and the ferjan and Aarab thou hast mentioned, what is reported of their pasture ?" — Maatuk: "And what tidings have ye for us, which Aarab are behind you ? what is heard of any ghrazzus ? Where is Ibn Nahal ? where be your booths ?" An hour or two later we found another herd of Heteym camels : and only two children kept them ! Maatuk made a gesture, stroking down his beard, when we rode from them; and said, " Thus we might have taken wellah every head of them, had they been our enemies' cattle !" Yet all this country lies very open to the inroads of Ateyba, who are beyond the W. er-Rummah. Not much later we came to a menzil of Heteym, and alighted for that day. — These tent-dAvellers knew me, and said to Maatuk, 'I had journeyed with a tribesman of theirs, Ghroceyb, my name was Khalil ; and Kasim's Aarab purchased medicines of me, which they found to be such as I had fore told them ; I Avas one that deceived not the Aarab.' As for Ibn Nahal, they heard he was gone over " The Wady," into the Ateyba border, (forsaken by them of late years for dread of Ibn Rashid). The land-height was here 4200 feet, shelving to the W. er-Rummah. At daybreak we mounted, and came after an hour's riding to other Heteym tents. All the wilderness was barren, almost mahal, and yet, full of the nomads' worsted hamlets at this season. Maatuk found a half-brother in this menzil, with their old mother; and we alighted to sit awhile with them. The man brought fresh goat milk and bade me drink, — making much of it, because his hospitality was whole milk ; ' The samn, he said, had not been taken.' Butter is the poor nomads' money, wherewith they may buy themselves clothing and town wares ; therefore they use to pour out only buttermilk to the guest. — We rode further ; the (granite) desert was now sand soil, in which after winter rain there springs the best wild pasture, and we began to find good herbage. We espied a camel troop feeding under the mountain Genna, and crossed to them to enquire the herdsmen's tidings ; but Maatuk, who was timid, presently drew bridle, not certainly knowing what they were. "Yonder I said, be only black camels, they are Harb;" [the great cattle of the south and middle tribes, Harb, Meteyr, Ateyban, are commonly swarthy or black, and none of them dun-coloured]. Maatuk ansAvered, it was God's tmth, and wondered from whence had I this lore of the desert. We rode thither and found them to be Harb indeed. The young men told us that Ibn Nahal had alighted by Seleymy to-day ; and they milked for us. We rode from them, and saw the heMs of 282 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. the palms of the desert village, and passed by a trap mountain, Chebdd. Before us, over a sandy descending plain, appeared a flat mountain Debby; and far off behind Debby I saw the blue coast of some wide mountain, el-Alem. "Thereby, said Maatuk, lies the way to Medina, — four days' thelul riding." We went on in the hot noon ; and saw another camel troop go feeding under the jebel ; we rode to them and alighted to drink more milk and enquire the herdsmen's tidings. They were Harb also, and shewed us a rocky passage in the mountain to go over to Ibn Nahal But I heard of them an adverse tiding : ' The B. Aly (that is all the Harb N. and E. from hence) were drawing southwards, and the country was left empty, before a ghrazzu of Ibn Saud and the Ateyba ! ' — How now might I pass forward to el-Kasim ? We saw a multitude of black booths pitched under Debby ; ' They were A4f, answered the herds men, — come up hither from the perpetual desolation of their Hejaz marches, between the Harameyn; for they heard that the rabia was in these parts. — El-A4f! that is, we have seen, a name abhorred even among their brethren ; for of Auf are the purse-cutters and pillers of the poor pilgrims. And here, then, according to a distich of the western tribes, I was come to the ends of the (known) world ! for says one of their thousand rhymed saws, 'El-A4f warrahum ma fi sh4f, nothing is seen beyond Auf I beheld indeed a desert world of new and dreadful aspect ! black camels, and uncouth hostile mountains ; and a vast sand wilderness shelving towards the dire imposter's city ! Genna is a landmark of the Beduin herdsmen ; in the head are pools of rain-water. Descending in the steep passage we encountered a gaunt desert man riding upward on a tall thelul and leading a mare : he bore upon his shoulder the wavering horseman's shelfa. Maatuk shrank timidly in the saddle ; that witch-like armed man was a startling figure, and might be an Aiify. Roughly he challenged us, and the rocks resounded the magnanimous utterance of his leathern gullet: he seemed a manly soul who had fasted out his life in that place of torment Avhich is the Hejaz between the Harameyn, so that nothing re mained of him but the terrific voice! — wonderfully stern and beetle-browed was his dark visage. He espied a booty in my bags ; and he beheld a stranger. " Tell me, he cries, what men ye be ? " — Maatuk made answer meekly, " Heteymy I, and thou ? " — '' I Harby, and ugh ! cries the perilous anatomy, who he with thee ?" — "A Shamy trading among the Aarab." — "Aye well, and I see him to be a Shamy, by the guise of his clothing." HARB WOMEN. 283 He drew his mare to him, and in that I laid hand to the pistol in my bosom, lest this Death-on-a-horse should have lifted his long spear against us. Maatuk reined aside; but the Harby struck his dromedary, and passed forth. We looked down from the mountain over a valley-like plain, and saw booths of the Aarab. " Khalil, quoth Maatuk, the people is ignorant, I shall not say to any of them, ' He is a Nasrany' ; and say it not thyself. Wellah I may not go with thee to Ibn Nahal's beyt, but will bring thee to Aarab that are pitched by him." — "You shall carry me to Ibn Nahal himself. Are not these tribesmen very strait in religion ? I would not light at another tent; and thou wilt not abandon thy rafik." — "But Khalil there is an old controversy betwixt us for camels ; and if I went thither he might seize this thelul." — "I know well thou speakest falsely." — "Nay, by Him who created this camel stick!" — But the nomad was forsworn ! The Nejumies had said to me at Kheybar, "It is well that Khalil never met Avith Harb; they would certainly have cut his throat :" — they spoke of Harb tribesmen between the sacred cities, wretches black as slaves, that have no better trade than to run behind the caravans clamouring, bakshish ! Here I came to upland Harb, and they are tributaries of Ibn Rashid; but such distinctions cannot be enquired out in a day from the ignorant. In the Nejd Harb I have found the ancient Arabian mind, more than in Annezy tribesmen. The best of the Ageyl at Kheybar was a young Harby, gentle and magnanimous, of an ascetical humour ; he was seldom seen at Abdullah's coffee drinkings, and yet he came in sometimes to Amm Mohammed, who was his half-tribesman, though in another kindred. One day he said boasting, "We the B. Salem are better than ye; for we have nothing Frenjy [of outlandish usage, or wares fetched in by Turks and foreign pilgrims to the Holy Places], saving this tobacco." — Now Maatuk held over to three or four booths, which stood apart in the valley-plain ; he alighted before them, and said he would leave me there. An elder woman came out to us, where we sat on the sand beside the yet unloaded theliil ; and then a young wife from the beyt next us. Very cleanly-gay she seemed, amongst Aarab, in her new calico kirtle of blue broidered with red worsted. — Was not this the bride, in her marriage garment, of some Beduin's for tunate youth? She approached with the grace of the desert and, which is seldom seen, with some dewy freshness in her cheeks, — it might be of an amiable modesty; and she was a lovely human flower in that inhuman desolation. She asked, with a young woman's diffidence, 'What would we?' Maatuk re- 284 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. sponded to the daughter of Harb, " Salaam, and if ye have here any sick persons, this is an hakim from es-Sham; one who travels about with his medicines among the Aarab, and is very well skilled: now he seeks who will convey him to el-Kasim. I leave this Shamy at your beyt, for I cannot myself carry him further; and ye will send him forward." She called the elder woman to counsel ; and they ansAvered, ' Look you ! the men are in the khala, and we are women alone. It were better that ye went over to Ibn Nahal ! — -and see his great booth standing yonder!' — Maatuk: "I will leave him here; and when they come home (at evening) your men can see to it." But I made him mount with me to ride to Ibn Nahal. We alighted at Ibn Nahal's great beyt : and entered with the solemnity and greeting of strangers. Ibn Nahal's son and a few young men were sitting on the sand in this wide hanging- room of worsted. We sat down and they whispered among them, that 'I was some runaway soldier, of the Dowla' [from the Holy Cities or el-Ydmen] : then I heard them whisper, 'Nay, I was that Nasrany !' — They would not question with us till we had drunk kahwa. A nomad woman of a grim stature stood upbraiding without Ibn Nahal's great booth ! she prophesied bitter words in the air, and no man regarded. Her burden was of the decay of hospitality now-a-days ! and Ibn Nahal [a lean soul, under a sleek skin], was gone over to another tent to be out of ear shot of the wife-man's brawling. The Beduw commonly bear patiently the human anger, zaal, as it were trouble sent by the will of God upon them : the Aarab are light even in their ire, and there is little weight in their vehement words. If any Nomad tribesman revile his sheykh, he as a nobleman will but shrink the shoulders and go further off, or abide till others cry down the injurious mouth. But evil tongues, where the Arabs dwell in towns, cannot so walk at their large : the common railer against the sheukh in Hayil, or in Boreyda, would be beaten by the sergeants of the Emir. The coffee mortar rang out merrily for the guests in Ibn Nahal's booth : and now I saw the great man and his coffee com panions approaching with that (half feminine) wavering gait which is of their long clothing and unmuscular bodies. They were coffee lords, men of an elegant leisure in the desert life ; also the Harb go gallantly clad amongst Beduins. Khalaf ibn Nahal greeted us strangers with his easy smile, and the wary franchise of these mejlis politicians, and that ringing hollow throat of the dry desert ; he proffered a distant hand : we all sat down to drink his kahwa, — and that was not very good. Khalaf KHALAF IBN NAHAL. 285 whispered to his son, " What is he, a soldier ?" The young man smiling awaited that some other should speak: so one of the young companions said, " We think we should know thee." The son: "Art not thou the Nasrany that came last year to Hayil?" — "I am he." — "I was at Hayil shortly after, and heard of thee there ; and when you entered, by the tokens, I knew thee." Khalaf answered among them, unmoved, "He had visited the Nasara, that time he traded with camels to Egypt ; and they were men of a singular probity. Wellah, in his reckoning with one of them, the Christian having received too much by five-pence, rode half a day after him to make restitution !" He added, " Khalil travels among the Aarab ! — well, I say, why not ? he carries about these medicines, and they (the Nasara) have good remedies. Abu Faris before him, visited the Aarab ; and wellah the princes at Hayil favoured this Khalil ? Only a thing mis- likes me, which I saw in the manners of the Nasara, — Khalil, it is not honest ! Why do the men and hareem sit so nigh, as it were in the knees of each other ?" Now there came in two young spokesmen of the Seleymy villagers, — although they seemed Beduw. They complained of the injury which Khalaf had done them to-day, sending his camels to graze in their reserve of pasture ; and threatened ' that they would mount and ride to Hayil, to accuse him before the Emir!' Khalaf's son called them out presently to eat in the inner apartment, made (such I had not seen before) in the midst of this very long and great Beduin tent : — that hidden dish is not rightly of the Nejd Aarab, but saA-ours of the town life and Medina. The young men answered in their dis pleasure, they were not hungry, they came not hither to eat, and that they were here at home. Khdlaf: "But go in and eat, and afterward we will speak together?" They went unwillingly, and returned anon: and when he saw them again, Khalaf, because he did them wrong, began to scold : — " Do not they of Seleymy receive many benefits from us ? buy we not dates of you and corn also ? why are ye then ungrateful ? — Ullah, curse the fathers of them, fathers of settatdsher kelb (sixteen dogs)." Another said: "Ullah, curse them, fathers of ethnasher kelb (twelve dogs);" forms more liberal perhaps than the "sixty dogs" of the vulgar malice. These were gallants of Harb, bearing about in their Beduin garments the savour of Medina. Khalaf said, with only a little remaining bitterness, that to satisfy them, he would remove on the morrow. Seleymy (Soleyma) is a small Shammar settlement of tAvelve households, their wells are very deep. . . . When the young men were gone, Khalaf, taking again his 286 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. elated countenance gave an ear to our business. He led out Maatuk and, threatening the timid Heteymy with the dis pleasure of Ibn Rashid, enquired of him of my passing in the country, and of my coming to his menzil. I went to Khalaf, and said to them, "Thou canst send me, as all the people say, to el-Kasim : I alighted at your beyt, and have tasted of your hospitality, and would repose this day and to-morrow ; and then let some man of your trust accompany me, for his wages, to el- Kasim." His voice was smooth, but Khalaf's dry heart was full of a politic dissimulation : "Md 4kdar, I am not able ; and how, he answered, might we send thee to el-Kasim ? — who would ad venture thither; the people of Aneyza are our enemies." — "Khalaf, no put-offs, you can help me if you will." — -"Well, hearken ! become a Moslem, and I will send thee whithersoever thou would'st ; say, ' There is no God, beside Ullah,' and I will send thee to el-Kasim freely." — "You promise this, before witnesses?" — " Am I a man to belie my Avords." — " Hear then all of you ; There is none God but Ullah ! — let the thelul be brought round." — "Ay ! say also Mohammed is the messenger of Ullah!" — " That was not in our covenant ; the thelul Khalaf ! and let me be going." — " I knew not that the Nasranies could say so ; all my meaning was that you should become a Moslem. Khalil, you may find some of the jemmamil (camaleers, sing. jemmdl) of el-Kasim, that come about, at this season, to sell clothing among the Aarab. Yesterday I heard of one of them in these parts [it was false] ; a jemmal would carry thee back with him for two reals. When you have supped and drunk the even ing camel milk, mount again with this Heteymy ! and he will ¦ convey thee to him " ; — but I read in his looks, that it was a fable. He went aside with Maatuk again, — was long talking with him ; and required him, with words like threatenings, to carry me from him. When we had supped, Maatuk called me to mount. I said to Ibn Nahal, "If I am forsaken in this wilderness, or there should no man receive me, and I return to thee, wilt thou then receive me?"- — Khalaf answered, 'he would receive me.' In the first darkness of the night we rode from him ; seek ing a ferij which Maatuk had espied as we came down from Genna. After an hour, Maatuk said, "Here is sand, shall we alight and sleep ?" — for yet we saw not their watchfires — "Let us ride on : and if all fail tell me what shall become of me, my rafik ? " — " Khalil, I have said it already, that I will carry thee again to live with me in my ferij." Then a hound barked from the dark valley side : we turned up thither, and came before three tents ; where a camel troop lay chawing the cud in ANOTHER FERIJ. 287 the night's peace: their fires were out, and the Aarab were already sleeping. We alighted and set down our bags, and kneebound the thelul. I would now have advanced to the booths, but Maatuk withheld me, — "It were not well, he whispered ; but abide we here, and give them time, and see if there come not some to call us." Bye and bye a man approached, and " Ugh ! said he, as he heard our salaam, why come ye not into the beyt ?" This worthy bore in his hand a spear, and a huge scimitar in the other. We found the host within, who sat up blowing the embers in the hearth; and laid on fuel to give us light. He roused the housewife ; and she reached us over the curtain a bowl of old rotten leban, of which they make sour mereesy. We sipped their sorry night bever, and all should now be peace and confidence ; yet he of the spear and scimitar sat on, holding his weapons in his two hands, and lowered upon us. "How now, friend ! I said at last, is this that thou takest us for robbers, I and my rafik ? " — " Ugh ! a man cannot stand too much upon his guard, there is ever peril." Maatuk said merrily, " He has a sword and we have another!" The host answered smiling, "He never quits that huge sword of his and the spear, waking or sleeping !" So we perceived that the poor fellow was a knight of the moonshine. I said to our host, "I am a hakim from Damascus, and I go to el-Kasita : my rafik leaves me here, and will you send me thither for my money, four reals ? " He answered gently, " We will see to-morrow, and I think we may agree together, whether I myself shall convey thee, or I find another; in the meantime, stay with us a day or two." When we would rest, the housemother, she of the rotten leban, said a thing to one of us, which made me think we were not well arrived: she was a forsaken wife of our host's brother. I asked Maatuk, "If such were the Harb manners!" — He whis pered again, " As thou seest ; and say, Khalil, shall I leave thee here, or wilt thou return with me ?" — When the day broke, Maatuk said to them, "I leave him with you, take care of him:" so he mounted and rode from us. Motlog (that was our host's name) : "Let us walk down to Ibn Nahal, and take counsel how we may send thee to el-Kasim, but I have a chapped heel and may hardly go." I dressed the wound with ointment and gave him a sock; and the Beduwy drew on a pair of old boots that he had bought in Medina. We had gone half a mile, when I saw a horseman, with his long lance, riding against us : a fierce-looking fanatical fellow. — It was he who alone, of all who sat at Khalaf's, had 288 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. contraried me yesterday. This horseman was Tollog, my host's elder brother ! and it was his booth wherein we had passed the night ! his was also that honest forsaken housewife ! It were a jest worthy of the Arabs and their religion, to tell why the new wedded man chose to lie abroad at Ibn Nahal's. " How now ! " cries our horseman staring upon me like a man aghast. His brother responded simply of the Shamy hakim and the Heteymy. — "Akhs! which way went that Heteymy?" (and balancing his long lance, he sat up) I will gallop after him and bring 'him again, — -Ullah curse his father! and knowest thou that this is a Nasrany?" Motlog stood a moment as tonished ! then the poor man said nobly, " Wa low, and though it be so...? he is our guest and a stranger; and that Heteymy is now too far gone to be overtaken." — Tollog rode further ; he was a shrew at home and ungracious, but Motlog was a mild man. We passed by some spring pasture, and Motlog cried to a child, who was keeping their sheep not far off, to run home and tell them to remove hither. When the boy was gone a furlong he waved him back and shouted ' No ! ' for he had changed his mind : he was a little broken headed, — and so is every third man in the desert life. I saw, where we passed under a granite headland, some ground courses of a dry-built round chamber, such as those which, in the western diras, I have supposed to be sepulchres. Khalaf had removed since yesterday : we found him in his tent stretched upon the sand to slumber — it was noon. The rest made it strange to see me again, but Motlog my host worthily defended me in all. Khalaf turning himself after a while and rising, for the fox was awake, said with easy looks, " Aha ! this is Khalil back again ; and how Khalil, that cursed Heteymy forsook thee ? " When he heard that Maatuk had taken wages of me he added: "Had I known this, I Avould have cut off his head, and seized his thelul ; — ho ! there, prepare the midday kahwa." His son answered, "We have made it already and drunk round."- — "Then make it again, and spare not for kahwa." Khalaf twenty days before had espoused a daughter of the village, and paid the bride money ; and the Beduins whis pered in mirth, that she was yet a maid. For this his heart Avas in bale : and the son, taking occasion to mock the Heteymy, sought in covert words his father's relief, from one called an hakim. Ibn Nahal said at last kindly, "Since Khalil has been left at your beyt, send him Motlog whither he desires of thee." Ibn Nahal, rightly named Son-of-the-Bee, was a merchant Beduwy, he gathered sweetness and substance of all in the khala. Though not born of a sheykhly family, he had grown, IBN NAHAL'S VENTURES. 289 by his dealing in camels, to be one of the Avealthiest among the southern Aarab ; and he had clients who trafficked for him, selling coffee and clothing among the Aarab. His great cattle were increased to so many that they must be herded in two droves ; and yet Ibn Nahal as an iniquitous Arab found ever some sleight to keep back part of his herdsmen's slender wages. He was not a sheep master, though the small cattle (yielding butter) be more profitable to poor nomad families; but he took up store of samn, in payment for his small merchandise. He had besides that which appeared to the Aarab a great (dead) treasure of silver, laid up in his coffer. Ibn Nahal had made his first considerable venture, years before, with a camel- drove to Egypt. The adventurous Harby passed those hundreds of desert miles, taking rafiks by the way: his tribesmen, having their eyes naturally turned towards Medina and Mecca, are unused to journey to that part. He arrived safely and his gain was seventy in the hundred. Some years later (deceived by a rumour), he made a second venture thither ; but then he found that camels were cheap ; and his loss was thirty in the hundred. Khalaf was without letters, — he needed them not ; and when I put Aneybar's paper in his hand, he said with a grace, "We are the Beduw ! we know not reading." Khalaf's life, little given to bounty, in which many might have rejoiced with him, had not much consolation of all this gathered good. The Nejd Arabians call such spirits tdjirs, 'tradesmen.' To day he was outwardly a sheykh of Aarab, yet being none, since the Beduw look only upon the blood ; for many were the house holds that removed and alighted with Ibn Nahal They were his jummaa or ferij ; he was besides Ibn Rashid's man. Samn was cheap this foreyear, a sah for a real in Hayil ; but Khalaf had tidings that the same was now worth two reals at Jidda. As we sat at the hearth I wondered to hear these Aarab enquire of each other, "How far is Jidda ? " and some among them, blaming themselves that they Avere never at Mecca (on pilgrimage), even asked, "Where lies Jidda!" — Jidda, more than 400 miles from hence, were for Khalaf and his Beduin carriers no more than twelve swift camel journeys. He would go dowrn thither in these days with many loads of clarified butter, and win silver. In all the Aarab is the spirit of barter ; but in very few is a provident wit and the hardy execution of Khalaf, and civil painmlness to put their hands to a lawful enter prise. I mused, should I ride with him and see much unknown country? — but nay, I had rather visit el-Kasim, that middle NefM land of industrious Nejd citizens. All Khalaf's sub stance, his 300 camels, his silver and the household gear, might D. T. 11. 19 290 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. be valued at nearly £2000 sterling; and that is great wealth in the poor nomad life upon the desert sand ! A Beduwy, Khalaf rode in the ghrazzus.; and he and his friends would mount to foray upon Ateyba, in one of the next days. Such Beduins will ride at least once every year of their indolent lives, to steal camels; and that is especially when the blood is renewed in their veins in the milk season, or first eagers in the returning summer drought. If a shot attained Ibn Nahal, Avhere, I asked them, were his thrift, and his selling of samn? I told this tale afterward to a friend at Aneyza ; who an swered me with another. — "Also there was a very wealthy sheykh of Ateyba, one well known to us all ; his camels were five hundred, and his small cattle without number. He was now at the first grey hairs, yet could not dAvell quietly at home, and leave riding in the ghrazzus, upon their Shammar foemen. In a last foray they were far entered in the enemies' country ; and having taken some inconsiderable booty, the companions turned to go homeward. But the Shammar horsemen outrode them., who were mounted on theluls, and {ghrdru aley) set upon and surrounded the raiders ; and, being enemies to the death, they left not one alive -of them"! — Among these Harb I saw many horsemen. Tollog and Motlog, though miserable householders, had a horse and a mare between them. I saw their mare's fore-hoofs all outgrown in this sand soil: Tollog said, 'Here is no farrier, but Avhen some Solubby comes by, he shall pare them.' — Their Harb talk sounded, in my ears, broken-like, such as the Arabic city speech, or that spoken by the Nejiimy at Kheybar. These are Aarab of Medina. Though the rumour of Ibn SaM's riding with Ateyba was in every man's mouth, the alarm was false ! I have not found that news is carried swiftly in Arabia, saving on the caravan roads ; yet in the season when none are passing, you may wait for long months, and hear no tidings. This alarm delayed my journey: "Have patience, said Motlog, till we hear further; and then I will ride with thee myself, not to Aneyza — they are ene mies, nor to Boreyda, but to S'beyieh near Nebhanieh [under the Abandt mountains] ; those villagers are good folk, and will send thee forward by some cameleers." But the brethren were confused, when I convinced them of their fabling to me of distances. ' How should the stranger know their country ! — what then does he here ? ' In Arabia I entered unwillingly into villages, but it were in the fellowship of the Beduw: I heard that some of Seleyma had said, 'they Avould cut the MISERABLE HOSPITALITY. 291 Nasrany in pieces if he ventured himself amongst them'; and yet between their Avords and deeds is commonly many leagues' distance. There was here but the deadly semblance of hospitality; naught but buttermilk, and not so much as the quantity of a cup was set before me in the long day. Happy was I when each other evening their camels came home, and a short draught was brought me of the warm le"ban, Tollog, the gay horseman, was a glozing fanatical fellow; in Motlog was some drivelling nobility of mind: the guest's mortal torment was here the miserable hand of Tollog's cast wife. Little of God's peace or blessing was in this wandering hamlet of three brethren ; the jarring con tention of their voices lasted from the day rising, till the stars shone above us. Though now their milk-skins overflowed Avith the spring milk, they were in the hands of the hareem, who boiled all to mereesy, to sell it later at Medina. The Beduw of high Nejd would contemn this ignoble traffic, and the decay of hospitality. Being without nourishment I fell into a day-long languishing trance. One morrow I saw a ferij newly pitched upon the valley side, in face of us : when none observed me, I went thither under colour of selling medicines. Few men sat at home, and they questioned with me for my name of Nasrany ; the woman clamoured to know the kinds of my simples, but none poured me out a little leban. I left them and thought I saw other tents pitched beyond: when I had gone a mile, they were but a toav of bushes. Though out of sight of friends and unarmed, I went on, hoping to espy some booths of the Aarab. I descried a black spot moving far off on the rising plain, and thought it might be an herd of goats: I would go to them and drink milk. I crossed to the thin shadow of an acacia tree ; for the sunbeaten soil burned my bare soles ; and turning I saw a tall Beduwy issue from a broken ground and go by, upon his stalking dromedary; he had not perceived the stranger: then I made forward a mile or tAvo, to come to the goats. I found but a young Avoman Avith a child herding them: — 'Salaam! and could she tell me where certain of the people were pitched, of such a name?' She answered a little affrighted, ' She knew them not, they were not of her Aarab.' — " 0 maiden milk for me ! " — " Min fen halib, milk from whence ? we milked them early at the booths ; there is naught now in these goats' udders, and we have no vessel to draAV in : " she said her tents stood yet far beyond. "And is there not hereby a ferij for which I go seeking all this morrow?" — "Come a little upon the hill side, and I will 19—2 292 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. shew it thee : lo there ! thou mayest see their beyts." My eyes were not so good ; but I marked where she shewed with her finger and went forward. Having marched half an hour, over wild and broken ground, I first .saw the menzil, when I was nigh upon them ; and turned to go to a greater booth in the circuit, wherein I espied men sitting. Their hounds leapt out against me with open throat ; the householder ran with an hatchet, to chase them away from the stranger "(a guest) arriving. — As I sat amongst them, I perceived that these Avere not the Beduins I sought. I asked bye and bye, " Have ye any tamr ? " — also to eat with them would be for my security. The good man answered cheer fully, " We have nothing but cheese ; and that shall be fetched immediately." The host was a stranger, a fugitive of Meteyr, living with these Harb, for an homicide. He sat bruising green bark of the boughs of certain desert trees ; and of the bast he Avould twist well-ropes : " There are, said he, some very (ghra- mik, for 'amik) deep golbdn (sing, jellib, a well) in these diras." The poor people treated me honourably, asking mildly and answering questions. I said, " I came to seek who would carry me to el-Kasim for his wages." The man answered, " He had a good thelul ; and could I pay five reals, he would carry me, and set me down wellah in the market-place of Aneyza ! " When I came again to my hosts — " Whither wentest thou ? exclaimed Motlog ; to go so far from our tents is a great danger for thee : there are many who finding thee alone would kill thee, the Beduw are kafirs, Khalil." When I told him the man's name, who would carry me to Aneyza, he added, " Have nothing to do with him ! he is a Meteyry. If he rode with thee (radif), beware of his knife — a Meteyry cannot keep himself from treachery ; or else he might kill thee sleeping : now canst thou ride four days to el-Kasim without sleeping ! " Such evil- speaking is common between neighbour tribes ; but I think the Meteyry would have honestly conveyed me to Aneyza. Motlog had in certain things the gentlest mind of any Arab of my acquaintance hitherto. When he saw that by moments, I fell asleep, as I sat, even in the flaming sun, and that I wandered from the (inhospitable) booths — it was but to seek some rock's shelter where, in this lethal somnolence and slowness of spirit, I might close the eyes — he said, ' He perceived that my breast was straitened (with grief) here among them : ' and since 1 had taken this journey to heart, and he could not carry me himself so far as Boreyda, he would seek for someone to-day to convey me thither; — howbeit that for my sake, he had let pass the ALY. 293 ghrazzu of Ibn Nahal, — for which he had obtained the loan of another horse.' Besides him, a grim councillor for my health Avas Aly, he of the spear and scimitar : that untempered iron blade had been perchance the pompous side arm of -some javelin man of the great officers of Medina, — a personage in the city bestowed the warlike toy upon the poor soul. "Ana sahibak, I am thy very friend," quoth Aly, in the husk voice of long-suffering misery. He was of the Harb el- Aly: they are next from hence in the N.-E. and not of these Aarab. I asked him: "Where leftest thou thy wife and thy children and thy camels?" He ansAvered, " I have naught besides this mantle and my tunic and my weapons : ana yatim ! I am an orphan !" This fifty years' old poor Beduin soul was yet in his nonage ; — what an hell were it of hunger and misery, to live over his age again ! He had in herited a possession of palms, with his brother, at Medina ; but the stronger father's son put out his weak-headed brother : and, said Motlog, " The poor man (reckoned a fool) could have there no redress." — "And why are these weapons always in his hands?" — "He is afraid for a thing that happened years ago: Aly and a friend of his, rising from supper, said they would try a fall. They wrestled: Aly cast the other, and fell on him; — and it may be there had somewhat burst in him, for the fallen man lay dead ! None accused Aly ; nevertheless the mesquin fled for his life, and he has gone ever since thus armed, lest the kindred of the deceased finding him should kill him." At evening there sat with us a young kinsman of Tollog's new wife. He was from another ferij ; and having spoken many injuries of the Nasara, he said further, " Thou Tollog, and Motlog ! wellah, ye do not well to receive a kafir in your beyts;" and taking for himself all the inner place at the fire, — unlike the gentle customs of the Beduins, he had quite thrust out the guest and the stranger into the evening Avind ; for here was but a niche made with a lap of the tent cloth, to serve, like the rest of their inhospitality, for the men's sitting-place. I exclaimed, " This must be an Ageyly ! " — They answered, " Ay, he is an Ageyly ! a proud fellow, Khalil." — " I have found them hounds, Turks and traitors ; by my faith, I have seen of them the vilest of mankind." — "Wellah, Khalil, it is true." — " What Harby is he?"— "He is Hdzimy."— "An Hdzimy ! then good friends, this ignoble proud fellow is a Solubby ! " — " It is sooth, Khalil, aha-ha-ha ! " and they laughed apace. The dis comfited young man, when he found his tongue, could but answer, subbak, "The Lord rebuke thee." It seemed to them a marvellous thing that I should knoAv this homely matter. — 2 94 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. Hazim, an ancient fendy of Harb, are snibbed as Heteym ; and Beduins in their anger will cast against any Heteymy, Sherary or sany the reproach of Solubby. Room was now made, and this laughter had reconciled the rest to the Nasrany. — I had wondered to see great part of Tollog's tent shut close : but on the morrow, when the old ribald housewife and mother of his children sat without boiling samn, there issued- from the close booth a new face, — a fair young woman, clean and comely clad ! She was Tollog's (new) bright bird in bridal bower ; and these were her love-days, without household charge. She came forth with dazing eyes in the burning sunlight. When the next sun rose, I saw that our three tents were become four. These new comers were Seyadin, not Solubbies, not sanies but (as we have seen) packmen of poor Beduin kin, carrying wares upon asses among the Aarab. I went to visit the strangers; — "Salaam!" — " Aleykom es-salaam; and come in Khalil ! art thou here ? " — " And who be ye ' " — " Remem- berest thou not when thou earnest with the Heteymies and drank coffee in our kasr, at Gofar ? " The poor woman added, "And I mended thy rent mantle." "Khalil, said the man, where is thy galliiin ? I will fill it with hameydy." Beduin- born, all the paths of the desert were known to him ; he had peddled as far as Kasim, and he answered me truly in all that I enquired of him : — they are not unkind to whom the world is unkind ! there was no spice in them of fanaticism. CHAPTER XL JOURNEY TO EL-KASIM: BOREYDA. Beduin carriers. Set out with Hamed, a Shammary. False report of the foray of Ibn Saud and the Ateyba. The digging of water-pits in the khala. Ibn Rashid's forays. Solubba. Beny Aly. Semira, anciently Dirat Ruwalla. Terky, a Medina Beduin. A rdhla of Beny Salem. The Atdfa. A tempest of rain. Triple rainbow. Lightning by night in the desert. Religious Beduw. A gentle host. A Harb menzil pitched ring-wise. el-Furn, a kindred of Harb. Sdra mountain. The first village of el-Kasim. Ayun. Gassa. Watchtowers. Bare hospitality in el-Kasim. The deep sand-land and its inhabitants. Aspect of Boreyda. The town. The Emir's hostel. The Nasrdny is robbed in the courtyard. Jeyber, the Emir's officer. The Kasr Hajelldn. Abdullah, the Emir's brother. Boreyda citizens ; the best are camel masters in the caravans. Old tragedies of the Emirs. The town. A troubled afternoon. Set out on the morrow for Aneyza. Well sinking. Ethel trees. The same morning came two Beduins with camel-loads of temmn ; which the men had brought down for Tollog and Motlog, from el-Irak ! They were of Shammar and carriers in Ibn Rashid's Haj caravan. I wondered how after long journeying they had found our booths: they told me, that since passing Hayil they had enquired us out, in this sort, — ' Where is Ibn Nahal ? ' — Answer : ' We heard of him in the S.-E. country. — Some say he is gone over to the Ateyba marches. — When last we had word of him, he was in such part. — He went lately towards Seleyma. — You shall find his Aarab be tween such and such landmarks. — He is grazing about Genna.' Whilst they were unloading, a Beduin stranger, but known in this ferij arrived upon his camel after an absence : he had lately ridden westward 130 miles, to visit Bishr, amongst whom he had been bred up ; but now he dwelt with Harb. The man was of Shammar, and had a forsaken wife living as a widow in our menzil : he came to visit their little son. Motlog coun selled me to engage this honest man for the journey to Kasim. 296 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. We called him: — He answered, 'Wellah, he feared to pass so open a country, where he might lose his camel to some foraying Ateyban ;' but Motlog persuaded him, saying he could buy with his wages a load of dates (so cheap in el-Kasim) to bring home to his household. He proffered to carry me to el-Bukkerieh : but we agreed for five reals that he should carry me to Boreyda. "Mount, erkub !" quoth the man, whose name was Hdined; he loaded my things, and climbed behind me, — and we rode forth. " Ullah bring thee to thy journey's end ! said Tollog ; Ullah, give that you see not the evil ! " The sun was three hours high : we passed over a basalt coast, and descended to another ferij ; in which was Hamed's beyt. There he took his water-skin, and a few handfuls of mereesy — all his provision for riding other 450 miles — and to his housewife he said no more than this: "Woman, I go with the stranger to Boreyda." She obeyed silently ; and commonly a Beduwy in departing bids not his wife farewell: — -"Hearest thou ? (said Hamed again) follow with these Aarab until my coming home!" Then he took their little son in his arms and kissed him. — We rode at first northward for dread of Ateyban : this wilderness is granite grit with many black basalt bergs. The marches beyond were now full of dispersed Aarab, B. Salem ; we saw their black booths upon every side. All these Harb were gathering towards Semira, in the Shammar dira, to be taxed there, upon a day appointed, by the collectors of Ibn Rashid ; because there is much water for their multitude of cattle. We left the mountain landmark of Benany at half a day's dis tance, west ; and held forward evenly with the course of W. el- Rummah, — the great valley now lying at a few miles' distance upon the right hand. Some black basaltic mountains, not very far off, Hamed told me, were beyond the Wady : that great dry Avaterway bounds the dirat of Harb in Nejd; all beyond is Ateyba country. Twice as we rode we met with camel herds ; the men milked for us, and we enquired and told tidings. At sun-setting we Avere journeying under a steep basalt jebel; and saw a black spot, upon a mountain sand-drift, far before us, which was a booth of the nomads : then we saw their camels, and the thought of evening milk was pleasant to our hearts. "But seest thou ? said Hamed, they are all males ! for they are gaunt and have Ioav humps ; — that is because they serve for carriage : the Aarab let the cows fatten, and load not upon them." As we approached we saw many more tents, which the brow had hidden. When we alighted, even those Beduins knew me ! — an elf of them cried out (he had seen the kafir at Hayil), "Aha! tho Nasrany!" a Avord which made their hearts and THE DESERT TOWARDS EL-KASIM. 297 ours cold. These tribesmen were Harb; the women wore silver nose-rings, — among the Nomads they are not made large. Here also the (false!) report was in all their mouths, of Ibn SaM and the foray of Ateyba, "that had arrived under the walls of Boreyda." — The open men's side, in these booths hardly the tent's third part, was made at the left hand, which is the house wife's apartment, in Annezy and Shammar beyts, in Nejd : in the Nejd Harb tents it is sometimes upon the right, but most- what upon the left hand ; in the Heteym tents left ; and in the most Billy beyts, that I have seen, left. These were dull and silent Aarab, and of no hospitality ; at length the house holder brought us a bowlful of their evening camel milk, and with few words he left us. At this altitude, where I found 4300 feet (the latitude being about 27°), the nights, now in the midst of April, were yet cold. Hamed spoke to me to visit on the morrow the village er-Rautha, not far before us. We heard that many were dying there of a fever, though the malady had never been known amongst them heretofore. Hamed thought I might sell them some medicines; I answered, " We would go, if he were not afraid:" but when the sun rose he said, " It would be too far about." We rode an hour or two, and the end of J. Selma appeared upon the left hand : " The mountain comes down, said Hamed, nearly to er-Rautha." Mustijidda he told me is a village less than Teyma. Leaving our former course, we now held southward: this desert soil is an uneven plain, with many stony places, s4mt, where our footsore camel had pain to pass. At noon we left on our right hand Bellezzieh, a small corn settle ment without palms. There are five houses in two kas4r, or yards of walling ; and the hamlet, lying out in the immense wilderness, is sheltered only by the (strong) name of Ibn Rashid : this open waste was now bare of Aarab. At half afternoon we came to water-pits, es-Shibberieh : Hamed alighted and ran on to fill our girby. The water-holes only ten feet deep (of sweet rain-water) were digged in a shaeb or freshet- strand, seyling to the wady er-Rummah. " To open a themila, such as one of these, said Hamed, is two men's labour in a day: one man digs with a stick [comp. Numb. xxi. 18], and his fellow casts out the earth in his hands": — under this land- face of harsh gravel is soft loam. The country bordering down to the great wady is full of ground water at little depth ; for which Hamed praised his Shammar dira above the Bishr marches, "where is much good pasture, but only few great waters, deep to draw at and far between them; but in dirat Shammar in every horizon there is some water-hole at least, and 298 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. the Aarab may disperse themselves by families, without danger of thirsting." When I had mixed a little mereesy Hamed refused the offered bowl, saying he had drunk already : but I perceived that he shunned to drink with a Nasrany ; also when we came to any Aarab he ever drank of the bowl before me. The poor man of a gentle humour, and (which are so many of them) a little staggering in his brains, took it heavily that I cen sured his Persian-like nicety, unlike the franchise of the desert. — "But, ah! said he, let us hasten from this place for fear of Ateyban; this land lies open, and if any ghrazzu went by now, they would see us." I asked him of the Ateyba country beyond the wady: he had ridden there in Ibn Rashid's forays. He said their dira is sandy plains with good pasture, and there are such bergs as these (of granite and basalt), and the Aarab are rich in flocks. He had visited Miskeh and Therrieh, which are free settlements, poor and open; and by some they are accounted to el-Kasim : later it was my chance to journey through that vast Nomad country. Hamed rode in all the Emir's forays : and so do many poor Beduins, to see what booty the Lord would send them; for among theluls of dismounted enemies, cattle dispersed and abandoned tents, there will hardly not come somewhat to a ready man's hand : Hamed had taken thus the naga under us, and now he rode upon her in all the ghrazzus. He could not tell me if there were thelul blood in her, ' because she had been taken from enemies, and none knew her generation.' " What think you ? I asked, is it no sin to slay men and to reave their goods?" Hamed, yielding and assenting as a Moslem to every religious word, answered me, " Well I think so, and I thank my Lord I did never kill any man ; I have but taken the booty." In such a field many theluls of the hostile Aarab are scattered and lost. The dromedary is a dull beast, that has no feeling with her master ; if he press her, it is not unlikely that the sheeplike brute will settle down bellowing under him, in the midst of the fray. If her rider but shake the bridle, she will stand perhaps to bray, and strive Avith a man when he should fly fast. Some are headstrong, and will bear their riders- amongst the enemy ; and the fleetest dromedary may be speedily outrun by the worst of the desert horses. Horse riders therefore though armed only with lances, and sitting loosely on their mares' backs without stirrups, have great advantage, in the desert warfare, against slow-firing matchlock men upon theluls ; and if one mounted upon an unruly dromedary have his long gun empty, when a horseman turns to assail him, he must needs cast himself down and forsake her. BENY ALY. 299 J. el-H&beshy was now in sight, a long black mountain of basalt lying beyond Semira. — A mounted company, like a file of cavalry, came riding hitherward over the khala: they were a score of Solubbies on their asses. Hamed wjrald ride on to meet them for tidings, but- having the bridle in my hand I held off: then one of them alighted and ran to us; — a lad, who hailed us with a salutation I had not heard before, Ullah y'a'yna- kom, ' The Lord be your help!' They had been tinkering about Semira; and he told us that little beyond yonder bergs we should find the Aarab. We passed forth, and when the sun was low, said Hamed, " The Solubby deceived us ! " for yet we saw not the Aarab. From hence he shewed me the tops of the ethel trees of Semira : two miles further we had sight of the ferij. These were a few booths of B. Aly, pitched in view of the settlement. We alighted, and even here they kneAv the Nasrany ! they spoke to us roughly; but were not inhospitable. The B. Aly are dispraised by the B. Salem as Aarab of raw manners, and kafirs ; because not many of them have learned to say the prayer ; nor do all of them keep holy the month of ramathan : they even pretend that the B. Aly be not of the right blood of Harb. As we sat about the evening hearth, the Beduins gave back on a sudden, and rising upon their feet they left me sitting ; for they had all seen a small adder winding amongst us : then one of them with a blow of his clubbed stick beat in sunder the poisonous vermin. At dawn we mounted to go to breakfast in Semira. Hamed had bartered his gun overnight in the tents to a lad, for an ewe and a lamb, worth nearly 5 reals ; the matchlock, of a very ill fashion, not worth 1\ reals, was one he had taken in a ghrazzu : it was so short that by likelihood the rest had burst. When we lately rode with fear over the wilderness, Hamed rammed down double lead upon the old powder ; but as he was in doubt if the gun would go off, I had made him fire it and charge anew. He went on driving his slow-footed cattle, to sell them in the settlement : but we were not come far when the weled, who had repented of his bargain, came running to overtake us. The unlucky lad cried after Hamed, who drove so much the faster ; but a bargain amongst the iniquitous in habitants of the desert is not binding till the third day be past. Hamed answered him with soft words, but the sore- hearted lad began to scold and delivered him his gun. Hamed received his own again, as a Beduwy, with a good grace ; and the lad turned back his sheep, and began to hiss them home. The sun now rose before us over Jebel He"beshy. 300 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. The small ancient town of Semira is but an enclosure (kasr) of houses in a high wall with towers of clay; in distant sight it stands like to some lone castle upon the desert side. There are two other small wall enclosures, kasrs. This little borough covers I suppose not two acres ; the gate is but a door in their battled wall at the south side, and there without is a dry seyl- strand of the winter rains. The tilled grounds of Semira lie beyond, bare and uncheerful to the eye, which here looks upon no pleasant boughs of palms ! their husbandry is of grain only : I saw their corn fields of well-grown wheat and barley almost ripe for the harvest. Camels cannot enter the town door ; and I was unwilling to leave our bags lying abroad, in the sight of children playing ; but Hamed said that here was the man6kh, they were safe, and no child would touch them. — We sat down to see who would call us in to breakfast. I have never arrived at the nomad menzils without a feeling of cheerfulness, but I never entered a desert village without misgiving of heart ; looking for koran contentions, the dull manners of peasants and a grudging hospitality. Hamed told me, here were thirty houses, and an hundred inhabitants; the villagers are called es-Shubdramy of the sheykh's house Rashid es-Sh4bramy : and they are of that old and wide inhabiting Nejd tribe the B. Temim. A man came out to us; and after salaams he led us into the place to drink kahwa. We passed by small clay ways to their public coffee chamber ; which was but a narrow shelter of palm branches betwixt clay walls. A few men only assembled; who lying along on the earthen floor, whilst we sipped of the first and second cups, kept a dull silence: the B. Temin are heavy spirits and civilly incurious. Our host after coffee led us out to breakfast, in his house ; and said his excuses for setting before us dates only, from the Jebel. When I asked, why had they no palm plantations ? and the ground-water is so nigh, that young plants putting down roots to the moisture after the first years should have no need of irrigation ? He answered, ' The palm did not prosper here.' At Semira is perhaps too sweet an earth, and the ground-water is of the pure rain. Hamed who had received from me a piece of gold at the setting out, now took it forth to ask the settler, if this were so many reals. Our host answered, "It is so 0 Beduwy, and in Kasim passes for somewhat more ; and doubt not, — this is Khalil." The goodman looked upon me, and I saw that he knew me ; but he had been too honest to show it before the people and molest me here. He said to my rafik, "And thou knowest who he is ? " Hamed answered, somewhat out of countenance, "Ay! — and keep this money for me, host, until my coming SEMIRA. 301 again." The Arabs are of an insane avidity; and Hamed en trusted his gold to a stranger without witnesses ! but for the most part the deposit will be religiously preserved by the Moslem receiver, to be rendered to the owner. The deposit may even become hereditary, — then it is laid up to be restored to the heirs [confer Ex. xxii. 7 et seq.]. I asked our host of their antiquity, " All this country, he answered, was in old time dirat Ruwdlla ! " We have seen that they were once Aarab of Medina ! [p. 184], — now their marches are far in the north, more than 200 miles from hence. Our host asked me to give him medicine for his son ; and I rejoiced at such times, that I had somewhat to bestow again. Semira, which lies in the path between J. Shammar and the Hejaz, has surely been always a principal water station. The B. Salem would soon arrive at these waters, to be taxed. The Beduins' stay with their troops of cattle can be only of hours ; and the telling and payment is made, with the Arabic ex pedition, in part of two days. — How may the collectors bring all these wild Arabs to a yearly tale and muster ? but the tribesmen are afraid of ibn Rashid, and this business is despatched easily ; — the sheukh are there to declare every matter upon oath, and his neckbone is in danger who would deceive the Emir. The B. Aly are taxed at the watering Fudra, one journey eastward of Semira, nigh the W. er- Rummah. At Fuara are wells and a spring, and corn-plots, with an only kasr of an adventuring villager from Mustijidda, who projected with that running spring to water his tillage: but he had not greatly prospered. So few are the springs in the Arabian highlands, that it might be almost said, There are not any. When I returned from these Travels to Damascus, I visited the Emir Abd el-Kddir (he was very erudite among erudite Moslems, in the Arabic letters and school-lore of their religion) ; and the noble Algerian enquired of me, 'Were there many springs [in those lands, which I had visited, of Arabia] where the Aarab water their herds and flocks ? ' He marvelled (as another Juba) when I responded there were none indeed ! that the wilderness (and oases) waters are draw-wells. We found the camel and the bags, at their town door, as Ave left them: the altitude is here 3900 feet. Now we rode to wards J. Hdbeshy: — an hour further a voice hailed us from some bushes ! a man sat there, and his thelul was browsing not far off. Hamed shouted again, "Auh! wouldst thou enquire tidings, come hither thyself!" — Then he lighted down to see what the man meant, Avho sat on making signs to us ; and I rode forth towards the jebel. After half an hour I saw tAvo men hieing 302 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. after me upon a thelul : I thought they might be thieves, and had my weapon ready, — till I knew Hamed's voice. The other was that man of the bush, who was making coffee when we passed ; and had but called us to drink with him. This worthy, Terky by name, was a merchant of beasts (or middle man between the nomads and the butchers) at Medina: though settled in the Holy City he was an Harby. Every spring time he rode to take up sheep in these marches. He was a weerish looking old man, full of the elvish humour of the Beduw. Upon me he gazed fast; for he had passed by Ibn Nahal's one day after us, and there he heard of the Nasrany : he arrived here before us, because we had fetched a circuit to the North. Terky inquired, ' Were I indeed he whom they call a Nasrany?' (a name full of stupor and alarms !) and he answered himself under his breath), ' It could not be, I seemed too peaceable a man ; also Hamed spoke well of me.' — " But come let us mend our pace, quoth he, to pass the mid-day heat with some Aarab, who they say are pitched yonder." We marched three hours and alighted at their menzil. Here my companions, when they had drunk le"ban, would have loitered till the next morrow ; but I was for the journey. — These Aarab were very ill-favoured -and un gracious. [Though of swarthy looks the Nejd Beduw are blackened most with smoke and filth — especially their often nearly negro-like hands : but the skin of their bodies which is not toasted in the sun is whitish.] When we set out again I asked my companions, "Were those Harb or Solubba?" They answered, laughing, "Harb, of B. Aly ; — Khalil knows everything ! they be wellah like the Solubba." As I turned in the saddle, Hamed's naga startled under me, and fled wildly : and before I could take hold, I was cast backward, and my cloak rending, which had caught on the hinder pillar of the saddle, I was slung in the air, and fell upon my back in soft sand ; — and woe to him who is cast upon a stone ! I have seen Beduins cruelly maimed thus. It was the vice of my rafik's camel, and he had not warned me; there are as many mad camels in the desert as dizzy sheep among us. In falling I had a heedful thought of my barometer ; and by happy fortune the delicate instrument, which I held in my hand, was not shaken. Hamed ran, and Terky outrode the fugitive beast upon his fleeter thelul; and brought her again. We marched yet three hours, and came to another Harb ferij, where we alighted to pass the night : here Terky found some acquaintance; and the Nasrany was no more known among them. When the sun is setting, the Beduins kindle their evening TERKY, A COFFEE TIPPLER. 303 fire. Terky was of those Arabs, of an infirm complexion, who are abandoned to kahwa, and think it is no day of their lives if they taste not, every third hour, the false refreshment. Had Terky been born in land of Christians, he had sat every day drunken on his bench in the village alehouse. This Beduwy rode but light ; he carried in his long-tasseled white saddle-bags no more than his coffee-roasting pan, his coffee-pot, his box of three cups, his brass pestle and mortar, and a wooden bowl for his own drinking: he had no food with him for the way, looking to sup every night with Aarab. As for clothing they have but that with them which is on their backs ; and when one comes to water he may wash his tunic, and sit in bis Avorsted mantle, till his shirt be dry again in the sun. Already the old tippler had taken out his coffee gear; he disposed all in order by the hearth, and said, "Who has here any kahwa ?" I whispered, that these were poor folk and had no coffee. "But abide ! said he, and we shall see it :" — and very soon a handful of the [South Arabian] berries was fetched from a yet poorer tent ! As the pot was on, there came flying to our firelight a multitude of yellow beetles, which beat upon all before them, and fell down in the ash-pit. Terky defended his pot awhile with a senile impatience ; then he drew it aside and exclaimed, "Look, Khalil ! even so the Nasranies will fall doAvn into the fire ; for that is the place of them, and such is the end of them all in Jehennem, Ullah burn them up ! but I think surely, thou art not one of them ; eigh ! Khalil, say that thou art not a Nasrany ! " — Here the host's only evening enter tainment was to pour us out camel milk, and Hamed's shallow affectation was to stay his honest hand: I said to him before them all, " Suffer him to fill our bowl ! — a plague upon ill-timed compliments." Hamed answered under his breath, "Your cus toms then be not as our customs." When the day dawned we mounted, and Terky rode with us. Beyond the long He"beshy mountain we came upon a great plain open all round to the horizon. I had not seen such a flat since I left Syria; for the plain landscape in Nejd is nearly everywhere encumbered with montecules and jebal Pyramid like bergs, of granite, but black under the shadowing of a cloud, were landmarks before us of a watering place, Ghraymar. This even land which they name Fueylik, lasts from hence to the NefM of el-Kasim, and my companions were here in dread of passing ghrazzus. Terky : " Ridest thou thus without care or fear Khalil ! but if we see them I and Hamed will escape upon this thelul, and leave thee upon the naga, and thou wilt be taken." In that there fell an April shower which 304 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. shone about us like golden hairs in the sun ; and the desert earth gave up to our sense a teeming grassy sweetness. As we approached the rocks, my companions espied great cattle, and they thought it was a ghrazzu at the watering ! Then we saw them to be camel troops of the Aarab : hundreds of great cattle were standing apart or couched by their households, awaiting their turn to be watered. It was a rahla, and these Beduins (of Harb) watered the cattle in the midst of their march. Some of their house stuff was unloaded from the bear ing camels ; upon other camels sat the Harb daughters, in their saddle litters, — crated frames, trapped Avith wavering tongues of coloured cloths and long lappets of camel leather. In the tribes of my former acquaintance such bravery is only of a few sheykhly housewives ; but these were B. Salem, — tribesfolk that are well clad amongst nomads. It seemed that any one of them might have been an Atdfa (v. Vol. I. 61, — or Ateyfa), — she that from her saddle frame warbles the battle note, with a passionate sweetness, which kindles the manly hearts of the young tribesmen, (and the Aarab are full of a wild sensibility). — They see her, each one as his spouse, without the veil, and decked as in the day of her marriage ! — The Atdfa is a sheykh's daughter; but, said Hamed, she may be another mez'4na: it were infamous to kill an Atdfa ; yet when shots flee her camel may fall or run furiously, and the maiden-standard is in peril. Sheep flocks were lying down in a wide seyl-strand, awaiting their waterers ; the shepherd's asses were standing with them. This desert well, great and square mouthed, I saw to be steyned Avith old dry-building of basalt ; there were three fathoms to the water. The camels at the troughs, standing in old stinking sludge, were stamping for the flies. A score of Beduins in their shirts drew upon the four sides, with a loud song, and sweated in the sun. In the throng of cattle I saw a few sheykhs with their mares ; the hounds of the nomad encampment lay panting in the shadows of the tall camels ; and suffered us strangers to pass by without a challenge ! A sheykhly man who stood nigh us, taking down his semily, and a bowl, poured us out leban. Another enquired whither we went, and said, " He would accompany us on the morrow [el-gdbily], if we would stay over this day in his tent. — See also the rain threatens, and we shall pitch yonder not far off." Hamed: "Wellah, I may not wait; for my breast is straitened, to be at home again." — None of these Aarab knew me. We departed and Terky remained with them. The wilder ness beyond is open gravel-plain : upon our left hand was a Ioav mountain, whereunder are the hamlets Makhaul (a jau with TRIPLE RAINBOW. 305 one kasr) and Autheym, where are five houses. Late in the afternoon there fell great drops from the lowering skies ; then a driving rain fell suddenly, shrill and seething, upon the harsh gravel soil, and so heavily that in few moments all the plain land was a streaming plash. Our naga settled under us stern- on to the cold tempest. Our worsted mantles were quickly wetted through ; and we cowered for shelter under the lee of the brute's body. After half an hour the worst was past, and we mounted again. Little birds, before unseen, flitted cheerfully chittering over' the wet wilderness. The low sun looked forth, and then appeared a blissful and surpassing spectacle ! a triple rainbow painted in the air before us. Over two equal bows a third was reared, upon the feet of the first ; and like to it in the order of hues. — These were the celestial arches of the sun's building, the peace in heaven after the battle of the elements in a desert-land of Arabia. The Triple Rainbow. (G. to R. signifies green to red; R. to G. red to green] The sun going down left us drowned in the drooping gloom, which was soon dark night. We held on our march in hope to meet with the Aarab, and there fell always a little rain. Serpentine lightning flickered over the ground before us, with out thunder ; long crested lightnings shot athwart and seemed suspended, by moments, in the wide horizon ; other long cross flashes darted downward in double chains of light. The shape of all those lightnings was as an hair of wool that is fallen in water. Only sometimes we heard a little, not loud, roaring of thunder. In a lull of the weather we beheld the new moon, two days old, at her going down. The first appearing of the virgin D. T. 11. ^O 306 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. moon is always greeted with a religious emotion in the deserts of Arabia, and we saluted her, poor night wanderers, devoutly ; the day by my reckoning should be the 23rd of April, We held on ever watching for the Beduin fires, and heard about us the night shrieks of I know not what wild birds. At length Hamed thought he had seen a watch-fire glimmer fiar in front. As we rode further we saw it sometimes, and otherwhiles it was hidden by the uneven ground of the wilderness. The night dark ness was very thick, the naga stumbled, and we could not see the earth. Hamed, whose wit ever failed a little short of the mark, began to be afraid we might fall from some cragged place : he would adventure no further. We had nothing to eat, and alighting with wet clothes, we lay down in the rain beside our camel ; but the wind blew softly, and we soon slept. The morrow broke with the cheerful voices of birds about us, as in a northern country ! our clothes were dried and light again upon our backs, and we rose never the worse. We had not ridden a gunshot when we saw the booths hardly a mile in front, and trooping camels. At this happy human sight we put our naga to the trot, and Hamed snivelled his loud saddle- song. Some of those Aarab — they were B. Aly, came forth to meet us ; for seeing my red saddle-bags of carpet stuff, they had taken me for one of those brokers [hete they said mushow- wam] from the border lands, who from time to time ride in their desert country to buy up camels. When we arrived, one spoke to his fellow, " Did I not tell thee that he was such ? " and an other answered, " Ay, and I knew him at the first sight." We dismounted at a booth and unloaded ; and those who stood by led us toward the sheykh's beyt. " The morning coffee is ready, said they,; let us go over, and there refresh yourselves, and tell us the news." Hamed loosed out our naga to graze ; and we followed to the kahwa. — The householder, at whose tent we had alighted, came bye and bye to call us : we returned Avith him to breakfast, and there rested. The altitude of the plain land was here 3400 feet. These were as all the other Beduw whom I have known, a merry crew of squalid wretches, iniquitous, fallacious, fanatical. Notwithstanding that the B. Aly are blamed as kafirs by their Harb kinsmen of the Medina dira, the men in this menzil were perfect, more than all the tribesmen of the khala, in the formal observing of the religion. For when the sun was mounted to the mid-height, one of those desert men stood forth [Hamed, a citizen of three great tribes, had never seen the like among Beduw] and played the mue'thin ! and being come to the last words, es-saldt wa es-salaam aleyk, yd auwel khulk Illah iva khdtimat rusul PRAYING AARAB: BEDUW WITHOUT CAMELS. 307 Illah, ' Peace be with thee, and glory, 0 first-born of the crea tion of God, and seal of the apostles of God,' those desert men gathered behind him in a toav; and they went through with their ' bowing, kneeling and knocking devotion, very praiseworthily ! That toAvn religion they aped, doubtless, from the nigh-lying Kasim, which is a Wahaby country. — They called me also, "Sail yd, taal sull, " Come and pray thou !" but I excused myself, and Avithdrew from them. I was never of any politic remembrance, that at the unlucky prayer hour I should not be found sitting in the midst of the most fanatical Arabs. — I wandered half a mile from them over the hot sand whither I saw some bushes; but I could not be hid from their hawks' eyes: for when I re turned, they said, ' The stranger had not prayed ; and oho ! — This can be no Musslim !' and there was some ferment amongst them. I had eaten in a tent, and answered them shortly, "What need of more questioning, my friends ? I am a Nasrany." When they saw I took all things patiently they began to bear Avith me. " But how ! they said one to another, could there be any yet in the world so blind that they worshipped not Ullah ?" They gazed on me, and questioned my companion, "What is he for a rafik ? how durst thou trust thyself with him ? — an heathen man !" Hamed responded mildly, ' Khalil had been a good rafik, and he heard good reported of him among the Aarab ; and if at any time Khalil spoke of religion, he seemed then to have some right inkling of Ullah ; and his words sound ed very nigh unto the words of the Moslemin." The B. Aly were thus appeased, I was a passenger, and they would not molest me ; only they answered, ' Would God I might stay awhile in the well-instructed Kasim, where the Lord might make a way and enlighten me!' The good housewives said among them, Widd el-ghrarib bdledhu. These Beduins seeing me broken to the nomad life, enquired ; 'were all my people Beduw?' At half-afternoon Hamed would set forward again — to pass another night in the khala ! We had an evil fit yesterday, and were accorded, that if we might find the Aarab, this should be a day of repose. But now he said excusing himself, ' His breast was sore straitened, till he should be at home again!' — " This is the last quarter of the day, and see the lowering skies! where is thy understanding?" He answered: 'If I would stay, then he must forsake me ' ; and went to take his naga: but I saw he remained to pasture her. The Beduins told me that not far before us was a ferij of "good Aarab"; who had lately received their summer provision of temmn from el-Irak, and we might sup with them. I beckoned therefore to 20—2 o 08 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. Hamed to return with his camel. — And mounting Ave journeyed two hours : and came to that menzil, when the sun set : but seeing no man in the principal booth, we alighted a little apart and sat down. The householder, who was the sheykh, came soon, and some men with him, from the further tents, which were only three or four: they stood a moment to see what we were ! and then he approached, saying, " Wherefore sit ye here, rise ho ! and come into the tent." — Now I saw their sheep driven in ; and a good flock lie down before every booth : but I could see only a camel or two. These Aarab have no goats : their small cattle are the black sheep with white heads, of high Nejd ; there was not a white fleece among them. When I asked Hamed, " Where are their camels?" he answered in a whisper, "They are the Oreymdt, of Harb, that have but sheep-flocks ; they have no camels." — Here then was a new life of men inhabiting in the wilderness without camels ! Hamed added, " This is a kindred which has no heart for warfare ; their camels have been taken by ghrazzus, but they foray not again. They have no more than those few camels for carriage : yet they fare well; for they have much samn of their ewes, which thou seest ; — and yus4kun ez-zika, they pay tithing, to Ibn Rashid." [The Harb and Shammar have all black sheep in these diras, and few or no goats: they think their black-fleeced sheep are bigger bodied, and that the ewes yield more milk. Sheep more than other cattle languish in the sun ; we see them go drooping, in each other's shadow, and hanging their heads at noon: and surely the white-fleeces were better in a hot country.] These Beduins, that are reckoned to the B. Salem, were of gentle and honest manners ; and I was never more kindly entertained in the nomad menzils. One of them — who had seen and spoken with ' the Nasrany at Hayil ! — reported very favourably of me. Here was not the half-grudging hospitality of the Medina Harb, and their tent was evenly divided: the men also were comely [which signifies in Arabia that they were well fed], and of a liberal carriage. Our sheykhly host, whose name was Salem, asked me ingenuously, ' Would I give him a remedy for his sore eyes?' I gave him the best medi cine I had; and he said sighing, "Who can tell if the Lord might not bless this mean unto me." Salem (therein the most honourable Arabian of my acquaintance) brought me imme diately a present of dry milk shards, and butter : and he made us a bountiful supper of temmn with samn. When we were weary we lay down on the pure sand under his friendly tent- cloth to sleep : but Salem, sitting-by, said he must waken all A LAST DAY WITH THE AARAB. 309 night, because the wolf — we knew it by the hounds' incessant barking — was prowling nigh us. Such were Beduins that had ceased to be cattle-reavers, in the desert ! When the day was breaking we rose to depart; and the host brought us a great bowl of butter-milk: his was like the good ness of those B. Salem, in the way to Hayil. — We journeyed two hours; and the sun was risen with heat over the desert, when we came to a menzil of B. Aly, sixteen booths pitched ring-wise, — which hitherto I had not seen any nomads use in Arabia ; but their great cattle, lying thus within anhedge of tents and stretched cords, can hardly be robbed by night thieves. — If a camel may be raised and led forth, the rest (it is their sheep-like nature) will rise and follow; and the steps of the pad-footed brute awaken not the slumbering Beduw. We found them coffee- Aarab, pithless day-sleepers, corroding their lives with pitiful dregs of the Mokha drug ; of malicious manners, of no hospitality. Certain of them looked upon me, and whispered and mocked together ! — all the nomads under Ibn Rashid had heard of the forwandered NasrMy. Dates were set before us ; and whilst we sat coffee drinking, two men went out with their matchlocks to shoot at a dog, which they called sar4k, a common thief. None gave him to eat, and all driving him from their beyts, they had looked to see the brute perish ; but he stole for himself more and more. Those Beduin shooters fired from thirty yards ; and they both missed him ! At the stroke of their balls in the sand, and rebutted by the (human) world, the hound fled back in the khala, with a lamentable howling; and the shooters, that would spend no more lead, returned to the coffee- hearth. — I soon called Hamed to mount ; lest their prayer-time should discover the Nasrany. We journeyed an hour or two, and fell in with a rahla of Aarab : they were el-F4rn, a kindred of Harb, called after the name of the sheykh's family, who is chief of the B. Aly ; — these Avere they whom Terky sought. Some young sheykhs who came riding together in advance upon their theluls, or rahols [which word is commonly heard in this dira], approached, to enquire news of us passengers : and they knew me ! for I heard certain of them say under their breaths, "It is the kafir"; and quoth one, " See his saddle-bags, stuffed with silver and gold ! so that they break the back of their naga ! " Another said to us, "0 you two passengers, riding upon the naga, we go to alight yonder, under Sdra [a bow-shaped mountain coast of sandstone, before us] ; rest to-day in my tent." — The fellow added, in a knavish whisper to his companions, " Come over this evening, and you shall see the game." I 3IO TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. thought his mirth might be to threaten me with a knife as did the young Kahtany sheykh at Hayil. We excused ourselves: 'We must needs ride forward, said Hamed, to pass certain (dangerous) way in the night time'; and with that word, striking our naga, I was glad to outride them. Here we passed out of the crystalline into a sandstone soil: the height of this wilderness plain is 3300 feet. "We must go over Sara, but not in the daylight, said Hamed, for fear of Ateyban ; let us ride to yonder camels, and drink a little milk ; and repose there till evening." — I saw the solitary mountain Sdk far off in the plain of el-Kasim, upon our right hand; like a sharp cone, and black under a clear afternoon sky. Hamed could even see the mountain tops el-Abanat! — which stand at either side upon the W. er-Rummah, beyond Sak, very far off. We came to those herding lads ; and the younger taking my, pan ran under his nagas and milked full and frothed- over for us. We sat down to drink; and when they had heard our news,- quoth the elder, "This is a man taller than any of our Aarab ! — Wherefore wander further, O stranger ? remain with us ! and a horse shall be given thee, and a mantle of scarlet, — billah with a long lance in his hand this (man) shall repulse Ateyba ! - — Also they will give thee a maiden to wife." We departed from the good fellows : and I left there the speech and the fran chise of the desert, for the village country of the Kasim cara vaners. We went on riding under Sara ; and ascended about the sunsetting in a breach of the mountain : and held on over the sandstone platform in the starlight, purposing to journey all night, which was cold and open about us. Toward midnight, Hamed, beginning to be afraid that we might lose ourselves, and overcome with slumber, drew bridle ; and we alighted in a place of sand and bushes ; where binding the naga's knee we laid ourselves down to sleep. At dawn we remounted: and passing the rest of the low sandstone height; as the sun came up we descended to a plain, and I saw palms of a (first) Kasim village. " This is er-Rauth, said Hamed, there are fifty houses." We found some of the village women busy abroad to cut fodder for their well-camels. Those hareem cried out, supposing we might be robbers, till we said salaam! — They were come forth in their old ragged smocks for dread of thieves. Hamed, who was yet afraid of the Ateyban, enquired of them, " O haree*m ! what have ye to tell us of any late ghrazzus ?" They answered, ' That a few days ago some of their women had been stripped by Beduins, a little without the village Avails ! ' EL-KASfM. 3 1 1 Now before us lay the Nefud sand of Kasim, which begins to be driven-up in long swelling waves, that trend some what N. and S. Four miles further we went by the oasis Ay4n; embayed in the same sandstone train, which is before called Sara. Upon a cliff by the NefM side is a clay-built lighthouse-like watch-tower [the watch-tower is found in all the villages of Kasim]. The watchman (who must be clear sighted) is paid by a common contribution : his duty is to look forth, in the spring months, from the day rising till the going down of the sun; for this is the season, when the villagers who haAre called in their few milch goats from the Aarab, send them forth to pasture without the oasis. We saw the man standing unquietly in his gallery, at the tower head, in the flame of the sun ; and turning himself to every part, he watched, under the shadow of his hand, all the fiery waste of sand before him. Hamed said, the palms at Ayun are about half the palm% of Teyma ; and here might be 400 or 500 inhabit ants. Ayun stands at the crossing of the Kasim cameleers' paths, to J. Shammar, to the land of the north, and to the Holy Cities. My rafik had been well content to leave me here; where, he promised, I should meet with carriers to all parts, even to Kuweyt and Bosra, "wellah, more than in Boreyda." Some great cattle were feeding before us in the Nefud — they were not camels ; but, oh ! happy homely sight, the village kine at pasture in that uncheerful sand wilderness ! I said, " I would ride to them and seek a draught of cow-milk." Hamed answered, " Thou wilt ask it in vain, go not Khalil ! for these are not like the Beduw, but people of the giria, not knowing hospitality : before us lies a good village, we shall soon see the watch-tower, and we will alight there to breakfast." I saw a distant clay steeple, over the NefM southward. Hamed could not tell the name of that oasis : he said, " Wellah the geraieh (towns and villages) be so many in el-Kasim ! " We came in two hours to Gassa, a palm village, with walls, and the greatest grown palms that I had seen since Teyma, — and this said Hamed, who knew Teyma. When I asked, what were the name Gassa, he answered, "There is a pumpkin so called:" but the Beduw are rude etymologers. Their watch- tower — mergdb or garra — is founded upon a rock above the village. The base is of rude stones laid in clay, the upper work is well built of clay bricks. We were now in Kasim, the populous (and religious) nefM country of the caravaners. We did not enter the place, but halted at a solitary orchard house under the garra. It was the time of their barley harvest: this 312 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. day was near the last in April. The land-height I found to be now only 2800 feet. We dismounted; the householder came out of his yard, to lead us to the kahwa, and a child bore in my bags: Hamed brought away the head-stall and halter of our camel, for here, he said, was little assurance. The coffee-hall floor was deep NefM sand ! When we had drunk two cups, the host called us into his store room ; where he set before us a platter of dates — none of the best, and a bowl of water. The people of Kasim are not lovers of hospitality: the poor Aarab (that are passengers without purses) say despitefully, 'There is nothing there but for thy penny ! ' — this is true. Kasim resem bles the border lands, and the inhabitants are become as towns men : their deep sand country, in the midst of high Arabia, is hardly less settled than Syria. The Kusman are prudent and adventurous : there is in them much of the thick B. Temim blood. Almost a third of the people are caravaners, to foreign provinces, to Medina and Mecca, to Kuweyt, Bosra, Bagdad, to the Wahaby country, to J. Shammar. And many of them leave home in their youth to seek fortune abroad; where some (we have seen) serve the Ottoman government in arms: they were till lately the Ageyl at Bagdad, Damascus, and Medina. — All Nejd Arabia, east of Teyma, appertain* to the Persian Gulf traffic, and not to Syria: and therefore tlie (foreign) colour of Nejd is Mesopotamian ! In those border lands are most of the emigrated from el-Kasim, — husbandmen and small salesmen ; and a few of them are become wealthy merchants. Arabians of other provinces viewing the many green villages of this country in their winding-sheet of sand, are wont to say half scornfully, 'Kasim is all NefM.' The NefM of Kasim is a sand country through whose midst passes the great Wady [er-Rummah], and everywhere the ground water is nigh at hand. Wells have been digged and palms planted in low grounds [ga, or khdbra], with a loam soil not too brackish or bitter: and such is every oasis- village redun dant of el-Kasim. The chief towns are of the later middle age. The old Kasim settlements, of which the early Moham medan geographers make mention, are now, so far as I have enquired, ruined sites and names out of mind. The poor of Kasim and el- Weshm wander even in their own country ; young field labourers seek service from town to town, where they hear that el-urruk, the sweat of their brow, is likely to be well paid Were el-Kasim laid waste, this sand country would be, like the lands beyond Jordan, a wilderness full of poor village ruins. APPROACHING BOREYDA. 313 Our host sat with a friend, and had sparred his yard door against any intrusion of loitering persons. These substantial men of Kasim, wore the large silken Bagdad kerchief, cast neg ligently over the head and shoulders ; and under this head-gear the red Turkey cap, tarb4sh. Our host asked me what country man I was. "I am a traveller, from Damascus." — "No, thou art not a Shamy, thy speech is better than so ; for I have been in Syria: tell me, art thou not from some of those villages in the Hauran ? I was there with the Ageyl. What art thou ? thou art not of the Moslemin ; art thou then YahMy, or of the Nasara ? " — " Yes, host, a Mesihy ; will ye therefore drive me away, and kill me ?" — "No ! and fear nothing; is not this el-Kasim ? where the most part have travelled in foreign lands : they who have seen the world are not like the ignorant, they will treat thee civilly." — We heard from him that Ibn SaM was come as far as Mejmad : but those rumours had been false of his riding in Kasim, and in the Harb country! Our host desired to buy quinine of the hakim ; I asked half a real ; he would pay but fourpence, and put me in mind of his inhos pitable hospitality. — "Wilt thou then accompany me to Bo reyda ? and I will give it thee." — " Wherefore should I pay for kanakina? in Kasim thou wilt see it given away (by some charitable merchants)." — We rode over a salt-crusted bottom beyond the village : the Av'ell-water at Gassa has a taste of this mineral. In the oasis, which is greater than er-Rauth, may be three hundred souls. The dark weather Avas past, the sun shone out in the afternoon; and I felt as we journeyed here in the desert of el-Kasim, such a stagnant sultry air, as we may commonly find in the deep Jordan plain below Jericho. At our left hand is still the low sandstone coast ; whereunder I could see palms and watch-towers of distant hamlets and villages. The soil is grit-sand with reefs of sand-rock ; beside our path are dunes of deep NefM sand. After five miles, we came before Shukk4k, which is not far from Boreyda; it stands (as I have not seen another Arabian settlement) Avithout walls ! in the desert side. Here we drew bridle to enquire tidings, and drink of their sweet water. We heard that Hdsan, Emir of Boreyda, whom they commonly call Weled (child of) Mahanna, was with his armed band in the wilderness, ghrazzai. — Mahanna, a rich jemmdl or camel master at Bo reyda, lent money at usury, till half the town were his debtors ; and finally with the support of the Wahaby, he usurped the Emir's dignity! — Hamed told me yet more strangely, 'that the sheykh of a geria, Kdfer, near Kuseyby, in these parts, is a 3 H TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. sany ! he said the man's wealth had procured him the village sheykhship. [It is perhaps no free oasis, but under Boreyda or Hayil] Now I saw the greater dunes of the NefM ; such are called . taus and nefd (pi. anfad) by Beduins : and adandt and kethib (pi. kethbdn) are words heard in Kasim. "Not far beyond the dunes on our right hand (towards Aneyza) lies the W. er-Rummah," said Hamed. We journeyed an hour and a half, and came upon a brow of the Nefud, as the sun was going down. And from hence appeared a dream-like spect acle !— a great clay town built in this waste sand with enclosing walls and towers and streets and houses ! and there beside a bluish dark wood of ethel trees, upon high dunes! This is Boreyda 1 and that square minaret, in the town, is of their great mesjid. I saw, as it were, Jerusalem in the desert ! [as we look down from the mount of Olives], The last upshot sun-beams enlightened the dim clay city in glorious manner, and pierced into that dull pageant of tamarisk trees. I asked my rafik, "Where are their palms?" He answered, "Not in this part, they lie behind yonder great dune towards the Wady (er-Rummah)." Hamed: "And whilst we were in the way, if at any time I have displeased thee, forgive it me ; and say hast thou found me a good rafik ? Khalil, thou seest Boreyda ! and to day I am to leave thee in this place. And when thou art in any of their villages, say not, ' I (am) a Nasrany,' for then they will utterly hate thee ; but pray as they, so long as thou shalt sojourn in the country, and in nothing let it be seen that thou art not of the Moslemin : do thus, that they may bear thee also goodwill, and further thee. Look not to find these town- lings mild-hearted like the Beduw! but conform thyself, to them ; or they will not suffer thee to abide long time among them. I do counsel thee for the best — I may not compel thee ! say thou art a mudowwy, and tell them what remedies thou hast, and for which diseases: this also must be thine art to live by. Thou hast suffered for this name of Nasrany, and what has that profited thee ? only say now, if thou canst, ' I (am a) Musslim.'" We met with some persons of the town, without their walls, taking the evening air ; and as we went by they questioned my Beduwy rafik : among them I noted a sinister Galla swordsman of the Emir. Hamed answered, ' We were going to the Emir's hostel' They said, " It is far, and the sun is now set ; were it not better for you to alight at such an house ? that stands a THE EMIR'S HOSTEL. 315 little within the gate, and lodge there this night ; and you may go to the Emir in the morning." We rode from them and passed the town gate: their clay wall [vulg. ajjiddt] is new, and not two feet thick. We found no man in the glooming streets ; the people were gone home to sup, and the shops in the siik were shut for the night : their town houses of (sandy) clay are low-built and crumbling. The camel paced under us with shuffling steps in the silent and forsaken ways: we went by the unpaved public place, mejlis; which I saw worn hollow by the townspeople's feet ! and there is the great clay mesjid and high-built minaret. Hamed drew bridle at the yard of the Emir's hostel, MunSkh es-Sheukh. The porter bore back the rude gates ; and we rode in and dismounted. The journey from er-Rauth had been nearly twenty -five miles. It was not long, before a kitchen lad bade us, " rise and say God's name ". He led through dim cloistered courts ; from whence we mounted by great clay stairs, to supper. The degrees were worn down in the midst, to a gutter, and we stumbled dangerously in the gloom. We passed by a gallery and terraces above, which put me in mind of our convent buildings: the boy brought us on without light to the end of a colonnade, where we felt a ruinous floor under us. And there he fetched our supper, a churlish wheaten mess, boiled in water (a sort of Arabian b4rghrol), without samn : we were guests of the peasant Emir of Boreyda. It is the evening meal in Kasim, but should be prepared Avith a little milk and butter; in good houses this burghrol, cooked in the broth and commonly mixed with temmn, is served with boiled mutton. — When we had eaten and washed, we must feel the way back in the dark, in danger of breaking our necks, which were more than the supper's worth. — And now Hamed bade me his short Beduin adieux : he mounted his camel; and I was easy to see my rafik safely past the (tyrant's) gates. The moon was rising ; he would ride out of the town, and lodge in one of the villages. I asked now to visit " the Emir ", — Hasan's brother, whom he had left deputy in Boreyda ; it was answered, " The hour is late, and the Emir is in another part of the town : — el-bdkir ! in the morning." The porter, the coffee server, a swords man, and other servitors of the guest-house gathered about me: the yard gates were shut, and they would not suffer me to go forth. Whilst I sat upon a clay bench, in the little moonlight, I was startled from my Aveariness by the abhorred 3l6 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. voice of their barbaric religion ! the mu£thin crying from the minaret to the latter prayer. — 'Ah! I mused, my little pro vident memory ! what a mischance ! why had I sat on thus late, and no Emir, and none here to deliver me, till the morn ing ? ' I asked quickly, 'Where was the sleeping place?' Those hyenas responded, with a sort of smothered derision, 'Would I not pray along with them, ere I went to rest ? ' — They shoved me to a room in the dark hostel building, which had been used for a small kahwa. All was silent within and sounding as a chapel. I groped, and felt clay pillars, and trod on ashes of a hearth: and lay down there upon the hard earthen floor. My pistol was in the bottom of my bags, which the porter had locked up in another place: I found my pen-knife, and thought in my heart, they should not go away with whole skins, if any would do me a mischief; yet I hoped the night might pass quietly. I had not slumbered an hour when I heard footsteps, of some one feeling through the floor ; " Up, said a voice, and follow me, thou art called before the sheykhs to the coffee hall :" — he went before, and I followed by the sound ; and found persons sitting at coffee, who seemed to be of the Emir's guard. They bade me be seated, and one reached me a cup : then they questioned me, "Art not thou the Nasrany that was lately at Hayil ? thou wast there Avith some of Annezy ; and Aneybar sent thee away upon their jurrdba (mangy thelul): they were to convey thee to Kheybar?" — "I am he." — "Why then didst thou not go to Kheybar?" — "You have said it, — because the thelul was jurraba; those Be duins could not carry me thither, which Aneybar well knew, but the slave would not hear: — tell me, how knowest thou this ? " — " I was in Hayil, and I saw thee there. Did not Aneybar forbid thy going to Kasim?" — "I heard his false words, that ye were enemies, his forbidding I did not hear; how could the slave forbid me to travel, beyond the borders of Ibn Rashid ? "¦ — At this they laughed and tossed their shallow heads, and I saw some of their teeth, — a good sign ! The inquisitors added, with their impatient tyranny, "What are the papers with thee, ha! go and fetch them; for those will we have instantly, and carry them to the Emir, — and (to a lad) go thou with the Nasrany." The porter unlocked a store-closet where my bags lay. I drew out the box of medicines ; but my weary hands seemed slow to the bird-witted wretches that had followed me. The Avorst of them, a Kahtany, struck me with his fist, and reviled THE NASRANY IS ROBBED. 317 and threatened1 the Nasrany. "Out, they cried, with all thy papers ! " and snatched them from my hands : " We go with these, they said now, to the Emir." They passed out; the gates were shut after them : and I was left alone in the court. The scelerat remained who had struck me : he came to me presently with his hand on his sword, and murmured, "Thou kafir ! say La ilah ill' Ullah;" and there came another and another. I sat upon the clay bench in the moonlight, and answered them, "To-morrow I will hear you; and not now, for I am most weary." Then they plucked at my breast (for money) ! I rose, and they all swarmed about me. — The porter had said a word in my ear, "If thou hast any silver commit it to me, for these will rob thee : " but now I saw he was one of them himself ! All the miscreants being upon me, I thought I might ex claim, " Haramieh, thieves ! ho ! honest neighbours ! " and see what came of it ; but the hour was late, and this part of the town solitary. — -None answered to my voice, and if any heard me, doubtless their hearts would shrink within them ; for the Arabs [inhabiting a country weakly governed and full of alarms] are commonly dastards. When I cried thieves ! I saw my tor mentors stand a little aghast: "Shout not (they said hoarsely) or by Ullah — !" So I understood that this assailing me was of their own ribald malice, and shouted on ; and when I began to move my arms, they were such cowards that, though I was infirm, I might, I perceived, with a short effort have delivered myself from them : yet this had been worse — for then they would re turn with weapons ; and I was enclosed by walls, and could not escape out of the town. Six were the vile crew struggling with me : I thought it best to shout on haramieh ! and make ever some little resistance, to delay the time. I hoped every moment that the officer would return from the Emir. Now my light purse was in their brutish hands ; and that which most troubled me, the aneroid barometer, — it seemed to them a watch in the starlight ! The Kahtany snatched and burst the cord by which the delicate instrument was suspended from my neck; and ran away with it like a hound with a good bone in his mouth. They had plucked off my mantle and kerchief; and finally the Aullains left me standing alone in a pair of slops : then they hied all together to the door wdiere my bags lay. But I thought they would not immediately find my pistol in the dark ; and so it was. — Now the Emir's man stood again at the gate, beating and calling loudly to be admitted : and the porter went like a truant to open. " What has happened ?" quoth the officer who en- 3l8 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. tered. " They have stripped the Nasr&ny." — " Who has done this ? " " It was the Kahtany, in the beginning." " And this fellow, I answered, was one of the nimblest of them !" The rest had fled into the hostel building, when the Emir's man came in. " Oh, the shame ! (quoth the officer) that one is robbed in the Kasr of the Emir ; and he a man who bears letters from the Sooltan, what have you done ? the Lord curse you all to gether." "Let them, I said, bring my clothes, although they have rent them."—" Others shall be given thee by the Emir." The lurkers came forth at his call from their dark corners; and he bade them, "Bring the stranger his clothes: — and all, he said to me, that they have robbed shall be restored, upon pain of cutting off the hand ; wellah the hand of anyone with whom is found aught shall be laid in thy bags for the thing that was stolen. I came to lead thee to a lodging prepared for thee; but I must now return to the Emir: — and (naming them) thou, and thou, and thou, do no more thus, to bring on you the displeasure of the Emir." They answered, "We had not done it, but he refused to say, La ilah ill' Ullah." — " This is their falsehood ! — for to please them I said it four or five times; and hearken! I will say it again, La ilah, ill' Ullah." — Officer : "I go, and shall be back anon." — " Leave me no more among robbers." — "Fear not, none of them will do anything further against you" ; and he bade the porter close the gates behind him. He returned soon: and commanded those wretches, from the Emir, "upon pain of the hand," to restore all that they had robbed from the Nasrany ; he bade also the porter make a fire in the porch, to give us light. The Kahtany swordsman, who had been the ringleader of them — he was one of the Emir's band — adjured me to give a true account of the money which was in my purse : ' for my words might endanger his hand ; and if I said but the sooth the Lord would show me mercy.' — ¦ "Dost thou think, Miserable, that a Christian man should be such as thyself!" — "Here is the purse, quoth the officer; how much money should be therein? take it, and count thy derdhim [Spa-xfi-]." I found their barbarous hands had been in it ; for there remained only a few pence ! " Such and such lacks." — Officer: "Oh! ye who have taken the man's money, go and fetch it, and the Lord curse you." The swordsman went ; and came back with the money, — two French gold pieces of 20 francs : all that remained to me in this bitter world. Officer : " Say now, is this all thy ful4s ?"—" That is all"— "Is there any more?" " No !" — The KahtMy showed me his thanks with a wondering brutish visage. Officer: "And what more?" — " Such and such." THE MORROW IN BOREYDA. 319 The wretches went, and came again Avith the small things and what else they had time, after stripping me (it was by good fortune but a moment), to steal from my bags. Officer: "Look now, hast thou all, is there anything missing?" — " Yes, my watch " (the aneroid, which after the pistol was my most care in Arabia); but they exclaimed, "What watch! no, we have restored all to him already." Officer : "Oh, you liars, you cursed ones, you thieves, bring this man his watch! or the (guilty) hand is forfeited to the Emir." It was fetched with delays; and of this they made restitution with the most un willingness : the metal gilt might seem to them fine gold. — To my comfort, I found on the morrow that the instru ment was uninjured : I might yet mark in it the height of a fathom. He said now, 'It was late, and I should pass the night here.' — "Lend me a sword, if I. must sleep in this cursed place; and if any set upon me again, should I spare him?" — "There is no more danger, and as for these they shall be locked in the coffee-hall till the morning:" and he led away the offenders. — The officer had brought my papers: only the safe-conduct of Aneybar was not among them ! When the day broke the Emir's officer — whose name was Jeyber— returned to me : I asked anew to visit the Emir. Jeyber answered, he must first go and speak with him. When he came again, he laid my bags on his infirm shoulders saying, he would .bring me to my lodging. He led me through an outlying street; and turned into a vast ruinous yard, before a great building — now old and crumbling, that had been the Emir's palace in former days [the house walls here of loam may hardly stand above one hundred years]. We ascended by hollow clay stairs to a great hall above ; where, two women, his housewives, were sitting. Jeyber, tenant of all the rotten palace, was a tribesman of Kahtan. In the end was a further room, which he gave me for my lodging. " I am weary, and thou more, said he ; a cup of kahwa will do us both good:" Jeyber sat down at his 'hearth to prepare the morrow's coffee. In that there came up some principal persons of the town; clad in the (heavy) Mesopotamian wise. A great number of the well-faring sort in Boreyda are jemmamil, camel masters trading in the caravans. They are wheat car riers in Mesopotamia; they bring down clothing and temmn to Nejd; they load dates and corn of Kasim (when the prices serve) for el-Medina. In autumn they carry samn, 320 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. which they have taken up from the country Nomads, to Mecca; and from thence they draw coffee. These burly Arabian citizens resemble peasants ! they were travelled men ; but I found in them an implacable fanaticism. Jeyber said when they were gone, "Now shall we visit the Emir?" We went forth; and he brought me through a street to a place, before the Prince's house. A sordid fellow was sit ting there, like Job, in the dust of their street : two or three more sate with him, — he might be thirty-five years of age. I enquired, 'Where was Abdullah the Emir?' They said "He is the Emir!" — "Jeyber (I whispered), is this the Emir?" — "It is he." I asked the man, "Art thou Weled Mahanna?" He answered, "Ay." " Is it (I said) a custom here, that strangers are robbed in the midst of your town ? I had eaten of your bread and salt ; and your servants set upon me in your yard." — "They were Beduw that robbed you." — "But I have lived with the Beduw ; and was never robbed in a menzil : I never lost anything in a host's tent. Thou sayest they were Beduins ; but they were the Emir's men!" — Abdullah: "I say they were Kahtan all of them." He asked to see my 'watch'. " That I have not with me ; but here is a telescope ! " He put this to his eyes and returned it. I said, " I give it thee ; but thou wilt give me other clothing for my clothing which the Emir's servants have rent." — He would not receive my gift, the peasant would not make the Nasrany amends; and I had not money to buy more. " To-day, said he, you depart." —"Whither?"- — "To Aneyza; and there are certain cameleers — they left us yesterday, that are going to Sidd4s: they will convey thee thither." — At Siddiis (which they suppose to have been a place of pilgrimage of the idolatrous people of the country or " Christians " before Mohammed), is an antique "needle" or column, with some scoring or epigraph. [Vol. I. p. 205.] But this was Abdullah's guile, he fabled with me of cameleers to Siddiis: and then he cries, "Mm yeshil, who will convey the Nasrany on his camel to el-Wady?" — which I afterwards knew to ' signify the palms at the Wady er- Rummah: I said to him, 'I would rest this day, I was too weary for riding.' Abdullah granted (albeit unwillingly) ; for all the Arabians [inhabitants of a Aveary land] tender human infirmities. — " Well, as thou wilt ; and that may suffice thee." ¦ — There came a young man to bid me to coffee. "They call you, said Abdullah, and go with him." I followed the messenger and Jeyber: we came to some principal house in the town; and there we entered a pleasant coffee-hall I saw the walls TRAGEDIES OF THE BOREYDA EMIRS. 321 pargetted with fret-work in gypsum ; and about the hearth were spread Persian carpets. The sweet ghrottha firewood (a tamarisk Kmd of the' NefM) glowed in the hearth, and more was laid up m a niche ready to the coffee maker's hand : and such is the cleanly civil order of all the better citizen households in -Kasim. Here sat a cold fanatical conventicle of well-clad per sons ; and a young man was writing a letter after an elder's words. But that did not hinder his casting some reproach, at eve.ry Pause> upon the Christian stranger, blaspheming that which he called my impure religion.— How crabbed seemed to me his young looks, moved by the bestial spirit within ! I took it to be of evil augury that none blamed him. And contempt ible to an European was the solemn silence of these infantile greybeards, in whom was nothing more respectable than their apparel! I heard no comfortable word among them; and wondered why they had called me ! after the second cup, I left them sitting; and returned to Jeyber's place, which is called the palace Hajellan : there a boy met me with two dry girdle- breads, from the guest-house. Such sour town bread is crude and tough; and I could not swallow it, even in the days of famine. The Kasr Hajelldn was built by Abdullah, son of Abd-el- Aziz, princes of Boreyda. Abdullah was murdered by Mahanna, when he usurped the government with the countenance of the Wahaby. Mahanna was sheykh over the town for many years, and his children are Hasan (now emir) and Abdullah. The young sons of the Prince that was slain fled to the neighbour town of Aneyza. — And after certain years, in a spring season, when the armed band was encamped with Hasan in the Nefud, they stole over by night to Boreyda ; and lay hid in some of their friends' houses. And on the morrow, when the tyrant passed by, going to his mid-day prayers in the great mes jid, Abdullah's sons ran suddenly upon him with the knife ! and they slew him there in the midst of the street. A horseman, one of the band that remained in the town, mounted and passed the gates, and rode headlong over the NefM; till he found the ghrazzu and Hasan. — Hasan hearing this heavy tiding gave the word to mount ; and the band rode hastily homeward, to be in Boreyda that night. Abdullah in the meanwhile who, though he have a leg short, is nimble of his butcherly wit, held fast in the town. In all this fear and trouble, his Avas yet the stronger part ; and the townspeople, long daunted by the tyranny of Mahanna, Were unready to favour the young homicides. And so well D. T. 11. 21 322 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. Abdullah wrought, that ere there was any sedition, he had enclosed the princelings in an house. It was nightfall when Abdullah with his armed men came before their door; and to give light (to the horrid business), a bon-fire was kindled in the street. Abdullah's sons and a few who were their companions within, desperately defended their lives with matchlocks, upon the house head. — Some bolder spirits that came with Abdullah advanced to the gate, under a shield they had made them of a door (of rude palm boarding), with a thick layer of dates crammed upon it. And sheltered thus from weak musketry, they quickly opened a hole, poured-in powder and laid the train. A brand was fetched! — and in the hideous blast every life within the walls perished, — besides one young man, miserably wounded; who (with a sword in his hand) would have leapt down, as they entered, and escaped; and he could not: but still flying hither and thither he cursed-on and detested them, till he fell by a shot. — Hasan arriving in the night, found the slayers of his father already slain, and the town in quiet: and he was Emir of Boreyda. — Others of the princely family of this town I saw afterward dwelling in exile at Aieyza ; and one of two old brethren, my patients, now poor and blind, was he who should have been by inheritance Emir of Boreyda ! I wandered in this waste Kasr, which, as a princely resi dence, might be compared with the Kasr at Hayil ; although less, as the principality of Boreyda is less. But if we com pare the towns, Hayil is a half Beduin town-village, with a foreign siik; Boreyda is a great civil township of the mid land Nejd life. The palace court, large as a market place, is returned to the Nefud sand! Within the ruinous Kasr I found a coffee-hall having all the height of the one-storied building, with galleries above — in such resembling the halls of ancient England, and of goodly proportion : the walls of sandy clay were adorned with pargetting of jis. This silent and now (it seems) time-worn Kasr, here in the midst of Desert Arabia, had been built in our fathers' days ! I admired the gypsum fretwork of their clay walls: such dedal e work springs as a plant under the hands of the Semitic artificers, and is an imagery of their minds' vision of Nature ! — which they behold not as the Pythagoreans contained in few pure lines, but all- adorned and unenclosed. And is their crust-work from India ? We find a skill in raw clay- work in Syria; clay storing-jars, pans, he'arths and corn-hutches are seen in all their cottages.; In Lebanon the earthen walls and pillars, in some rich peasants' THE CARAVANERS' TOWN. 323 houses, are curiously crusted with clay fretwork, and stained in barbaric wise. — Admirable seemed the architecture of that clay palace ! [the sufficiency of the poorest means in the Arabs' hands to a perfect end]. The cornice ornament of these builders is that we call the shark's-tooth, as in the Mothif at Hayil. A rank of round-headed blind arches is turned for an appear ance of lightness in the outer Availing, and painted in green and red ochre. Perchance the' builder of Kasr Hajellan was some Bagdad master, mudllem — that which we may understand of some considerable buildings, standing far from any civil soil in certain desert borders. Years before I had seen a kella among the ruins of 'Utherah in mount Seir, where is a great welling pool, a watering of the Howeytat [Vol. I. p. 35] : it was a rusty building but not ruinous ; and Mahmud from Maan told me, 'The kella had been built in his time, by the Beduw!' I asked in great astonishment, "If Beduw had skill in masonry?" — Mahm4d : " Nay, but they fetched a muallem from Damascus ;. who set them to draw the best stones from the ruins, and as he showed them so the Beduins laid the courses." In that Beduin kella were not a few loopholes and arches, and the whole frame had been built by his rude prentices Avithout mortar ! In Beduins is an easy wit in any matter not too remote from their minds ; and there are tribes that in a summer's day have become ploughmen. [Vol. I. p. 15, v. also pp. 45, 46, 234, 440.] — Jeyber inhabited the crumbling walls of the old Mothif. The new peasant lords of Boreyda keep no public hospitality ; for which they are lightly esteemed by the dwellers in the desert. I went out with Jeyber to buy somewhat in the siik, and see the town. We passed through a market for cattle forage, mostly vetches : and beyond were victuallers' shops, — in some of them I saw hanging huge (mutton — perhaps Mesopota mian) sausages ! and in many were baskets of parched locusts. Here are even cook-shops — yet unknown in the Beduin- like Hayil — where one may have a warm mess of rice and boiled mutton, or else camel flesh for his penny. A stranger might live at Boreyda, in the midst of Nomad Arabia nearly as in Mesopotamia; saving that here are no coffee taverns Some of those who sat selling, green stuff in the stalls were women'— Damascus is not so civil! and there are only a few IZ saleswomen at Aneyza. Boreyda, a metropolis of Oasis Arabia s ioined to the northern settled countries by the.tradmg AraDia, 1= j ^ B Temim townsmen are not unlike the halt- bloMMArabs of those border provinces. 324 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. Elvish boys and loiterers in the street gaped upon the Nas rany stranger ; and they gathered as we went. Near the mejlis or market square there was sitting, on a clay bench, that Galla SAvordsman of the Emir, whose visage I had noted yester- evening, without the gate. The swarthy swordsman reproved Jeyber, for bringing me out thus before the people; then rising, with a stick, he laid load upon the dusty mantles of some of them, in the name of the Emir. Jeyber, liberal minded as a Beduwy but timid more than townsfolk, hearing this talk, led me back hastily by bye-streets: I would have gone about to visit another part of the town, but he brought me again by solitary ways to his place. He promised, that he would ride with me on the morrow to Aneyza ; "Aneyza, he said, is not far off." These towns were set down on maps with as much as a journey between them : but what was there heretofore to trust in maps of Arabia! Jeyber, whose stature and manners showed the Beduin blood, was of Kahtan in el-Kasim. Poor, among his tribesmen, but of a sheykhly house, he had left the desert life to be of the Emir's armed service in Boreyda. The old con trariety of fortune was written in his meagre visage ; he was little past the middle age, and his spirits half spent. The mild Beduin nature sweetened in him his Kahtany fanaticism ; and I Avas to-day a thaif-ullah in his household: he maintained therefore my cause in the town, and was my advocate with the swine Abdullah. But the fanatical humour was not quenched in him ; for some one saying, " This (man) could not go to er-Riath ; for they would kill him !" Jeyber responded, half- smiling, "Ay, they are very austere there ; they might not suffer him amongst them." He spoke also with rancour of the hetero dox Mohammedanism of Nejran [whose inhabitants are in religion Bayddiyyeh, 'like the people of Mascat']. Jeyber had passed his former life in those southern countries : Wady Dauasir, and Wady Bisha, he said, are full of good villages. The mid-day heat was come; and he went to slumber in a further part of the waste building. I had reposed somewhile, in my chamber, when a creaking of the old door, painted in vermilion, startled me ! — and a sluttish young woman entered. I asked, wherefore had she broken my rest ? Her answer was like some old biblical talk ; Tekhdlliny andm fi hothnak? ' Suffer me to sleep in thy bosom.' — Who could have sent this lurid quean ? the Arabs are the basest of enemies, — hoped they to find an occasion to accuse the Nasrany ? But the kind damsel was not daunted ; for when I chided she stood to rate the stranger ; saying, with the loathly voice of misery, ' Aha ! TUMULT. 325 the cursed Nasrany ! and I was about to be slain, by faith ful men ; that were in the way, sent from the Emir, to do it ! and I might not noAv escape them.' — I rose and put this baggage forth, and fastened the door. — But I Avondered at her words, and mused that only for the name of a Religion, (0 Chimoera of human self-love, malice and fear!) I was fallen daily into such mischiefs, in Arabia. — Now Jeyber came again from napping; and his hareem related to him the adventure: Jeyrber left us saying, he must go to the Emir. Soon after this Ave heard people of the town flocking about our house, and clamouring under the casements, which opened backward upon a street, and throwing up stones ! and some noisy persons had broken into the great front yard ! — The stair was immediately full of them: and they bounced at our door which the women had barred. — "Alas, said the hareem, wringing their hands, what can we do now ? for the riotous people will- kill thee ;¦ aM Jeyber is away." One of them was a townswoman, the- other was a Beduwia : both were good towards the guest. I sat down saying to them, "My sisters, you must defend the house with your tongues." — They Avere ready; and the townswoman looking out backward chided them that made this hubbub in the street. " Ha ! un civil people ; who- be they that throw up stones into the apart ment of the hareem ? akhs ! what would ye ? — ye seek what ? God send a sorrow upon you ! — Oh ! ye seek Khalil the Nasrany ? but here is not Khalil ; ye fools, he is not here : away Avith you. Go-! I say, for shame; and Ullah curse you." — AM she that kept the door cried to them that were with out, "Aha-! what is your will ? — akhs! who are these that beat like to break our door ? 0 ye devil-sick and shameless young men ! Khalil is not here ; he went forth, go and seek the Nasrany, go ! We have told you Khalil went forth, we know not Avhither, — akhs ! [they knocked now on. the door with stones.] Oh you shameless fellows ! would ye break through folks' doors, to the hareem ? Ullah send a very pesti lence upon you all ; and for this the Emir will punish you." Whilst she was speaking there was a confused thrusting and shuffling of feet without our door; the strokes of their sticks and- stones sounded hideously upon the wood. — The faithful women's tongues yet delayed them,! and I put my hope in the stars, that Jeyber would return with speed. But if the besiegers burst in to rend me in pieces, should I spare the foremost of them ? The hareem cried on, " Why beat thus, ye cursed people ? — akhs ! will ye beat doAvn out door indeed ? " 326 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. At length came Jeyber again ; and in the name of the Emir he drove them all forth, and locked them out of his yard. — When he entered, he shrunk up his shoulders and said to me, "They are clamouring to the Emir for thy death ! 'No Nasrany, they say, ever entered Boreyda': there is this outcry in the town, and Abdullah is for favouring the people ! — I have now pleaded with him. If, please Ullah, we may pass this night in safety, to-morrow when my thelul shall be come — and I have sent for her — I will convey thee by solitary lanes out of the place ; and bring thee to Aneyza." — As we were speaking, we heard those townspeople swarming anew in his court! the foremost mounted again upon our stairs, — and the door was open But Jeyber, threatening grievous punishments of the Emir, drove them down once more ; and out of his yard. When he returned, he asked his house-wives, with looks of mistrust, who it was had undone the gate (from within) ? which he had left barred! He said, he must go out again, to speak with Abd ullah ; but should not be long absent. I would not let him pass, till he had promised me to lock his gates, and carry the (wooden) key with him. There remained only this poor soul, and the timber of an old door, betwixt me, a lonely alien, and the fanatical wildness of this townspeople. When he came again he said the town was quiet : Abdullah, at his intercession, had forbidden to make more ado, the riotous were gone home; and he had left the gate open. After this there came up some other of the principal citizens, to visit me : they sat about the hearth in Bagdad gowns and loose kerchiefs and red caps ; whilst Jeyber made coffee. -Amongst them appeared the great white (Medina) turban — yet spotless, though he slept in it — of that old vagabund issue of the ne"by ! who a month before had been a consenting witness to my mischiefs at Hayil ! " Who art thou ? " I asked. — " Oh ! dost thou not remember the time when we were together in Hayil?" — " And returnest thou so soon from India?" — "I saw the Emir, and ended my business; also I go not to el-Hind, until after the Haj." There came in on the heels of them a young sheykh, who arrived then from Hasan's camp; which was at half a journey, in the NefM. He sat down among them and began to question with me in lordly sort ; and I enquired ' of the absent Emir. I found in him a natural mali^fe'7 and an im probity of face which became the young man's injurious insolence. After these heavy words, he said further, " Art thou Nasrany or Musslim?" — "Nasrany, -which all this town knows; now leave questioning me."—" Then the Moslemin will kill thee, please Ullah ! Hearest thou ? the Moslemin will kill thee ! " and the A PENSIVE HOST. 327 squalid young man opened a leathern mouth, that grinning on me to his misplaced lap ears, discovered vast red circles of mule's teeth. — Surely the fanatical condition in religion [though logical !] is never far from a radically ill nature ; and doubtless the javel was an offspring of generations of depraved Arab wretches. Jeyber, though I was to-day under his roof, smiled a withered half-smile of Kahtany fanaticism, hearing words which are honey to their ears, — 'a kafir to be slain by the Moslemin ! ' Because the young man was a sheykh and Hasan's messenger, I sat in some thought of his venomous speaking. When they departed, I said to Jeyber my conceit of that base young fanatic ; who answered, shrinking the shoulders, that I had guessed Avell, for he was a bad one ! — My hap Avas to travel in Arabia in time of a great strife of the religion [as they understood], with (God and His Apostle's enemies) the Nasara. And now the idle fanatical people clamoured to the Emir, ' Since Ullah had delivered a Nasrany into their hands, wherefore might they not put him to death ?' At length the sun of this troubled day was at her going down. Then I went out to breathe the cooling air upon the terrace : and finding a broken ladder climbed to a higher part of our roof, to survey this great Arabian toAvn. — But some townspeople in the street immediately, espying me, cried out, " Come down ! Come down! a kafir should not overlook a beled of the Mos lemin." Jeyber brought me a ration of boiled mutton and rice (which he had purchased in the suk) : when I had eaten he said we Avere brethren. He went out again to the Emir. Jeyber returned all doubtful and pensive ! ' The people, he said, were clamouring again to Abdullah ; who answered them, that they might deal with me as they would: he had told them already, that they might have slain the Nasrany in the desert; but it could not be done in the toAvn.' Jeyber asked me now, ' Would I forsake my bags, and flee secretly from Boreyda on foot ? ' I answered " No ! — and tell me sooth, Jeyber ! hast thou no mind to betray me?" He promised as he was a faithful man that he would not. "Well, what is the present danger?" — " I hope no more, for this night, at least in my house." — "Hoav may I pass the streets in the morning ?" — "We will pass them; the peril is not so much in the town as of their pursuing." — "How many horsemen be there in Boreyda, a score?" — "Ay, and more." — "Go quickly and tell Abdullah, Khalil says I am rdjol Dowla, one who is safeguarded (my papers declare it) by the government of the Sooltan: if an evil betide me (a guest) among you, it might draw some trouble upon yourselves. For were 328 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. it to be suffered that a traveller, under the imperial protection, and only passing by your town, should be done to death, for the name of a religion, which is tolerated by the Sooltan ? Neither let them think themselves secure here, in the midst of deserts ; for 'long is the arm of the Dowla!' Remember Jidda, and Damascus ! and the guilty punished, by commandment of the Sooltan!" Jeyber answered, 'He would go and speak these words to Abdullah.' Jeyber returned Avith better looks, saying that Abdullah allowed my words : and had commanded that none should any more molest the Nasrany; and promised him, that no evil should befall me this night. Jeyber: "We be now in peace, blessed be the Lord ! go in and rest, Khalil ; to be ready be times." I was ready ere the break of day; and thought it an hundred years till I should be out of Boreyda. At sunrise Jeyber sat down to prepare coffee; and yet made no haste! the promised thelul was not come. — "And when will thy thelul be here ? " — "At some time before noon."— "How then may we come to Aneyza to-night?" — "I have told thee, that Aneyza is not far off." My host also asked for remedies for his old infirmities. — "At Aneyza!" — "Nay but now; for I would leave them here." When he had received his medicines, Jeyber began to make it strange of his thelul-riding to Aneyza. I thought an host would not. forswear himself ; but all their life is passed in fraud and deceit. — In this came up the Kahtany who had been ring-leader in the former night's trouble; and sat down before his tribesman's hearth ; where he was wont to drink the mor row's cup. Jeyber would have me believe that the fellow had been swinged yesterday before Abdullah: I saw no such signs in him. The wretch who had lately injured me would now have maintained my cause ! I said to Jeyber's Beduin jara, who sat with us, " Tell me, is not he possessed by a jin ?" The young man answered for himself, "Ay, Khalil, I am somewhiles a little lunatic." He had come to ask the Nasrany for medicines, — in which surely he had not trusted one of his own religion. — A limping footfall sounded on the palace stairs : it Avas the lame Emir Abdullah who entered ! leaning on his staff. Sordid was the (peasant) princeling's tunic and kerchief: he sat down at the hearth, and Jeyber prepared fresh coffee. Abdullah said, — showing me a poor man standing by the door and that came in with him ; " This is he that will carry thee on his camel to Aneyza; rise! and bring out thy things." — "Jeyber promises to convey me upon his thelul." But now THE ROAD TO ANEYZA. 329 my host (who had but fabled) excused himself, saying, 'he would follow us, Avhen his thelul were come.' Abdullah gave the cameleer his wages, the quarter of a mejidy, eleven pence. — The man took my bags upon his shoulders, and brought me by a lonely street to a camel couched before his clay cottage. We mounted and rode by lanes out of the town. The palms and tillage of Boreyda lie all on this side, toAvards the W. er-Rummah betwixt a main sand-dune and the road to Aneyza; and last for three miles nearly (to el- Kh4thar). I saw their wells, sunk in the Nefud sand, — which is not deep, and through a bluish white underlying clay, into the sand-rock : these wells, steyned with dry masonry [such in West Arabia would be reckoned works of the ancients !] are begun and ended every day in el-Kasim. By-wells, of less cost, are digged like wide sand-pits to the clay level ; and they fence the sliding sides of sand with faggot-work. Over the well-hole, sunk square through the clay in the pit's midst, is set up a rude frame of ethel studs, for the wheel-work of their suMies ; such are commonly two-wheel pits. The steyned wells, made four-square, are for the draught of four camels ; and there are some double Avells of six or eight wheels, to water greater grounds, made long-square ; the camels draw out from the two sides. To the ground-water they count seven fathoms: it is eight at the summer's end. This clay is what ? — surely the silt of a river, which flowing of old in the W. er-Rummah, was an affluent of Euphrates. Here are wells, also of the ancients; especially near the end of the plantations, in the site Menzil B. Heidi. Boreyda was founded three to four centuries ago : the towns folk are reckoned to the B. Temim. They are not, I think, fully 5000 souls; and with the nigh outlying villages and hamlets, which are suburbs to Boreyda, may be 6000 persons. When we had ridden by their palms a second mile, there met us one coming from an orchard, a young man who by his fresh clothing seemed to be of the welfaring townspeople. He asked my cameleer, whose name was Hdsan, if he could deliver a letter for him in Aneyza ; and beginning to talk with me I found him to be a litterate. "Ah! quoth the young franklin, thou art a Nasrany ; in the town whither you are going, please Ullah they will make thee a Moslem ! " — He too spoke of Siddiis, and thought he had found in his crabbed books that the old name was KerMs ; and he told me, that men had worshipped sdnam, an image, there. He looked upon me as of the sect "of those ancient idolaters ! — A wonder to me Avas to 33° TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. see a new planting of ethel trees, upon the great dune of Boreyda, in this dewless and nearly rainless land, where the lowest fibres must be much above the ground-water. They set the young plants in the loose sand, and water them one year; till they have put down long roots and begin to thrive of themselves. It is a tree seldom making clean and straight stems, but which is grown in twelve years to (brittle and heavy) timber, fit for the frames of their suanies : the green sticks and boughs will burn well. — Planted with tamarisks, the sands of Arabia might become a green wood ! APPENDIX TO CHAP. XI. The Triple Rainbow.— Note by Prof. P. G. Tait, Sec.R.S.E.— The occasional appearance of additional rainbows has been long known. They are due to sunlight reflected from a lake (or, as in the present example, a surface or surfaces of wet ground and rain water) behind the spectator. The elementary principles of Optics show that, in such a case, the result is the same as if there were two suns, the second being as far below the horizon as the true sun is above it. CHAPTER XII. ANEYZA. The Nefiid (of el-Kasim). Passage of the Wady er-Rummah. The Nasrany, forsaken by his rafik, finds hospitality ; and enters Aneyza. Aspect of the town. The Emir Zamil. His uncle Aly. The townspeople. Abdullah el-Kenneyny. His house and studies. Breakfast with Zamil. The Nasrany is put out of his doctor's shop by the Emir Aly. A Zelot. Breakfast with el-Kenneyny. Eye diseases. Small-pox in the town. The streets of Aneyza. The homely and religious life of these citizens. Women are unseen. Abdullah el-Bessam. A dinner in his house. The Bessam kindred. Ndsir es-Smiry. The day in Aneyza. Jannah. el-Kenneyny' s plantation. Hamed es-Safy, Abdullah Bessam, the younger, and Sheykh Ibn Ayith. An old Ateyba sheykh: Zelotism. The infirm and destitute. The Nasrdny's friends. A tale of Omar, the first Calif. Archeology. The Kenneyny. Tlie vagabund Medina Sherif arrives at Aneyza. The good Bess&m. Now we came upon the open NefM, where I saw the sand ranging in long banks : adanat and kethib is said in this country speech of the light shifting NefM sand; Jurda is the sand-bank's weather side, the lee side or fold is Idghraf [Idhaf]. J4rda or Jorda (in the pi Jirad and Jerdd) is said of a dune or hillock, in which appear clay- seams, sand and stones, and whereon desert bushes may be grow ing. The road to Aneyza is a deep-worn drift-way in the uneven Nefud; but in the sand (lately blotted with wind and rain) I perceived no footprint of man or cattle ! — Bye and bye Hasan turned our camel from the path, to go over the dunes : we were the less likely thus to meet with Be duins not friends of Boreyda. The great tribes of these diras, Meteyr and Ateyba, are the allies of Zdmil, Emir of Aneyza. — Zamil Avas already a pleasant name in my ears: I had heard, even amongst his old foes of Harb, that Zamil Avas 332 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. a good gentleman, and that the "Child of Mahanna" (for whom, two years ago, they were in the field with Ibn Rashid, against Aneyza) was a tyrannical churl: it was because of the Harb enmity that I had not ridden from their menzils, to Aneyza. The Nefud sand was here overgrown with a canker- weed which the Aarab reckon unwholesome ; and therefore I struck away our camel that put down his long neck to browse; but Hasan said, " Nay ; the town camels eat of this herb, for there is little else." We saw a nomad child keeping sheep: and I asked my rafik, ' When should we come to Aneyza ? ' "By the sunsetting." I found the land-height to be not more than 2500 feet. When we had ridden slowly three hours, we fell again into the road, by some great-grown tamarisks. Negil, quoth Hasan, we will alight here and rest out the hot mid-day hours.' I saw trenches dug under those trees by locust. hunters. I asked, " Is it far now ?" — "Aneyza is not far off."—' "Tell me truth rafik, art thou carrying me to Aneyza?" — "Thou belie vest not;— see here!" (he drew me out a bundle of letters — and yet they seemed worn and old). "All these, he said, are merchants' letters which I am to deliver to-day in Aneyza ; and to fetch the goods from thence." — And had I not seen him accept the young franklin's letter for Aneyza! Hasan found somewhat in my words, for he did not halt ; we might be come ten miles from Boreyda. The soil shelved before us ; and under the next tamarisks I saw a little oozing water. We were presently in a wady bottom, not a stone-cast over ; and in crossing we plashed through trickling water ! I asked, " What bed is this?" — Answer: "El-Wady" — that is, we were in (the midst of) the Wady er-Rummah. We came up by oozing (brackish) water to a palm wood unenclosed, where are grave-like pits of a fathom digged beside young palm-sets to the ground Avater. The plants are watered by hand a year or two, till they have put down roots to the saltish ground moisture. It is nearly a mile to pass through this palm wood, where only few (older) stems are seen grown aloft above the rest; because such outlying possessions are first to the destruc tion in every warfare. I saw through the trees an high-built court wall, wherein the husbandmen may shelter themselves in any alarms; and Hasan showed me, in an open ground, where Ibn Rashid's tents stood two years ago, when he came with Weled Mahanna against Aneyza. We met only two negro labourers; and beyond the palms the road is again in the NefM. Little further at our right hand, were some first THE NASRANY FORSAKEN NEAR THE TOWN. 333 enclosed properties; and we drew bridle at a stone trough, a sebil, set by the landowner in his clay wall, with a channel from his suanies : the trough was dry, for none now passed by that way to or from Boreyda. We heard creaking of well-wheels and voices of harvesters in a field. "Here, said Hasan, as he put down my bags, is the place of repose : rest in the shadoAV of this Avail, Avhilst I go to water the camel And where is the girby ? that I may bring thee to drink ; you might be thirsty before evening, when it will be time to enter the town, — thus says Abdullah ; and now open thy eyes, for fear of the Beduw." I let the man go, but made him leave his spear with me. When he came again with the waterskin, Hasan said he had loosed out the camel to pasture; "and wellah Khalil I must go after her, for see ! the beast has strayed. Reach me my romh, and I Avill run to turn her, or she will be gone far out in the Nefud." — " Go, but the spear remains with me." "Ullah ! doubt not thy rafik, should I go unarmed ? give me my lance, and I will be back to thee in a moment." I thought, that if the man were faithless and I compelled him to carry me into Aneyza, he might have cried out to the fanatical townspeople : 'This is a Nasrany!' — "Our camel will be gone, do not delay me." — "Wilt thou then forsake me here?" — "No wellah, by this beard !" I cast his lance upon the sand, which taking up, he said, "Whilst I am out, if thou have need of any thing, go about the corner of the wall yonder; so thou wilt see a palm ground, and men working. Rest now in the shadow, and make thyself a little mereesy, for thou art fasting; and cover these bags ! let no man see them. Aneyza is but a little beyond that ddan there; thou mayest see the town from thence : I will run now, and return." I let him pass, and Hasan, hieing after his camel, was hidden by the sand billows. I thought soon, I Avould see what were become of him, and casting away my mantle I ran barefoot in the Nefud ; and from a sand dune I espied Hasan riding forth upon his camel — for he had forsaken me ! he fetched a circuit to go about the Wady palms homeward. I kneAv then that I was betrayed by the secret commission of Abdullah, and re membered his word, "Who will carry the Nasrany to the Wady ?" This was the cruellest fortune which had befallen me in Arabia! to be abandoned here without a chief town, in the midst of fanatical Nejd. I had but eight reals left, which might hardly more than carry me in one course to the near est coast. I returned and armed myself; and rent my maps 334 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. in small pieces, — lest for such I should be called in question, amongst lettered citizens. A negro man and wife came then from the palms, carrying firewood towards Aneyza: they had seen us pass, and asked me simply, "Where is thy companion and the camel?" — After this I went on under the clay walling towards the sound of suanies ; and saw a palm ground and an orchard house. The door was shut fast : I found another beyond ; and through the chinks I looked in, and espied the owner driving, — a plain- natured face. I pushed up his gate and entered at a venture with, " Peace be with thee ;" and called for a drink of water. The goodman stayed a little to see the stranger! then he bade his young daughter fetch the bowl, and held up his camels to speak with me. " Drink if thou wilt, said he, but we have no good water." The taste was bitter and un wholesome; but even this cup of water would be a bond between us. I asked him to lend me a camel or an ass, to carry my things to the town, and I would pay the hire. I told -further how I came hither, — with a cameleer from Boreyda ; who whilst I rested in the heat had forsaken me nigh his gate: that I was an hakim, and if there were any sick in this place I had medicines to relieve them. — "Well, bide till my lad return with a camel : — I go (he said to his daughter) with this man ; here ! have my stick and drive, and let not the camels stand.— What be they, 0 stranger, and where leftest thou thy things ? come ! thou shouldst not have left them out of sight and un guarded; how, if * we should not find them — ?" — They were safe ; and taking the great bags on my shoulders, I -tottered back over the Nefud to the good man's gate; rejoicing in wardly, that I might now bear all I possessed in the world. He bade me sit down there (without), whilst1 he went to fetch an ass. — "Wilt thou pay a piastre and a half (three pence)?" There came now three or' four grave elder men from the plantations, and they were going in at the next gate to drink .their afternoon kahwa. The goodman stayed them and said, " This is a stranger,— he cannot remain here, and we cannot receive him in our house; he asks for carriage to the town." They answered, he should do well to fetch the ass and send me to Aneyza. "And what art thou ? (they said to me) we go in now to coffee ; has anyone heard the ithin ? " Another: " They have cried to prayers in the town, but we^can- not always hear it ; — for is not the sun gone down to the assr ? then pray we here together." They took their stand devoutly, and my host joined himself to the row ; they called me also, A HUSBANDMAN'S HOSPITALITY. 335 "Come and pray, come!" — ''I have prayed already." They marvelled at my words ; and so fell to their formal reciting and prostrations. When they rose, my host came to me with troubled looks: — "Thou dost not pray, hmm !" said he; and I saw by those grave men's countenance, they were persuaded that I could be no right Moslem. "Well send him forward," quoth the chief of them, and they entered the gate. My bags were laid now upon an ass. We departed: and little beyond the first ddan, as Hasan had foretold me, was the begin ning of cornfields; and palms and fruit trees appeared, and some houses of outlying orchards. — My companion said [he was afraid !] " It is far to the town, and I cannot go there to-night ; but I will leave thee with one yonder who is ibn judd, a son of bounty ; and in the morning he will send thee to Aneyza." — We came on by a wide road and unwalled, till he drew up his ass at a rude gateway ; there was an orchard house, and he knocked loud and called, "Ibrahim !" An old father came to the gate, who opened it to the half and stayed — seeing my clothes rent (by the thieves at Boreyda) ! and not knowing what strange person I might be : — but he guessed I was some runaway soldier from the Harameyn or el- Yemen, as there had certain passed by Aneyza of late. He of the ass spoke for me ; and then that housefather received me. They brought in my bags to his clay house ; and he locked them in a store closet : so without speaking he beckoned with the hand, and led me out in his orchard, to the " diwan " (their clean sanded sitting-place in the field) ; and there left me. Pleasant was the sight of their tilled ground with corn stub bles and green plots of vetches, jet, the well-camels' provender ; and borders of a dye-plant, whose yellow blossoms are used by the townswomen to stain the partings of their hair. When this sun was nigh setting, I remembered their unlucky prayer-hour ! and passed hastily to the further side of their palms ; but I was not hidden by the clear-set rows of trees : when I came again in the twilight, they demanded of me, ' Why I prayed not ? and wherefore had I not been with them at the prayers ?' Then they said over the names of the four orthodox sects of Islam, and questioned with me, " To which of them pertainest thou ; or be'st thou (of some heterodox belief) a rdfuthy?" — a word which they pronounced with enmity. I made no answer, and they remained in some astonishment. They brought me, to sup, boiled wheat in a bowl and another of their well water ; there was no greater hospitality in that plain household. I feared the dampish (oasis) air and asked, where was the coffee chamber. Answer : " Here is no kahwa, and we drink none." 336 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. They sat in silence, and looked heavily upon the stranger, who had not prayed. He who brought me the boAvl (not one of them) was a manly young man, of no common behaviour; and he showed in his words an excellent understanding. I bade him sup with me. — "I have supped."- — "Yet eat a morsel, for the bread and salt between us :" he did so. After that, when the rest were away, I told him what I was, and asked him of the town. "Well, he said, thou art here to-night; and little re mains to Aneyza, where they will bring thee in the morning; I think there is no danger — Zamil is a good man : besides thou art only passing by them. Say to the Emir to-morrow, in the people's hearing, ' I am a soldier from Biled el-Asir ' (a good province in el-Yemen, which the Turks had lately occupied)." — Whilst we were speaking, the last ithin sounded from the town! I rose hastily; but the three or four young men, sons of Ibrahim, were come again, and began to range them selves to pray ! they called us, and they called to me the stranger with insistance, to take our places with them. I an swered: "I am over-weary, I will go and sleep. "\—The bread- and-salt Friend: "Ay-ay, the stranger says well| he is come from a journey; show him the place without more, where he may lie down." — " I would sleep in the house, and not here abroad." — "But first let him pray; ho ! thou, come and pray, come !" — The Friend: "Let him alone, and show the weary man to his rest." — " There is but the wood-house." — " Well then to the wood-house, and let him sleep immediately." One of them went with me, and brought me to a threshold : the floor was sunk a foot or two, and I fell in a dark place full of sweet tamarisk boughs. After their praying came all the brethren : they sat before the door in the feeble moonlight, and mur mured, 'I had not prayed! — and could this be a Musslim?' But I played the sleeper ; and after watching half an hour they left me. How new to us is this religiosity, in rude young men of the people ! but the Semitic religion— so cold, and a strange plant, in the (idolatrous) soil of Europe, is like to a blood passion, in the people of Moses and Mohammed. An hour before day I heard one of these brethren creeping in it was to espy if the stranger would say the dawning prayers ! When the morrow was light all the brethren stood before the door ; and they cried to me, Ma sitlleyt, ' Thou didst not say the prayer !'—" Friends, I prayed." — "Where washed you then?" — This I had not considered, for I was not of the dissembler's craft. Another brother came to call me; and he led me up the house stairs to a small, clean rnom : where ENTER ANEYZA. 337 he spread matting on the clay floor, and set before me a dish of very good dates, with a bowl of whey ; and bade me breakfast, with their homely word, fdk er-rig 'Loose the fasting spittle': (the Bed. say rij, for rik). "Drink !" said he, and lifted to my hands his hospitable bowl. — After that he brought the ass and loaded my bags, to carry them into the town. We went on in the same walled road, and passed a ruinous open gate of Aneyza. Much of the town wall was there in sight ; which is but a thin shell, with many wide breaches. Such clay walling might be repaired in few days, and Aneyza can never be taken by famine; for the wide town walls enclose their palm grounds: the people, at this time, were looking for war with Boreyda. We went by the first houses, which are of poor folk ; and the young man said he would leave me at one of the next doors, ' where lived a servant of (the Emir) Zdmil! He knocked with the ring, which [as at Damascus] thmre is set upon all their doors, like a knocker; and-'STyoung negro housewife opened: her goodman (of the bjafccner's craft) was at this hour in the suk. He was bedel or^rfblic sergeant, for Zamil : and to such rude offices, negroes-(men of a blunter metal) are commonly chosen. My baggage Avas set down in the little camel yard, of their poor but clean clay cottage. Aly the negro householder came home soon after; and finding a stranger standing in his court, he approached and kissed the guest, and led me into his small kahwa; where presently, to the pleasant note of the coffee pestle, a few persons assembled — mostly black men his neigh bours. And Aly made coffee, as coffee is made even in poor houses at Aneyza. After the cup, the poor man brought-in on a tray a good breakfast : large was the hospitality of his humble fortune, and he sat down to eat with me.- — Homeborn negroes, out of their warmer hearts, do often make good earnest of the shallow Arabian customs ! Before the cottage row I saw a waste place, el-Gd ; and some booth or two therein of the miserable Beduins: the plot, left open by the charity of the OAvner, was provided with a public pool of water running from his suanies. When later I knew them, and his son asked the Nasrany's counsel, ' What were best to do with the ground ? — because of the draffe cast there, it was noisome to the common health' — I answered, "Make it a public garden:" but that was far from their Arabian understanding. I went abroad bye and bye Avith Aly to seek Zamil ; though it were tow, too early, said my negro host : here is the beginning of the town streets, with a few poor open stalls ; the ways are cleanly. Tavo furlongs beyond is the siik, where (at these hours) D. T. 11. 22 338 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. is a busy concourse of the townspeople : they are all men, since maidens and Avives come not openly abroad. — At a cross street there met us two young gallants. "Ha! said one of them to Aly, this stranger with thee is a Nasrany;" — and turning to me, the coxcombs bid me, "Good morrow, khawaja:" I answered them, "I am no khawaja, but an Engleysy; and how am I of your acquaintance?" — "Last night we had word of thy coming from Boreyda : Aly, whither goest thou with him ?" That poor man, who began to be amazed, hearing his guest named Nasrany, answered, " To Zamil." — " Zamil is not yet sitting; then bring the Nasrany to drink coffee at my beyt. We are, said they, from Jidda and wont to see (there) all the kinds of Nasara." They led us upstairs in a great house, by the market- square, which they call in Kasim el-Mejlis : their chamber was spread with Persian carpets. These young men were of the Aneyza merchants at Jidda. One of them showed me a Winchester (seventeen shooting) rifle ! 'and there were fifty more (they pretended) in Aneyza : with such guns in their hands they were not in . dread of warfare [which they thought likely to be renewed] with Ibn Rashid: in the time of the JehM they had exercised them selves as soldiers at Jidda.' They added maliciously, "And if we have war with Boreyda, wilt thou be our captain?" We soon left them. Aly led me over the open market- square : and by happy adventure the Emir was now sitting in his place ; that is made under a small porch upon the Mejlis, at the street corner which leads to his owm (clay) house, and in face of the clothier's siik. In the Emir's porch are two clay banks ; upon one, bespread with a Persian carpet, sat Zamil, and his sword lay by him. Zamil is a small-grown man with a pleasant weerish visage, and great understanding eyes : as I -approached, he looked up mildly. When I stood before him Zamil rose a little in his seat and took me by the hand, and said kindly, "Be seated, be seated !" so he made me sit beside him. I said, "I come now from Boreyda, and am a hakim, an Engleysy, a Nasrany; I have these papers with me; and it may please thee to send me to the coast." Zamil perused that which I put in his hand : — as he read, an uneasy cloud was on his face, for a moment! But looking up pleasantly, "It is well, he re sponded ; in the meantime go not about publishing thyself to the people, 'I am a NasraMiy;' say to them, ana askary, I am a (runaway Ottoman) soldier. Aly return home with Khalil, and bring him after midday prayers to kahwa in my house: but, Avalk not in the public places." ZAMIL, EMIR OF ANEYZA. 339 We passed homeAvards through the clothiers' street, and by the butchers' market. The busy citizens hardly regarded us ; yet some man took me by the sleeve ; and turning, I saw one of those half-feminine slender figures of the Arabians, with painted eyes, and clad in the Bagdad wise. "O thou, min eyn, from whence? quoth he, and art thou a Nasrany?" I answered, "Ay:" yet if any asked, "Who is he with thee, Aly ?" the negro responded stoutly, "A stranger, one that is going to Kuweyt." — Aneyza seemed a pleasant town, and stored with all things needful to their civil life : we went on by a well-built mesjid ; but the great mesjid is upon the public place,— all building is of clay in the Arabian city. In these days the people's talk was of the debate and breach between the town and Boreyda: although lately Weled Ma hanna wrote to Zamil ana weled-ak, ' I am thy child (to serve and obey thee)'; and Zamil had written, "I am thy friend." "Wellah, said Aly's gossips at the coffee hearth, there is no more passage to Boreyda : but in few days the allies of Zamil will be come up from the east country, and from the south, as far as Wady Dauasir." Then, they told me, I should see the passing continually through this street of a multitude of armed men. After the noon ithin we went down to Zamil's (homely) house, which is in a blind way out of the mejlis. His coffee room was spread with grass matting (only) ; and a few persons were sitting with him. Zamil's elder son, Abdullah, sat behind the hearth, to make coffee. Tidings were brought in, that some of the townspeople's asses had been reaved in the NefM, by Ateyban (friendly Nomads) ! — Zamil sent for one of his armed riders : and asked him, ' Was his dromedary in the town?' — "All ready." — "Then take some with you, and ride on their traces, that you may overtake them to-day!" — "But if I lose the thelul — ?" (he might fall amongst enemies). Zamil answered, " The half loss shall be mine ; " and the man went out. Zamil spoke demissly, he seemed not made to command ; but this is the mildness of the natural Arab sheykhs. — Aly, uncle of the Emir, entered hastily! Zamil some years ago appointed him executive Emir in the toAvn ; and when Zamil takes the field he leaves Aly his lieutenant in Aneyza. Aly is a dealer in camels ; he has only few fanatical friends. All made him room, and the great man sat down in the highest place. Zamil, the Emir and host, sat leaning on a pillow in face of the company ; and his son Abdullah sat drinking a pipe of tobacco, by the hearth ! — but this would not be tolerated in the street. The coffee was ready, 22—2 34° TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. and he who took up the pot and the cups went to pour out first for Zamil; but the Emir beckoned mildly to serve the Emir Aly. When the coffee had been poured round, Zamil said to his uncle, " This stranger is an hakim, a traveller from es-Sham: and we will send him, as he desires, to Kuweyt."- — Aly full of the Wahaby fanaticism vouchsafed not so much as to cast an eye upon me. " Ugh ! quoth he, I heard say the man is a NasrMy: wouldst thou have a Nasrany in thy town?" Zd- rnil: "He is a passenger; he may stay a few days, and there can be no hurt!" "Ugh!" answered Aly; and when he had swal lowed his two cups he rose up crabbedly, and went forth. Even Zamil's son was of this Wahaby humour ; twenty years might be his age : bold faced was the young man, of little sheykhly promise, and disposed, said the common speech, to be a niggard. Now making his voice big and hostile, he asked me — for his wit stretched no further, " What is thy name ?" When all were gone out, Zamil showed me his fore-arms corroded and inflamed by an itching malady which he had suffered these twenty years ! — I have seen the like in a few more persons at Aneyza. He said, like an Arab, "And if thou canst cure this, we will give thee ful4s!" Already some sick persons were come there to seek, the hakim, when I returned to Aly's ; and one of them offered me an empty dokdn, or little open shop in a side street by the suks. — Aly found an ass to carry my bags : and ere the mid-afternoon I was sitting in my doctor's shop : and mused, should I here find rest in Arabia ? when the mue'thin cried to the assr prayers ; there was a trooping of feet, and neighbours went by to a mesjid in the end of the street.— Ay, at this day they go to prayers as hotly as if they had been companions of the Nelby! I shut my shop with the rest, and sat close ; I thought this shutter would shield me daily from their religious importunity. — ¦ "Ullahu akhbar, Ullahu akhbar!" chanted the mue"thins of the town. After vespers the town is at leisure ; and principal per sons go home to drink the afternoon coffee with their friends. Some of the citizens returning by this street stayed to see the Nasrany, and enquire what were his medicines ; for nearly all the Arabs are diseased, or imagine themselves to be sick or else bewitched. How quiet was the behaviour of these towns folk, many of them idle persons and children ! but Zamil's word was that none should molest Haj Khalil, — so the good gen tleman (who heard I had been many times in the "Holy" City) called me, because it made for my credit and safety among the people. The civil countenance of these midland Arabian ABDULLAH EL-KENNEYNY. 341 citizens is unlike the (Beduish) aspect of the townsmen of Hayil, that tremble in the sight of Ibn Rashid : here is a free township under the natural Prince, who converses as a private man, and rules, like a great sheykh of Aarab, amongst his brethren. Zamil's descent is from the Sbeya, first Beduin colonists of this loam-bottom in the Nefud. At this day they are not many families in Aneyza; but theirs is the Emirship, and therefore they say henna el-4mera, 'we are the Emirs.' More in number are the families of the Beny Khdlid, tribesmen of that ancient Beduin nation, Avhose name, before the Wahaby, was greatest in Nejd; but above an half of the toAvn are B.- Temim. There are in Aneyza (as in every Arabian place) several wards or parishes under hereditary sheykhs ; but no malcontent factions, — they are all cheerfully subject to Zamil. The people living in unity, are in no dread of foreign enemies. Some principal persons went by again, returning from their friends' houses. — One of them approached me, and said, " Hast thou a knowledge of medicine ? " The tremulous figure of the speaker, with some drawing of his face, put me in mind of the Algerine Mohammed Aly, at Medain Salih ! But he that stood here was a gentle son of Temim, whose good star went before me from this day to the end of my voyage in Arabia ! Taking my hand in his hand, which is a kind manner of the Arabs, he said, "Wilt thou visit my sick mother?" He led me to his house gate not far distant; and entering himself by a side door he came round to open for me : I found within a large coffee-hall, spread with well-wrought grass mat ting, which is fetched hither from el-Hdsa. The walls were pargetted with fretwork of jis, such as I had seen at Boreyda. A Persian tapet spread before his fire-pit was the guests' sitting place; and he sat down himself behind the hearth to make me coffee. This was Abdullah el-Kenneyny, the fortunate son of a good but poor house. He had gone forth a young man from Aneyza ; and after the first hazards of fortune, was grown to be one of the most considerable foreign merchants. His traffic was in corn, at Bosra, and he lived willingly abroad ; for his heart was not filled in Aneyza, where he despised the Wahaby straitness and fanaticism. In these days leaving his merchandise at Bosra to the care of a brother (Salih, who they told me little resembles him), Abdullah was come to pass a leisure year at home ; where he hoped to refresh his infirm health in the air of the NefM. When I looked in this man's face he smiled kindly. — " And 342 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. art thou, said he, an Engleysy ? but wherefore tell the people so, in this wild fanatical country? I have spent many years in foreign lands, I have dwelt at Bombay, which is under government of the Engleys : thou canst say thus to me, but say it not to the ignorant and foolish people ; — what simplicity is this! and incredible to me, in a man of Europa. For are we here in a government country? no, but in land of the Aarab, where the name of the Nasara is an execration. A Nasrany they think to be a son of the Evil One, and (therefore) deserving of death : an half of this townspeople are Wahabies." — " Should I not speak truth, as well here as in mine own country?" Abdullah: "We have a tongue to further us and our friends, and to illude our enemies ; and indeed the more times the lie is better than the sooth. — Or dreadest thou, that Ullah would visit it upon thee, if thou assentedst to them in appearance ? Is there not in everything the good and evil ?" [even in lying and dissembling.] — "I am this second year, in a perilous country, and have no scathe. Thou hast heard the proverb, ' Truth may walk through the world unarmed '." — " But the Engleys are not thus ! nay, I have seen them full of policy .-: in the late warfare between Abdullah and SaM ibn SaM, their Resident on the Gulf sent hundreds of sacks of rice, secretly, to SaM [the wrongful part ; and for such Abdullah the Wah&by abhors the English name]. — I see you will not be persuaded ! yet I hope that your life may be preserved : but they will not suffer you to dwell amongst them ! you will be driven from place to place." — "This seemed to me a good peaceable town, and are the people so illiberal ?" — "As many among them, as have travelled, are liberal; but the rest no. Now shall we go to my mother?" Abdullah led me into an inner room, from Avhence we as cended to the floor above. He had bought this great new (clay) house the year before, for a thousand reals, or nearly £200 sterling. The loam brickwork at Aneyza is good, and such house-walls may stand above one hundred years. His rent, for the same, had been (before) but fifteen reals; house property being reckoned in the Arabian countries as money laid up, and not put out to usury, — a sure and lawful possession. The yearly fruit of 1000 dollars, lent out at Aneyza, were 120 ; the loss therefore to the merchant Abdullah, in buying this house, was each year 100 reals. But dwelling under their own roof, they think they enjoy some happy security of fortune : although the walls decay soon, it will not be in their children's time. In Abdullah's upper storey were many good chambers, but bare to our eyes, since they have few more moveables than THE BEGINNING OF HIS FRIENDSHIP. 343 the Beduw : all the husbandry of his great town-house might have been carried on the backs of three camels ! In the Arabic countries the use of bed-furniture is unknown ; they lie on the floor, and the wellborn and welfaring have no more than some thin cotton quilt spread under them, and a coverlet : I saw only a few chests, in which they bestow their clothing. Their houses, in this land of sunny warmth, are lighted by open loopholes made high upon the lofty walls. But Abdullah was not so simply housed at Bosra ; for there — in the great world's side, the Arab merchants' halls are garnished with chairs: and the Aneyza tdjir (sat like the rest) upon a takht or carpeted settle in his counting-house. He brought me to a room where I saw his old mother, sitting on the floor; and clad— so are all the Arabian women, only in a calico smock dipped in indigo. She covered her old visage, as we entered, with a veil ! Abdullah smiled to me, and looked to see "a man of Europa" smile. " My mother, said he, I bring thee el-hakim ; say what aileth thee, and let him see thine eyes :" and with a gentle hand he folded down her veil. " Oh ! said she, my head ; and all this side so aches that I cannot sleep, my son." Abdullah might be a man of forty; yet his mother was abashed, that a strange man must look upon her old blear eyes. — We returned to the coffee room perfect friends. "My mother, said he, is aged and suffering, and I suffer to see her; if thou canst help us, that will be a great comfort to me." Abdullah added, " I am even now in amazement ! that, in such a country, you openly avow yourself to be an English man ; but how may you pass even one day in safety ! You have lived hitherto with the Beduw ; ay, but it is otherwise in the townships." — "In such hazards there is nothing, I suppose, more prudent than a wise folly." — " Then, you will not follow better counsel 1 but here you may trust in me : I will watch for you, and warn you of any alteration in the town." I asked, "And. what of the Emir?"— "You may also trust Zamil; but even Zamil cannot at all times refrain the unruly multitude." — In the clay-built chamber of the Arabs, with casements never closed, is a sweet dry air, as of the open field ; and the perfume of a serene and hospitable human life, not knowing any churlish superfluity : yet here is not whole human life, for bye and bye we are aware of the absence of women. And their bleak walling is an uncheerfulness in our sight : pictures — those gracious images that adorn our poorest dwellings, were but of the things. which are vain in the gross vision of their Mohammedan austerity. The Arabs, who sit on the 344 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. floor, see the world more indolently than we : they must rise with a double lifting of the body. — In a wall-niche by the fire were Abdullah's books. We were now as brethren, and I took them down one by one : a great tome lay uppermost. I read the Arabic title Encyclopedia Bustdny, Beyr4t, — Bustany (born of poor Christian folk in a Lebanon village), a printer, gazet teer, schoolmaster, and man of letters, at Beyriit : every year he sends forth one great volume more, but so long an enterprise may hardly be ended. Abdullah's spectacles fell out at a place which treated of artesian wells: he pored therein daily, and looked to find some mean of raising water upon his thirsty acres without camel labour. Abdullah enriched abroad, had lately bought a palm and corn ground at home ; and not content with the old he had made in it a new well of eight camels' draught. I turned another leaf and found "Burning Mountain," and a picture of Etna. He was pleased to hear from me of the old Arab usurpers of Sicilian soil, and that this mountain is even now named after their words, Gibello (Jebel). I turned to "Tele graph", and Abdullah exclaimed, "Oh! the inventions in Europa ! what a marvellous learned subtlety must have been in him who found it!" When he asked further of my profession of medicine ; I said, "I am such as your Solubba smiths — better than none, where you may not find a better."- — Yet Abdullah always believed my skill to be greater than so, because nearly all my reasonable patients were relieved; but especially his own mother. Whilst we were discoursing there came in two of the foreign-living Aneyza townsmen, a substantial citizen and his servant, clad in the Mesopotamian guise, with head-bands, great as turbans, of camel wool The man had been jemmdl, a camel carrier in the Irak traffic to Syria, — that is in the long trade-way about by Aleppo ; but after the loss of the cara van, before mentioned [Vol. I. p. 602], having no more heart for these ventures, he sold his camels for fields and plough shares. To-day he was a substantial farmer in the great new corn settlement, el-Amdra (upon the river a little north of Bosra), and a client of Kenneyny's — one of the principal grain merchants in the river city. The merchant's dinner tray was - presently borne in, and I rose to depart ; but Abdullah made me sit down again to eat with them, though I had been bidden in another place. — I passed this one good day in Arabia ; and- all the rest were evil because of the people's fanaticism. At night I slept on the cottage terrace of a poor patient, Aly's neighbour ; not liking the unswept dokan for a lodging, and so far from friends. THE WAHABY EMIR ALY. 345 At sunrise came Aly, from Zamil, to bid me to breakfast — the bread and salt offered to the (Christian and Frankish) stranger by the gentle philosophic Emir. We drank the morn ing cup, at the hearth ; then his breakfast tray was served, and we sat down to it in the midst of the floor, the Emir, the Nasrany and Aly : for there is no such ignoble observing of degrees in their homely and religious life. — The breakfast fare in Aneyza is warm girdle-bread [somewhat bitter to our taste, yet they do not perceive the bitterness, ' Avhich might be because a little salt is ground with the corn,' said Abdullah] : therewith we had dates, and a bowl of sweet (cow) butter. A bowl of (cow) butter milk is set by; that the breakfasters may drink of it after eating, when they rise to rinse the hands ; and for this there is a metal ewer and basin. The water is poured over the fingers ; and without more the breakfasters take leave : the day begins. I went to sit in my dokan, where Zamil sent me bye and bye, by Aly, a leg of mutton out of the butchers' siik, "that I might dine well." Mutton is good at Aneyza: and camel's flesh is sold to poor folk. A leg of their lean desert mutton, which might weigh five or six pounds, is sold for sixpence: this meat, with scotches made in it and hung one day to the ardent sun, will last good three days. Beduins bring live gazelle fawns into the town ; which are often bought by citi zens to be fostered, for their children's pastime : these dearlings of the desert were valued at eight pence. I had not long been sitting in my dokan before one came to put me out of it ! he cried churlishly with averted face — so that I did not know him — to the negro Aly, who stood by, "Out! with these things!" The negro shouted again, "The Nasrany is- here with Zamil's knowledge: wilt thou strive with Zamil ! " The other (who was Aly the second or execu tive emir) muttered between his teeth, "Zamil quoth he, ugh ! — the dokan is mine, and I say out ! ugh ! out of my dokan, out, out ! " But the negro cried as loud as he, " Zamil he is Emir of this town, and what art thou?" — "I am Emir." The emir Aly respected my person — to me he spoke no word, and I was ready to content him; the shop he said was his own. But my friends had not done well to settle me there: the violence of the Wahaby Aly, in contempt of the liberal Emir Zamil, would hearten the town fanatics against the Nasrany. — This was the comedy of the two Alyes. The white Aly spurned-to the door, and drew the bolt ; and the same day he had driven me out of the town, but Zamil would not hear of it. I remained with my bags in the street, and idle persons came to look on ; but the negro Aly vehemently 346 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. threatened, that 'Zamil would pluck out the eyes and the tongue of any that molested me !' The hot morning hours advanced to high noon ; and when the muefhins chanted I was still sitting in the street by my things, in the sight of the malevolent people, who again flocked by me to the mesjid. — " Ullah ! this is one who prays not," quoth every passing man. After them came a lad of the town, whose looks showed him to be of impure sinister con ditions ! and bearing a long rod in his hand : therewith of his godly zeal — that is an inhuman envy and cruelty ! he had taken upon him to beat in late-lingerers to the prayers. Now he laid hands on the few lads, that loitered to gape upon the Nas rany, and cried, " Go pray, go pray ! may Ullah confound you !" and he drove them before him. Then he threatened Aly, who remained with me ; and the poor man, hearing God named, could not choose but obey him. The shallow dastard stood finally grinning upon me, — his rod was lifted! and doubtless he tickled in every vein with the thought of smiting a kafir, for God's sake : but he presently vailed it again, — for are not the Nasara reputed to be great strikers ? In this time of their prayers, some Beduins [they were perhaps Kahtan] issued from a house near by, to load upon their kneeling camels. I went to talk with them and hear their loghra: but Beduins in a town are townsmen, and in a journey are hostile ; and with maledictions they bade me stand off, saying, " What have we to do with a kafir ? " Aly would have me speak in the matter of the dokan to Zamil. I found Zamil in the afternoon at his house door: and he said, with mild voice, "We will not enter, because the kahwa is full of Beduw" [Meteyr sheykhs, come in to consult with the town, of their riding together against the Kahtan]. We walked in his lane, and sat down under a shadowing wall in the dust of' the street. "Have you lost the dokan? said Zamil, well, tell Aly to find you another." — Yesterday some Aneyza tradesmen to the nomads had been robbed on the Boreyda road, and three camel loads of samn were taken from them — nearly half a ton, worth 200 reals: the thieves were Kahtan. The intruded Kahtan in el-Kasim were of the Boreyda alliance; and Zamil sent a letter thither, complaining of this injury, to ^Abdullah. Abd ullah wrote word again, " It was the wild Beduw : lay not their misdeed to our charge." Zamil now sent out thirty young men of good houses, possessing theluls in the town, to scour the- NefM — [they returned six days later to Aneyza, having seen nothing]. Zamil spoke not much himself in the SEEKING A LODGING. 347 town councils : but his mind was full of solicitude ; and it was said of him in these days, that he could not eat. Aly found me so wretched a tenement, that my friends exclaimed, "It is an house of the rats ! it is not habitable." The negro answered them, He had sought up and down, but that everyone repulsed him saying, "Shall a Nasrany harbour in my beyt?" The ruinous house was of a miserable old man, a patient of mine, who demanded an excessive daily hire, al though he had received my medicines freely. Aly qn the morrow persuaded a young negro neighbour, who had a small upper chamber, empty, to house the hakim ; promising him that the Nasrany should cure his purblind father. — I went to lodge there : the old father was a freed-man of Yah/yds house (after ward my friends). The negro host was a pargetter ; it was his art to adorn the citizens' coffee-halls with chequered daubing and white fretwork, of gypsum. We may see, even in the rudest villages of Arabia, the fantasy they have for whitening ; their clay casements are commonly blanched about with jis: the white is to their sense light and cheerfulness, as black is balefulness. ["A white day to thee!" is said for "good-mor row" in the border countries : Syrian Moslems use to whiten their clay sepulchres. — Paul cries out, in this sense, "Thou whited walling !"] "Now ! quoth the young negro, when I entered his dwelling, let them bibble-babble that Avill, sixty thousand bibble-bab- blings,"- — because for the love of his aged father, he had received the kafir. His narrow kahwa was presently full of town folk ; and some of them no inconsiderable persons. It was for the poor man's honour to serve them with coffee, of the best ; and that day it cost a shilling, which I was careful to restore to him. All these persons were come in to chat curiously of their maladies with the hakim, whose counsels should cost them nothing ; they hoped to defraud him of the medicines, and had determined in their iniquitous hearts to keep no good will for the Nasrany again. And I was Avilling to help them, in aught that I might, without other regard. At the next sunrise I went to breakfast with Kenneyny: this cheerful hour is not early in that sunny climate, where the light returns with a clear serenity ; and welfaring persons waken to renew the daily pleasures of prayers, coffee, and the friendly discourse of their easy lives. The meal times are commonly at hours when the Arabian people may honestly shun the burden of open hospitality. But the hours of the field labourers are those of the desert : breakfast is brought out to them at high 348 TRA VELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. noon, from the master's house, and they sup Avhen the sun is going down. Every principal household possesses a milch cow in this town. Each morning as I walked in the suk, some that were sick persons' friends, drew me by the mantle, and led the hakim to their houses ; where they brought me forth a break fast-tray of girdle-bread and lel>an. Thus I breakfasted twice or thrice daily, whilst the wonder lasted, and felt my strength revive. Their most diseases are of the eyes; I saw indeed hundreds of such patients ! in the time of my being at Aneyza. The pupils are commonly clouded by night-chill cataract and small-pox cataract: many lose the sight of one or even both their eyes in childhood by this scourge; and there is a blindness, which comes upon them, after a cruel aching of years in the side of the forehead. — There is nothing feasible which the wit of some men will not stir them to attempt; also we hear of eye-prickers in Arabia: but the people have little hope in them. An eye-salver with the needle, from Shuggera, had been the year before at Aneyza. Their other common diseases are rheums and the oasis fever, and the tdhal : I have seen the tetter among children. —The small pox was in the town : the malady, which had not been seen here for seven years, spread lately from some slave children brought up in the returning pilgrim caravan. Some of the town caravaners, with the profit of their sales in Mecca, use to buy slave children in Jidda, to sell them again in el-Kasim, or (with more advantage) in Mesopotamia. They win thus a few reals: but Aneyza lost thereby, in the time of my be ing there — chiefly I think by their inoculation! — "five hundred' of her free-born children ! Nevertheless the infection did not pass the Wady to Boreyda, nor to any of the Nefud villages lying nigh about them. I was called to some of their small-pox houses, where I found the sick lying in the dark ; the custom is to give them no medicines, "lest they should lose their eye sight." And thus I entered the dwellings of some of the most fanatical citizens: my other patients' diseases were commonly old and radical. — Very cleanly and pleasant are the most homes in this Arabian town, all of clay building. The tradesmen's shops are well furnished. The common food is cheaper at Boreyda; at Aneyza is better cheap of "Mecca coffee" (from el- Yemen), and of Gulf clothing. Dates, which in Kasim are valued by weight, are very good here ; and nearly 30 pounds were sold for one real. TJ^ere is an appearance of welfare in the seemly clothing of THE TOWN MANNERS. 349 this townsfolk — men commonly of elated looks and a comely liberty of carriage. They salute one another in many words, nearly as the Beduins, with a familiar grace ; for not a few of them, who live in distant orchard houses, come seldom into the town. But the streets are thronged on Fridays ; when all the townsmen, even the field labourers, come in at mid-day, to pray in the great mesjid, and hear the koran reading and preaching : it is as well their market day. The poorer towns people go clad like the Aarab ; and their kerchiefs are girded with the head-cord. These sober citizens cut the hair short — none wear the braided side-locks of the Beduw: the richer sort (as said) have upon their heads Fez caps, over which they foosely cast a gay kerchief; that they gird only when they ride abroad. As for the haggu or waist-band of slender leathern plait [it is called in Kasim hdgub or brim] which is worn even by princes in Hayil, and by the (Arabian) in habitants of Medina and Mecca, the only wearers of it here are the hareem. The substantial townsmen go training in black mantles of light Irak worsted : and the young patricians will spend as much as the cloth is worth, for a broidered collar in metal thread-work. The embroiderers are mostly women, in whom is a skill to set forth some careless grace of running lines, some flowery harmony in needlework — such as we see woven in the Oriental carpets. Gentle persons in the streets go balancing in their hands long rods, which are brought from Mecca. Hareem are unseen, and the men's manners are the more gracious and untroubled : it may be their Asiatic society is manlier, but less virile than the European. They live-on in a pious daily assurance : and little know they of stings which be in our unquiet emulations, and in our foreign religion. Mohammed's sweet-blooded faith has redeemed them from the superfluous study of the world, from the sour-breathing in hospitable wine ; and has purified their bodies from nearly every excess of living : only they exceed here, and exceed all in the East, in coffee. Marriage is easy from every man's youth ; and there are no such rusty bonds in their wedlock, that any must bear an heavy countenance. The Moslem's breast is enlarged ; he finds few wild branches to prune of his life's vine, — a plant supine and rich in spirit, like the Arabic language. There is a nobility of the religious virtue among them, and nothing stern or rugged, but the hatred of the kafir : few have great hardness in their lives. — But the woman is in bondage, and her heart has little or no refreshment. Women are not seen passing by their streets, in the daytime ; but in the evening 35° TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. twilight (when the men sit at coffee) you shall see many veiled forms flitting to their gossips' houses: and they will hastily return, through an empty suk, in the time of the last prayers, whilst the men are praying in the mesjids. A day or two after my being in Aneyza a young man of the patricians came to bid me to dinner, from his father ; who was that good man Abdullah Abd er-Rahman, el-Bessam, a merchant at Jidda, and chief of the house of Bessam in Aneyza. Abdullah el-Bessam and Abdullah el-Kenneyny were entire friends, break fasting and dining together, and going every day. to coffee in each other's houses; and they were filas4fs with Zamil. Besides the Kenneyny I found there Sheykh Ndsir, es-Smiry, a very swarthy man of elder years, of the Wahaby straitness in religion ; and who was of the Aneyza merchants at Jidda. He had lately returned — though not greatly enriched, to live in an hired house at home ; and was partner with the Kenneyny in buying every year a few young horses from the Nomads, which they shipped to Bombay for sale. The Bessam kindred — now principal in wealth at Aneyza, came hither sixty years before, from a village in el-Aruth. [In Pliny Besamna is the name of an Arabian town ; Bessam of the Beduins is el-Barr4d, a village of thirty houses, south of Shuggera in the way to Mecca.] Some of them, of late years, are established in Jidda, where now the East Nejders are as commonly called [besides es-Sherkyin, 'men of the East, Orientals'] el-Bessdm! Abdullah el-Bessam, of B. Temim, is a merchant Arabian honoured at home, and his name is Arery honourable in all Nejd ; of a joyful wise nature, full of good and gentle deeds. When Ibn Rashid came against the town two years before, with Boreyda, Zamil and the sheykhs sent out this man of integrity, to treat with him. The matter was this : Ibn Saiid came with a great ghrazzu before Aneyza, and alighted to encamp between Rasheyd's out lying palm ground and the town. His purpose was to go against Boreyda: then Ibn Rashid sallied from Hayil in defence of his allies, [v. p. 22.] — Abdullah el-Bessam (with his ready- writer Ibn Ayith) and Abdullah el-Yeh$a, the young sheykhly companion of Zamil, rode forth to Ibn Rashid, who lay encamped beyond the Wady. And he said to the Shammar Prince, "0 Child of Abdullah! we of Aneyza would to God- that no difference should grow to be an occasion of warfare between Moslemin : we desire to be a mean of peace betwixt you." Mohammed ibn Rashid : " For this also am I come out, that there might be peace." — In the end it was accorded SHEYKH NASIR ES-SMIRY. 351 among them, that Ibn Saud would withdraw from these parts ; and then would Ibn Rashid return home. Their parleying had not been without some glorious loud words of Hamiid el- Abeyd [v. supra p. 18] on the behalf of Ibn Rashid; and in such the princely man behaved himself ' like a Beduwy '. — Three days the good Bessam was a guest in the menzil of the Shammar Emir; and towards evening when he would depart the Prince Mohammed bade Mufarrij, ' lead round the red mare for Sheykh Abdullah!' But the prudent and in corrupt citizen was in no Avise to be persuaded to receive a gift from Ibn Rashid of such price. The Emir said, 'then bring the thelul, and mount the Sheykh Abdullah thereon!' — This was accepted; and Ibn Rashid clothed the two honour able men ambassadors from Aneyza with scarlet mantles and silken kerchiefs ; and gave garments to those who followed them : and they returned to the town. — The other Bessam houses in Aneyza, though some of them had trafficked with the Franks in the ports (saving a younger Abdullah, now of the foreign merchants in Bosra) were Wahabies. The people said of Abdullah, "he is a good man, but his sons are afiln (cor rupted)!" That might be of the moral malaria in the port- town of Mecca; or the unlooked-for accident of many honest fathers, that the graft of their blood in the mother's stock was faulty. Sheykh Nasir was of the B. Khalid families : there is a Beduishness in them more than in the Temimies. Though stiff in opinions, he answered me better than any man, and with a natural frankness ; especially when I asked him of the history and topography of these countries : and he first traced for me, Avith his pen, the situation of the southern Harras, — B. Abdillah, Kesshab, Turn a, 'Ashiry, 'Ajeyfa, (Rodwa, Jeheyna;) which, with the rest of the vulcanic train described in this work, before mv voyage in Arabia, were not heard of in Europe. Not long before he had embarked some of the honest gain of his years of exile under the Red Sea climate, with two more Jidda merchants, in a lading to India. Tidings out of the caravan season may hardly pass the great desert ; but he had word in these days, by certain who came up by hap from Mecca, that their vessel had not been heard of since her sailing ! and now it was feared that the ship must be lost. These foreign mer chants at the ports do never cover their sea and fire risks by an assurance, — such were in their eyes a deed of unbelief! In the meanwhile sheykh Nasir bore this incertitude of God's hand with the severe serenity of a right Moslem. This was the best company in the town : the dinner-tray 35 2 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. was set on a stool [the mess is served upon the floor in princes' houses in Hayil — Vol. I. p. 597]; and we sat half- kneeling about it. The foreign merchants' meal at Aneyza is more town-like than I had seen in Arabia: besides boiled mutton on temmn, Abdullah had his little dishes of carrots fried in butter, and bowls of custard messes or curded milk. — We sit at leisure at the European board, we chat cheerfully; but such at the Arabs' dish would be a very inept and unreasonable behaviour! — he were not a man but an homicide, who is not speechless in that short battle of the teeth for a day's life of the body. And in what sort (forgive it me, 0 thrice good friends ! in the sacrament of the bread and salt,) a dog or a cat laps up his meat, not taking breath, and is dispatched without any curiosity, and runs after to drink ; even so do the Arabs endeavour, that they may come to an end with speed: for in their eyes- it were not honest to linger at the dish ; whereunto other (humbler) persons look that should eat after them. The good Bessam, to show the European stranger the more kindness, rent morsels of his mutton and laid them ready to my hand. — Yerhamak Ullah, "The Lord be merciful unto thee," say the town guests, every one, in rising from dinner, with a religious mildness and humility. Bessam him self, and his sons, held the towel to them, without the door, whilst they washed their hands. The company returned to their sitting before the hearth ; and his elder son sat there already to make us coffee. El-Kenneyny bid me come to breakfast with him on the morrow ; and we should go out to see his orchard (which they call here jeneyny 'pleasure ground'). "Abdullah, quoth sheykh Nasir, would enquire of thee how water might be raised by some better mean than we now use at Aneyza, where a camel walking fifteen paces draws but one bucket full ! [it may be nearly three pails, 200 pails in an hour, 1500 to 2000 pails in the day's labour.] And you, a man of Europa, might be able to help us ! for we suppose you have learned geometry ; and may have read in books which treat of machines, that are so wonderful in your countries." — Nasir's Wahaby malice would sow cockle in the clean corn of our friendship, and have made me see an interested kindness in the Kenneyny ! who an swered with an ingenuous asperity, that he desired but to ask Khalil's opinion. He had imagined an artesian well flowing with water enough to irrigate some good part of Aneyza! — I had seen to-day a hand-cart on wheels, before a smith's forge ! a sight not less strange in an Arabian town, than the camel in Europe; it Avas made here for the Kenneyny. The THE DAY IN ANEYZA. 353 sany had fastened the ends of his tires unhandsomely, so that they overlapped: but his felloes, nave and spokes were very well wrought ; and in all Nejd (for the making of suany wheels — commonly a large yard of cross measure), there are perfect wheelwrights. Abdullah's dates had been drawn home on this barrow, in the late harvest; and the people marvelled to see how two men might wield the loads of two or three great camels ! The guests rise one after another and depart when the coffee is drunk, saying, Yunaam Ullah aleyk, ' The Lord be gracious unto thee;' and the host responds gently, Fi amdn illah, '(go) in the peace of the Lord.' There are yet two summer hours of daylight ; and the toAvnsmen landowners will walk abroad to breathe the freshing air, and visit their orchards. As for the distribution of the day-time in Aneyza: the people purchase their provision at the market stalls, soon after the sunrising ; the shuttered shops are set open a little later, when the tradesmen (mostly easy-living persons and land owners) begin to arrive from breakfast. The running brokers now cry up and down in the clothiers' street, holding such things in their hands as are committed to them to sell for ready money, — long guns, spears, coffee-pots, mantles, fathoms of calico, and the like. They cry what silver is bidden ; and if any person call them they stay to show their wares. Clothing- pieces brought down by the caravaners from Bagdad, are often delivered by them to the dellals, to be sold out of hand. The tradesmen, in days when no Beduins come in, have little business : they sit an hour, till the hot forenoon, and then draw their shop shutters, and go homeward; and bye and bye all the street will be empty. — At the mid-day ithin the towns men come flocking forth in all the ways, to enter the mesjids. Few salesmen return from the mid-day prayers to the siik; the most go (like the patricians) to drink coffee in friends' houses : some, who have jeneynies in the town, withdraw then to sit in the shadows of their palms. At the half-afternoon ithin, the coffee drinkers rise from the perfumed hearths, and go the third time a-praying to their mesjids. From the public prayers the tradesmen resort to the siik ; their stalls are set open, the dellals are again a-foot, and passengers in the bazaar. The patricians go home to dine ; and an hour later all the shops are shut for the day. — Citizens will wander then beyond the town walls, to return at the sun's going down, when the ithin calls men a fourth time to pray in the mesjids ! P. T. II. 23 354 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. From these fourth prayers the people go home : and this is not an hour to visit friends ; for the masters are now sitting to account with the field labourers, in their coffee-halls — where not seldom there is a warm mess of burghrol set ready for them. But husbandmen in far outlying palmsteads remain there all night ; and needing no roof, they lie down in their mantles under the stars to sleep. Another ithin, after the sun-setting hardly two hours, calls men to the fifth or last public prayers (s4lat el-akhir). It is now night; and many who are weary remain to pray, or not to pray, in their own houses. When they come again from the mesjids, the people have ended the day's religion: there is yet an hour of private friendship (but no more common assemblings) in the coffee-halls of the patricians and foreign merchants. — El-Kenneyny sent a poor kinsman of his, when we had breakfasted, to accompany me to his jeneyny, half a league distant, within the furthest circuit of town walling: he being an infirm man would follow us upon an ass. [With this kinsman of his, Sleymdn, I have afterward passed the great desert southward to the Mecca country] We went by long clay lanes with earthen walling, between fields and plantations, in the cool of the morning; but (in this bitter sun) there springs not a green blade by the (unwatered) way side ! Their cornfields were now stubbles; and I saw the lately reaped harvest gathered in great heaps to the stamping places. At the midst of the way is the site of an ancient settlement, Jannah, founded by a fendy, of that name, of B. Khalid, some time before Aneyza [which is now called Umm (Mother of) Nejd]. — There was perpetual enmity between the two villages standing a mile asunder. Jannah had been abandoned ninety- five years ; but many living persons have seen carcases of old houses still standing there, forty years ago : pargetters dig jis on the ancient site — to-day a field. The B. Khalid Aarab [before- time in el-Hasa; but in our days they wander in the north towards Kuweyt], are reckoned to the line of Keys ; and they are of Ydm, with Murra, Ajmdn, B. Hajir, el-Shamir: the Ajman are now also in the north near Kuweyt. Jannah, in the opinion of Sheykh Nasir, was founded six hundred years ago [in our xiii century], three generations or four before the building of Aneyza. Jannah in the beginning of the Wahaby Power, held with Thueyny el-M4ntefik, the great Sheykh upon the river country in the north, but Aneyza was allied with the Wahaby. The Khalidies of Jannah were VALUE OF OASIS LAND. 355 overcome in the troubles ensuing, and they forsook the place : many of them went to live in the north, the rest withdrew to Aneyza. Colonists (we have seen) of es-Sbeya, Key- sites, were the founders of Aneyza. [Their nomad tribesmen remain in el-Aruth ; Hayer is their village, they are settlers and Beduw. More of their tribesmen are in W. es-Sbeya, in the borders of Nejd and the Hejaz, four journeys northwards from Mecca; their villages are Khdrma and R4nya.] They were afterwards increased by incomers of B- Temim, who with Koreysh are Ishmaelites in the line of Elyds, brother of Keys. — So are Mozayna (Harb) from Elyas: Elyas is ibn M4thur. Koreysh, B. Assad (which were before in Jebel Ty) Temim, B. Khalid, el-Miintifik, Meteyr, Ateyba, Thakif and Sbeya are all of Muthur. — Thus Abdullah el-Bessam, who read me this lore from his book of genealogies : and "of B. Temim be sprung, he said, the B. Sdkhr." Kenneyny 's palm and corn-ground might be three and a half acres of sand soil. The farthest bay of the town wall which fenced him was there fallen away in wide breaches : and all without the sur is sand-sea of the NefM. The most had been corn land, in which he was now setting young palm plants from the Wady: for every one is paid a real. He had but forty stems of old palms, and they were of slender growth ; because of the former "weak" (empoverished) owner's insufficient water ing. And such are the most small landed men in this country; for they and their portions of the dust of this world are devoured (hardly less than in Egypt and Syria) by rich money-lenders : that is by the long rising over their heads of an insoluble usury. Abdullah's new double well-pit was six fathoms deep, sunk into the underlying crust of sand-rock; and well steyned with dry courses of sandstone, which is hewn near Aneyza. All the cost had been 600 reals, or nearly £120 in silver : the same for four camels' draught would have cost 400 reals. Abdullah valued the ground with his well at about £600, that is above £100 an acre without the water: and this was some of their cheaper land, lying far from the town. They have thick-grown but light-eared harvests of wheat, sown year by year upon the same plots ; and corn is always dear in poor Arabia. Here four nagas — their camel cattle are black at Aneyza — wrought incessantly: a camel may water one acre nearly from wells of six or eight fathoms. He had opened this great well, hoping in time to purchase some piece more of his neighbour's ground. Abdullah, as all rich landed men, had two courses of well camels; the beasts draw two months till they become lean, and they are two months at pasture in the wilderness. 356 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. Every morrow Abdullah rode hither to take the air, and oversee his planting: and he had a thought to build himself here an orchard house, that he might breathe the air of the NefM, — when he should be come again [but ah ! that was not written in the book of life] to Aneyza. Abdullah asked, how could I, "a man of Europa," live in the khala ? and in journeying over so great deserts, had I never met with foot robbers, hensh4ly ! The summer before this, he and some friends had gone out with tents, to dwell nomadwise in the Nefud. Wel- faring Aneyza citizens have canvas tents, for the yearly pilgrimage and their often caravan passages, made like the booths of the Beduw, that is cottage-Avise, and open in front, — the best, I can think, under this climate. These tilled grounds so far from the town are not fenced ; the bounds are marked by mere-stones. Abdullah looked with a provident eye upon this parcel of land, which he planted for his daughters' inheritance : he had purchased palms for his sons at Bosra. He would not that the men (which might be) born of him should remain in Arabia ! and he said, with a sad pre sentiment, 'Oh! that he might live over the few years of his children's nonage.' I found here some of his younger friends. These were Hdmed es-Sdfy, of Bagdad, and Abdullah Bessam, the younger (nephew of the elder Abdullah el-Bessam); and a negro com panion of theirs, Sheykh ibn Ayith, a lettered sheykh or elder in the religion. After salaams they all held me out their forearms, — that the hakim might take knowledge of their pulses ! Hamed and Abdullah, unlike their worthiness of soul, were slender growths : their blood flowed in feeble streams, as their old spent fathers, and the air of great towns, had given them life. Ibn Ayith, of an (ox-like) African complexion, showed a pensive countenance, whilst I held his destiny in my hands ! — and required in a small negro voice, ' What did I deem of his remiss health ?' The poor scholar believed himself to be ahvays ailing; though his was no lean and discoloured visage ! nor the long neck, narrow breast, and pithless members of those chop-fallen men that live in the twilight of human life, growing only, since their pickerel youth, in their pike's heads, to die later in the world's cold. — The negro litterate was a new man from this day, wherein he heard the hakim's absolu tion ; and carried himself upright among his friends (thus they laughed to me), whereas he had drooped formerly. And Ibn Ayith was no pedant fanatic ; but daily conversing with the foreign merchants, he had grown up liberal minded. Poor, he had not travelled, saving that — as all the religious Nejdians A negRo scholar. 357 not day-labourers — he had ridden once on pilgrimage (with his bountiful friends, who had entertained him) to Mecca; " And if I were in thy company, quoth he, I would show thee all the historial places." His toward youth had been fostered in learning, by charitable sheykhs; and they at this day maintained his scholar's leisure. He was now father of a family ; but besides the house wherein he dwelt he had no worldly possessions. There was ever room for him at Abdullah el-Bessam's dish ; and he was ofttimes the good man's scri vener, for Abdullah was less clerk than honourable merchant ; and it is the beginning of their school wisdom to write hand somely. But in Ibn Ayith was no subject behaviour ; I have heard him, with a manly roughness, say the kind Abdullah nay ! to his beard. There is a pleasant civil liberty in Aneyza, and no lofty looks of their natural rulers in the town ; but many a poor man (in his anger) will contradict, to the face, and rail at the long-suffering prudence of Zamil ! — saying, Md b'ak kheyr. When I came again, it was noon, the streets were empty, and the shops shut: the ithin sounded, and the people came trooping by to the mesjids. An old Ateyba sheykh passed lateward, — he was in the town with some of his marketing tribesmen ; and hearing I was the hakim, he called to me, ' He would have a medicine for the rih.' One answered, " It might cost thee a real." — "And what though this medicine cost a real, 0 townling (hathery), if I have the silver !" There came also some lingering truants, who stayed to smile at the loud and sudden-tongued old Beduwy ; and a merry fellow asked, amidst their laughter, were he well with his wives ? " Nay, cries the old heart, and I would, billah, that the hareem had not cause. — Oho ! have patience there ! " (because some zealots thrust on him). — " Heardest not thou the ithin ? go pray !" — "Ay, ay, I heard it, Ullah send you sorrow ! am I not talking with this mudowwy ? — well, I am coming presently." — A zealot woman went by us : the squalid creature stepped to the Beduin sheykh, and drew him by the mantle. " To the prayer ! cries she, old devil-sick Beduwy; thou to stand here whilst the people pray ! — and is it to talk with this misbelieving person?" — "Akhs ! do away thy hands ! let me go, woman ! — I tell thee I have said my prayers." Though he cried akhs-akhs! she held him by the cloth ; and he durst not resist her : yet he said to me, "0 thou the mudowwy! where is thy remedy for the rheums ? — a wild fire on this woman ! that will not let me speak." I bade him return after prayers ; and the sheykh hearing some young children chide with " Warak, waralc! why goest thou not in to pray?" he called to me as 35^ TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. he was going, " 0 thou ! resist them not, but do as they do ; when a man is come to another country, let him observe the usage and not strive — that will be best for thee, and were it only to live in peace with them." Now the stripling with the rod was upon us ! — the kestrel would have laid hands on the sheykhly father of the desert. " Oh ! hold, and I go," quoth he, and they drove him before them. My medical practice was in good credit. Each daybreak a flock of miserable persons waited for the hakim, on my small terrace (before they went to their labour) : they importuned me for their sore eyes ; and all might freely use my eye washes. In that there commonly arrived some friendly messenger, to call the stranger to breakfast ; and I left my patients lying on their backs, with smarting eyeballs. The poorer citizens are many, in the general welfare of Aneyza. Such are the field labourers and well drivers, who receive an insufficient monthly wage. The impotent, and the forsaken in age, are destitute indeed ; they must go a-begging through the town. I some times met with a tottering and deadly crew in the still streets before midday; old calamitous widows, childless aged men, indigent divorced wives, and the misshapen and diseased ones of step-dame Nature that had none to relieve them. They creep abroad as a curse in the world, and must knock from door to door, ¦ to know if the Lord will send them any good ;. and cry lamentably Yd ahl el-karim ! ' 0 ye of this bountiful household.' But I seldom saw the cheerful hand of bounty which beckoned to them or opened. One morrow when I went to visit the Emir the mesquins were crouching and shuffling at his door; and Zamil's son Abdullah came out with somewhat to give them: but I saw his dole was less than his outstretched hand full of dates ! " Go further ! and here is for you," quoth the young niggard: he pushed the mesquins and made them turn their backs. I passed some pleasant evenings in the kahwas of the young friends and neighbours Hamed and Abdullah ; and they called in Ibn Ayith, who entertained me with discourse of the Arabic letters. Hamed regaled us with Bagdad nargilies, and Abdullah made a sugared cooling drink of tdmr el-Hind (tamarind). To Abdullah's kahwa, in the daytime, resorted the best company in the town, — such were the honourable young Bessam's cheerful popular manners. His mortar rang out like a bell of hospitality, when he prepared coffee. The Aneyza mortar is a little saucer-like hollow in a marble block great as a font-stone : a well-ringing mortar is much esteemed among FRIENDS. 359 them. Their great coffee-mortar blocks are hewn not many hours from the town eastward (near el-Mith'nib, toward J. Tueyk). An ell long is every liberal man's pestle of marble in Aneyza : it is smitten in rhythm (and that we hear at all the coffee- hearths of the Arabs). A jealous or miserable householder, who would not have many pressing in to drink with him, must muffle the musical note of his marble or knelling brasswork. These were the best younger spirits of the (foreign) merchant houses in the town : they were readers in the Encyclopedia, and of the spirituous poets of the Arabian antiquity. Abdullah, when the last of his evening friends had departed, sitting at his petroleum lamp, and forgetting the wife of his youth, would pore on his books and feed his gentle spirit almost till the day appearing. Hamed, bred at Bagdad, was incredulous of the world new and old ; but he leaned to the new studies. These young merchants sought counsels in medicine, and would learn of me some Frankish words, and our alphabet, — and this because their sea carriage is in the hands of European shippers. A few of these Arabians, dwelling in the trade ports, have learned to endorse their names upon Frankish bills which come to their hands, in Roman letters. Abdullah el- Bessam's eldest son — he was now in India, and a few more, had learned to read and to speak too in English: yet that was, I can think, but lamely. Others, as the Kenneyny, who have lived in Bombay, can speak the Hindostani. Hamed wrote from my lips (in his Arabic letters) a long table of English words, — such as he thought might serve him in his Gulf passages. His father dwelt, since thirty years, in Bagdad ; and had never revisited Aneyza: — in which time the town is so increased, that one coming again after a long absence might hardly, they say, remember himself there. El-Kenneyny told me that Aneyza was now nearly double of the town fifteen years ago ; and he thought the inhabitants must be to-day 15,000! My friends saw me a barefoot hakim, in rent clothing, as I was come-in from the khala, and had escaped out of Boreyda. The younger Abdullah Bessam sent me sandals, and they would have put a long wand in my hand; but I an swered them, " He is not poor who hath no need : my poverty is honourable." Kenneyny said to me on a morrow, when we were alone (and for the more kindness finding a Frankish word), " Mussu Khalil, if you lack money — were it an hundred or two hundred reals, you may have this here of me : " but he knew not all my necessity, imagining that I went poorly for a disguise. I gave thanks for his generous words ; but which were thenceforth in my ears as if they had never been 3^o , Travels in Arabia desErTA. uttered. I heard also, that the good Bessam had taken upon himself to send me forward, to what part I would. I was often bidden to his house, and seldom to Kenneyny's, who (a new man) dreaded over-much the crabbed speech of his Wahaby townspeople. The good Bessam, as oft as he met with me, invited the stranger, benignly, to breakfast on the morrow: and at breakfast he bid me dine the same day Avith him, — an humanity which was much to thank God for in these extremities. Abdullah el-Bessam lent a friendly ear to my questions of the Arabian antiquity; and was full of tolerance. — 'Had not Nasara, he said, visited the Ne"by in Medina, and 'A mar V — Omar, he who called to govern the new religion (of some sparkles on a waste coast, grown to a great conflagration in the world !) would bear none other style, after the deceased "apostle" than khalif, his vicar. But what may be thought of the rotten ness of the Roman power at that time ? when her legionaries, clad in iron, could not sustain the furious running-on of weak- bodied and half-armed dissolute Arabians, in their ragged shirts ! banded [which alone can band Semites !] by the (new) passion of religion, and their robber-like greediness of the spoil ! the people through whose waste land Gallus had led a Roman army without battles five ages before, and returned with a European man's disdain of the thievish and unwarlike inhabitants ! Egypt was soon overrun by the torrential arms of the new faith : and Bessam told a tale, how there came a Copt to show his grief to the Commander of the believers in el-Medina. He found the magnanimous half-Beduin 'Amar busy, like any poor man, in his palm-yard, to drive the well camels ; and 'Amar held up his cattle to hear the Christian's tale. The Copt alleged that the general of the Moslemin in Egypt dealt oppressively, because in Iskanderia (Alexandria) he would build their mesjid in a plot of his, and thereto beat down his house, — although he, the Christian, hM constantly refused a price. 'Amar went in his ground till he found a bone — in the Arabs' country the scattered bones of beasts unburied are never far to seek (conf. Jud. xv. 15), and bade the Copt bear witness of that he saW him do. 'Amar with his sword cleft the head of the bone, and gave this token to the Christian, to [bind in his garment and] deliver to his lieutenant in Egypt, with his word to desist from that enterprise. 'Amar's word might remove kings, though he knew not the superfluous signs of writing, and his tessera was humbly obeyed by (the Arabian) his lieutenant at Alexandria. — It was 'Amar who burned the letters of the former world: it seemed to his short Semitic THE ANCIENT CAPITAL OF EL-KASlM. 36 1 understanding that these had nothing profited unto the know ledge of the true God, and of His saving Religion ! Neither Bessam nor the scholars at Aneyza could answer my simple question, "Where is Jorda? — named in the old (Mohammedan) itineraries 'the metropolis of Kasim':" that name was unknown to them ! They first found to answer me after other days, with much tossing of books ; and the site, when they had enquired of men wont to ride in the NefM. — The place they suppose to be el-Ethelly (some outlying granges), nigh to er-Russ, at the Wady er-Rummah ; where are seen 'wide ruins and foundations': and they amended my Jorda to Jdrada. Their lettered men only study to be indifferent scholars in the tedious koran learning; and they would smile at his idle curiosity, who would take in hand to write a history of their poor affairs, in the vulgar speech. The title-deeds of their grounds are perhaps the only ancient writings of the oases' dwellers. . El-Bessam's book of (pretended) genealogies was a brave volume in gild ed binding of red leather: wherein I read the kinships of Amalek, Midian, and other Arabian tribes ; which were Be duins and settlers of the Mosaic and Hebrew antiquity. The good man seeing me busy to turn the leaves, gave me his book; but I would not accept it, — which a little displeased him. They told me, ' that an agent of the Ottoman Government, with a firman from the Sultan, had been the year before in these parts ; and he wrote down the names of towns and vil lages, and wandering tribes ! ' The authority [howbeit usurped by the sword] of the Turkish Sultan is acknowledged by all good Moslemin ; and the principality of Boreyda pays yearly to the Ottoman treasury in the Hejaz a (freewill) contribution, — which is not fully a thousand pounds. — But this was the answer of Aneyza ; " We do not deny the tribute : send unto us and receive the same." But the Turks hitherto like not this ad venturing the skin, in the sands of Arabia ! Kenneyny's thoughts were continually for the bringing up of his son ; whose frail life he would launch upon the world's waves, with all that munition for the way which he had long imagined. He would have his child learn Persian and Turkish (the tongues of their Gulf neighbourhood); and French and English. In his twentieth year the young man would take his journey through the states of Europe, to view the great civil world, and those thousand new miraculous machines, which are become the nurses of human life. In Abdullah's perspicuous 362 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. mind was a privy scorn of every national jealousy, and in tolerance and religious arrogance ; and an admiration of that natural knowledge, civility and humanity, which is now in the West parts of the world. Abdullah was of the best kind of spirits, or next to the best : he was mild, he was also austere, yet neither to a fault. He would at first send the boy Mohammed, for two years, to a school of the Moslems at Bagdad, ' since it was among the Moslemin that his son must live.' After that he would bring him to Egypt or to Beyriit ; and he asked me of the schools at Beyriit [now once more, the Schoolmistress of the Levant]. The son, for whom Ab dullah had so much busy thought, was ten years old, and had not yet learned letters. This child was born to him in Bombay of an Indian woman : I afterward heard it there, in the Nejd colony ; and that among them such alliances in the native blood are not well seen. Abdullah would have his son study much, that he might learn much ; he longed to see him continually running in the first horizons of knowledge : but seeing the slip was slender, and heir of a weak stock, I counselled his father to whelm no such damps upon him. — Abdullah who heard me speak with a sincerity not common in their deceitful world, answered finally, with a sigh, sahih ! ' The truth indeed.' Abdullah's youth had not been spent to pore on a squalor of school-learning ; he had not proceeded in the Universities — those shambles of good wits; but his perspicuous understanding was well clad, and ripened in the sun of the busy human world: and running in the race he had early obtained a crown of God's good speed. His father dealt in horses, as many of the better sort in the town; but he had remained poor and was deceased early. Then Abdullah adventuring into the world went to Bagdad, where at first (I have heard him say) he could not readily understand the outlandish northern speech. After ward he traded ; and his trading was of a kind which [speaking with an Englishman] he said, md yunf'a 'is good for nothing', — Abdullah bought and sold slaves; and in this traffic he sailed to Zanzibar, whose Sultan (of the princely family of Amdn) is of the B. Temim, and these Nejders' tribesmen. Abdullah also navigated for sugar to the Mauritius ! He was afterward a rice-shipper at Bombay, to the Arabian ports ; until he went to establish himself at Bosra: where, he told me with a merchant's pride, he had corn lying in his (open) granary to the value of £5000 ! — for shelter, he used only matting and reed shutters ; which might be drawn in any falling rain. His yearly household spending, with somewhat EL-KENNEYNY'S LIFE. 363 bestowed upon the followers of his fortunes, was now he told me £400. Abdullah valued the greatest merchant's fortune in Aneyza at £24,000 ; upon which, if we should count tAvelve in the hundred, the yearly rent were ten times the ordinary trading capitals in Hayil ! (if we might accept Hamud's estimation). But how little can be the spending of an Arabian town house hold, in comparison of two or three thousand pounds! Kenneyny's name was honourable in the liberal part of the town : ' Ullah, they said, had prospered him, and he is a good man' ; but the Wahaby envy looked upon him as a bee in their vile cobweb. None could tell me how Abdullah, " so needy in the beginning that he might hardly buy himself a pair of shoes", was now enriched in the world ; they responded only, ' the Lord had blessed him.' Market prices in the eastern wheat staples suddenly rise and fall : and for the good understanding of Abdullah all those ebbs and flows might be occasions to multiply wealth. At this day he was a corn-chandler, selling to lesser merchants upon trust, and that he said, without much carefulness of heart ; for he thought he knew (by observation) all his clients' state. — When living at Damascus, I saw the price- of bread-corn excessively enhanced before the winter's end ; and imagined that with one or two hundred pounds a small granary might be opened, where poor households could buy all the year through, at little above the harvest prices. I enquired of some prudent and honest persons ; but they all answered : "It is such a curious trade, that one who has been bred a corn-chandler may scarce thrive in it." So no man had any courage to adventure with me. When I dined again with the Bessam, there Was the Medina sherif! That old fox in a turban had now arrived at Aneyza, and taken up his lodging in the public hostel {menzil es- sheukh):, but he breakfasted and supped solemnly at the good Bessam's dish, who also of his charity undertook to send the holy beggar home to Medina. Abdullah was of like goodness to all, and, when the soldier-deserters lately arrived at Aneyza, it was Abdullah who piously provided for their further journey. Though the head of a wealthy kindred, and full of bountiful deeds, the good man had not much capital: when he came home to Aneyza he dwelt in an hired house ; and the most of his trading was with that which others committed to the radical integrity of Abdullah. He was a young-hearted man of the elder middle age and popular manners ; there was nothing in him too brittle for the world. His was a broad 364 Travels in Arabia deser'Ta. pleasant face ; he went very comely clad in the streets, and balancing the patricians' long wand in his hand : and in every place with a wise and smiling countenance he could speak or keep silence. He was a dove without gall in the raven's nest of their fanaticism : he loved first the God of Mohammed (be cause he was born in their religion), and then every not- unworthy person as himself. Large, we have seen, was the worshipful merchant's hospitality ; and in this also he was wise above the wisdom of the world. CHAPTER XIII. LIFE IN ANEYZA. Rumours of warfare. A savage tiding from the North. The Meteyr Aarab. The 'Ateyba. A Kahtany arrested in the street. A capital crime. Friday afternoon lecture. The Muttowwa. Besscbm and Kenneyny discourse of the Western Nations'. An Arabic gazette. "The touchstone of truth." The Shazlleh. An erudite Persian's opinion of The three (Semitic) religions. European evangelists in Syria. An Arabian's opinions of Frankish manners (which he had seen in India). An inoculator and leech at Aneyza. The Nasrany without shelter. A learned personage. Mohammed. The Semitic faiths. " Sheykh" Mohammed. Laudanum powder medicine. A message from Boreyda. Discourse of religion. A Jew's word. The small-pox. Yahya's household. Mala dies. A short cure for distracted persons; story of a Maronite convent in Lebanon. Stone-workers at Aneyza. An outlying homestead. Money borrowed at usury. Oasis husbandry. An Aneyza horse-broker. Ants' nests sifted for bread. Arabian sale horses; and the Northern or Gulf horses. El-'Eyarieli. The Wady er-Rummah northward. Khalid bin Walid. Owshazieh. Deadly strife of well-diggers. Ancient man in Arabia. The Nasrany is an outlaw among them. Thoughts of riding to Siddiis and er-Bidth. The Arabic speech in el-Kasim. ONE of these mornings word was brought to the town, that Beduins had fallen upon harvesters in the Wady, and carried away their asses: and in the next half hour I saw more than a hundred of the young townsmen hasten-by armed to the Boreyda gate. The poorer sort ran foremost on foot, with long lances ; and the well-faring trotted after upon theluls with their backriders. But an hour had passed; and the light-footed robbers were already two or three leagues distant ! There were yet rumours of warfare with Boreyda and the Kahtan. Were it war between the towns, Hasan and the Boreydians (less in arms and fewer in number) durst not ad venture to meet the men of Aneyza in the Nefud; but would shelter themselves, within their (span-thick) clay wall, leaving their fields and plantations in the power of the enemy, — as it has happened before-time. The adversaries, being neighbours, will no more than devour their fruits, whilst the orchards 366 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. languish unwatered: they are not foreign enemies likely to lop the heads of the palms, whereby they should be ruined for many years. — This did Ibn SaM's host in the warfare with Aneyza; they destroyed the palms in the Wady: so pleasant is the sweet pith-wood to all the Arabians, and they desire to eat of it with a childish greediness. Kahtan tribesmen were suffered to come marketing to Aneyza ; till a hubt of theirs returning one evening with loaded camels, and finding some town children not far from the gate, in the NefM, that were driving home their asses, and an dbd with them, took the beasts and let the children go : yet they carried away the negro, — and he was a slave of Zamil's ! A savage tiding was brought in from the north ; and all Aneyza was moved by it, for the persons were well known to them. A great camp of Meteyr, Aarab sad4k, or " friends-of- trust to the town and Zamil", (if any of the truthless nomads can be trusty !) had been set upon at four days' distance from hence by a strong ghrazzu of Kahtan, — for the pastures of Kasim, their capital enemies. Leader of the raid was that Hayzan who, not regarding the rites of hospitality, had threatened me at Hayil The nomads (fugitive foemen in every other cause), will fight to "the dark death" for then- pastures and waters. The Meteyr were surprised in their tents and outnumbered; and the Kahtan killed some of them. The rest saved themselves by flight, and their milch camels ; leaving the slow-footed flocks, with the booths, and their household stuff in the power of their enemies; who not re garding the religion of the desert pierced even women with their lances, and stripped them, and cut the wezands of three or four young children ! Among the fallen of Meteyr was a principal sheykh well known at Aneyza. Hayzan had borne him through with his romh ! Those Aarab now withdrew towards Aneyza: where their sheykhs found the townsmen of a mind to partake with them, to rid the country of the common pestilence. In their gene alogies, el-Meteyr, Ishmaelites, are accounted in the descents from Keys, and from Anmdr, and Rubia : Rubia, Anmar, Muthur, and EyM are brethren; and Rubia is father of Wayil, patriarch of the Annezy. Meteyr are of old Ahl Gibly : and their home is in the great Harra which lies between the 'Harameyn, yet occupied by their tribesmen. Their ancient villages in that country, upon the Derb es-Sherky or east Haj- road to Mecca, are El-Fere'ya, Hdthi, Sfeyna, es-Swergieh in the borders of the Harrat el-Kisshub ; and Hajjir: but the most METEYR AND ATEYBA TRIBES. 367 villagers of the Swergleh valley are at this day ashrdfi or of the " eminent" blood of the Neby. The Meteyr are now in part Ahl es-Shemal : for every summer these nomads journey upward to pasture their cattle in the northern wilderness : their borders are reckoned nearly to Kuweyt and Bosra ; and they are next in the North to the northern Shammar. Neither are tributary but "friendly Aarab" to Ibn Rashid. The desert marches of the Meteyr are thus almost 200 leagues over! [They are in multitude (among the middle Arabian tribes) next after the great Beduin nation 'Ateyba, and may be almost 5000 souls.] Their tents were more than two hundred in el-Kasim, at this time. Each year they visit Aneyza ; and Zamil bestows a load or two of dates upon their great sheykh, that the town caravans may pass by them, unhindered. Other Beduin tribesmen resorting to Aneyza are the 'Ateybdn (also reckoned to the line of Keys): neither the Meteyr nor 'Ateyba were friendly with Boreyda. The 'Ateyba marches are all that high wilderness, an hundred leagues over, which lies between el-Kasim in the north, and the Mecca country : in that vast dira, of the best desert pastures, there is no settle ment ! The 'Ateyba, one of the greatest of Arabian tribes, may be nearly 6,000 souls ; they are of more stable mind than the most Beduw ; and have been allies (as said), in every fortune, of Abdullah ibn SaM. There is less fanatism in their religion than moderation : they dwell between the Wahaby and the Haram ; and boast themselves hereditary friends of the Sherifs of Mecca. Zamil was all for quietness and peace, in which is the welfare of human life, and God is worshipped ; but were it warfare, in his conduct the people of Aneyza are confident. Now he sent out an hundred thelul riders of the citizens, in two bands, to scour the NefM, and set over them the son of the Emir Aly, Yahija; a manly young man, but like his father of the strait Wahaby understanding. I saw a Kahtany arrested in the street ; the man had come marketing to Aneyza, but being known by his speech, the by-standers laid hands on his theliil. Some would have drawn him from the saddle; and an Arab overpowered will [his feline and chameleon nature] make no resistance, for that should endanger him. "Come thou with us afore Zamil," cried they. "Well, he answered, I am with you." They discharged his camel and tied up the beast's knee : the salesmen in the next shops sat on civilly incurious of this adventure. — At Hayil, in like case, or at Boreyda all had been done by men of the Emir's band, with a tyrannous clamour; but here is a 368 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. free township, where the custody of the public peace is left in the hands of all the citizens. — As for the Kahtan Zamil had not yet proclaimed them enemies of Aneyza ; and nothing was alleged against this Beduwy. They bound him : but the right eous Emir gave judgment to let the man go. Persons accused of crimes at Aneyza (where is no prison), are bound, until the next sitting of the Emir. Kenneyny told me there had been in his time but one capital punishment, — this was fifteen years ago. The offender was a woman, sister of Mufarrij ! that worthy man whom we have seen steward of the prince's public hall at Hayil : it was after this mis fortune to his house that he left Aneyza to seek some foreign service. — She had enticed to her yard a little maiden, the only daughter of a wealthy family, her neighbours ; and there she smothered the child for the (golden) ornaments of her pretty head, and buried the innocent body. The bereaved father sought to a soothsayer, — in the time of whose " reading " they suppose that the belly of the guilty person should swell. [See above, p. 189.] The diviner led on to the woman's house ; and showing a place he bade them dig ! — There they took up the little corpse ! and it was borne to the burial. — The woman was brought forth to suffer, before the session of the people and elders (musheyikh) assembled with the executive Emir. — In these Arabian towns, the manslayer is bound by the sergeants of the Emir, and delivered to the kindred of the slain, to be dealt with at their list. — Aly bade the father, "Rise up and slay that wicked woman, the murderess of his child." But he who was a religious elder (muttowwa), and a mild and godly person, responded, " My little daughter is gone to the mercy of Ullah; although I slay the woman yet may not this bring again the life of my child! — suffer Sir, that I spare her: she that is gone, is gone." Aly : " But her crime cannot remain unpunished, for that were of too perilous example in the town ! Strike thou ! I say, and kill her." — Then the muttowwa drew a sword and slew her ! Common misdoers and thieves are beaten with palm-leaf rods that are to be green and not in the dry, which (they say) would break fell and bones. There is no cutting off the hand at Aneyza ; but any hardened felon is cast out of the township. After this Zamil sent his message to the sheykhs of Kahtan in the desert, ' that would they now restore all which had been reaved by their tribesmen they might return into friendship: and if no, he pronounced them adversaries.' Having thus dis charged their consciences, these (civil) townsfolk think they THE IMAM. 369 may commit their cause to the arbitrage of Ullah, and their hands shall be clean from blood : and (in general) they take no booty from their enemies ! for they say " it were unlaw ful," — notwithstanding, I have known to my hurt, that there are many sly thieves in their town ! But if a poor man in an expedition bestow some small thing in his saddle-bag, it is indulged, so that it do not appear openly. — And thus, having nothing to gain, the people of Aneyza only take arms to defend their liberties. One day when I went to visit Zamil, I found a great silent assembly in his coffee-hall : forty of the townspeople were sitting round by the walls. Then there came in an old man who was sheykh of the religion ; and my neighbour told me in my ear, they were here for a Friday afternoon lecture ! Coffee was served round ; and they all drank out of the same cups. The Arabs spare not to eat or drink out of the same vessel with any man. And Mohammed could not imagine in his (Arabian) religion, to forbid this earthly communion of the human life: but indeed their incurious custom of all hands dipping in one dish, and all lips kissing in one cup, is laudable rather than very wholesome. The Imam's mind was somewhat wasted by the desolate koran reading. I heard in his school discourse no word which sounded to moral edification ! He said finally — looking to wards me ! " And to speak of Aysa bin Miriam, — Jesu was of a truth a Messenger of Ullah : but the Nasara walk not in the way of Jesu, — they be gone aside, in the perversity of their minds, unto idolatry." And so rising mildly, all the people rose ;- and every one went to take his sandals. The townspeople tolerated me hitherto, — it was Zamil's will. But the Muttowwa, or public ministers of the religion, from the first, stood contrary; and this Imam (a hale and venerable elder of threescore years and ten) had stirred the people, in his Friday noon preaching, in the great mesjid, against the Nasrany. 'It was, he said, of evil example, that certain principal persons favoured a misbelieving stranger: might they not in so doing provoke the Lord to anger ? and all might see that the seasonable rain Avas withheld!'- — Cold is the outlaw's life ; and I marked with a natural constraint of heart an alienation of the street faces, a daily standing off of the faint-hearted, and of certain my seeming friends. I heard it chiefly alleged against me, that I greeted with Salaam aleyk; which they will have to be a salutation of God's people only — the Moslemin. El-Kenneyny, Bessam, Zamil D. T. II. 24 37° TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. were not spirits to be moved by the words of a dull man in a pulpit; in whom was but the (implacable) wisdom of the Wahabies of fifty years ago. I noted some alteration in es-Smiry ; and, among my younger friends, in the young Abd ullah Bessam, whose nigh kindred were of the Nejd strait- ness and intolerance. There was a strife in his single mind, betwixt his hospitable human fellowship, and the duty he owed unto God and the religion: and when he found me alone he asked, " Wellah Khalil, do the Nasara hold thus and thus ? contrary to the faith of Islam !" — Not so Hamed es-Safy, the young Bagdady; who was weary of the tedious Nejd religion: sometimes ere the ithin sounded he shut his outer door; but if I knocked it was opened (to " el-docteur"), when he heard my voice. These Aneyza merchant friends commonly made tea Avhen the Engleysy arrived : they had learned abroad to drink it in the Persian manner. The elder Bessam took pleasure to question with me of the Western world. — If at such time the Kenneyny were present, he assented in silence : there was not such another head in Aneyza — nor very likely in all Nejd. To Abdullah el-Ken neyny I was Arabian-like; and he was to me like an European ! El-Bessam was well-nigh middle aged when he first went down — that was fifteen years ago, to trade at Jidda. Among the nations without, his most friendly admiration was for the Engleys: he took it to be of God, that our rulers and people were of the Sultan's alliance. He could even pronounce the names of our great wizirs, Palmerston, Disraeli ! — and lament ing the Ottoman misrule and corruption ; he said, " a grand wizir may hardly sit three months at Stambiil ! — but how long keep the Engleys their w4zera ? " " Some of them, I respond ed, have continued for many years." "Aha, well done, he cries, affdrim! well done the Engleys!" — In el-Kenneyny was an European-like contempt for the Turks : he despised even their understanding. I said, "I have found them sententious, though without science : there is a wary spirit in their discourse, which is full of human wisdom." — "No! and I have seen several Turkish Governors, at Bosra. The last one — could you believe it ? had not heard of the Suez Canal ! and, I say, how can men, that live in such darkness of mind, be to the furtherance of a country where they are sent to govern ? A few pashas are better instructed; yet being strangers they care not for the common good. — Has not every pasha purchased his govern ment beforehand ? and what wonder then if he rake the public money into his own purse ? But if there come one of those POLITICIANS IN ANEYZA. 371 few that are good, and he undertake some public work ; it is likely he will be recalled in the midst of his enterprise, — for the place has been bought over him ! and another succeeding is unwilling to fulfil the projects of a former pasha." — They spoke of the enmity of France and Prussia in Europe; and el-Kenneyny said, ' His mind misgave him, that what for Bismark, and what for Iskander (Czar Alexander) the earth ere long would be soaked with blood! He had lately seen a pic ture of Iskander at Bosra ; it was th4kr, virile !' Now I heard from their mouths all the event of the Turkish war with Russia, — begun and ended in the time of my wandering in the wilderness of Arabia: and el-Bessam told me, with a lively pleasure, 'that the English fleet had passed the sea-strait — even contrary to the word of the Sultan ! — to defend Stambul' [Only strong strokes can persuade the Moslemin ; since they believe devoutly that this world is theirs, and the next ; and God (but for their sins) should be ever with them, and against the un believers. Their incurious ignorance seems not to remember the fear of their enemies, much above a score of years.] Of the late passage of the Dardanelles the sheykhly friends made an argument for the Engleysy in the intolerant town. I marvelled at the erudition of these Arabian politicians ! till I found they had it of a certain Arabic newspaper (which is set forth in face of the " Porte " at Constantinople). — The aged editor was of Christian parentage in Mount Lebanon ; and when yet a young man, Ibrahim Pasha engaged him to publish a gazette for Syria. Some years later he was Arabic reader in the Levant College at Malta : and having learned to smatter our languages, he journeyed through France, England and other States of Europe ; and printed in vulgar Arabic an huge idle tome of his occidental travels. The Syrian afterward established himself at Stambul; where he made profession of the Turks' religion : and under the favour of some great ones founded the (excellent) Arabic gazette, in which he con tinues to labour [in the Mohammedan interest]. His news-sheet is current in all countries of the Arabic speech : I have found it in the Nejd merchants' houses at Bombay. In the rest I speak as I heard it related in Christian Syria, by credible persons, — theirs be the blame if they calumniate the man ! ' The Syrians, say they who sojourn amongst them, are nearly always liars, evil surmisers, of a natural vility of mind.' — That Nasrany-bom is reputed to have blackened his scrivener's fingers in another Avork, whose authors are solemn ullema of Islam, learned in their unfounded learning ; — a loose 24—2 372 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. volume full of braying contumely, written in answer to a little Arabic treatise of certain Christian Missionaries in India, and printed in London, Mizdn el-hak, 'Touchstone of the truth.' The mission book examines, with the European erudition, the religious inheritance of the Moslemin : and when their heap is winnowed, there remains no more than this (which only Mohammed could allege in testimony of his divine mission), — the purity and beauty of the Arabs' tongue in the koran ! Had not Mohammed — from his birth a religionist ! — mused in the solitude of his spirit, in this exalted vein, more than thirty years ? till there was grown up in his soul a wood of such matter ; whereof he easily gathered the best fruits to serve his turn. [Confer. Mat. xiii. 52.] There was not another Arabian of his time who had walked to this length in so singular a way ; and there might no man emulate him, — reaping of that which he had not sowed in his childhood. Nevertheless in the opinion of perfect [European] scholars, the Arabic tongue in the koran is somewhat drooping from the freshness and candour which is found in the poets of the generation before Mohammed. The Arabs' speech is at best like the hollow words dropping out of the mouth of a spent old man : it Avas shown also in the Mizan el-hak that in other ingenuous tongues is a nobler architecture of language. — I have heard it said in Syria, that if the Mizan el-hak were found in a man's keeping, that the Moslems would burn his house over him ! For this and other books of damnable doctrine there was a fanatical inquisi tion made in my time in all their custom-houses. — Loud is the ullemas' derision (in their tedious response) of the "prat tling priestlings of the Nasara." — The Syrian Christianity attributed to the hand of that old gazetteer and quondam Mesihy of Jebel Libndn, the muster that is made therein of the atheistical opinions of certain past century (English) philosophasters, without leaven of science. The Moslemin, as the rest of mankind, are nearly irrational in matter of faith ; and they may hardly stumble in a religion which is so conformable to human nature; yet in their (free) cities, where men's faces are sharpened, and they see other ways about them, there are some who doubt. — It was related to me by Syrian friends, ' that the Mizan el-hak had been, few years before, a cause of public troubles in the Turkish Capital;' where not a few persons, mostly military officers, seceded from the national religion ; and became a half-christian sect assem bling together secretly, to worship and hear doctrine. The rumour came to the ears of the government ; and there was a persecution : some of the innovators, by commandment of the THE SHAZLlER. 373 Sultan ('Abd-el-'Aziz), were drowned in the Bosforus; and many were deported in ships to Syria. — They are now much increased at Damascus; where they are called esh-Shazlieh: the Shazlieh say of themselves, that they will one day be masters of the country '. They are abhorred by the Moslems ; and misseen by the superstitious religion (without piety) of the Syrian Christianity. I have met with white turbans of this new school — Moslems in appearance, that in privity durst acknow ledge their small or no belief in the Nel>y : I have seen some enter a Christian friend's shop, to drink nastily of his water crock behind the door, in the languishing days of Ramathan. — In the great Syrian city I have found another school of liberal and not credulous Musslemans. A Persian gentleman, high in office, as we were speaking one day of religions, drew on the floor before me this figure. — Perfect or Heavenly Knowledge. Veil [The •"~-----~~ three religions (Semitic revelations)] ~nr"r,~, The Earth " Our religions, said he — be we Jews or Christians or Mos lems, arise to Godward : but they be all alike stayed at a veil (hijdb) ! and pass not unto perfect or Divine Knowledge ! " — Syria, that bald country, which might again be fruit ful, is not of the only faith of Islam. The Nasara are many in the land, but faint-hearted. The confederate Druses are strong weeds growing out of the Mohammedan stock, in the middle mountain and vulcanic country. In certain villages towards Antioch are other idolatrous Moslems, en-Nuseyrieh. And in Phoenicia and the next borders of Palestine there are village colonies of the Persian religion, [v. p. 261.] — The inveterate religious divisions in this Province are not a little profitable to the weak government of their Turkish rulers. European evangelists have been the salt of the earth in Syria these fifty years ; but they speak not — for dread of death — to any Moslem ! and it must be acknowledged that among 374 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. Moslems they have not made five proselytes. Can Christians now return to be Jews? and how should Moslems become Christians ? Those long-coated, and (in that summer country) well salaried messengers, of the European churches, preach only to the Christian folk, converting them, from bitterness to bitterness, from, one to another name under the broad banner of Christ. The Arab people are in their sight as cattle ; and the disciples of such teachers, upon their part, are heartless and of a nettlesome pride towards the Franks, — that Semitic pride which is a strong-sounding fibre of the Moham medan fanaticism! They are new-whited scholars in all, save the loving meekness of Christ : and their native guile receives a Frankish colour (Italian, French, or English), whereby it may be knoAvn what countrymen were their gospellers — seldom crucified spirits. And they who received a free schooling Avithout thankfulness, look further to receive — some are re ported to embezzle ! — from the same rich, and (they think too simple) beneficent Europe, a continual stipend : their own wit they hold to be 'much more subtle {rafi'a) than the [plain] understanding of the Franks ' ! — New offsets, they are of the gross Arabic stock, with little moral sense; and resemble (save in courage and in natural worth) the country Moslems. Others I have known who resenting the European harshness (and inhospitality) of their divines and teachers, prayed God, every day, that He would release them from Frenjy schoolmasters, and raise up teachers of their own : sometimes they will say shortly, "All these Frenjies (among us) are spies !" Yet would they have their apostles still to abide with them, to communicate with them the almsdeed of Europe. — Virtue is not very rare, but frustrated, in that corrupt and misgoverned country. Syrians — sterile in invention, by an easy imitation may become smatterers in the liberal arts. — We sate about the Bessam's (coffee) hearth — that altar of humanity of the Arab households ! Others came in ; and a young man said, " Among the customs of the Engleys, he had most marvelled to see [in India] the husbands giving place to the hareem. [The gynolatria of the Franks is unseemly and unmanly in the sight — beginning with the Greeks, of all Orientals.] Besides they lift the bernetta (Frankish hat) — that is the reverence used amongst them, when they meet with any dame of their acquaintance j but to men no!" Bessam, with an host's comity, expected my answer. I answered, " Our hareem are well taught : it is a manly gentleness to favour the weaker part, and that gladden our lives most — which are AN ARABIAN LEECH. 375 the women and children. What says the proverb? — Biled el- Engleys jinnat el-hareem, wa jehennem el-khail, ' England the paradise of women, and hell of horses!'" I felt the Bessam blench, in the first clause ; but understanding the conclusion, which came roundly off in Arabic, he repeated it twenty times, with honest mirth and acceptation. — Abdullah, in my presence, was wary with a host's gentleness, to avoid (un savoury) discourse of religion. But he was not so tender of the YahM ; for having lately read, in bis Gazette, that certain merchant Jews in England were richer than the Queen's Majesty, and that the Rothschilds (whose name he knew, be cause they send yearly alms to Bagdad to be distributed to the poor Oriental brethren) were creditors of all Egypt, he could not forbear to cry out, "The Lord cut them off!" " How strange, another said, that the Engleys have a Queen, and no man to rule over them ! what, Khalil, is the name of the Queen ? " I answered, Mans4ra, the Victorious Lady : a name which (used in the masculine) is also of happy augury in their tongue. Though there is not a man of medicine in Nejd, yet some modest leech may be found: and I was called to another Bessam household to meet one who was of this town. That Bessam, a burly body, was the most travelled of the foreign merchants: by railway he had sped through the breadth of India ; he had dwelt in the land, and in his mouth was the vulgar Hindostany. But no travel in other nations could amend his wooden head ; and like a tub which is shipped round the world he was come home never the better: there is no transmuting such metals ! His wit was thin ; and he had weakly thriven in the world. The salver sat at the Bessam's coffee hearth ; awaiting me, with the respectable coun tenance of a village schoolmaster. — His little skill, he said with humility, he had gathered of reading in his few books ; and those were hard to come by. He asked me many simple questions ; and bowed the head to all my answers ; and, glad in his heart to find me friendly, the poor man seemed to wonder that the learning of foreign professors were not more dark, and unattainable ! In these last days the honest soul had inoculated all the children in the town : he acknowledged, ' that there die many thus ! — but he had read that in the cow-pox inoculation [el-'athab] of the Nasara there die not any' ! After hearing me he said, he would watch, mornings and evenings, at some of the town gates, when the kine are driven forth or would be returning 376 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. from pasture; if haply he might find the pocks on some of their udders. [Already Amm Mohammed had looked for it in vain, at Kheybar.] — I counselled the sheykhs to send this worthy man to the north, to learn the art for the public good ; and so he might vaccinate in these parts of Nejd. Worn as I was, I proffered myself to ride to Bagdad, if they would find me the thelul, and return with the vaccine matter. But no desire nor hope of common advantage to come can move or unite Ara bians : neither love they too well that safeguarding human fore thought, which savours to them of untrust in an heavenly Providence. Their religion encourages them to seek medicines, — which God has created in the earth to the service of man; but they may not flee from the pestilence. Certain of the foreign merchants have sometimes brought home the lymph, — so did Abdullah el-Bessam, the last year; yet this hardly passes beyond the walls of their houses. — I heard a new word in that stolid Bessam's mouth (and perhaps he fetched it from India), "What dost ' thou,, quoth he, in a land where is only dianat el-Mohammedia, Mohammedan religion ? whereas they use to say din el-Islam." — India, el-Kenneyny called, "A great spectacle of religions ! " Amm Mohammed at Kheybar and the Beduw have told me, there is a disease in camels like that which they under stood from me to be the cow-pox. — The small-pox spread fast. One day at noon I found my young negro hostess sorrowing, ¦ — she had brought-in her child very sick, from playing in the Ga : and bye and bye their other babe sickened. — I would not remain in that narrow lodging to breathe an infected air: but, leaving there my things, I passed the next days in the streets: and often when the night fell I was yet fasting, and had not where to sleep. But I thought, that to be over taken here by the disease, would exceed all present evils. None offered to receive me into their houses; therefore beating in the evening — commonly they knock with an idle rhythm — at the rude door of some poor patient, upon whom I had be stowed medicines, and hearing responded from within, ugglot; 'approach'! I entered; and asked leave to lie down on their cottage floor [of deep Nefud sand] to sleep. The Kenneyny would not be marked to harbour a Nasrany: to Bessam I had not revealed my distress. And somewhat I reserved of these Arabian friends' kindness ; that I might take up all, in any extreme need. The deep sanded (open) terrace roof of the mesjid, by my old dokan, was a sleeping place for strangers in the town ; but what sanctity of the house of prayer would defend me slum- A FASSING LEARNED MAN. 2,77 bering? for with the sword also worship they Ullah. — But now I found some relief, where I looked not for it : there was a man who used my medicines, of few words, sharp-set looks and painted eyes, but the son of a good mother, — a Avidow woman, who held a small shop of all wares, where I sometimes bought bread. He was a salesman in the clothiers' siik, and of those few, beside the Emirs and their sons, who carried a sword in Aneyza ; for he was an officer of Zamil's. He said to me, " I am sorry, Khalil, to see thee without lodging ; there is an empty house nigh us, and shall we go to see it?" — Though I found it to be an unswept clay chamber or two ; I went the same day to lodge there : and they were to me good neighbours. Every morrow his mother brought me girdle-bread with a little whey and butter, and filled my water-skin: at the sunsetting (when she knew that commonly — my incurable obliviousness — I had provided nothing; and now the siik was shut), she had some wheaten mess ready for the stranger in her house, for little money ; and for part she would receive no payment ! it must have been secretly from Zamil This aged woman sat before me open-faced, and she treated me as her son : hers was the only town-woman's face that I have seen in middle Nejd, — where only maiden children are not veiled. I was called to another house of the fanatical Bessams. They would have medicines for a personage who dwelt with them ; one who, I heard, was passing " learned "; and a fugitive (of the former Emir's house) from Boreyda. That householder hardly bade the hakim be seated; and poured out a tepid cup of the dregs of their last coffee, for the Nasrany. — There sat their guest, an huge ghostly clod of B. Temim ! He was silent; and they beckoned that he desired a remedy of me. I cried at the ears of the dull swine, in contempt of their unkind usage, " Dost hear ? what wouldst thou of me ? " He cast down his goggle eyes — lest he should behold a kafir! I asked, "Is this a deaf man ?" — They blench when we turn on them, knowing that the Frenjies exceed them in the radical heat and force of the spirit. The peasant divine looked up more mildly, yet would he not hold speech with one of the heathen ; but leaning over to the negro Aly, who brought me hither, he charged him, in a small dying voice, to ask, ' Had the Nasrany a remedy for the emerods?' — the negro shouted these words to the company! "It sufficeth," responded the morose pedant; and settling his leathern chaps his dunghill spirit reverted to her wingless contemplation, at the gates of the MeccaAvy's paradise. — In such religious dotage we perceive 378 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. no aspect of the Truth ! which is so of kin to our better nature, that we should know her, even through a rent of her veil, as the young one knows his mother. — The most venerable image in their minds is the per sonage of Mohammed ; which to us is intolerable : for the house hold and sheykhly virtues that were in him — mildness and comity and simplicity and good faith, in things indifferent of the daily life — cannot amend our opinion of the Arabian man's barbaric ignorance, his sleight and murderous cruelty" in the institution of his religious faction; or sweeten our contempt of an hysterical prophetism and polygamous living. — Moham med who persuaded others, lived confident in himself; and died persuaded by the good success of his own doctrine. What was the child Mohammed ?— a pensive orphan, a herding lad : the young man was sometime a caravan trader, — wherein he discovered his ambitious meaning, when he would not enter Damascus ! His was a soaring and wounded (because infirm) spirit, a musing solitary conscience ; and his youth was full of dim vaticination of himself, and of religious aspiration. A soul so made will pursue the dream of those her inexpert and self- loving years : and how long soever, difficult, ay, and perilous be the circuit which lies before him, it were lighter for such an one to endure all things than fail of his presumption and (finally) to fall short of his own soul. — Mohammed, the Preacher, found no purer worshippers and witnesses of the God of Abra ham than an idolatrous Christianity, and the YahM, 'a seed of evil-doers.' He calls them in the koran ' The people of the [former] Scriptures, which were sent down from on high': but as his faction increased he came to account them — since they were not with him — adverse factions; and afterward his enemies. — As flies will beat to an appearing of light in darkness ; so it is in 'the preaching of a new doctrine. Arabs are naturally half-melancholy in the present [it is the weakness of their fibre], and they live in a fond hope of better things: many therefore were shortly his partizans, and valiant men became partakers of the religious fortune of Mohammed, — who had been sheltered in the beginning by the uncles and alliance of his (considerable) sheykhly house. — Five hundred men banded in arms — as much as the power of Ibn Rashid — may well suffice, in empty Arabia, for any warlike need: how much more being vehemently knit and moved together by some con tagious zeal, to the despising of death ; and when, for one who falls, many will arise in his room ! — In any age they might carry [as lately the Wahaby] in few years, all the wilderness THE SEMITIC FAITHS. 379 land of Arabia. Sword is the key of the Meccawy's paradise ; and in the next decennium, those unwarlike but frenetic Arabians, inflamed with the new greediness of both worlds, ran down like wolves to devour the civil borders. — There is moreover a peaceable conquest of the Arabian religion [that preaches a mild-hearted Godhead, and a way of rest —in the sober and spiritual fruition of this weak fleshly life, to the bliss of Heaven] which mostly advances (now) in the African Continent; and that may in time become a danger to Christendom! And such being Mohammed's doc trine, it has obtained a third place among the religions of mankind. Wide is the diversity of the Semitic faiths. The Messianic religion — a chastisement of the soul sunning herself in the divine love — were fain to cast her arms about the human world, sealing all men as one brotherhood with a virginal kiss of meekness and charity. The Mohammedan chain- of-credulities is an elation of the soul, breathing of God's favour only to the Moslemin; and shrewdness out of her cankered bowels to all the world besides. — The Arabian religion of the sword must be tempered by the sword : and the daughter of Mecca and Medina captive, the Moslemin will become as Jews ! One may be a good Moslem, though he pass his life in the khala, with out teachers. In the towns are religious elders — not ministers of mysteries: there is no order of priesthood. Mohammed is man, an householder, the father of a family; and his is a virile religion: also his people walk in a large way, which is full of the perfume of the flesh purified ; the debate betwixt carnal nature and opinion of godliness is not grievous in their hearts. — In the naturally crapulent and idolatrous Europe man himself is divine ; every age brings forth god-like heroes. And what seek we in religion ? — is it not a perfect law of humanity ? — to bind up the wounds, and heal the sores of human life ; and a pathway to heaven. — Looking upon the religious tradition of Beny Israel, from the soil of the desert, we might muse of its rising in Jacob's family, out of the nomad Semites' vision of the mel4k. We read in Herodotus as in Moses of the circumcision, the superstition of meats, the priest's imposing the iniquity of the people upon the head of an animal, the vesture and ordinance of the priesthood: they were customs of the Egyptians. The bitter cry of the Hebrew prophets revived in every generation and continued the (Mosaic) tradition, which was finally esta blished by David; but righteousness, justice, sanctity, spring naturally in the human conscience; they are lent to the re- 380 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. ligions : wherein divinity and human equity stand oft-times so far asunder that we might muse of a stone age in heaven ! I was bidden to another Wahaby household; and they received the hakim not without hospitality. The house-father, a landed person, had grown sons, and named himself to me the Sheykh Mohammed : yet was he no sheykh, but, as friends told me (they are jealous of the sheykhly dignity), min khulk Ullah, ' of God's creatures ', that is one of the people. Sheykh Mohammed, who had a great town house, was purblind ; and his sons Avere ailing. [When I was driven from Aneyza he sent me four pence, for medicines, for conscience' sake !] The old man gave me good words whilst I sat in their hall : — " Khalil, I look on thee as one of my sons : couldst thou not, for the time thou art here, conform thyself to us in religion, the religion of Islam ? — I know that ye are the people of the Enjil, and worshippers of Ullah, but not as we; say, Mohammed Ras4l Ullah ! and be of fellowship with the Moslemin. Then all they that now hold aloof, will wish thee well ; and what ever thou wouldst ask thou shalt obtain, were it to stay here and make the pilgrimage with us, or to take thy journey to another country." — They watched me out of their false eyes ; as I responded, "Every creature is ras4l Ullah ! " One morning I went to breakfast there ; and he called a gossip of his, another Mohammed, a clothier in the suk, whose mother had many years suffered incessant pain of facial neuralgia. We went afterward to see the patient, and I left with her some papers of laudanum powder. Later in the day I passed Mohammed's shop ; and he told me she had swallowed the doses at once ! — I bade him hasten home ; and if he found his mother slumbering to give her the pot- ful of coffee to drink ! — " Only mind the shop for me ! Khalil," — and he went. I dreaded the worst; but he returned soon, saying (to my comfort) that his mother was well. The by standers rallied the clothier, who was a little broken-headed. insisting [the oasis Arabs are full of petulant humour] that he Avould have poisoned his old mother ! Sheykh Mohammed sent for me one morrow suddenly! — I found two Beduins sitting in his coffee-hall; and quoth he, " Khalil, there is a message come for thee to go to Boreyda ; and these are the men that will convey thee, and here is the letter from Abdullah (the Emir). — Come near one of you, my sons there ! and read this for Khalil." Abdullah wrote — after their formal greetings — 'They heard in Boreyda that the people of A DISCOURSE OF RELIGION. 381 Aneyza had found the Nasrany 's remedies to be profitable ; and he desired the Sheykh Mohammed, to persuade the Nasrany to return with his messengers ; to cure his sister's eyes, and to minister unto other persons.' I answered, " I was in Boreyda, and they drove me from them ; also this Abdullah caused me to be forsaken in the Wady !" [I would not trust myself again in a town, where the worst of all the citizens were the ungracious usurping sheykhs.] The old man exhorted me as if he had a power to compel me ; and the Beduw said (with then- Asiatic fawning), " Up now Khalil ! and mount with us. Eigh ! wellah they will give thee much silver : Abdullah will be kind." "Ay, trust me Khalil! only go with them, added Sheykh Mo hammed ; and thou shalt have a letter from Zamil requiring them to send thee again within a certain time." — " Let Abdul lah's sister come hither ; and I will cure the woman at Aneyza." ¦ — "Khalil, I warrant thee, thou shalt win at least thirty reals by this voyage !" — "Neither for thirty mares would I return thither, farewell." On a morrow I was in my friend's palm ground, when the sun was rising : and we sat under thick boughs of pomegranate trees. The fresh-breathing air from the NefM disposed our thoughts to cheerful contemplation ; and in this Arabian, here in the midst of great deserts, was the brotherly discourse and the integrity of Europe ! " Khalil, quoth he, I marvel,— I have indignation at the strange fanaticism of the people ! what is it?" — "They bite at me in religion! but who may certify us in these things ? that are of faith, hope, authority, built on no certain ground." — "And they who have preached religions were moved by some worldly seeking (tdm'a ed-dinya)!" — "Every religion, were it anciently begotten of a man's sins ! is born of human needs, and her utterance of the human conscience is true religion; whether we adore a Sovereign Unity, Father eternal of all PoAver and Life, Lord of the visible and invisible, or (with shorter spiritual ken) bow the knees to the Manifold divine Majesty in the earth and heavens. Nations hold to their religions — 'that is true [in their countries] which every man saith ': howbeit the verity of the things alleged cannot be made manifest on this side the gate of death. And everyone will stand to his chance, and depart to the Gulf of Eternity in the common faith ; — that to clearer sight may be but a quack-salving of the soul, a dark incongruous argument. But let us pass forth to enter the indestructible temple-building of science, wherein is truth." — "Akhs ! that they should persecute thee : and is there such a malignity in mankind!" — "And tell me, what can so bind 382 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. to religion this people full of ungodly levity and deceitful life?" — "I think it is the feae of the fire (of hell) that amazes their hearts ! all the time of their lives." — "Is not death ' an end of all evils ' ? but by such doctrines even this last bitter com fort is taken away from the miserable"! — -Fire is the divine cruelty of the Semitic religions ! As I came again to town, idle persons gathered about me in the street ; and a pleasant fellow of the people stayed to tell them a tale. — "When I was trafficking in Irak, I had dealings Avith a certain YahMy; who, when we spoke together, called me at every word akh4y, 'my brother! my brother!' but one day I cried, ' Shield me Ullah from Sheytan ! am I the Jews' brother ? ' The YahMy answered me, ' For this word; when I shall see thee in the flame (of hell torments) I will not bring thee water.' And this is the confidence, friends, that have all men in their religion wherein they were born. Let us not rashly blame an alien ! they have a religion and so have we. And, I say, ye do not well to pursue the Nasrany with your uncivil words : is not Khalil here in the countenance of the sheykhs ? and those medicines that he dispenses are profitable to the Moslemin." The small-pox increased in the town:' already they numbered thirty deaths among the sick children. The parents who called me wondered, to see the hakim avoid to breathe the air of their infected chambers ;— since they heard from me, I had been vaccinated ! for it is a saying in these parts of Nejd, that 'if one be vaccinated, the small-pox shall never attain him.' They will tell you, 'that of all the hundreds, vaccinated by Abu Faris, thirty years ago, none has been afterward overtaken by the disease :' — haply the graft may be more enduring in the temper of their Arabian bodies. As I returned one evening I met a little boy in the street,— and he said dolefully, Sully 'aid hd 'I ghrddd, 'pray for this passed one'. The child car ried a bundle, in his arms ; and I saw it was a dead babe that he bore forth, to the burial ! — At this time, there died five or six children daily: and in the end 'there was not an unbereaved household'. In that disease they refuse all remedies. The only son of a patient of mine being likely to die, I would have given him a medicine, but the poor man answered, " It may yet please the Lord to save the child and his eyes." In a day or two the boy died: and finding that pensive father in the street, I said to him, " Comfort thyself ! God may send. thee another; and is the child dead?" — "Ah! I have even now buried him, — aha ! he is gone unto Him who made him !" THE PATRIOT YAHYA. 383 A courtly young man led me one afternoon to an home stead out of the town, to see his sister's sick child; the father was a kinsman of the Kenneyny's. And in the way he said to me, " Dwell here (at Aneyza), we will provide the house ; and be thou a father to us." This was Hdmed el-Yahfla, third son of the patriot Yahija. So we came to a palm plant ation and a rustic house ; where I was many times afterward entertained, and always kindly welcomed by the patrician family. The palm ground of not fully five acres was all their patrimony: this noble poverty had sufficed the old patriot to foster up honourably his not small family. The young man's mother welcomed the hakim at the gate, and brought in her arms a fair-faced sick grandchild. — I had not seen such a matronly behaviour, nor one so like a lady, in the Arabian oases! Yahya had made his wife such, taking no more than one to be the mother of his household. Hamed brought me to his father, who was sitting in the arbour : the sire — now a poor old man bowed together and nearly blind, rose to greet the Nasrany ; but the mother and son smiled (a little undutifully) to the stranger ; as it were to excuse the decay of his venerable person. Yah^a's authority still guided the household : his sons also took to heart, and made much of their father's sayings. — In these new friends I saw a right Arabian family : they had not ridden out of their township, save in warfaring ex peditions, and to go down in the pilgrimage to Mecca; and had never put their hands to merchandise. But old Yahya had been a busy patriot and sheykh of the bold Khereysy, a great (peaceable) faction of his toAvnsmen [as there are such in all the oases] ; and theirs is one of the three standards in the battle of the men of Aneyza. The same was now the dignity of his eldest son, Abdullah, [v. above p. 350,] by a former wife, who was to-day the companion of Zamil ; and ' without Abdul lah el- Yahya, Zamil did nothing at Aneyza.' The young sheykh is a dealer in camels. — In Yahya's household there was no savour of intolerance : the venerable father's voice taught his children and others, that "Khalil is of the Mes sih, and their scripture is the Enjil, which is likewise Word of Ullah." My medicines were well spoken of in Aneyza: the Ken neyny's mother — very dear to him, as are the Arabian mothers to their sons — had been happily relieved ; and he went about magnifying this cure to his friends and acquaintance. The good man even added ; ' And it were not too much, although he divided all that he had with Khalil!' — The Nejders are 384 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. coffee-tipplers, above all the inhabitants of the East. A coffee- server was my patient, who, in his tastings, between the cups, drunk "sixty" fenjeyns every day; besides he thought he smoked " as many " pipes of tobacco. I bade him every week drink ten cups fewer daily; and have done with the excess. " Verily, he exclaimed, there is a natural wisdom in the Nasara ! more than in the Moslemin. Khalil can cure even without medicine : ye see in this an easy and perfect remedy, and it shall cost a man nothing!" Even English medicaments are brought to the caravaners' town — in the Gulf trade, from India. To a phthisical patient I prescribed cod-liver oil ; and he found a bottle the same day in the siik ! but they think it not good to drink in the hot months. The beginning of his sickness was a chill: he had been overtaken in the Nefud by a heavy rain, and let his drenched clothing dry upon him. The malady is oftener bred of the morning chill, falling on sleepers in the open ; but this disease is not common in the desert air of Nejd. The evil, without cough, was come upon the Kenneyny ; but he hid it from me : with a narrow chest, he had passed the years since his youth in a dampish tropical climate. — I had here an epileptical patient ; I have seen but one other in Arabia : and he was of the blacks at Kheybar. I had also a patient whose malady cannot be found in the new books of medicine ; the man was "fascinated " ! He lamented, " It is nefs, a spirit, which besets me ;" and added, ' this was common in their parts — the work of the hareem, with their sly philters and maleficent drinks.' — "There, there! he cries, I see her wiggle-wiggling! and she is ever before mine eyes. The woman was my wife, but last year I put her away ; and am in dread, she has given me a thing to drink ; whereof I shall every day fare the worse, whilst I live. The phantom is always in my head, even when I walk abroad, — wellah as we sit here I see her winding and wiggling!" The poor fancy-stricken man, who served the Kenneyny at Bosra, was wasted and hypochondriac : his melancholy fantasy was matter of mirth (only not openly) with Hamed of Bagdad and the younger friends. I have seen a ready cure, in the East, for distracted persons, under the shadow of religion. Years before when wandering in the high Lebanon I descended into a deep wady — the name of it is in their tongue Valley-of-Saints ; wherein is a great Christian minster of the Syrian religion. One hundred and twenty are the poor religious brethren: twenty-five were ordained priests ; the rest live not in ease and leisure, of that which the toiling people have spared, but every man labours VALLEY OF SAINTS. 385 with his hands for the common living, — the most are husband men. Each cheerful sunrising calls them to the fields ; Avhere every religious labourer draws apart to be alone with God in his contemplation. The handicraftsmen remain at home, namely the brothers shoemakers, and those who weave the decent black mantles without seam of all the humble friars ; others serve devoutly in the kitchen, where they bake bread for the convent, and boil their poor victual. The priests remain in the cloister to sing mass, and say their formal devotion at the canonical hours. At the knelling of the chapel bell those who are in the valley below, at their tillage, pause to bid the church prayers : the convent chapel is a great cave walled-up under the living rock. From sunset to sunset, six times in the natural day, their bells ring out to the common devotion : the brethren rise at the solemn sound in the night season, and assemble to their chapel prayers. — The winter months are austere in their airy height of the mountains : the sun, moving behind the pinnacles of that valley-side, shines but an hour upon them. The religious taste no flesh ; bread with oil, and pot-herbs is their common diet ; leban and eggs they may eat twice in the week. In the deep under them is a little snow-cold river (running from above the Cedars) which turns their millstones : some brothers are millers ; and thereby is a clay building, where, in the--*pring time, certain of the religious husbandmen feed silkworms. The cells of the convent are bare walls, with a little open casement, and clay floor twelve feet wide : the cloisterers are poor men, Avhose senses be but blunt in the use of this world ; and we might think their religious houses little cleanly. Of that society are two hermits, whose dwelling is among the rocks in the dim limestone valley: they pray continually, and a novice carries down their victual, every midday. — There are thirty convents of their order in the mountains of Lebanon ; and amongst the multitude of brethren are, they say, three holy men, unto whom it is given to work miracles. A young friar, lately ordained priest, Avhose office was to study, and wait upon (any visiting) strangers, seeing me suffer with rheumatism in the autumn clouds of these high places, exhorted me, with an affectionate humility, to visit one of the saints, 'to Avhose. convent was only five little hours ; and he would ask his abbot's leave to accompany me.' One of those men of God healed all manner of infirmities; another, he told me, had raised even the dead to life ; and of another he said, that he ha'd given children many times to barren wives. ' He knew a sterile woman who visited the man of God : and she bare a son, D. T. 11. 25 386 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. according to his saying, before the year's end; but in the journey, as she carried her babe to him for baptism, the child died. On the third day she came to the saint ; and he restored her dead child to life ! — Tavo men went to visit the saint, and one of them was blind : but as they were in the way the blind man saw ! then said his companion, " Wherefore should we go further? what need have we of the man of God?" — But whilst he was speaking, the blindness of the other fell upon him ! ' No Avoman may pass their cloister gate. " And is it not, I asked, a hard thing, that one who is entered into religion should be cut off from marriage ? " " Nay, he answered, it is an easy thing, it is next to nothing: and I look on a woman as I look on yonder gate-post." This young priest was epileptic, from a child ; and ' had been wont, he said, to fall every day once, till he went to the saint, with whom he abode four months ; and the malady left him '. — He answered that he read only seldom in the Old Testament Scriptures; and asked me, if the Syrian father (and commentator of the Gospels in that tongue), the venerable Ephraim, lived before or were he after Jesus Christ ? and whether the Temple, builded by Solomon — with the cedars of Libnan, were before or since Christ's time?' Besides he could not guess that wine hM been in the world before the coming of the Messiah ! for he thought Jesus first made it by miracle in a marriage supper. Of Noah's sons he had not heard, how many they were, nor their names. But he enquired earnestly of Sinai ; and asked me ' in what part of the world lay that holy mountain, — at present ? ' Finally he showed me a deep well, in their cloister yard, that he said was 'very good for the cure of any who were not in their right minds : and when the patient was drawn up it would be seen that he was come to himself — The poor moon-sick is let down in a dark Avell, and drenched in water deadly cold! and doubtless the great dread and the chill may work together to knit the fibre of all but the most distempered brains. Poor or rich patients at Aneyza, none of them paid anything for the hakim's service and medicines! Some welfaring persons, though I helped their lives, showed the Nasrany no humanity again, not so much as calling me to coffee in their ungracious: houses. I was happy to dispense medicines freely to poorer persons : and though I affected to chide my fraudulent debtors, I was well content with them all ; since even out of their false wrangling I learned somewhat more of this Nejd country. One STONE-HE WING. 387 of the defaulters was a farmer beyond the walls; and I had these occasions of walking abroad. — Not far beyond the Boreyda gate, the neighbours showed me a fathom-thick corner of clay walling, all that remains of a kella of the old Wahaby usurpation. When Ibrahim Pasha arrived with an Egyptian army at Aneyza, his artillery battered the clay fortress all night ; and at dawn there remained nothing of the work but earthen heaps : the same day he suffered Ibn SaM's garrison to depart from the town. In that place is a floor of bare sand-rock,, which the owner has made his Avell-yard; and the fifty-foot-deep well, bored therein, was the labour of Aneyza stone-AVorkers. Their toil is so noxious (under this breathless climate), that he who in the vigorous hope of his youth is allured by the higher wage to cast in his lot with the stone-hewers may hardly come to ripe years, or even to his middle age. And the people say, in their religious wise, " It is a chastisement from Ullah ; the young men transgress heedlessly, giving themselves to an excessive labour." When the sharp flying powder has settled in the lungs, cutting and consuming them as glass, there is no power in Nature which can expel it again. — A young stone-hewer came to me ; his beard was only beginning to spring, but he was sick unto death : he could not go the length of a few houses, so his heart, he said, panted ; and he lamented to the hakim, " My breast is broken !" Sheykh Nasir said, " Thus they all perish early ; in two or three years they die." I went on to the farmer's, who had a good place nigh the Kenneyny 's garden. The man came from the well to meet me ; and led me into his kahwa, out of the sun ; and sat down to make coffee. After the cup I said to him, " This is a good homestead ! I see palms and corn-land and camels ; and here are great heaps of your wheat and barley harvest ! ready to be trodden out : tell me, why keep you back the small price of my medicines?" — "Eigh, Khalil! Thou dost not know how it stands with us, I would God that all these things were mine indeed, as they be mine in appearance ! Seest thou yonder camels ? — they are the Bessam's ; and nearly all this corn will be theirs to pay for their loan ; and we must every year bor row afresh from them : wellah, it is little when I have settled with them that will remain to us. This ground was mine own, but now it is almost gone ; and I am become as it were their steward." The wealthy Bessam family are money-lenders at Aneyza. The rate is fifteen in the hundred for tAvelve months, paid in 25—2 388 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. money ; but if yielded in kind, — the payment of the poor man ! for every real they are to receive a real and a half's worth, in dates or corn, at the harvest rates. This fruit they lay up till they may sell it, later in the year, at an enhanced price (to the poor Nomads). — One who came in, and Avas my acquaintance, thus reproached the iniquity of the farmer, " 0 man ! fearest thou not Ullah ? pay the hakim his due, or know that the Lord- is above thee." The farmer's son had been an Ageyly in Syria, — where he sometime served, he told me, a Nasrany, a certain rich corn-chandler at Nazareth ; of whom he magnified the probity and hospitality. Factions and indebtedness are the destruction of the Arab countries. "Borrowed money, they tell you, is sweet" [as they say of lying], — it is like a booty of other men's goods, and the day of reckoning is not yet. The lending at usury, dis allowed in the koran doctrine, is practised even in these puritan countries. The villagers are undone thereby; and the most Beduins fall every year behindhand, thus losing a third in the use of their little money. — In Syria the Moslems lend not, for conscience sake; but the people are greedily eaten up by other caterpillars, the YahM, and yet more — to the confusion of the name of Christ ! by the iniquitous Nasara : twenty-five yearly in the hundred is a "merciful" price among them for the use of money. The soil is fallen thus into servitude : and when the mostly honest (Moslem) husbandmen-landowners, have at last mortgaged all for their debts; and are become tenants at will to those extortioners [of that which with a religious voice, contemning the unstable condition of this world, ' they call " the dust " — which was theirs], they begin to forsake the villages. — When I lived sometime among the people in Syria ; and saw that the masters of art in this kind of human malice were persons addicted to the foreign consulates, I spared not to blame the guilty ; for which cause such persons bore me slight good will. " The land, they have answered, is fruitful, above the soil in your countries : the tillage is light and of little cost." [In this twilight climate — where we live with such cost, and human needs are doubled — we sow with double labour to reap the half: the time is also doubled !] The Arabian oasis husbandry is hardly less skilful than that we see used in the ghr4ta of Damascus. — The oases are soil of the desert ; which is commonly fruitful under the Arabian sun, where it may be watered. Every year they soav down the same acres, with one or another kind of grain ; and yet their harvests are not light. The seed plots are dressed A HORSE-BROKER 389 with loam and the dung of their well-camel yards, ed-dimn. The stubbles, when ploughed to be sowed down in the autumn, are laid even and balked out in pans and irrigation channels, — which in their hands is quickly performed : so that Avhen the well-pond is let out all the little field may be flooded at once. In palm plantations every stem stands in a channel's course; and the wet earth about their roots is refreshed by the sinking moisture as oft as the runnels are flushed, that is once or twice in the natural day. [At el- Ally contrariwise — it may be the Hejaz or Medina custom — the palm stems are banked up from the floor of the earth.] My friends, when I enquired of the antiquity of the country, spoke to me of a ruined site el-'Eyarieh, at little distance north ward upon this side of the W. er-Rummah : and Kenneyny said "We can take horses and ride thither." I went one morning afterward with Hamed Assafy to borrow horses of a certain horse-broker Abdullah, surnamed [and thus they name every Abdullah, although he have no child] Abu Nejm: Abu Nejm was a horse-broker for the Indian market. There is no breed ing or sale of horses at Boreyda or Aneyza, nor any town in Nejd ; but the horse-brokers take up young stallions in the Aarab tribes, which — unless it be some of not common excel lence, are of no great price among them. Kenneyny would ride out to meet with us from another horse-yard, which was nigh his own plantation. We found Abu Nejm's feAV sale horses, with other horses which he fed on some of his friends' account, in a field among the last palms north of the town. Two stallions feed head to head at a square clay bin ; and each horse is tethered by an hind foot to a peg driven in the ground. Their fodder is green vetches {jet) : and this is their diet since they were brought in lean from the desert, through the summer weeks; until the time when the Monsoon blows in the Indian seas. Then the broker's horse-droves pass the long northern wilderness, with camels, bearing their water, in seventeen marches to Kuweyt ; where they are shipped for Bombay. An European had smiled to see in this Arab's countenance the lively impression of his dealing in horses ! Abu Nejm, who lent me a horse, would ride in our company. Our saddles Avere pads Avithout stirrups, for — like the Beduins, they use none here : yet these townsmen ride with the sharp bit of the border lands ; whereas the nomad horsemen mount without bit or rein, and sit upon their mares, as they sit on their dromedaries (that is somewhat raAvly), and with a halter only. — 39° TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. I have never heard a horseman commended among Beduins for his fair riding, though certain sheykhs are praised as spearsmen. Abu Nejm went not himself to India ; and it was unknown to him that any Nasrany could ride: he called to me therefore, to hold fast to the pad-brim, and wrap the other hand in the horse's mane. Bye and bye I made my horse bound under me, and giving rein let him try his mettle over the sand- billows of the NefM, — " Ullah ! is the hakim khayydl, a horse man?" exclaimed the worthy man. We rode by a threshing-ground ; and I saw a team of well- camels driven in a row with ten kine and an ass inwardly (all the cattle of that homestead), about a stake, and treading knee-deep upon the bruised corn-stalks. In that yard-side I saw many ant-hills; and drew bridle to consider the labour of certain indigent hareem that were sitting beside them.— I saw the emmets' last confusion (which they suffered as rob bers), — their hill-colonies subverted, and caught up in the women's meal- sieves ! that (careful only of their desolate living) tossed sky-high the pismire nation, and mingled people and musheyikh in a homicide ruin of sand and grain. — And each needy wife had already some- handfuls laid up in her spread kerchief, of this gleaning corn. We see a long high platform of sand-rock, Mergab er-Rafa, upon this side of the town. There stone is hewed and squared for well building, and even for gate-posts, in Aneyza. — Kenneyny came riding to meet us ! and now we fell into an hollow ancient way through the Nefud leading to the 'Eyarieh ; and my com panions said, there lies such another between el-'Eyarieh and el-Owshazieh ; that is likewise an ancient town site. How may these impressions abide in unstable sand ? — So far as I have seen there is little wind in these countries. Abdullah sat upon a beautiful young stallion of noble blood, that went sidling proudly under his fair handling : and seeing the stranger's eyes fixed upon his horse, ''Ay, quoth my friend, this one is good in all." Kenneyny, who with Sheykh Nasir shipped three or four young Arabian horses every year to Bombay, told me that by some they gain ; but another horse may be valued there so low, that they have less by the sale- money than the first cost and expenses. Abu Nejm told us his winning or losing was ' as it pleased Ullah : the more whiles he gained, but sometimes no.' They buy the young desert horses in the winter time, that ere the next shipping season they may be grown in flesh, and strong ; and inured by the oasis' diet of sappy vetches, to the green climate of India. BetAveen the wealthy ignorance of foreign buyers, and the THE BEST ARABIAN HORSES. 391 Asiatic flattery of the Nejders of the Arab stables in Bombay, a distinction has been invented of Aneyza and Nejd horses ! — as well might we distinguish between London and Middlesex pheasants. We have seen that the sale-horses are collected by town dealers, min el- Aarab, from the nomad tribes; and since there are few horses in the vast Arabian marches, they are ofttimes fetched from great distances. I have found "Aneyza" horses in the Bombay stables which Avere foaled in el- Yemen. — Perhaps we may understand by Aneyza horses, the horses of Kasim dealers [of Aneyza and Boreyda] ; and by Nejd horses, the Jebel horses, or those sent to Bombay from Ibn Rashid's country. I heard that a Boreyda broker's horse-troop had been sent out a few days before my coming thither. — Boreyda is a town and small Arabian state ; the Emir governs the neighbour villages, but is not obeyed in the desert. It is likely therefore that the Aneyza horse-coursers' traffic may be the more con siderable. [The chief of the best Bombay stable is from Shuggera in el-We'shm.] As for the northern or "Gulf" horses, bred in the nomad diras upon the river countries — although of good stature and swifter, they are not esteemed by the inner Arabians. Their flesh being only " of greenness and water " they could not en dure in the sun-stricken languishing country. Their own daughters-of-the-desert, albe they less fairly shaped, are, in the same strains, worth five of the other. — Even the sale-horses are not curried under the pure Arabian climate : they learn first to stand under the strigil in India. Hollow-necked, as the camel, are the Arabian horses: the lofty neck of our thick- blooded horses Avere a deformity in the eyes of all Arabs. The desert horses, nurtured in a droughty wilderness of hot plain lands beset with small mountains, are not leapers, but very sure of foot to climb in rocky ground. They are good weight carriers: I have heard nomads boast that their mares ' could carry four men '. The Arabians believe faithfully that Ullah created the horse-kind in their soil : el-asl, the root or spring of the horse is, they say, " in the land of the Aarab ". Even Kenneyny was of this superstitious opinion ; although the horse can live only of man's hand in the droughty khala. [Rummaky, 'a mare, is a word often used in el-Kasim : Salih el-Rasheyd tells me they may say ghrSg for a horse ; but that is seldom heard.] We rode three miles and came upon a hill of hard loam, overlooking, the Wady er-Rummah, which might be there two miles over. "In the further side appear a few outlying palm plantations and granges: but that air breeds fever 392 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. and the water is brackish, and they are tilled only by negro husbandmen. All the nigh valley grounds were Avhite with subbakha: in the midst of the Wady is much good loam, grown up with desert bushes and tamarisks ; but it cannot be husbanded because the ground-water — there at the depth of ten feet — is saline and sterile. Below us I saw an enclosure of palms with plots of vetches and stubbles, and a clay cabin or two ; which were sheykh Nasir 's. Here the shallow Rummah bottom reaches north-eastward and almost enfolds Aneyza : at ten hours' distance, or one easy thelul journey, lies a great rautha, Zighreybieh, with corn grounds, which are flooded with seyl-water in the winter rains : there is a salt bed, where salt is digged for Aneyza. The Wady descending through the northern wilderness [which lies waste for hundreds of miles without settlement] is dammed in a place called eth-Thueyrdt, that is a thelul journey or perhaps fifty miles distant from Aneyza, by great dunes of sand which are grown up, they say, in this age. From thence the hollow Wady ground — wherein is the path of the northern caravans — is named el-Bdtin ; and passengers ride by the ruined sites of two or three villages : there are few wells by the way, and not much water in them. That vast wilderness was anciently of the B. Taamir. The Wady banks are often cliffs of clay and gravel, and from cliff to cliff the valley may be commonly an hour (nearly three miles) over, said Kenneyny. In the NefM plain of Kasim the course of the great Wady is sometimes hardly to be discerned by the eyes of strangers. A few journeying together will not adventure to hold the valley way : they ride then, not far off, in the desert. All the winding length of the Wady er-Rummah is, according to the vulgar opinion, forty-five days or camel marches (that were almost a thousand miles): it lies through a land- breadth, measured from the heads in the Harrat Kheybar to the out going near Bosra, of nearly five hundred miles. — What can we think of this great valley-ground, in a rainless land? When the Wady is in flood — that is hardly twice or thrice in a century, the valley flows down as a river. The stream- ' ing tide is large ; and where not straitened may be forded, they say, by a dromedary rider. No man of my time of life had seen the seyl; but the elder generation saw it forty years before, in a season when uncommon rains had fallen in all the high country toward Kheybar. The flood that passed Aneyza, being locked by the mole of sand at eth-Thueyrat, rose backward and became a wash, which was here at the 'Eyarieh two miles wide. And then was seen in Nejd the neAv spectacle of a lake el-'EYArIeh. 393 indeed ! — there might be nigh an hundred miles of standing water; which remained two years and was the repair of all wandering wings of water-fowl not known heretofore, nor had their cries been heard in the air of these desert countries. After a seyling of the great valley the water rises in the wells at Boreyda and Aneyza ; and this continues for a year or more. We found upon this higher ground potsherds and broken glass — as in all ruined sites of ancient Arabia, and a few building-stones, and bricks: but how far are they now from these arts of oid settled countries in Nejd! — This is the site el-'Eyarieh or Menzil 'Eydr ; where they see ' the plots of three or four ancient villages and a space of old inhabited soil greater than Aneyza' : they say, " It is better than the situation of the (new) town." We dismounted, and Abdullah began to say, " Wellah, the Arabs (of our time) are degenerate from the ancients, in all ! — we see them live by inheriting their labours" (deep wells in the deserts and other public works) ! — The sword, they say, of Khdlid bin-Walid [that new Joshua of Islam, in the days of Omar] devoured idolatrous 'Eyarieh, a town of B. Temim. The like is reported of Owshazieh, whose site is three hours eastward : there are now some palm-grounds and orchard houses of Aneyza. 'Eydr and Owshdz, in the Semitic tradition, are "brethren ".—" It is re membered in the old poets of those B. Temim citizens (quoth my erudite companions) that they had much cattle ; and in the spring-time were wont to wander with their flocks and camels in the NefM, and dwell in booths like the nomads." — This is that we have seen in Edom and Moab [Vol. I. pp. 24, 38, 41] where from the entering of the spring the villagers are tent- dwellers in the wilderness about them, — for the summering of their cattle : I have seen poor families in Gilead — which had no tent-cloth — dwelling under great oaks ! the leafy pavilions are a covert from the heat by day, and from, the nightly dews. Their flocks Avere driven-in toward the- sun- setting, and lay down round about them. Only the soil remains of the town of 'Eyar : Avhat were the lives of those old generations more than the flickering leaves ! the works of their hands, the thoughts and intents of their hearts, — ' their love their hatred and envy,' are utterly perished ! Their religion is forsaken ; their place is unvisited as the ceme teries of a former age: only in the autumn landed men of Aneyza send their servants thither, with asses and panniers, to dig loam for a top-dressing. As we walked we saw white slags lying together ; where perhaps had been the Avorkstead of some ancient artificer. When I asked 'had nothing been found here?' 394 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. Kenneyny told of some well-sinkers, that were hired to dig a well in a new ground by the 'Eyarieh [the water is nigh and good]. "They beginning to open their pit one of them lighted on a great earthen vessel ! — it was set in the earth mouth downward [the head of an antique grave]. Then every well-digger cried out that the treasure was his own! none would hear his fellows' reason — and all men have reason ! From quick words they fell to hand-strokes ; and laid so sharply about them with their mattocks, that in the end but one man was left alive. This workman struck his vessel, with an eager heart! — but in the shattered pot was no more than a clot of the common earth!" — Abdullah said besides, 'that a wedge of fine gold had been taken up here, within their memories. The finder gave it, when he came into the town, for two hundred reals, to one who afterward sold the metal in the North, for better than a thousand.' We returned : and Kenneyny at the end of a mile or two rode apart to his horse-yard; where he said he had some what to show me another day. — I savf it later, a blackish vein, more than a palm deep and three yards wide, in the yellow sides of a loam pit : plainly the ashes of an antique fire, and in this old hearth they had found potsherds ! thereabove lay a fathom of clay ; and upon that a drift of NefM sand. -^Here had been a seyl-bed before the land was enclosed ; but potsherds so lying under a fathom of silt may be of an high antiquity. What was man then in the midst of Arabia ? Some part of the town of Aneyza, as the mejlis and clothier's street, is built upon an old seyl-ground; and has been twice wasted by land floods : the last was ninety years before. I went home Avith Hamed and there came-in the younger Abdullah el-Bessam. They spoke of the ancients, and (as litterates) contemned the vulgar opinion of giants in former ages: nevertheless they thought it appeared hy old writings, that men in their grandsires' time had been stronger than uoav ; for they found that a certain weight was then reckoned a man's load at Aneyza, which were now above the strength of common labourers ; and that not a few of those old folk came to four score years and ten. There are many long-lived persons at Aneyza, and I saw more grey beards in this one town than in all parts besides where I passed in Arabia. But our holiday on horseback to the 'Eyarieh bred talk. ' We had not ridden there, three or four together, upon a fool's errand; the Nasrany in his books of secret science had some old record of this country.' Yet the liberal townsmen bade me daily, Not mind their foolish words ; and they added pro- THE MUTTOWWA. 395 verbially, eUArab, 'akl-hum ndkis, the Arabs are always short- witted. Yet their crabbed speech vexed the Kenneyny, a spirit so high above theirs and unwont to suffer injuries. — I found him on the morrow sitting estranged from them and offended i " Ahks, he said, this despiteful people ! but my home is in Bosra, and God be thanked ! I shall not be much longer with them. Oh ! Khalil, thou canst not think what they call me,— they say, el-Kenneyny bellowwy !" — This is some outrageous villany, which is seldom heard amongst nomads; and is only uttered of anyone Avhen they would speak extremely. The Arabs— the most unclean and devout of lips, of mankind ! — curse all under heaven which contradicts their humour ; and the Wahaby rancour was stirred against a townsman who was no partizan of their blind faction, but seemed to favour the Nasrany. I wondered to see the good man so much moved in his philo sophy ! — but he quailed before the popular religion ; which is more than law and government, even in a free town. " A pang is in my heart, says an Oriental poet, because I am disesteemed by the depraved multitude." Kenneyny was of those that have lived for the advancement of their people, and are dead before the time. May his eternal portion be rest and peace ! And seeing the daily darkening and averting of the Wahaby faces, I had a careful outlaw's heart under my bare shirt; though to none of them had I done anything but good, — and this only for the name of the young prophet of Galilee and the Christian tradition ! The simpler sort of liberals were bye and bye afraid to converse with me ; and many of my former acquaintance seemed now to • shun that I should be seen to enter their friendly houses. And I knew not that this came of the Mut towwa — that (in their Friday sermons) they moved the people against me ! 'It is not reason, said these divines, in a time when the Sooltan of Islam is busy in slaughtering the Nasara, that any misbelieving Nasrany should be harboured in a faith ful town: and they did contrary to their duties who in any wise favoured him.'— Kenneyny though timid before the people was resolute to save me: he and the good Bessam were also in the counsels of Zamil— But why, I thought, should I longer trouble them with my religion? I asked my friends, 'When would there be any caravan setting forth, that I might depart with them ? ' They answered, "Have patience awhile ; for there is none in these days." A fanatic sometimes threatened me as I returned by the narrow and lonely ways, near my house: "0 kafir! if it please the Lord, thou wilt be slain this afternoon or night, or else to morrow's day. Ha ! son of mischief, how long dost thou refuse 396 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. the religion of Islam ? We gave thee indeed a time to repent, with long sufferance and kindness ! — now die in thy blind way, for the Moslemin are weary of thee. Except thou say the testimony, thou wilt be slain to-day: thou gettest no more grace, for many have determined to kill thee." Such deadly kind of arguments were become as they say familiar evils, in this long tribulation of Arabian travels ; yet I came no more home twice by the same way, in the still (prayer and coffee) hours of the day or evening; and feeling any presentiment I went secretly armed: also when I returned (from friends' houses) by night I folded the Arab cloak about my left arm ; and confided, that as I had lived to the second year a threatened man, I should yet live and finally escape them. In this drought of spirit there came to me a certain cameleer, Ibrahim of Shuggera; which is a good town, t\vo dromedary journeys eastward in el-Wdshm. He proffered to carry me whithersoever I would, affirming that he knew all the ways to the east and southward as far as el- Yemen. 'If I would ride, he said, to Sidd4s: the way is ten camel marches, which he divided thus ; the first to Mith'nib; the second day to A4n es-Sweyna, a small village in Wady es-Sirr, [this valley, in which there are springs and hamlets, seyls only into a gd or place of subsidence] ; we should be the third night at el-Feythdh, another small village ; the fourth at Borr4d, a small village ; the next station was his own town, Shuggera; then Thdrmidda, a populous and ancient place ; the seventh er-Robba, a small village ; the eighth Theydich ; the ninth Horeymla, a populous town ; then Sidd4s, which is a small village in Wady Hanify, with Ayeyna and Jebeyly : from thence we might ride to eth- Therr'eyyeh, in the same valley of el-Aruth ; and be the twelfth night at er-Ridth. — Or if I thought this tedious, the way for theliil riders is four journeys to Siddiis ; and the stations — W. es-Sirr, Shuggera, Horeymla.' When I enquired of the security of the way, — "We will ride, he said, in the night-time; by day there is no safe passage : for since Ibn SaM's lordship was broken, the tribes have returned to their wildness, and the country is infested by ghrazzus " — I heard from Kenneyny, that this Ibrahim had been twice robbed, in the last months ! of his thelul, and of the wares whereAvith he went trafficking to friendly Aarab. Yet my friend thought I might adventure to ride with him, bearing a letter from Zamil ; and return. "If we must ride all by night, where shall we lodge in the day?" Ibrahim: "In the villages." — "And if any insult and threaten the Nasrany — ?" — 'We Avill alight to rest in friendly EAST NEJD. 397 houses ; and [he stamped upon the floor] they are all under my heel — thus ! Fear nothing if thou hast a letter from Zamil to Abdullah ibn SaM ; wellah for the name only of Zamil [it is so honourable] there will none molest thee." — But I con sidered that the fatigues of this voyage in the darkness would be little profitable : besides I languished, so that I might expire in the saddle ere those many long journeys were ended again at Aneyza. And I valued more than all the assurance of Abdullah el-Bessam, that I should ride in his son's company to Jidda; for my desire was to ascertain the nature of the southern vul canic country. Ibrahim had ridden sometime by the Wady Dauasir to el- Ye*men ; but that was many years ago. The Aflaj he affirmed to be in J. Tueyk, six theliil journeys from er-Riath ; the way is rugged, and without villages. In the Aflaj he named four good palm settlements. From the Aflaj to the Wady Dauasir "are two days through tubj," or mountain straits. Northward of the Aflaj is a valley which descends to el-Hauta (a populous town of B. Temim, "great as Aneyza"), and reaches to el-Khorj (Khark). Therein are good villages, as ed-Dillum, el-Yemdna, Najdn, es- Sellummieh, el-Atthar, es-Seyeh: then passing between er-Riath and the Tueyk mountains it is lost in the sands.' — In Bombay I afterward met with one, Hamed en-Nefis, whose father had been treasurer at er-Riath ; and he said "Aflaj is six villages," Sidh, Leyta, Khurrfa, er-Rautha, el-Biddea; — and in Wady Dauasir he named el-Hammam, es-Shotibba, es-Soleyil, Tammerra, el- Dam, (three hamlets) el-Loghrf el-Ferr'a, es-Showy'g, el-Ayathdt. There was a salesman who, as often as I passed-by his shop, was wont to murmur some word of fanaticism. One day, as he walked in the siik, we staid to speak with the same person ; and when he heard my [Beduish] words, " Ha-ha ! I will never believe, he cries, but that Khalil is Arab-bom, and no Engleysy ! trust me, he was bred in some Arabic land." And in this humour the poor man led me home to coffee: he was now friendly minded. — Since those days when I had been houseless, I remained almost bedrid at home ; and there came no friends to visit me. Arabs are always thus — almost without the motions of a gene rous nature. I was seldom seen in the street. "It is his fear," murmured the Wahaby people; and their malevolence gathered fast. My good friends, readers in the Gazette, though curious politicians, had no notice of geography: taking therefore a sheet of large paper I drew out a map of Europe ; and Bessam called for his caligraph Ibn Ayith ; who inscribed from my mouth 398 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. the capital names. When our work was accomplished, he sent it round among his friends. The Semites — wide wanderers in countries which they pass upon - the backs of camels, have little _ understanding of the circumscriptions which we easily imagine, and set down in charts. I have not found any, even among the new collegians in Syria, that have more than an in fantile mind in geography. These are not Semitic arts: the Semitic arts are of human malice, and of the sensitive life. The friends enquired, if I had passed by Andaliis ? — a name which ever sounds in their ears as the name of a mistress ! Bessam desired me to tell them something of all I had seen there. I spoke of Granada, Sevilla, Cordoba ; and of great works cele brated in their poets, which remain to this day. But they were impatient to hear from me what were become of the Great Mesjid (the noble foundation of Abd-er-Rahmdn) at Cordoba [which is an acre of low roof laid upon a grove of marble columns]. I answered, " It is the metropolitan church of them to-day." When they heard that it was a Christian temple, all their jaws fell : the negro Ibn Ayith could not forbear to utter a groan! — for doubtless they think very horribly of the Christian faith. Even the good Abdullah was cast down a moment; but in the next he caught again his pleasant countenance : and he was in that country of crabbed religion, a very cheerful man. —The bountiful is cheerful ; and his honest human-heart has cause ; for do not all faces answer him with cheerful looks ?— Kenneyny, surveying that rude map asked me, if I were a draughtsman ? he had seen the engraved pictures of the Franks; and he thought it a beautiful art. I questioned these friends, of the Nejd speech which is heard in el-Kasim. " It is very well, they answered, if compared with the language of Syria, Egypt, the Hejaz, Mesopotamia. Our vulgar is not the tongue of the koran : we speak as it were with another mind, and in newer wise."— To my ears all the nomads, beginning from the tribes in the Syrian and Egyptian borders, with the Nejd oases-dwellers, speak a like rdtn; which r6tn we might call Nejd Arabic, or mother-tongue of upland Arabia, In many words they deem themselves to pro nounce amiss, as when they say Yahya for Ye"hia. People's words are djjidat, town- wall, gd for koom, rise, and the like. And there are some foreign words brought in among them, by those who have wandered abroad ; such is khdsh in the northern merchant's talk : they say a khdsh man, a khdsh house— that is one excellently good. A man of the people is 'adamy (pi. ou'adam), in the discourse of some Gulf merchants. CHAPTER XIV. THE CHRISTIAN STRANGER DRIVEN FROM ANEYZA; AND RECALLED. Yahya' s homestead. Beduins from the North. Rainless years and murrain. Picking and stealing in Aneyza. Handicrafts. Hurly-burly of fanatic women and children against the Nasrany. Violence of the Emir Aly, who sends away the stranger in the night-time. Night journey in the Nefud. The W. er- Rummah. Strife with the camel driver. Come to Khdbra in the Nefud. Tlie emir's kahwa. The emir's blind father. Armed riders of Boreyda. Medicine seekers. The town. An'Aufy. The cameleer returns from Zamil ; to convey the stranger again to Aneyza ! Ride to el-Heldlieh. El-Bukerieh. Heldlieh oasis. Night journey in the Nefud. Alight at an outlying plantation of Aneyza (appointed for the residence of the Nasrany). Visit of Abdullah el-Kenneyny. — Rasheyd's jeneyny, Sdlih. Joseph Khdlidy. A son of Raslieyd had visited Europe ! Rasheyd's family. Ibrahim. Tlie Suez Canal. Tlie field labourers. El-Weshm. A labouring lad's tales. Ruin of the Wahaby. Northern limits of Murra and other Southern Aarab. A foray of Ibn Rashid. A PLEASANT afternoon resort to me out of the town was Yahya's walled homestead. If I knocked there, and any were within, I found a ready welcome; and the sons of the old patriot sat down to make coffee. Sometimes they invited me out to sup ; and then, rather than return late in the stagnant heat, I have remained to slumber under a palm in their orchard; where a carpet was spreM for me and I might rest in the peace of God, as in the booths of the Aarab. One evening I walked abroad with them, as they went to say their prayers on the pure NefM sand. By their well Hamed shoAved me a peppermint plant, and asked if it were not medicine ? he brought the (wild) seed from es-Seyl [Kurn el-Mendzil], an ancient station of the Nejd caravans, in the high country before Mecca (whither I came- three months later). — I saw one climb over the clay wall from the next plantation ! to meet us : it was the young merchant of the rifle ! whom I had not since met with, in any good company in the town. The young gallant's tongue was nimble : and he 400 TEA VELS IN A RA BIA - D ESERTA . dissembled the voice of an enemy. It was dusk when they rose from prayers ; then on a sudden we heard shrieks in the NefM ! The rest ran to the cry : he lingered a moment, and bade me come to coffee on the morrow, in the town ; " Thou seest, he said, what are the incessant alarms of our home in the desert ! " — A company of northern (Annezy) Beduins entered the house at that time, with me ; the men Avere his guests. We sat about the hearth and there came-in a child tender and beautiful as a spring blossom ! he was slowly recovering from sickness. Goom hubb amm-ak! Go, and kiss thine uncle Khalil, quoth the young man, Avho was his elder brother ; and the sweet boy — that seemed a floAver too delicate for the common blasts of the world, kissed me ; and afterward he kissed the Beduins, and all the company : this is the Arabs' home tenderness. I wondered to hear that the tribesmen were fifteen years before of this (Kasim) dira! They had ridden from their menzil in Syria, by the water el-Hdzzel [a far way about, to turn the northern NefM], in a fortnight : and left their tents standing, they told me, by Tddmor [Palmyra] ! Their coming down was about some traffic in camels. The small camels of Arabia increase in stature in the northern wilderness. Hamed es-Safy sent his thelul to pasture one year with these Aarab ; and Avhen she Avas brought in again he hardly knew her, what for her bulk, and Avhat for the shaggy thickness of her wool. This Annezy tribe, when yet in Kasim, were very rich in cattle ; for some of the sheykhs had been owners of "a thousand camels": until there came year after year, upon all the country, many rainless years. Then the desert bushes (patient of the yearly drought) were dried up and blackened, the Nomads' great cattle perished very fast; and a thelul of the best blood might be purchased for two realS- — These Aarab forsook the country, and journeying to the north [now full of the tribes and half tribes of Annezy], they occupied a dirat, among their part friendly and partly hostile kinsmen. One day when I returned to my lodging, I found that my watch had been stolen ! I left it lying with my medicines. This was a cruel loss, for my fortune was very low ; and by selling the watch I might have had a few reals : suspicion fell upon an in famous neighbour. The town is uncivil in comparison with the desert ! I was but one day in the dokan, and all my vaccination pens were purloined : they were of ivory and had cost ten reals; more than I gained (in twice ten months) by the practice of HANDICRAFTS. 401 medicine, in Arabia. I thought again upon the Kenneyny 's proffer, which I had passed over at that time ; and mused that he had not renewed it ! There are many shrewd haps in Arabia; and even the daily piastre spent for bread divided me from the coast : and what would become of my life, if by any evil acci dent I were parted from the worthy persons who were now my friends ? — Handicraftsmen here in a Middle Nejd town (of the sanies' caste), are armourers, tinkers, coppersmiths, goldsmiths ; and the Avorkers in^wood are turners of bowls, wooden locksmiths, makers of camel saddle-frames, well-wheel-wrights, and (very unhandsome) carpenters [for they are nearly without tools] ; the stone-workers are hewers, well-steyners and sinkers, besides marble-wrights, makers of coffee mortars and the like ; and house-builders and pargeters. We may go on to reckon those that work with the needle, seamsters and seamstresses, em broiderers, sandal makers. The sewing men and women are, so far as I have known them, of- the libertine blood. The gold and silver smiths of Aneyza are excellent artificers in filigrane or thread-work : and certain of them established at Mecca are said to excel all in the sacred town. El-Kenneyny promised that I should see something of this fine Arabian industry ; but the waves of their fanatical world soon cast me from him. The salesmen are clothiers in the siik, sellers of small wares [in which are raw drugs and camel medicines, sugar- loaves, spices, Syrian soap from Medina, coffee of the Mecca Caravans], and sellers of victual. In the outlying quarters are small general shops — some of them held by women, where are sold onions, eggs, iron nails, salt, (German) matches, girdle- bread [and certain of these poor wives will sell thee a little milk, if they have any]. On Fridays, you shall see veiled women sitting in the mejlis to sell chickens, and milk-skins and girbies that they have tanned and prepared. Ingenuous vocations are husbandry, and camel and horse dealing. All the welfaring families are land owners. — The substantial foreign merchants were fifteen persons. Hazardry, banquetting, and many running sores and hideous sinks of our great towns are unknown to them. The Arabs, not less frugal than Spartans, are happy in the Epicurean moderation of their religion. Aneyza is a welfaring civil town more than other in Nomadic Arabia : in her B. Temim citizens is a spirit of industry, with a good plain understanding — how beit somewhat soured by the rheum of the Wahaby religion. Seeing that few any more chided the children that cried after me in the street, I thought it an evil sign; but the D. T. II. 26 402 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. Kenneyny had not warned me, and Zamil was my friend: the days were toward the end of May. One of these forenoons, when I returned to my house, I saw filth cast before the thresh old; and some knavish children had flung stones as I passed by the lonely street. Whilst I sat within, the little knaves came to batter the door ; there was-a Babel of cries : the boldest climbed by the side walls to the house terrace ; and hurled down stones and clay bricks by the stair head. In this uproar I heard a skritching of fanatical women, " Ya, Nasrany ! thou shalt be dead ! — they are in the way that will do it ! " I sat on an hour whilst the hurly-burly lasted: my door held, and for all their hooting the knaves had no courage to come down where they must meet with the kafir. At this hour the respect able citizens were reposing at home, or drinking coffee in their friends' houses ; and it was a desolate quarter where I lodged. At length the siege was raised; for some persons went by who returned from the coffee companies, and finding this ado about Khalil's door, they drove away the truants, — with those extreme curses which are always ready in the mouths of Arabs. Later when I would go again into the town, the lads ran together, with hue and cry : they waylaid the Nasrany at the corners, and cast stones from the backward ; but if the kafir turned, the troop fled back hastily. I saw one coming — a burly man of the people, who was a patient of mine ; and called to him, to drive the children away. — " Complain to Zamil ! " muttered the ungracious churl; who to save himself from the stones, shrank through an open door-way and forsook me. We have seen there are none better at stone-casting than the gipsy like Arabs : their missiles sung about my head, as I walked forward, till I came where the lonely street gave upon the Boreyda road near the Ga: some citizens passed by. The next moment a heavy bat, hurled by some robust arm, flew by my face. Those townsfolk stayed, and cried "ho!" — for the stones fell beyond them; and one, a manly young man, shouted, "What is this, eyyal? akhs! God give you confusion; — there was a stone, that had Khalil turned might have slain him, a guest in the town, and under the countenance of the sheykhs and Zamil "—No one thinks of calling them cowards. I found the negro Aly, and persuaded him to return with me; and clear the lonely by-streets about my lodging. And this he did chasing the eyyal ; and when his blood was warmed fetching blows with his stick, which in their nimbleness of flies lighted oftener upon the walls, Some neighbours accused the fanatical hareem, and Aly, showing his negro teeth, ran on the hags to have beaten them; but they pitifully entreated, A FANATICAL TUMULT. 403 and promised for themselves. Yet holding his stick over one of these, ' Wellah, he cries, the tongue of her, at the word of Zamil, should be plucked up by the roots ! ' After this Aly said, " All will now be peace, Khalil !" And I took the way to the Mejlis ; to drink coffee at Bessam 's house. Kenneyny was there : they sat at the hearth, though the stagnant air was sultry, — but the Arabians think they taste some refreshment when they rise from the summer fire. Because I found in these friends a cheerfulness of heart, which is the life of man — and that is so short ! — I did not reveal to them my trouble, which would have made them look sad. I trusted that these hubbubs would not be renewed in the town : so bye and bye wishing them God's speed, I rose to depart. They have afterward blamed me for sparing to speak, when they might have had recourse immediately to Zamil- — In returning I found the streets again beset nigh my house, and that the eyyal had armed themselves with brickbats and staves. So I went down to the siik, to speak with my neighbour Rasheyd, Zamil's officer. — I saw in Rasheyd's shop some old shivers of Ibrahim Pasha's bombshells ; which are used in poor households for mortars, to bray-in their salt, pepper, and the like. Rasheyd said, 'that Zamil had heard of the children's rioting in the town. He had sent also for the hags, and threatened them ; and Aly had beaten some of the lads : now there would be quietness, and I might go home' ; — but I thought it was not so. I returned through the bazaar with the deyik es-s4dr — for what heart is not straitened, being made an outlaw of the humanity about him ? were it even of the lowest savages! — as I marked how many in the shops, and in the way now openly murmured when they saw me pass. Amongst the hard faces which went by me was Aly, the executive Emir, bearing his sword ; and Abdullah the grudging son of Zamil, who likewise (as a grown child of the Emir's house) carries a sword in the streets. Then , Sheykh Nasir came sternly stalking by me, without regard or saluta tion ! — but welcome all the experience of human life. The sun was set, and the streets were empty, when I came again to the door of my desolate house ; where weary and fasting, in this trouble, I lay down and slept immediately. I thought I had slumbered an hour, when the negro voice of Aly awakened me ! crying at the gate, " Khalil ! — Khalil ! the Emir bids thee open." I went to undo for him, and looked out. It was dark night; but I perceived, by the shuffling feet and murmur of voices, that there were many persons. Aly: " The Emir calls thee ; he sits yonder (in the street) ! " I went, and sat down beside him: could Zamil, I mused, be 26—2 404 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. come at these hours ! then hearing his voice, which resembled Zamil's, I knew it was another. " Whither, said the voice, would'st thou go, — to Zilfy?" — "I am going shortly in the company of Abdullah el-Bessam's son to Jidda." " No, no ! and Jidda (he said, brutally laughing) is very far off : but where wilt thou go this night?"— "Aly, what sheykh is this?"— "It is Aly the Emir." Then a light was brought : I saw his face which, with a Wahaby brutishness, resembled Zamil's; and with him were some of his ruffian ministers. — " Emir Aly, Ullah lead thy parents into paradise ! Thou knowest that I am sick ; and I have certain debts for medicines here in the town ; and to-day I have tasted nothing. If I have deserved well of some of you, let me rest here until the morning; and then send me away in peace." — "Nay, thy camel is ready at the corner of the street; and this is thy cameleer: up! have out thy things, and that quickly. Ho ! some of you go in with Khalil, to hasten him." — " And whither will ye send me, so suddenly? and I have no money!" — "Ha-ha! what is that to us, I say come off": as I regarded him fixedly, the villain struck me with his fist in the face. — If the angry instinct betray me, the rest (I thought) would fall with their weapons upon the NasrMy: — ¦ Aly had pulled his sword from the sheath to the half. " This, I said to him, you may put up again ; what need of violence ? " Rasheyd, Zamil's officer, whose house joined to mine from the backward — though by the doors it was a street about, had heard a rumour ; and he came round to visit me. Glad I was to see him enter, , with the sword, which he wore for Zamil I enquired of him, if Aly's commandment were good ? for I could not think that my friends among the chief citizens were consent ing to it ; and that the philosophical ZaVmil would send by night to put me out of the town ! When I told Rasheyd that the Wahaby Aly had struck me ; he said to me apart, " Do not pro voke him, only make haste, and doubtless this word is from Zamil : for Aly would not be come of himself to compel thee." Emir Aly called from without, " Tell Khalil to hasten ! is he not ready?" Then he came in himself; and Rasheyd helped me to lift the things into the bags, for I was feeble. " Whither, he said to the Emir Aly, art thou sending Khalil?" 'To Khub- bera." — " El-Helalieh were better, or er-Russ ; for these lie in the path of caravans." — " He goes to Khubbera." " Since; I said, you drive me away, you will pay the cameleer; for I have little money." Emir Aly : " Pay the man his hire and make haste ; give him three reals, Khalil."- — Rasheyd : " Half a real is the hire to Khubbera: make it less, Emir Aly." — "Then belt two reals,I shall pay the other myself." — " But tell me, are there none the better THE NASRANY DRIVEN FROM ANEYZA. 405 for my medicines in your town ?" — " We wish for no medicines." — " Have I not done well and honestly in Aneyza ? answer me, upon your conscience." Emir Aly: "Well, thou hast." — " Then what dealing is this ?" But he cried, "Art thou ready? now mount !" In the meanwhile, his ruffian ministers had stolen my sandals (left without the chamber door); and the honest negro Aly cried out for me, accusing them of the theft, " 0 ye, give Khalil his sandals again!" I spoke to the brutal Emir; who answered, " There are no sandals : " and over this neAV mishap of the Nasrany [it is no small suffering to go bare foot on the desert soil gloAving in the sun] he laughed apace. " Now, art thou ready? he cries, mount then, mount ! but first pay the man his hire." — After this, I had not five reals left ; my watch was stolen: and I was in the midst of Arabia. Rasheyd departed: the things Avere brought out and laid upon the couching camel ; and I mounted. The Emir Aly with his crew followed me as far as the Mejlis. " Tell me, (I said to him) to Avhom shall I go at Khubbera ? " — " To the Emir, and remember his name is Abdullah el-Aly." — " Well, give me a letter for him." — "I will give thee none." I heard Aly talking in a low voice with the cameleer behind me ; — words (of an adversary), which doubtless boded me no good, or he had spoken openly: when I called to him again, he was gone home. The negro Aly, my old host, Avas yet with me ; he would see me friendly to the town's end. — But where, I mused, were now my friends ? The negro said, that Zamil gave the word for my departure at these hours, to avoid any further tumult in the town; also the night passage Avere safer, in the desert. Per haps the day's hubbub had been magnified to Zamil ; — they themselves are always ready ! Aly told me that a letter from the Muttowwa of Boreyda had been lately brought to Zamil and the sheykhs of Aneyza; exhorting them, in the name of the common faith, to send away the Nasrany! — "Is this driver to trust? and are they good people at Khubbera ? " Aly answered with ayes, and added, " Write back to me ; and it is not far : you will be there about dawn, and in all this, believe me Khalil, I am sorry for thy sake." He promised to go himself early to Kenneyny, with a request from me, to send ' those few reals on account of medi cines': but he went not (as I afterward learned); for the negro had been bred among Arabs, whose promises are but words in the air, and forged to serve themselves at the moment. — " Let this cameleer swear to keep faith with me." Aly : " Ay, come here thou Hasan ! and swear thus and thus." Hasan swore all that he Avould ; and at the town Avails the negro departed. 406 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. There we passed forth to the dark NefM ; and a cool night air met us breathing from the open sand wilderness, which a little revived me to ride: we were now in the beginning of the stagnant summer heat of the lower Rummah country. After an hour's riding we went by a forsaken orchard and ruined buildings, — there are many such outlying homesteads. The night was dim and overcast so that we could not see ground under the camel's tread. We rode in a hollow way of the NefM; but lost it after some miles. "It is well, said Hasan ; for so we shall be in less danger of any lurking Beduins." We descended at the right hand, and rode on by a firmer plain-ground — the Wady er-Rummah ; and there I saw plashes of ponded water, which remained from the last days' showers at Aneyza. The early summer in Kasim enters with sweet April showers : the season was already sultry, with heavy skies, from which some days there fell light rain; and they looked that this weather should continue till June. Last year, I had seen, in the khala, a hundred leagues to the westward, only barren heat and drought at this season ; and (some after noons) dust-driving gusts and winds. We felt our camel tread again upon the deep NefM ; and riding on with a little starlight above us, to the middle night we went by a grove of their bushy fuel-tree, ghrotha. The excellence of this firewood, which is of tamarisk kind, has been vaunted — my friends told me, by some of their (elder) poets ; "ardent, and enduring fire (they say) as the burning ghrotha:" and, according to sheykh Nasir, " a covered fire of this timber may last months long, slowly burning: which has been oft proved in their time; for Aneyza caravans returning over the deserts have found embers of their former fires remaining as much as thirty days afterward." The sere wood glows with a clear red flame ; and a brand will burn as a torch: they prefer it to the sammara fuel, — that we have seen in much estimation at Kheybar. Hasan my back-rider, was of the woodman's trade. He mounted from his cottage in the night time; at dawn he came to the trees, and broke sere boughs, and loaded; and could be at home again in Aneyza by the half-afternoon. He was partner in the wooden beast under us — an unbroken dromedary, with Zamil, who had advanced half the price, fifteen reals. Small were his gains in this painful and perilous industry ; and yet the fellow had been good for nothing else. I asked him Avherefore he took of me; for this night's journey as much as he gained, doing the like, in eight or nine days? 'The NefM, he ansAvered, Avas now full of unfriendly Aarab, and he KHUBBERA. 407 feared to lose the theliil ; he would not otherwise have ad ventured, although he had disobeyed Zamil. — He told me, this sending me away was determined to-night, in a council of the sheykhs ; he said over their names, and among them were none of my acquaintance. Hasan had heard their talk ; for Zamil sent early to call him, and bade him be ready to carry Haj Khalil : the Emir said at first to el-B4kerieh — for the better opportunity of passing caravans ; but the rest were for Khubbera. — Hasan dismounted about a thing I had not seen hitherto used in the Arab countries, although night passengers and Beduins are not seldom betrayed by the braying of their theluls: he whipped his halter about the great sheep-like brute's muzzle ! which cut off further complainings. I was never racked by camel riding as in this night's Avork, seated on a sharp pack-saddle: the snatching gait of the untaught theliil, wont only to carry firewood, was through the long hours of darkness an agony. What could I think of Zamil ? — was I heretofore so much mistaken in the man ? Hasan at length drew bridle; I opened my eyes and saw the new sun looking over the border of the NefM : the fellow alighted to say his prayer; also the light revealed to me the squalid ape-like visage of this companion of the way. We were gone somewhat wide in the night time ; and Hasan, who might be thirty years of age, had not passed the NefM to Khubbera since his childhood. From the next dune we saw the heads of the palms of el-Helalieh. The sand sea lay in great banks and troughs : over these, we were now riding ; and when the sun was risen from the earth, the clay-built town of Khubbera [or Khdbra] appeared before us, without palms or greenness. The tilled lands are not in sight; they lie, five miles long, in the bottom of the Wady er Rummah, and thereof is the name of their gdria. [v. p. 238.] Amidst the low-built Nefud town stands a high clay watch-tower. Hdsan : " Say not when thou comest to the place, ' I am a Nasrany,' because they might not receive thee." — "Have they not heard of the Nasrany, from Aneyza ? " — " It may be ; for at this time there is much car riage of grain to the Bessams, who are lenders there also." We saw plashes a little beside our way. "Let us to the water," quoth Hasan. — "There is water in the girby, and we are come to the inhabited." — " But I am to set thee down there; for thus the Emir Aly bade me." — Again I saw my life betrayed ! and this would be worse than when the Boreyda cameleer (of the same name) forsook me nigh Aneyza; for in Aneyza was the hope of Zamil : Khubbera, a poor town 408 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. of peasant folk, and ancient colony of Kahtan, is under Boreyda; the place was yet a mile distant. — "Thou shalt set me down in the midst of the town ; for this thou hast received my reals." Hasan notwithstanding made his beast kneel under us ; I alighted, and he came to unload my bags. I put him away, and taking out a bundle in which was my pistol, the wretch saw the naked steel in my hands ! — " Rafik, if thou art afraid to enter, I shall ride alone to the town gate, and unload; and so come thou and take thy thelul again : but make me no resist ance, lest I shoot her; because thou betrayest my life." "I carry this romh, answered the javel, to help me against any who would take my thelul." — I went to unmuzzle the brute ; that with the halter in my hand I might lead her to Khubbera. A man of the town was at some store-houses not far off; he had marked our contention, and came running: "Oh! what is it ? (he asked) ; peace be with you." I told him the matter, and so did Hasan who said no Avord of my being a Nasrany: nor had the other seen me armed. The townsman gave it that the stranger had reason ; so we mounted and rode to the walls. But the untrained thelul refused to pass the gates : alighting therefore we shackled her legs with a cord, and left.her ; and I compelled Hasan to. take my bags upon his shoulders, and carry them in before me. — So we came to the wide public place ; and he cast them down there and would have forsaken me ; but I would not suffer it. Some townspeople who came to us ruled, That I had right, and Hasan must bear the things to the kahwat of the emir. I heard said behind me, " It is some stranger ; " and as so many of these townspeople are cameleers and almost yearly pilgrims to the holy places, they have seen many strangers. — We entered the coffee hall ; where an old blind man was sitting alone — Aly, father of the Emir; who rising as he heard this concourse, and feeling by the walls, went about to prepare coffee. The men that entered after me sat down each one after his age and condition, under the walls, on three sides of their small coffee-chamber. Not much after them there came in the Emir himself, who returned from the fields; a well-disposed and manly fellah. They sent out to call my rafik to coffee; but Hasan having put down my things was stolen out of their gate again. The company sat silent, till the coffee should be ready ; and when some of them Avould have questioned me the rest answered, " But not yet." Certain of the young men already laid their heads together, and looking up between their whispers they gazed upon me. I saw they Avere bye and bye persuaded, that I could be none other than BLIND ALY. 409 that stranger who had passed by Boreyda — the wandering Nasrany. Driven thus from Aneyza, I was in great weariness ; and being here without money in the midst of Arabia, I mused of the Kenneyny, and the Bessam, so lately my good friends ! — Could they have forsaken me ? Would Kenneyny not send me money ? and how long would this people suffer me to continue amongst them ? Which of them would carry me any whither, but for payment ? and that I must begin to require for my remedies, from all who were not poor: it might suffice me to purchase bread, — lodging I could obtain freely. I perceived by the grave looking of the better sort, and the side glances of the rest, when I told my name, that they all knew me. One asked already, 'Had I not medicines ? ' but others responded for me, " To-morrow will be time for these enquiries." I heard the emir himself say under his breath, ' they would send me to the Helalieh, or the B4kerieh.' — Their coffee was of the worst: my Khubbera hosts seemed to be poor householders. When the coffee-server had poured out a second time the company rose to depart. Only old Aly remained. He crept over where I was, and let himself down on his hands beside the hakim ; and gazing with his squalid eyeballs enquired, if with some medicine I could not help his sight ? I saw that the eyes were not perished. " Ay, help my father ! said the emir, coming in again ; and though it were but a little yet that would be dear to me." I asked the emir, "Am I in safety here ?" — " I answer for it ; stay some da3's and cure my father, also we shall see how it will be." Old Aly promised that he would send me freely to er-Russ — few miles distant; from whence I might ride in the next (Mecca) samn kafily, to Jidda. The men of er-Russ [pronounce dr-Russ] are nearly all caravaners. I enquired when the caravan would set forth ? " It may be some time yet ; but Ave will ascertain for thee." — "I have not fully five reals [20s.] and these bags; may that suffice?" — "Ay, responded the old man, I think we may find some one to mount thee for that money." Whilst we were speaking, there came in, with bully voices and a clanking of swords and long guns, some strangers ; who were thelul troopers of the Boreyda Prince's band, and such as we have seen the rajajil at Hayil. The honest swaggerers had ridden in the night time ; the desert being now full of thieves. They leaned up matchlocks to the wall, hanged their swords on the tenters, and sat down before the hearth with ruffling smiles ; and they saluted me also : but I saw these rude men Avith apprehension; lest they should have a commission from 4IO TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. Hasan to molest me: after coffee they mounted to an upper room to sleep. And on the morrow I was easy to hear that the riders had departed very early, for er-Russ : these messengers of Weled Mahanna were riding round to the oases in the prin cipality [of Boreyda], to summon the village sheykhs to a common council. Old Aly gave me an empty house next him, for my lodging, and had my bags carried thither. At noon the blind sire led me himself, upon his clay stairs, to an upper room ; where I found a slender repast prepared for me, dates and girdle-bread and water. He had been emir, or we might say mayor of Khubbera under Boreyda, until his blindness ; when his son suc ceeded him, a man now of the middle age ; of whom the old man spoke to all as 'the emir'. The ancient had taken to him self a young wife of late ; and when strange man-folk were not there, she sat always beside her old lord ; and seemed to love him well. They had between them a little son ; but the child was blear-eyed, with a running ophthalmia. The grey-beard bade the young mother sit down with the child, by the hakim ; and cherishing their little son with his aged hands he drew him before me. Old Aly began to discourse with me of religion ; enforcing himself to be tolerant the while. He joyed devoutly to hear there was an holy rule of men's lives also in the Christians' religion. — " Eigh me ! ye be good people, but not in the right way, that is pleasing unto Ullah; and therefore it profiteth nothing. The Lord give thee to know the truth and say, there is none God but the Lord and Mohammed the apostle of the Lord." — A deaf man entering suddenly, troubled our talk ; demanding ere he sat down, would I cure his malady? "And what, I asked, wouldst thou give the hakim if he show thee a remedy?" The fellow answered, "Nothing surely! Wouldst thou be paid for only telling a man, — wilt thou not tell me ? eigh !" and his wrath began to rise. Aly : "Young man, such be not words to speak to the hakim, who will help thee if lie may." — " Well tell him, I said, to make a horn of paper, Avide in the mouth," and lay the little end to his ear ; and he shall hear the better." — The fellow, who deemed the Nasrany put a scorn upon him, bore my saying hardly. "Nay,_if the thing be rightly considered, quoth the ancient sheykh, it may seem reasonable ; only do thou after Khalil's bidding." But the deaf would sit no longer. 'The cursed Nasrany, whose life (he murmured) was in their hand, to deride him thus !' and with baleful looks he flung out from us.— A young man, Avho had come THE TOWN. 411 in, lamented to me the natural misery of his country ; " where there is nothing, said he, besides the incessant hugger-mugger of the suanies. I have a brother settled, and welfaring in the north ; and if I knew where I might likewise speed, wellah I would go thither, and return no more." — "And leave thy old father and mother to die! and forget thine acquaintance?" — "But my friends would be of them among whom I sojourned." — Such is the mind of many of the inhabitants of el-Kasim. On the morrow there arrived two young men riding upon a thelul, to seek cures of the mudowwy ; the one for his eyes, and his rafik for an old visceral malady. They were from the farthest palm and corn lands of Khubbera, — loam bottoms or rauthas in the Wady; that last to the midway betwixt this town and er- Russ. When they heard, that they must lay down the price of the medicines, elevenpence — which is a field labourer's wages (besides his rations) for three days — they chose to suffer then- diseases for other years, whilst it pleased Ullah, rather than ad venture the silver. — " Nay, but cure us, and we will pay at the full : if thy remedies help us, will not the sick come riding to thee from all the villages ?" But I would not hear ; and, with many reproaches, the sorry young men mounted, to ride home again. I found my medical credit high at Khubbera ! for one of my Aneyza patients was their townswoman: the Nasrany's eye washes somewhat cleared her sight ; and the fame had passed the NefM. I was soon called away to visit a sick person. At the kahwa door, the boy who led the hakim bade me stand — contrary to the custom of Arabian hospitality — whilst he went in to tell them. I heard the child say, "The kafir is come;" and their response in like sort, — I entered then ! and sat down among them; and blamed that householder's uncivil usage. Because I had reason, the peasants were speechless and out of countenance ; the coffee maker hastened to pour me out a cup : and so rising I left them. — I wondered that all Khubbera should be so silent ! I saw none in the streets ; I heard no cheerful knelling of coffee-pestles in their clay town. In these days the most were absent, for the treading out and winnowing of their corn : the harvest was light, because their corn had been beaten by hail little before the ear ripened. The house-building of Khubbera is rude ; and the place is not unlike certain village- towns of upland Syria. I passed through long uncheerful streets of half-ruinous clay cottages ; but besides some butchers' stalls and a smith's forge, I saw no shop or merchandise in the town. Their mosque stands by the mejlis, and is of low clay building : thereby I saw a brackish well — only a fathom deep, where they wash before prayers. They have no Avater to drink in the 412 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. toAvn, for the ground is brackish ; but the housewives must go out to fill their girbies from wells at some distance. The watch-tower of Khubbera, built of clay — great beneath as a small chamber, and spiring upward to the height of the gallery, is in the midst of the acre-great Mejlis : and therein [as in all Kasim towns] is held the Friday's market ; when the nomads, coming also to pray at noon in the mesjid, bring camels and small cattle and samn. — It was near mid-day : and seeing but three persons sitting on a clay bench in the vast forsaken Mejlis ; I went to sit down by them. One of these had the aspect of a man of the stone age ; a wild grinning seized by moments upon his half human visage. I questioned the others who sat on yawning and in different: and they began to ask me of my religion. The elf- like fellow exclaimed : " Now were a knife brought and put to the wezand of him ! — which billah may be done lawfully, for the Muttowwa says so ; and the Nasrany not confessing, la ilah ill' Ullah ! pronounce, Bismillah er-rahman, er-rahim (in the name of God the pitiful, the God of the bowels of mercies), and cut his gullet; and gug-gug-gug ! — this kafir 's blood would gurgle like the blood of a sheep or camel when we carve her halse : I will run now and borrow a knife." — "Nay, said they, thou mayest not do so." I asked them, "Is not he a Beduwy? — but what think ye, my friends? says the wild wretch well or n0 ?" — " We cannot tell: this IS the religion! Khalil ; but we would have no violence, — yes, he is a Beduwy." — " What is thy tribe, 0 thou sick of a devil?"— "I Harby."— " Thou liest! the Harb are honest folk : but I think, my friends, this is an A4fy." — "Yes, God's life ! I am of Auf; how knowest thou this, Nas rany? — does he know everything!"- — "Then my friends, this fellow is a cut-purse, and cut-throat of the pilgrims that go down to Mecca, and accursed of God and mankind!" The rest answered, " Wellah they are cursed, and thou sayest well : we have a religion, Khalil, and so have ye." But the Aiify laughed to the ears, ha-ha-hi-hi-hi ! for joy that he and his people were men to be accounted-of in the world. "Ay billah, quoth he, we be the Haj -cutters." — They laughed now upon him ; and so I left them. When I complained of the Aufy's words to the emir, he said — wagging the stick in his hand, "Fear nothing! and in the meanwhile cure the old man my father : wellah, if any speak a word against thee, I will beat him until there is no breath left in him !— The people said of the emir, " He is poor and indebted:" much of their harvest even here is grown for the Bessam; who take of them ten or twelve in the GOOD FRIENDS. 413 hundred: if paid in kind they are to receive for every real of usury one-third of a real more. After this I saw not the emir ; and his son told me he was gone to el-Biikerieh, to ride from thence in the night-time to Boreyda : they journey in the dark, for fear of the Beduw. Last year Abdullah the emir and fifteen men of Khubbera returning from the Haj, and having only few miles to ride home, after they left the Boreyda caravan, had been stripped and robbed of their theluls, by hostile Beduw. The townspeople that I saw at Khubbera were fellahin- like bodies, ungracious, inhospitable. No man called the stranger to coffee ; I had not seen the like in Arabia, even among the black people at Kheybar : in this place may be nigh 600 houses. Many of their men were formerly Ageylies at Medina ; but the Turkish military pay being very long with held of late, they had forsaken the service. Khubbera is a site without any natural amenity, enclosed by a clay wall : and strange it is, in this desert town, to hear no creaking and shrilling of suanies ! — The emir and his old father were the best of all that I met with in this place. — ' The Kenneyny, I thought, will not forsake me !' but now a second day had passed. I saAv the third sun rise to the hot noon ; and then, with a weary heart, I went to repose in my lodging. Bye and bye I heard some knocking at the door, and young men's voices without, — " Open, Khalil ! Zamil has sent for thee." I drew the bolt ; and saw the cameleer Hasan stand ing by the threshold! — "Hast thou brought me a letter?" — "I have brought none." I led him . in to Aly, that the fatherly man might hear his tale. — 'Zamil recalled me, to send me by the kafily which was to set out for Jidda.' — But we knew that the convoy could not be ready for certain weeks ! and I asked Aly, should I mount with no more to assure me than the words of this Hasan ? — it had been better for the old man that I continued here awhile, for his eyes' sake. "Well, said he, go Khalil, and doubt not at all ; go in peace ! " I asked for vials, and made eye-washes to leave with him : the old sire was pleased with this grateful remembrance. Some young men took up my bags of good will, and bore them through the streets; and many came along with us to the gates, where Hasan had left his thelul. — When Ave were riding forth I saluted the bystanders : but all those Kahtanites were not of like good mind ; for some recommended me to Iblis, the most were silent ; and mocking children answered my parting word with maa samawwy! — instead of the goodly Semitic valediction maa salaamy, ' go in peace '. 4H TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. We came riding four miles over the NefM, to the Helalieh : the solitary mountain Sag, which has the shape of a pine-apple, appeared upon our left hand, many miles distant. The rock, say the Arabs, is hard and ruddy-black :— it might be a plutonic outlyer in the border of the sand country. As we approached, I saw other palms, and a high watch-tower, two miles beyond ; of another oasis, el-Bukerieh : between these settlements is a place where they find " men's bones " mingled with cinders, and the bones of small cattle ; which the people ascribe to the B. Helal— of whom is the name of the village, where we now arrived. El-Blikerieh is a station of the cameleers ; and they are traffickers to the Beduw. Some of them are well enriched ; and they traded at first with money borrowed of the Bessam. The villagers of Helalieh and of Blikerieh (ancient Sbeya colonies) would sooner be under Zamil and Aneyza than subject to Hasan Weled Mahanna — whom they call jabbdr : they pay tax to Boreyda, five in the hundred. Of these five, one-fourth is for the emir or mayor of the place ; an half of the rest was formerly Ibn SaM's, and the remnant was the revenue of the princes of Boreyda; but now Weled Mahanna detains the former portion of the Wahaby. — Their corn is valued by mea sure, the dates are sold by weight. At the Helalieh are many old wells " of the B. Helal ". Some miles to the westward is Tholfa, an ancient village, and near the midway is an hamlet Shehieh : at half a journey from Biikerieh upon that side are certain winter granges and plantations of Boreyda. — One cried to us, as we entered the town, "Who is he with thee, Hasan ?"¦ — "A NasrMy dog, answered the fellow [the only Nejd Arabian who ever put upon me such an injury], or I cannot tell what ; and I am carrying him again to Aneyza as Zamil bids me." — Such an unlucky malignant wight as my cameleer, whose strange looking discomforts the soul, is called in this country mish4r, bewitched, enchanted. When I complained of the elf here in his native village — though from a child he had dwelt at Aneyza, they answered me, "Ay, he is mishur, mesquin!"— We rode through the streets and alighted where some friendly villagers showed us the kahwa. Many persons entered with us; and they left the highest place for the guest, which is next the coffee maker. A well-clad and smiling host came soon, with the coffee berries in his hand : but bye and bye he said a word to me as bitter as his coffee, " How farest thou ? 0 adu (thou enemy of) Ullah !" Adu is a book Avord [v. p. 80] ; but he was a koran reader. — " I am too simple to be troubled with so wise a man : is every camel too a Moslem?" "A camel, responded the village pedant, is a crea- EL-HELALIEH. 4 1 5 ture of Ullah, irrational; and cannot be of any religion." — " Then account me a camel : also I pray Ullah send thee some of the aches that are in my weary bones ; and now leave finding fault in me, who am here to drink coffee." The rest laughed, and that is peace and assurance with the Arabs : they answered him, " He says reason ; and trouble not Khalil, who is over weary." — But the koran reader would move some great divinity matter : " Wherefore dost thou not forsake, Nasrany, your im pure religion {din nejis) ; and turn to the right religion of the Moslemin ? and confess with us, ' There is an only God and Mohammed is his Sent One'? — And, with violent looks, he cries, I say to thee abjure ! Khalil." I thought it time to appease him : the beginning of Mawmetry was an Arabian faction, and so they ever think it a sword matter. — ¦" 0 What-is-thy-name, have done thou ; for I am of too little understanding to attain to your high things." It tickled the village reader's ears to hear himself extolled by a son of the ingenious Nasara. " No more, I added : the Same who cast me upon these coasts, may esteem an upright life to be a prayer before Him. As for me, was I not born a Christian, by the providence of Ullah? and His providence is good ; therefore it was good for me to be born a Christian ! and good for me to be born, it is good for me to live a Christian ; and when it shall please God, to die a Christian : and if I were afraid to die, I were not a Christian ! " Some exclaimed, "He has well spoken, and none ought to molest him." The pedant murmured, "But if Khalil knew letters — so much as to read his own scriptures, he would have discerned the truth, that Mohammed is Seal of the prophets and the apostle of Ullah." Even here my remedies purchased me some relief; for a patient led me away to breakfast. We returned to the kahwa ; and about mid-afternoon the village company, which sat thick as flies in that small sultry chamber, went forth to sit in the street dust, under the shadowing wall of the Mejlis. They bade me be of good comfort, and no evil should betide me : for here, said they, the Arabs are muhdkimin, 'under rulers.' [The Arabs love not to be in all things so straitly governed. I remember a young man of el-We"shm, of honest parentage, who complained ; that in his Province a man durst not kill one out right, though he found him lying with his sister, nor the adul terer in his house : for not only must he make satisfaction, to the kindred of the slain ; but he would be punished by the laws !] — Some led me through the orchards ; and I saw that their wells were deep as those of Aneyza. In the evening twilight I rode forth with Hasan. The moon 416 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. was rising, and he halted at an outlying plantation; where there waited two Meteyr Beduins, that would go in company Avith us, — driving a few sheep to their menzil near Aneyza. The mother of Hasan and some of her kindred brought him on the way. They spoke under their breath ; and I heard the hag bid her son ' deal with the Nasrany as he found good, — so that he delivered himself!' — Glad I was of the Beduin fellowship; and to hear the desert men's voices, as they climbed over the wall, saying they were our rafiks. — We journeyed in the moon-light ; and I sat crosswise, so that I might watch the shadow of Hasan's lance, whom I made to ride upon his feet. I saw by the stars that our course lay eastward over the Nefiid billows. After two hours we descended into the Wady er-Rummah. — The Beduin companions were of the mixed Aarab, which remain in this dira since the departure of Annezy. They dwell here together under the protection of Zamil ; and are called Aarab Zdmil. They are poor tribe's-folk of Meteyr and of Ateyba, that wanting camels have become keepers of small cattle in the Nefud, where are wells everywhere and not deep : they live at the service of the oases, and earn a little money as herds men of the suany and caravan camels. Menzils of these mixedj Arabs remove together : they have no enemies ; and they bring their causes to Zamil An hour after middle night we halted in a deep place among the dunes ; and being now past the danger of the way they would slumber here awhile. — Rising before dawn we rode on by the Wady er-Rummah; which lay before us like a long plain of firm sand, with much greenness of desert bushes and growth of ghrdttha : and now I saw this tree, in the day light, to be a low weeping kind of tamarisk. The sprays are bitter, rather than — as the common desert tamarisk — saline : the Kasim camels wreathe to it their long necks to crop mouthfuls in the inarch. — The fiery sun now rose on that Nefiid horizon : the Beduins departed from us towards their menzil; and we rode forth in the Wady bottom, which seemed to be nearly an hour over. We could not be many miles from Aneyza: — I heard then a silver descant of some little bird, that flitting over the desert bushes warbled a musical note which ascended on the gamut ! and this so sweetly, that I could not have dreamed the like. I sought to learn, from my brutish companion, what were Zamil's will concerning me. I asked, whither he carried me ? Hasan answered, 'To the town;' and I should lodge in that great house upon the Ga, — the house of Rasheyd a northern mer chant, now absent from Aneyza. We were already in sight of an RASHEYD'S OUTLYING JENEYNY. 417 outlying corn ground ; and Hasan held over towards a planta tion of palms, Avhich appeared beyond. When we came thither, he dismounted to speak with some whose voices we heard in the coffee-bower, — a shed of sticks and palm branches, which is also the husbandmen's shelter.- — Hasan told them, that Zamil's word had been to set me down here ! Those of the garden had not heard of it : after some talk, one Ibrahim, the chief of them, invited me to dismount and come in ; and he would ride himself with Hasan to the town, to speak with Zamil They told me that Aneyza might be seen from the next dunes. This outlying property of palms lies in a bay of the Wady, at little distance (southward) from el-'Eyarieh. They were busy here to tread out the grain : the threshing- floor Avas but a plot of the common ground ; and I saw a row of twelve oxen driven round about a stake, whereto the inmost beast is bound. The ears of corn can be little better than bruised from the stalks thus, and the grain is afterward beaten out by women of the household with wooden mallets. Their winnowing is but the casting up this bruised straw to the air by handfuls. A great sack of the ears and grain was loaded upon a thelul, and sent home many times in the day, to Rasheyd's town house. The high-walled court or kasr of this ground, was a four square building in clay, sixty paces upon a side, with low corner towers. In the midst is the well of seven fathoms to the rock, steyned with dry masonry, a double camel-yard, and stalling for kine and asses ; chambers of a slave woman care taker and her son, rude store-houses in the towers, and the well-driver's beyt. The cost of this castle-like clay yard had -been a hundred reals, for labour ; and of the well five hundred. An only gateway into this close was barred at nightfall. Such redoubts — impregnable in the weak Arabian warfare, are made in all outlying properties. The farm beasts were driven in at the going down of the sun. At mid-afternoon I espied two horsemen descending from the Nefud. It was Kenneyny with es-Safy, who came to visit me. — Abdullah told me that neither he nor Bessam, nor any of the friends, had notice that night of my forced departure from Aneyza. They first heard it in the morning; when Hamed, who had bidden the hakim to breakfast, awaited me an hour, and wondered why I did not arrive. As it became known that the Nasrany had been driven away in the night, the townspeople talked of it in the siik : many of them blamed the sheykhs. Kenneyny and Bessam did not learn all the truth D. T. 11. 27 41 8 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. till evening; when they went to Zamil, and enquired, 'Where fore had he sent me away thus, and without their knowledge ?' Zamil answered, ' That such had been the will of the mejlis,' and he could not contradict them. My friends said, 'But if Khalil should die, would not blame be laid to Aneyza? — since the Nasrany had been received into the town. Khalil was ibn juM, and it became them to provide for his safe departure.' Bessam, to whom. nothing could be refused, asked Zamil to recall Khalil; — 'who might, added el-Kenneyny, remain in one of the outlying jeneynies, if he could not be received again into the town [because of the Wahdby malice], until some kafily were setting forth.' Zamil consented, and sent for Hasan; and bade him ride back to Khubbera, to fetch again Haj Khalil. My friends made the man mount immediately ; and they named to Zamil these palms of Rasheyd. Abdullah said that none would molest me here ; I might take rest, until he found means for my safe departure : and whither, he asked, would I go? — "To Jidda." He said, 'he should labour to obtain this also for me, from Zamil ; and of what had I present need ?' — I enquired should I see him again? — "Perhaps no; thou knowest what is this people's tongue!" Then I requested the good man to advance money upon my bill; a draft-book was in my bags, against the time of my arriving at the coast; and I Avrote a cheque for the sum of a few reals. Silver for the Kenneyny in his philosophical hours was nejis ed-dinya " world's dross "; nevertheless the merchant now desired Hamed (my disciple in English) to peruse the ciphers ! But that was surely of friendly purpose to in struct me; for with an austere countenance he said further, " Trust not, Khalil, to any man ! not even to me." In his remem brance might be my imprudent custom, to speak always plainly; even in matter of religion. Here, he said, I was in no danger of the crabbed Emir Aly : when I told my friend that the Wahaby mule had struck me, " God, he exclaimed, so smite Aly ! "—The bill, for which he sent me on the morrow the just exchange in silver, came to my hands after a year in Europe : it had been paid at Beyriit. — Spanish crowns are the currency of Kasim : I have asked, how could the foreign merchants carry their fortunes (in silver) over the wilderness ? it was answered, " in the strong pilgrimage caravans." This tillage of Rasheyd might be nearly five acres; a third planted with palms, the rest was unenclosed seed ground, towards the Wady. A former palm ground in this place had been destroyed in the Wahaby warfare ; and the well was stopped TRAVELS OF A NEJD ARABIAN IN EUROPE. 419 by the besieged of Aneyza. — There remained but a desert gd, when Rasheyd occupied the ground, who planted palms and opened two wells. The tenement, with the young plants, was now valued at six to seven thousand reals. When Ibn Rashid came before the town two or three years ago, with Boreyda, this jeneyny had been a camping ground of some of his cavaliers : they found here plenty of green forage. — The site was held in ancient times ; for the labourers often cast up potsherds and (burnt) bricks in their ploughing and digging. Here one Salih, a salesman in the clothiers' siik, was master (for his father) ; a tall fellah-like body, who came hither daily from the town. — If one had chalked on Salih's back, Battdl ibn Battdl (Good-for-little, son of The- Same), none reading it would not have allowed this to be rightly said. His heart was sore, his wit was short, his head was broken ; and he believed himself to be a sot in the world. — Salih began to say to me in the even ing, to my very amazement ! that he had lately travelled in Europa; and seen those wonderful countries of the Nasara! the churl added, half aghast ! that it cost him " seven hundred liras (£560)." "We sailed, quoth he, from Bosra ; we touched at Stambul ; we passed an island — the name I have not now in mind : and we landed at London. After that we visited Bari?, Vienna and Italia, — great cities of the Nasara !" Seven months they were out : a summer month they spent in Londra, — London was wonderful ! In Baris they were a month — Baris was beautiful ! But all the people gazed on their Oriental clothing ! and after that they went clad — besides the Fez cap, as Europeans. I asked who Avas his rafik? He answered, " Y4sef Khdlidy." — Now by adventure I came to Vienna in the days when Khalidy AA^as there ! and I had remarked two Semitic strangers in red caps in the public places ! And the name was known to me ! because they had visited the learned Orientalist Von Kremer : who afterwards wrote it for me (in Arabic),— YGsef Khalidy, el-Kuds : saying that he was a litterate Moslem, a school-teacher [a vaunter of his noble lineage, who has some- turns made profession of Christianity] in Jerusalem, who had some smattering of European languages; and another day I might meet with him there. — I drew from my bags a bundle of letters; and suddenly exhibited this writing to the thick eyes of Salih ! — who then with inept smiles as if he had been beat, began to say; it was not himself but his brother that had been the Occidental traveller ! — one Aly, a merchant and landed man at Bosra; where his palms "exceeded all Aneyza"! [I have since heard that Aly el-Rasheyd Avas not a good name 27—2 420 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. there, — and it was said, he had defaulted in his European travels!] he left this Salih guardian of his affairs, in his absence. It was told me at Aneyza of the same Aly, 'that upon a time he brought down (here) a stranger from the north, a kafir, — but they could not say whether YahMy, Christian or Persian; to set up some pumping gear, which should save cost of camel- labour. But ere the work was ready, the Wahabies' short patience was at an end ; and the mechanic, who would not be of their religion, was driven from among them.' The words of Ahy, returned from the Occident, dwelled in the ears of Salih. He dreamed of that dedale world of the Nasara, full of amazing inventions ! and the homely Nejd seemed to his busy broken fantasy a wilderness indeed, in comparison with all that he lately beheld with his brother's eyes in Europa. — And Salih, because Khalil was an European, looked to read in my simple sayings the enigmatology of Solomon. Ibrahim was his brother-in-law, — a vile spirit of a pleasant humour, full of ribald jangles ; and of some goodness of heart, when not crossed: he was here continually in these days to oversee the harvest work. Fdhd, a labouring lad of twenty and younger son of Rasheyd, was over the husbandmen, — an honest soul more than the rest ; but of so stockish impenetrable nature that he had not been able to learn letters. And there fore his father banished the lubber to the fields ; that at least some profit might arise to the household of his strong arms. Rude was the young man and miserable, but very diligent: he had learned at school no more than to say his prayers. This wealthy family was new, and of the libertine blood : their lineaments were Arabian, and not swarthy. The old Rasheyd in his youth was a butcher's prentice ! and carried camel-flesh and mutton on his head, from house to house. He was afterward a salesman of cotton wares and women's wimples ; and very soon became a welfaring tradesman. But of this diverse voices were current in Aneyza,^ some saying, that " Rasheyd had found a treasure in the Hejaz, as he came again with the Haj from Mecca"; others held, that it was the blessing: "Ullah giveth to some, and taketh away from some in the world."— Rasheyd grew, and traded in the North: he became one of the great coast merchants ; and now his traffic was chiefly at Bosra. He had merchant sons at Zbeyer and Amara; and a third in Kuweyt. Beside them a son-in-law of his was a trader in Wady Runnya in the Bishy country ; and another son was lately a tradesman, at Aden. The old man, we heard, would come down in the next caravan. — Joining to these palms was the plantation of a poor family, also of libertine blood ; but IBRAHIM. 421 hardly to be discerned, at least by the eyes of strangers, from the full-blooded citizens. Ibrahim was one of the many East Nejders that, some years before, went down to dig for wages in the work of the Suez Canal: he thought there were two hundred men from el-Kasim. And he had seen, in that enterprise, "the peoples of Nazara" — French, Italians, Greeks, whom he supposed to speak one language ! Some parcels of the Canal had been assigned to petty undertakers: Ibrahim Avrought in the service of a Frankish woman; and the wife-man, he said, with pistols in her belt, was a stern overseer of her workmen. There was a Babel of nations, a concourse of men of every hard and doubtful fortune: — and turbid the tide-rips of such an host of adven turing spirits on the shoals ! Moslems and Christians — especially the fanatic Oriental Greeks (er-R4m), were mingled together ; and peaceable men were afraid to stray from their fellowships. He saw in these natural enmities only a war of religions: "It was the Rum, he pretended — they had the most arms — that set upon the Moslemin." The Greeks are execrated by el-Islam in those parts ; so that even among nomads of the Sinai coast I have heard a man say to his adversary — using the Frenjy word, " Thou art worse than a Greco ! " These disorders were re pressed, Ibrahim said with impartiality, by the Egyptian soldiery. Upon a time, he told us, as he and a few together went to Suez, they were waylaid by some murderous Nasara: but there came a Nasrany horseman ; who spoke to those homi cides, with authority; and persuaded them to return. — When they entered Suez, Ibrahim saw three stripped bodies laid out in the streets, of murdered men ! whose faces had been flayed that they should not be known ; nevertheless they were known, by the sign of circumcision, to be of Islam. Ibrahim had other Suez tales of more pleasure : he could tell of his friendships with some of the Nasara. Certain Christians, that were their neighbours, invited them upon a time to drink in the booths : but they honestly excusing themselves, the Nasranies called them to supper ; and that was prepared with a bountiful liberality. He related some half-jests and witty words, in their lame Arabic, of his Christian acquaintance. — Many a night Ibrahim and his mates stole a balk for their cooking and coffee fire, which they buried in the day time. When I exclaimed, thief ! he responded, " The timber, though it cost so much, was no man's ; but belonged to the Kompania !" Ibrahim returned from this moral quagmire after twelvemonths' labour ; poorer in human heart, richer by a hundred or two of reals. Though not needy at home, he had journeyed seven hundred miles to be a 42 2 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. ditcher at Suez! — but such is the natural poverty of the oasis Arabians. Ibrahim was of the illiberal blood, and brother-in-law of Aly the Western traveller. I found their minds yet moved by the remembrance of the Suez Canal ; and some have said to me, "Might there not be made a canal through Nejd?" — such, they thought, would be for the advantage of their country. In this palm-yard I was to pass many a long day. The coffee-bower {madshush, rnuj4bbub) was my shelter from the flaming sun ; and a camel-manger of clay in the well-yard my bed, under the stars, by night. The gnats were not many in this outlying jeneyny; but the townspeople 'could not now sleep for them' in the stagnant air of Aneyza. From the dripping well sounded all night the shrill chirping of crickets. — Between midnight and morning is hea,rd again the noise of the well-gear, the camels' shoveling tread ; and the voice and stripes of the well-driver. Twice in the day I took water from the well, and gathered sticks over the NefM, to boil an handful of rice ; and found a pleasure to watch the little there is of life in that sea of sand. Many plants and insects which I saw formerly in Sinai — that compendium of Arabia — I had not seen again in the great peninsula ! The deserts of Barbary are white with the bleached shells of land-snails; but I found none in the dewless Arabia. Only few seeds of life have passed the great deserts ! we may see here how short are the con fines of some living beings. Where are the plants of the border lands ? — we hardly find a weed kind in some oases ! The same small turreted water-snail lives in the thermal (sul phurous) brooks of el- Ally, and Kheybar ; but the frog which riots in all the lukewarm springs at Kheybar, is not found thirty leagues from thence in the like waters of el- Ally, and Thirba. There are none at Aneyza or Boreyda, where are only irriga tion waters, nor in any Nejd oases which I have visited : I first heard them again in the brooks of the Mecca (Tehama) country. ,Here — I had not seen them before in Nejd — were infinite burier beetles, creeping by day upon the desert sand : their prey is the jella of camels. The insect miners apply the robust limb- spades; and bear up loads of sliding sand on their broad backs, and cast it from them. The eyyal, with other lads of the next plantation and from the 'Eyarieh, wandered round the palms in their idle hours a gunning. And every bird was meat for them, beside the hoopoe with his royal crest, — which they told me Avas sometime king of fowls, and servant to king Solomon; who commanded Hoopoe to seek him waters in the desert: but one day it A TELLER OF TALES. 423 pleased Solomon, in his sapient impatience, to curse the gay fowl ; which became unclean, and without pre-eminence. The dung hill bird, flickering by twos and threes in the orchard paths, was most common, of the (few) feathered parasites of the oasis. Towards midday, when the sun beats sore on their kerchiefed heads, the lads come in from the field labour to the arbour of boughs, to break their fast of dates. After this they will sit on, till the meridian heat be a little abated, which is nigh the assr ; but they are not idle : for their hands are busy about the well-camel harness. Some pull palm-bast (which is steeped in . water) ; some roll the fibre betwixt their palms and twist strands. Of two strands they twine a camel rope ; and of two ropes lap up a well cable. All is rudely wrought, with the Arab expedition: but these palm cables will last a good Avhile, and the cost is little or nothing. First among the eyyal was a young man from Shuggera, in el- Wishm a plain country. — [Other places in Weshm are Shujjer, an old village near Shuggera, Thermidda, Marrat, Otheythia, el-Ger^en, Kassab, el-Herreyik, el-Jereyfa, Osheyjir (from hence came the Bessam family), el-Ferr'a. The people of Shuggera are the Beny Zeyd, and es-Suedda (of Kahtan blood). North of the town is the NefM sand el-Mestewwy, and of W. es-Sirr, and southward a Nefud wherein is el-Engell, a pit of bubbling water. El-Toeym is an hamlet on the north-west, with ruins of "a town fortified with square towers, made for archers". El-Hajia, or Garat el-Hajaj, between their town and Ther midda, is a hill with some ruins of stone building and columns : the people say 'it was a place of pilgrimage in the Time of Ignorance'.] That young man, though living by his handy- work, was a gentle endued spirit: his humanity flowed to us in the afternoon sitting, whilst he twisted bast and made strands, in the telling of tales ; and he put a life in his words, as a juggler can impress his will on some inert matter ; and thereto he had a pleasant voice. In music is an entertainment of delectable sounds flowing through our ears, with some picture of the affections ; and they ask not much more in their stories. His telling was such as I had heard at Kheybar. And some times he told us tales which showed forth the wisdom of proverbs — as this among them ; A prudent man will not reveal his name in strange company. — ' Upon a time, when the thousands of the Haj were at Miina, a voice was heard above the rumour of the multitude, which cried, " Is there here present Ibrahim es-Sdlih of er-Russ?" A man of Russ, in el-Kasim, was in the pilgrimage, of this name ; and he responded (hoping to hear of something to his advancement), "It is I." — And the stranger approached, — but 424 TRAVELS IN ARABIA. DESERT A. suddenly he fell upon him with the sword, and killed him ! for this was the avenger of blood ! and the Kasim villager was slain in error; for the homicide was of er-Russ in el-Yemen!' — Seldom in the desert life, will one of the popular sort name before a stranger ruh-hu, " his own soul" 1 But that was more worthy to be heard which the young Shuggery told me of the final ruin of the Wahaby — yet unknown in Europe ! — When old blind Feysal died, Abdullah, the elder of his two sons, succeeded him at er-Riath. But SaM, the younger, who was of a climbing spirit, withdrew to el-Ye"men ; where he gathered a multitude of partizans from the W. Bishy and W. Dauasir, and from the Beduin marches. With this host he returned to Nejd: and fought against his brother, and expelle'd him from the government ; and Abdullah became a fugitive in Ibn Rashid's country, [v. above, p. 36.] SaM, now Ruler, would subdue the great tribe of Ateyba ; because they were confederate with Abdullah. — He set out with his armed men and the nomad allies, el-Ajman, Aarab Dauasir, el-Murra, Kahtan, Meteyr; every tribe riding under a banner {bdrak), which had been delivered to them by SaM. — The Ateyban wander dispersedly through immense deserts; but word had been brought to er-Riath that a great summer camp of them was pitched at a certain water. SaM hasted to arrive by forced marches, before any tidings could prevent him. — It was at the hour of prayer, in an afternoon, when they came in sight of the Ateyba ; who were taken at unawares : but Beduw as they stand up in their shirts and have caught their arms, are ready to sally against their foemen. SaM halted, and would not set-on that day ; because his men and beasts came weary, after great journeys: the Wahabies drew off before the sun set ; and alighted to encamp. — It happened that the young Shuggery (who that year trafficked to the Aarab with a little borrowed money) was then in the Ateyba menzil, with another salesman, to sell ¦ clothing. At dawn the Aarab prayed ; and their sheykhs appointed some of the tribesmen to keep the camp behind them. — "Abide here lads, said their host to the young salesmen; look ye to yourselves : and the event will be as it may please Ullah." The Ateyban made haste to meet the advancing enemies, that were six times their number. At the first brunt they bore back Meteyr; Avhose barak was taken. — And what was seen then? The Kahtan falling on the flank of their friends! — they are nearly the best in arms among nomads. In the next FINAL DEFEAT OF THE WAIlABY POWER. 425 moments they routed Ibn SaM's horsemen, and took "two hundred" mares ! — nearly all the Wahaby 's stud, that had been so long in gathering. Then these hornets of men turned and fought against Meteyr ! And the Beduw remembering no more than their old enmities, went on fighting among themselves, in this infernal fray. At length the Kahtan drew off with that they had gotten; and the valorous Ateyba re mained masters of the field. " Three hundred " were fallen of SaM's men ; his few tents and the stuff were in the power of Ateyba: and the shorn Wahaby wolf returned as he might over the deserts, to er- Riath. By the loss of the horses the Wahaby rule, which had lasted an hundred years, was weakened to death ; never — such is the opinion in Nejd — to rise again ! Founder of the WahaVby reform was one Mohammed ibn Abd-el-Waliab, a studied religious elder, sojourning in the oasis eth-Ther'eyyeh, in East Nejd; and by blood a Temimy or, as some report, of Annezy : he won over to his puritan doctrine the Emir of the town, a warlike man, Sa4d ibn Abd-el-Aziz. The new Wahaby power grew apace and prevailed in Nejd : in the first years of this age they victoriously occupied the Hejaz ! Then Moham med Aly, the Albanian ruler of Egypt, came with a fleet and an army as " the Sultan's deputy, to deliver the Harameyn ". — We have seen Ibrahim Pasha, his son, marching through the midst of Arabia, [v. p. 387.] After leaving Aneyza, he took and destroyed eth-Ther'eyyeh which was not afterward rebuilt : but the Wahabies founded their new clay metropolis at " the Rau- thas"' (er-Riath). When they had rest from the Egyptian expe dition, they ruled again in all Nejd and desert Arabia, as far as el-Yemen ; and the Gulf coast towns yielded tribute : but the Wahaby came no more into the Hejaz. — We heard an unlikely rumour, that the Gulf Province el-Hasa, occupied by the Turks, had been ceded by them to the Wahaby (under tribute). The Wahaby rulers taught the Beduw to pray; they pacified the wilderness : the villages were delivered from factions ; and the people instructed in letters. I found it a reproach in Aneyza to be named Wahdby : [this, in our plantation, was a mocking word in the mouths of the eyyal which they bestowed on any lourdane ill-natured fellow.] — The town of er-Riath with her suburbs, and the next village country about, is all that now remains of the Wahaby dominion ; which is become a small and weak principality, — such as Boreyda. Their great clay town, lately the metropolis of high Arabia, is silent; and the vast guest-hall is forsaken [the Wahaby Prince's clay castle is greater than the Kasr at Hayil] : Ibn SaM's servants abandon 426 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. his unfortunate stars and go (we have seen) to hire themselves to Mohammed ibn Rashid. No Beduins now obey the Wahaby; the great villages of East Nejd have sent back Abdullah's tax- gatherers : but they all cleave inseparably to the reformed reli gion. — "Abdullah has, they say, grown an over-fat man and unwieldy." It was not in SaM's destiny that he should live out half his age. The fatal Wahaby sat Ruler two years in er-Riath, and deceased: it is believed that he died of an old malady. The people say of SaM, " He was not a good man : all his heart was set upon spoiling and reaving." Abdullah, being thus restored to his dignity, spared the young sons of SaM, and suffered them to dwell at er-Riath. — I heard, a year later, that they had rebelled against him. The Morra (or Murra), Kahtan, and other Aarab of el- Yelnen, wander northward in the summer as far as el-We'shm, in Middle Nejd : the young Shuggery knew many Morra, and Kahtan tribesmen, whom he saw every year in his own town : [Jeyber told me that the Kahtan marches reach northward to el-Harich.] Also they bring with them the rod-like horns of the Arabian antelope wothyhi, which inhabits as well their southern sand country. The Ateyban, an honourable and hospitable Beduin nation, are reputed better fighters than the Kahtan ; and not soon treacherous. They are rich in sheep and camels ; and were never subject to any, save to the old Wahaby Princes. They have resisted the yearly incursions of Ibn Rashid; and the Ottoman expeditions, sent from time to time, from the holy cities, to take tribute of them perforce. We heard that Mohammed ibn Rashid had lately sweated his theluls in their country. We left him ghrazzai, keeping his warlike spring holidajrs in the pastures of the north, beyond the Nefiid. From thence the Prince advanced by rdhlas, in the nomad wise, pasturing and encamping, almost to S4k es- Sheukh, at the rivers of Mesopotamia. Who could think, that being there his intent was to snatch a prey in the Mecca country ? [a month distant by the pilgrimage caravans !] but none more than the Semitic Asiatics, are full of these fine fetches. You look for them another year ; and they are to-day in the midst of you ! Ibn Rashid mounted with his armed band, and the Beduw that were Avith him ; and they rode swiftly over the high deserts, holding wide of the inhabited Kasim. As he passed by, Ibn Rashid called to him the riders of Harb, that Avere assembled at Semira [p. 301] : and in a few more marches he saw the Harrat el-Kisshub, which borders on the Hejaz ! — A LATE GHRAZZU OF IBN RASHSD. 427 They found some Ateyba upon a water, and "took them": the booty was "thirteen thousand" camels [perhaps 130; for thus the Arabs use to magnify numbers ; it is a beggarly liberality — a magnanimity which costs them nothing] ; besides sheep with out number. In his returning Ibn Rashid lighted upon certain free Heteym, of the Ateyba alliance ; and he took them also. — An old Ateyba sheykh afterward told me, 'that Ibn Rashid took but a ferrij of his tribesfolk.' We might reckon 2000 beyts to "thirteen thousand" camels, defended by more than 2000 men, or as many as the whole Ateyba nation ! — more than enough to have sent their Shammar adversaries home weeping. Ibn Rashid foraying, in the same dira, in the former spring, returned empty, for tidings were gotten before him ; and the Aarab had saved themselves in Ibn SaM's country. APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XIV. The 'Ateyba Aarab. — Sherif-Ndsir, a tribute-gatherer of the Sherif of Mecca, and afterward my rafik to Jidda, named to me above thirty fendies of 'Ateyba, — Thu Ithbeyt. El-Jethemma. El-Muzzeh'ma. Eol-Dajtn. El-Mufeyrij. Es-She'ahin. El-Mnrrdshedda. El-Berrartj. El-Mugbtta. . Ed-Dehussa. Thu Izzyad. El-Merbwha. El-Esomma. El-Menajhn. Er-Ruthdn. El-Eyatla. En-N'kusslia. Erb'a. El-She'adda. El-Bat'neyn. Es-Suta. Es-Sh'hebba. El- Withanin. Eth-Thuy Bat. El-Halleyfat. El-Monasir. Ez-Zwr&n. El-Kurzdn. Wajjidan. Es-Sebbaha. El-He'lissa. El-Ateydt. El-Hessdnna. He said further; that upon a time when "less than a fourth" of the tribe were gathered against Saud ibn SaM, he bad numbered their horses — passing in a strait place — 2100. [We have seen that nomads mostly multiply a true number by 10.] CHAPTER XV. WARS OF ANEYZA. KAHTAN EXPELLED FROM EL-KASlM. The Wahdby governor driven out by the patriot Yahya. Aneyza beleaguered by Ibn Saud. The second war. A sortie. Aneyza women in the field. The words of Zamil. A strange reverse. Words of Yahya. A former usurping Emir was cut off by Zamil. Zamil's homely life. The Emir's dues. Well-waters of Aneyza. Well-driving and irrigation. Evenings in the orchard. The hinds of palms. Locusts. The Bosra caravan arrives. Violence of Ibrahim. Basheyd visits his jeneyny. The hareem. The small-pox. Bereaved households. The jehdd. Arabian opinion of English alms-deeds. The Meteyr Aarab gather to Aneyza. Warfare of tlie town, with the Meteyr, against the (intruded) Kahtan. Morning onset of Meteyr. Zamil approaches. Final overthrow and flight of the Kahatin. Hayzan is slain. The Iiahtdn camp in the power of Meteyr. A Moghrebby enthralled among those Kahtan is set free. The Meteyr and the town return from tlie field. Beduin wives wailing for their dead. ' When the Messiah comes will he bid us believe in Mohammed?' The great sheykh of the Meteyr. The departure of the Mecca caravan is at hand. Helmed el-Yahya. The Nasrdny removes to the Kenneyny's palm-ground. Of the late wars of Aneyza, I may relate that which I heard from my friends' mouths. Jellowwy [they told me he yet lived!] brother of the Prince Feysal ibn SaM, was governor for the Wahaby at Aneyza; where he daily vexed the people with his tyrannically invented exactions: for of one he would require dates, of another forage for his horses — without payment, of the rich money ; and these under the name of contributions, besides yearly dues. — The chief citizens held secret council; and they determined to put out Jellowwy, and live again under an Emir of their own : the sheykhs debated who among them should lead the town in this enterprise. " He cannot be one of our house, said the Bessams; for that might encourage Ibn SaM to bring war on us, hoping to confiscate the riches of the Bessam." Yahya said, " Well, my patrimony is little ; and I am willing to take this danger upon me : but give me fifty swords for ANEYZA DELIVERED FROM THE WAHABY. 429 those of my young men [of the Khereysy] that are poor." The Arabs are sudden in execution : and the soon gathered weapons were borne openly through the street ; and cast down before Yahya, who sat in the Mejlis, with the Khereysy. Yahya bade them take up the swords : and cried, " Who would be with us, to free Aneyza, let him now fetch his weapon !" The sheykh led them to the governor's gate ; and beat loud ! A slave answered, " Who knocks ? " — " Go tell thy master, Yahya is here with his men ; who say, ' Quit this town, at the instant ! ' " — Then they heard Jellowwy 's voice within, " How, my friends ! is not this a Friday ? and the hour almost noon. Let us go and pray together; and then we will leave you." Yahi/a : " But I vow to God, that when we hear the ithin thou Jellowwy shalt be without the walls of Aneyza." Jellowwy : "You shall give me forty theluls." — "Be it so." At Aneyza there are many theluls of private persons always standing in their houseyards. The theluls were fetched, and led before Jellowwy 's gate. The Wahaby governor with his hareem and servants loaded hastily : they mounted, and rode forth ; holding the way to Boreyda. — Even for so short a passage, it seemed they had provided themselves with water : but the black girbies hanging from all the saddle bows, were filled with the Wahaby prince's samn ! Could an Arabian leave his butter, — as much as his ful4s, behind him ? Feysal ibn Saud marched from er-Riath to recover the rebellious town; and his vassal Ibn Rashid came from Jebel Shammar to help him. The besieging host lay encamped on the borders of the WMy, till the second year [such is the indigent Arabian warfare !] ; when not able to make any impression on the good borough of Aneyza, the Wahaby made peace with her citizens, and withdrew from them. This war fare, which they call harb el-awwel, the former war, was in the years 1269 — 70 after the Hejra (twenty-five years before my coming to Aneyza). The Emir of the town was then Abdullah ibn Yahija ibn Seleym. Harb eth-thdny, or their second warfare with the Wahaby, was after other eight years. In 1278, the part of Abdullah el-Aziz el-Mohammed, Prince of Boreyda and an enemy of the Wahaby tyranny, had been defeated in that town; and Abdullah fled over to Aneyza: where not yet thinking him self sure, he soon after set out, to go over to the Sherif of Mecca. But Ibn SaM sent men to waylay him in the deserts : and as Abdullah el- Aziz came riding, with a company of Aneyza citizens, the Wahabites met with them; and they killed the 43° TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. Emir there. When this tiding was brought to Aneyza, the sheykhs sent out armed riders who overtook the servants of Ibn SaM, and fought with them in the NefM, crying out, "Ye have slain eth-thaif (the guest of) Aneyza!" — Abdullah was yet Emir : he had made Zamil (his brother's son) executive Emir. This honourable action of the town drew the Wahaby upon them again. Mohammed ibn SaM, brother of Feysal, a muttowwa, came to beleaguer Aneyza, "with all Arabia," namely the East Nejd villagers and Beduins, and those from el- Hasa and 'Aman. Mahanna and Boreyda was with him, and all Kasim ; and the Prince Telal and Abeyd ibn Rashid, with the oasis-dwellers and Beduins of his jurisdiction — "from as far a3 the villages of Jauf." This armed multitude lay out in the Nefiid before the clay town, wherein might be not many more than a thousand able to bear arms. — But the companies of 'Aman and el-Hasa followed faintly; and as for the Kusman, they did but make a show to fight against their. countrymen ! Although now beset, the citizens were in no dread : the hus bandmen still laboured within their wide town walls. "And why then, I asked, did not the enemy break your clay siir with cannon shot?" Answer : "They were afraid of their own guns more than we — they could not handle them ; only one shot fell in an empty space of Aneyza, and did no hurt." I have seen old cannon shot lying in the town, which they say were 'of the Wahaby'; and perhaps those iron balls — so rudely round! had been wrought by the hammer of Arabian sanies. The capital feat of arms in their second warfare was thus related to me by our well-driver : one midnight Zamil sent out 200 matchlock-men, to lie in wait by a spring in the Wady, nigh the 'Eyarieh. "Fear nothing, said he, for I shall be at hand to support you." When the Wahaby waterers descended before day, the men of Aneyza shot at them ; and the noise was heard in the enemy's menzil. This drew on them the Nejd horsemen ; of whom two presently falling ! the rest held off : and the day beginning to lighten, there arrived Abdullah el- Yahya, with his Khereysy. A swarm of armed men came then running down from the Wahaby host ; and Abdullah shouted, "Upon them Khereysy ! " Then the Aneyza companies advanc ing together, and firing, the enemy gave back, and a Wahaby banner was taken : the men of Aneyza presently arrived at the tents ; and the outer camp was won. — There fell many of Ibn SaM's part ; and not few who, running whereas they thought they saw their own b&raks, lighted upon the hostile Khereysy.— DAY OF BATTLE. 431 The warfare of Arabians is like a warring of gipsies : they use not even to fence their menzil with an earthwork ! The Aneyza housewives were come forth to the battle driv ing asses with girbies. They poured out water for the thirsty fighters; and took up the wounded men. — Abdullah fell, leading the bold Khereysy ! then the good Avives laid the young sheykh upon an ass, and carried him to the town. Zamil, galloping hither and thither (he alone of Aneyza came on horseback), shouted now to stay the slaughter, Imbdrak ! Imbdrak ! la t4ktillu el-Moslemin, " The Lord hath blessed us, slay not our brethren in the religion!" But suddenly there was a woeful reverse ! — When the fight ing was even at their tents, there went in some principal persons to the muttowwa commander, who sat still in his pavilion : " Up, they cried, Muhafuth ! and show thyself without the tent, that our people may take heart." "Friends, responded the holy block, kneel with me, and let us pray." And whilst they prayed, as men that wrestled for their lives, there fell a shower — it covered not so much as the breadth of the Wady ! — which quenched the matches of the lately victorious towns men ; who with now dead firearms in their hands, and two miles from home, remained without, defence. They retreated ; but were overridden by the Nejd horsemen, " more than a thousand lances " : and there perished in that flight " two hundred " of Aneyza : [this were a fifth or sixth part of all their fighting men.] — There is a song from this time made of the patriot father Yahya ; who had been valiant in war, whilst yet sufficient of eye and limb, and a good marksman. — He came wandering pen sively from the field to an outlying palm-ground : and went in there to repose awhile in the shadow. Certain of Aneyza who lay watching in that place hailed him, 'What did he seek?'— "It is a fast-day with me, and oh this thirst!" The pious sheykh was wont twice — that is every third and fifth day in the week, to fast; and when they fast they drink not till the going down of the sun. — "Is this a fasting day, when the enemies are broken ? drink 0 father of Abdullah, drink!" — "Ay, the Lord be praised for this day! though I should lose Abdullah, and beside him a son." Abdullah's flesh wound — a shot in the thigh, was whole in a month ; and a noble life was spared to Aneyza. As for his other sons, the old patriot's blood had been a little alloyed in the children of his second marriage. — This is a country where the wounded can have no surgery for the love of God or reward. Two lesser skirmishes are recorded of these months'-long warfaring of "all Arabia", before the two-span-thick clay 432 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERT A. Avail of Aneyza. Telal became impatient of the time spent fruitlessly ; and the rest, so long absent from their households, Avere out of heart, and yet imperilling their lives. At last Mohammed ibn SaM, the Muttowwa, levied the camp; and returned with his lost labour to er-Riath. On the town part were fallen "four hundred" men. — Only a war of religion could hearten Arabians, who are free warfarers, weakly obeying their sheykhs, to assault defended walls. Few besides Yahya, will jeopardy life and goods for the public welfare. The people of Aneyza count themselves sufficient, ' if such were the mind of their sheykhs, to obtain the sovereignty of Nejd. God, say they, has given them mild and peaceable Emirs ; but were Zamil of such stomach as Ibn Rashid, all the country might be brought under Aneyza which lies between - WMy Dauasir and Damascus.' — Yet Aneyza citizens have some times been aggressors ; as in that ill-counselled and worse led expedition of theirs against Ibn Rashid, "to have his head," which Avas miserably defeated by Abeyd ; who in the pursuit slew so many of them : whereof the warrior-kassM made the paean before recorded, [v. p. 28.] Zamil has been a fortunate leader in all the warfare of his time. — When, in his early manhood, he was captain of the Aneyza troop (in a long expedition of the Wahaby) in 'Aman, he already manifested the strategist spirit and moderation which are natural to him. Zamil's age might now be forty-five years or somewhat more. They say, 'that all their Emirs, within memory, have been men of not common worth and understanding.' Nevertheless I heard of one — perhaps he was not of the sheykhly lineage, who had usurped the Emir's dignity. He went down in a pilgrimage to Mecca: and as they returned, and were come nigh to Aneyza, he alighted to rest out the hot noon in the shadow of some outlying palms. Zamil in the town heard of it, and mounted with his partizans ; and they found him, and slew him : there was a blood feud betwixt him and Zamil. When Zamil's hands are not clean from blood, what may we look for from the other Arabs ? There is now a good season in Aneyza, after the Wahaby drought ; where Zamil even by his own merit is first among a generation of patriots : in no place have I seen men live more happily than in this oasis. Zamil, born in the Emirs' kindred, had never travelled : wise in council, he governed the town in peace ; and upon him was all their hope- in any stormy time He has six or se>en male children: a younger son, Aly (at this time a lad of thirteen years), is thought to zAmil. 433 resemble him. Zamil, son of a former Emir, did not immediately inherit the dignity; he succeeded the next Emir, his uncle Abdullah : for their successions are not as in the desert life, from sire to son. Zamil is a perfect Moslem ; and he would have been a good man in any religion. He is religious for conscience's sake ; and somewhat more, outwardly, because he is Emir : I have seen him stand apart in the fields at by-hours to pray. He was full of a coldly-serene circumspection, to deal prudently with the conflicts of minds in a government : all with him was fair and softly in the town. None ever appealed to him, even of the sudden-tongued and (in their causes) loud- crying Beduw, whom he did not appease with a gentle smiling wisdom, and dismiss with fair words ; at the least he said, B'il- kheyer insh' Ullah : 'It shall be well, please God.' Zamil can pru dently dissemble displeasures ; and is wont — with that lenity, which we call in Europe 'the Christian mind', to take all in patience. Soon after the sun is risen Zamil breakfasts ; and then he withdraws to a jeneyny of his, nigh at hand, for an hour : he will return here in the afternoon, giving himself a reasonable liberty from public cares. When the sun is rising with the first heat, Zamil walks into the town, carrying his sword : and passes by to the Mejlis, giving the salaam aleyk to the sales men seated in their shops, and to any meeting him in the street. The Emir goes on to the porch of audience, where the most days he sits but a moment ; for in fhe homely living of a free township, there are few causes : I saw no daily mejlis in Aneyza. — The Emir fils4f is shortly at leisure ; and may be commonly found in the forenoon hours visiting the jeneynies of patricians that are in the number of his friends. He comes home to the mid-day prayer ; and afterward he sits in his hall or in the kahwa of some principal person. If there be any public affairs, the sheykhs assemble where Zamil is ; and their sitting may last till the assr, when the ithin calls all men again, from Avorldly business to the public prayer. He 'was not liberal', this only could be alleged against Zamil. A man radically honest, and of the old gentle blood, cannot add to his substance, but by the somewhat strait keeping of his own: el-Kenneyny said, "Zamil lays up all he gets mithil tdjir, like a tradesman." This humour in Zamil was the more marked because Abdullah, before him, had been fool-large, so that he died indebted. The Emir's dues were some two and a-half, and some five, upon corn ; and of dates seven and a-half in the hundred : houses, shops and cattle are free. The rich foreign merchants [they were richer than Zamil], whose homes are at Aneyza, D. T. ii. 28 434 TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA. pay a moderate contribution, in money, to the Emir : it is ten reals yearly. The most of so considerable revenues — which were full of envy — comes not to Zamil's purse : there are expenses of the public service, and especially for the mothif. — A customs' gatherer, an ill-looking fellow, visited us in Rasheyd's palms : he came spying through the jeneynies to take account of the harvest. These were sultry days ; and in the hours of most heat I commonly found (in our arbour) 97° F, with heavy skies. The wells are of five, four and three fathoms, as they lie lower to wards the Wady ; and a furlong beyond the water is so nigh that young palm-sets in pits should need no watering after a year or two. The thermometer in the well-water — which in this air seemed cool, showed 87° F. A well sunk at the brim of the NefM yields fresh ground- water ; but wells made (lower) in the ga are somewhat brackish. Corn, they say, conies up better in brackish ground ; and green corn yellowing in sweet land may be restored by a timely sprinkling of salt. All the Avells reek in the night air : the thermometer and the tongue may discern be tween well-waters that lie only a few rods asunder : the water is cooler which rises from the sandstone, and that is warmer which is yielded from crevices of the rock. Of all wells in Aneyza, there is but one of purely sweet water !— the sheykhs send thither to fill their girbies in the low summer season. 'It is in the possession of a family whose head, Abu DaM, one of the emigrated Kusman, lived at Damascus ; where he was now sheykh of the Ageyl [Vol. I. p. 71, Vol. n. p. 46], and leader of the rear guard in the Haj caravan. [Abu DaM told me, he had returned but once, in twenty-five years, for a month, to visit his native place !]— Water from Rasheyd's two wells was raised incessantly by the labour of five nagas ; and ran down in sandy channels (whereby they sowed water melons, in little pits, with camel jella) to a small pool, likewise bedded in the loamy sand. These civil Arabians have not learned to burn lime, and build themselves conduits and cis terns. The irrigation pond in Kasim lies commonly under the dim shadow of an undressed vine; which planted in the sand by water will shoot upon a trellis to a green wood. We have seen vines a covert for well-walks at Teyma. The camels labour here under an awning of palm branches. The driving at the wells, which began in the early hours after midnight, lasts till near nine, when the day's heat is already great.— At the sun-rising you may see women (of the well-driver's family) sit with their baskets in the end of the shelving well-walk, to feed the toiling camels: they wrap a THE HUSBANDMEN'S LABOUR. 435 handful of vetches in as much dry forage cut in the desert ; and at every turn the naga receives from her feeder's hands the bundle thrust into her mouth. The well-cattle wrought anew from two in the afternoon, till near seven at evening, when they were fed again. The well-driver, who must break every night his natural rest, and his Avife to cut trefoil and feed the camels, received three reals and a piastre — say thirteen shillings, by the month ; and they must buy their own victual. A son drove the by- well, and the boy's sisters fed his pair of camels. They lived leanly with drawn brows and tasting little rest, in a land of idle rest. [Whenever I asked any of these poor souls, How might he endure perpetually? he has answered the stranger (with a sigh), That he Avas inured thereto from a child, and — min Ullah! the Lord enabled him.] — But the labouring lads in the jeneyny fared not amiss ; they received 4