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 NAKKATIVE 
 
 OF 
 
 A YEAR'S JOURNEY THROUGH 
 
 CENTRAL AND EASTERN 
 AKABIA 
 
 (1862-63) 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM GIFFOKD PALGEAVE 
 
 LATE OF THE EIGHTH REGDIENT BOMBAY N. I. 
 
 Not in vain tlie nation-strivings, nor by chance the currents flow ; 
 Error-mazed, yet truth-directed, to their certain goal they go. 
 
 TEY'YEEYAT EL KOBEA', BY BBK-EL-FaRID 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 
 VOL. I 
 
 ITouboit anb dambriibge 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 18G5
 
 
 ^ - 
 
 1.
 
 TO THE MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 
 CAESTEN NIEBUHR 
 
 IN HONOUR OF THAT 
 
 INTELLIGENCE AND COURAGE 
 
 WHICH FIRST OPENED ARABIA TO EUROPE 
 
 I wspEtlfullg ^t)ntnk 
 
 THE RESULTS OF A JOURNEY 
 
 ITSELF INSPIRED BY THAT GREAT MEMORY 
 
 .. I.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 A JOURNEY undertaken througli Central and Eastern 
 Arabia, with the purpose of observing rather than of 
 pubhshmg, put me in possession of certain details upon 
 those parts of the great Peninsula, which may be worth 
 recording. It is true that the circumstances of my visit, 
 and the restraints inseparable from native disguise, abridged 
 antiquarian research, impeded botanical or geological en- 
 quiry, and deprived me of the means for exact and scien- 
 tific investigation ; for instance, of the customary requisites 
 for verifying longitudes and latitudes, or determining the 
 degrees of heat and cold, of moisture and aridity. Worse 
 yet ! I was at times unable to take down a single note, 
 much less could I display a sketching book or photographic 
 apparatus, however fair the landscape and tempting the 
 sun ; and hence my pen must unaided do the work of 
 the pencil as well as its own, Avhile my reader's imagina- 
 tion may help to supply the rest. Why this was so, a 
 few pages of the narrative will make clear. On the other 
 hand long years, the best part of my life indeed, passed in 
 the East, familiarity with the Arabic language till it 
 became to me almost a mother tongue, and experience in 
 the ways and manners of " Semitic " nations, to give them 
 their general or symbolic name, supplied me with advan- 
 tages counterbalancing in some degree the drawbacks 
 
 a 2
 
 VI PREFACE 
 
 enumerated above. Besides, the men of the hmd, rather 
 than tlie Land of tlie men, were my main object of researcli 
 and principal study. My attention was directed to the 
 moral, intellectual, and political conditions of living 
 Arabia, rather than to the physical phenomena of the 
 country, — of great indeed, but, to me, of inferior interest. 
 Meanwhile whatever observations on antiquity and science, 
 on plants and stones, geography and meteorology I was 
 able to make, I shall give, regretting only their inevitable 
 imperfection. 
 
 In the hard attempt to render Arab orthography by 
 Enghsh letters, I have for the most part followed the 
 system adopted by Lane in his delightful " Modern Egyp- 
 tians," as the nearest approximation intelligible to English 
 readers. However, in representing the initial " Jeem " by 
 " Dj " rather than by " j " (as in the middle or at the end 
 of a word), I have quitted our countryman for the universal 
 foreign method ; nor have I generally thought it neces- 
 sary to accent vowels, contenting myself with an occasional 
 mark (~) of length, where uniformity of pronunciation 
 appeared to require it. Some mistakes, or at least ir- 
 regularities, will, I fear, ha\'e eluded the vigilance of 
 correctors and revisers in a first edition ; a second Avill, 
 I trust, remove such anomahes. The few maps annexed, 
 though without pretension to that exact nicety which 
 sextants and measuring-lines can alone afford, may serve 
 in some measure to illustrate the leading features and 
 divisions of the principal provinces, towns, and country 
 in general. 
 
 Eeaders may perhaps be desirous to learn what was
 
 PBEFACE Vii 
 
 the special object and what the determining circumstances 
 of the journey now before them. The hope of doing 
 something towards the permanent social good of these 
 wide regions ; the desire of bringing the stagnant waters 
 of Eastern life into contact with the quickening stream 
 of European progress ; perhaps a natural curiosity to 
 know the yet unknown, and the restlessness of enterprise 
 not rare in Englishmen ; these were the principal motives. 
 The author may add that at the time of the undertaking 
 he was in connection with the Order of the Jesuits, an 
 Order well known in the annals of philanthropic daring ; 
 he has also gratefully to acknowledge that the necessary 
 funds were furnished by the liberality of the present 
 Emperor of the French. 
 
 It is a matter of real importance to form a correct 
 idea of nations mth whom events tend to brin^ us ever 
 more and more into contact, and of whose future destinies 
 we seem likely to be in no small measure, under Provi- 
 dence, the arbitrators. Ideas which, I regret to say, 
 appear to me often distorted and exaggerated, prevail in 
 the West regarding our Eastern fellow-men ; ideas due in 
 part to the defective observation, perhaps the prejudices, 
 of travellers, too preoccupied by their own thoughts and 
 fancies to appreciate or even understand the phases of 
 mind and manners among nations other than their own ; 
 while at times an enthusiastic imagination has thrown a 
 prismatic colouring over the faded East. My principal 
 object and endeavour in this work has been, accord- 
 ingly, to give a tolerably correct notion of the Arab 
 race, — of their condition, intellectual and political, social
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 aiul religious ; such at least as it appeared to me ; and 
 should it be my good fortune to have effected this, I 
 ask no more. Much herein will not only serve for the 
 nations and tribes that inhabit the Arabian Peninsula, 
 but may also afford useful hints for understanding otlier 
 Oriental lands and peoples ; for Egj^t, Syria, Mesopo- 
 tamia, nay even for Anatoha, Curdistan, and Persia, all 
 which have been deeply modified in many respects by 
 Arab influence, partly too by Arab intermixture and 
 colonization. Thus a clear apprehension of the causes of 
 prosperity and decline in Arabia and within its inde- 
 pendent limits, may give no small aid towards solving 
 many a riddle in the phases of the adjacent Ottoman 
 Empire, and even of other Asiatic Governments, each in 
 its proportion and degree. Besides, the practical working 
 and the results of that strange phenomenon of the human 
 mind, Mahometanism, or, more compendiously and more 
 correctly, Islam, will hereby receive especial illustration ; 
 a point which I w^ould especially desire to commend 
 to the notice of those in East or West who are inclined 
 to bestow their credence or admiration on the Prophet 
 and his Avork. 
 
 With regard to the correctness of facts or statements 
 bearing on the present or past of Arabia, given in this 
 work, it may be well to remark that I have all along 
 carefuUy discriminated between what I have myself seen 
 in person or ascertained by actual investigation, what I 
 have merely inferred or conjectured, and what I have 
 gathered at secondhand from the natives of the country. 
 Dividing thus the subject-matter into three classes, I claim
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 for the first that degree of certainty and rehance wliicli can 
 be placed on an Enghshman saying " I have seen," or 
 " I have heard," and no more. The second I must leave 
 to my reader's own free criticism, trusting that years of 
 Oriental study, observation, and intercourse may incline 
 the verdict, where doubtful, in my favour ; nor do I wish 
 to impose my theories and conclusions on tliose who may 
 have their reasons for thinking them erroneous. The 
 third, or hearsay statements have each invariably their 
 preface to announce them for what they are ; and to 
 them my reader may give what degree of value he 
 thinks fit. The only point on which I lay any stress, 
 when quoting authorities of this nature, is whether they 
 were natives of, or at least neighbours to, the country they 
 described, and eye-witnesses of the facts they averred, or 
 otherwise. But it hardly seemed requisite to set down, 
 as a general rule, their individual names and surnames, 
 or to fill my pages with the catalogue of Mohammed, 
 Hasan, and 'Alee — an enumeration which in Enijland 
 could afford no more guarantee for veracity than Thomas, 
 John, or William, in Arabia. 
 
 Nor have I deemed it needful, in a work of this 
 character, to state beneatli every page the names of 
 Eastern authors cited or alluded to. Should, however, 
 any Oriental scholar desire to know who they are, I may 
 mention as the principal among the works which oppor- 
 tunity and leisure have best enabled me to consult, — 
 the Hamasah of Aboo-Temmam,the well-known Mo'allakat 
 of 'Amroo-1-Ke'ys and his fellow-poets, the writings of 
 Aboo-l-Feda, Makreezee, the Dimishkee Shems-ed-Deen,
 
 X PREFACE 
 
 Ebn-Kliallikriii, Ebn-Klialdoon, Ilareeree, Makarrce, the 
 proverbs of Meydanee, the famous Alf-Leyl-w-Leylah, or 
 Thousand-and-One Nights (a book in which often " more 
 is meant than meets the ear ") ; the stories of 'Antarah, 
 Aboo-Zeyd, Benoo-Hihil, and the gallant Zeer ; the poems 
 or "divans" of 'Omr'-ebn-Abee-Eabee'ah, of Djereer, 
 Akhtal, Ferazdak, El-Moghrebee, Motenebbi, Ebn-Farid, 
 Aboo-l-'Ola, the Nabloosee, the Divan of Hodheyl ; be- 
 sides the Coranic commentaries of Beydawee, Zamakli- 
 sharee, Djelal-ed-Deen, and others, with the ascetical 
 writings of El-Ghazalee, the Kibreet-el-Ahmar, the Anwar- 
 el-Kadeeseeyah, the treatises of Mohee-d-Deen, and others 
 of whom only scraps and fragments have remained to 
 us ; lastly, several anonymous manuscript collections of 
 historical and moral incident, put into my hands by 
 native acquaintances in Syria and Eg}^ot, and mostly 
 destroyed or pilfered by my friends the Druses when in 
 1860 they burnt Zahleh, and therein my residence. To 
 the above-mentioned sources, accordingly, I refer my 
 learned readers for the investigation and verification of 
 allusions, facts, or theories collected from their pages. 
 
 Of European works regarding the lands of the East, of 
 travels in Arabia and its vicinity, I have read but little, 
 from want not of will, but of leismre. Niebuhr's cool and 
 impartial style led me to study his Arabian journey with 
 special attention, and I have had every reason to admire 
 the great truthfulness and the judicious observation of 
 that eminent traveller. In some few points, indeed, he 
 appears to me slightly mistaken or misinformed, and such 
 I have noticed in tlie course of my work, with all due
 
 PREFACE xi 
 
 respect for the authority of the learned German, and 
 leaving my readers to judge for themselves between the 
 conflicting statements thus brought forward. 
 
 Subsequent to my return home, Capt. Welsted's and 
 Mr. Wallin's Memoirs, as given among the Papers of the 
 Eoyal Geographical Society, have been kindly put at my 
 disposal. So far as my experience goes, it confirms their 
 accuracy. The researches of these gentlemen having 
 been mainly topographical, they naturally paid but a 
 subordinate attention to the circumstances of the inhabi- 
 tants, and this blank in their narratives is precisely what 
 I now desire to fill up. 
 
 With the travels of Pococke, Burckhardt, and others, 
 I have not sufficient acquaintance for much positive con- 
 firmation or dissidence. It seems to me that in Burckhardt's 
 work there is somewhat of an exaggerated view, not un- 
 frequent in other authors, regarding Bedouins and Bedouin 
 life ; perhaps, too, a want of clearness and accuracy in the 
 social picture, even in the statistical enumerations. Few 
 writers, indeed, appear to me to have arrived at a just 
 appreciation of the wandering, fewer still of the settled, 
 population of Arabia ; few to have well understood the 
 workings of the clan-system in either element of society, 
 and where lies the strength, where the weakness of the 
 land. For this the collective estimate is often too vague, 
 and the isolated details partial and insufficient. Yet, 
 considering the difficulties in their way, we shoidd 
 be more ready to praise European investigators for what 
 they have done, than to criticize them for omissions. 
 
 If, however, from the pages of a past generation I have
 
 Xll rHEFACE 
 
 derived eomparutively little asisistancc, I have not been 
 without the kind help of those living friends whose erudi- 
 tion and Oriental acquirements rendered them best able to 
 suggest, amend, and supply. Professor Eodiguer at Berlin, 
 and Mr. Stanley Poole in London, have both laid me in 
 this way under real and lasting obligations ; and their 
 names I mention with pleasure, not to exclude other 
 friends, but as the abridgment of a long list at the head 
 of which they stand. In the minute and laborious details 
 of the general map of Arabia prefixed to this volume, 
 Professor Iviepcrt of Berlin lent his learned and conscien- 
 tious accuracy ; the Geographical Societies of London and 
 Berlin, with their respective Presidents, Sir Eoderick 
 Murchison and Professor Barth, have alike honoured me 
 with friendly support. In short, nothing which kind- 
 ness could do in my behalf has been left undone in the 
 capitals of England and of Northern Germany, and hence 
 I have the less excuse to offer for what defects may exist 
 in the work now laid before the judgment of the reader, 
 although my best has truly been done to render them 
 few. — But I hope he is now willing, or even wishful, to 
 start with me on our way. And thus without further 
 preface, let us mount and go. 
 
 WILLIAM GIFFOED PALGEAVE 
 
 Berlin : Ajiril 29, 18G5
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 THE FIEST VOLUME 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I . . . THE DESERT AND ITS INHABITANTS 
 II . . . THE DJOWF 
 
 III . . . THE NEFOOD AND DJEBEL SHOMEE 
 
 IV . . . LIFE IN Ha'YEL 
 
 V . . . COURT INCIDENTS AT HA'YEL 
 
 VI . . . JOURNEY FROM HA'YEL TO BEREYDAH 
 
 VII ,. . BEREYDAH 
 
 VIII . . . FROM BEREYDAH TO RIAD . 
 IX . . . RIAD 
 
 1 
 
 46 
 90 
 139 
 187 
 216 
 273 
 323 
 389 
 
 MAP AND PLANS 
 
 POBTRAIT OF THE AuTnoR 
 
 Map of Arabia . 
 
 Plan of Ha'yel 
 
 „ Riad . 
 
 To face title-juKje 
 
 • „ P(t0<^ 1 
 
 • » j7 130 
 
 • „ „ 3§9
 
 JOUENEY AND RESIDENCE 
 
 IN 
 
 CENTRAL AND EASTERN ARABIA 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 The Deseet and its Inhabitants 
 
 But I hold the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child. — A. Tennyson 
 
 DEPARTURE FROM MA'aN — OTJR BEDOTjrN' COMPANIONS — OUR OAVN EOUIP- 
 MENT AND DISGUISE ; ITS REASON AND CHARACTER — INCIDENT "WHILE 
 AT MA'AN — BEDOUIN SUN-WORSHIP — REMARKS ON BEDOUIN RELIGION 
 AND MORALITY — WELLS OF WOKBA — FIVE DAYS OF STONY DESERT — 
 
 MODE OF TRAVELLING FIRST NEWS OF TELSX-EBN-RASHEED — AVELLS — 
 
 APPROACH TO WADI SERHAN — HILLS — SEMOOM — VIEW OF THE DESERT — 
 ITS CHANGE AT WADI SERHAN — SHERARAT ENCAMPMENT — BEDOUIN 
 HOSPITjU,ITY and conversation — THEIR SOCIAL CONDITION — SAMH AND 
 MESAa' — EFFECT OF TELAL's GOVERNMENT ON THE BEDOUINS — ANECDOTE 
 
 THEIR WARS — GENERAL VIEW OF THE FIRST FORMATION OF ARAB 
 
 NATIONALITY, AND ITS DIVISION INTO THE FIXED AND THE NOMADE 
 POPULATIONS ; THEIR RESPECTIVE VALUE — ROUTE OF WADI SERHAN : 
 SAND-HILLS AND GHADA — REMARKS ON THE CAMEL — 'azZAM SHERARAT 
 OF MA'gOOA' — CHANGE OF GUIDES — ROUTE TO DJOWF : OSTRICHES, 
 SCORPIONS — ^. DJEBAL-EL-DJOWP : VILLAGE OF DJOON — FIRST MEETING 
 WITH THE MEN OF DJOWF — GORGES OF THE VALLEY. 
 
 " Once for all let us attempt to acquire a fairly correct and 
 comprehensive knowledge of the Arabian Peninsula. With 
 its coasts we are already in great measure acquainted; several 
 of its maritime provinces have been, if not thoroughly, at 
 least sufficiently, explored; Yemen and Hejaz, Mecca and 
 Medinah, are no longer mysteries to us, nor are we wholly 
 
 VOL. I. 1!
 
 2 THE DESERT AND ITS INHABITANTS [Chap. I 
 
 without information on the districts of Hadramaut and 'Oman. 
 But of the interior of the vast region, of its plains and moun- 
 tains, its trihes and cities, of its governments and institutions, 
 of its inhabitants, their ways and customs, of their social con- 
 dition, how far advanced in civilization or sunk in barbarism, 
 what do we as yet really know, save from accounts necessarily 
 wanting in fulness and precision ? It is time to fill up this 
 blank in the map of Asia, and this, at whatever risks, we will 
 now endeavour ; either the land before us shall be our tomb, 
 or we will traverse it in its fullest breadth, and know what it 
 contains from shore to shore. Vestigia nulla retrorsum.^^ 
 
 Such were my thoughts, and such, more or less, I should sup- 
 pose, those of my companion, when we found ourselves at fall of 
 night without the eastern gate of Ma'an, while the Arabs, our 
 guides and fellow-travellers, filled their water-skins from a gush- 
 ing source hard by the town walls, and adjusted the saddles and 
 the burdens of their camels, in preparation for the long journey 
 that lay before us and them. It was the evening of the 16th 
 June 1862 ; the largest stars were already visible in the deep 
 blue depths of a cloudless sky, while the crescent moon, high to 
 the west, shone as she shines in those heavens, and promised 
 us assistance for some hours of our night march. We were 
 soon mounted on our meagre long-necked beasts, "as if," 
 according to the expression of an Arab poet, " we and our men 
 were at mast-heads," and now we set our faces to the east. 
 Behind us lay, in a mass of dark outline, the walls and castle of 
 JMa'an, its houses and gardens, and farther back in the distance 
 the high and barren range of the Sheraa' mountains, merging 
 into the coast-chain of Hejaz. Before and around us extended 
 a wide and level plain, blackened over with countless jDebbles 
 of basalt and flint, except where the moonbeams gleamed 
 white on little intervening patches of clear sand, or on 
 yellowish streaks of withered grass, the scanty product of the 
 winter rains, and now dried into hay. Over all a deep silence, 
 which even our Arab companions seemed fearful of breaking ; 
 when they spoke it was in a half whisper and in few words, while 
 the noiseless tread of our camels sped stealthily but rapidly 
 through the gloom, without disturbing its stillness. 
 
 Some precaution was not indeed wholly out of place, for
 
 Chap. I] MA'AN TO THE DJOWF 3 
 
 that stage of the journey on which we were now entering 
 was anything but safe. We were bound for the Djowf, the 
 nearest inhabited district of Central Arabia, its outlying station, 
 in fact. Now the intervening tract offered for the most part 
 the double danger of robbers and of thirst, of marauding 
 bands and of the summer season. The distance itself to be 
 traversed was near two hundred miles in a straight line, and 
 imavoidable circumstances were likely to render it much longer. 
 For the wells, the landmarks of the traveller, and according to 
 which he needs must shape his course, are not ordinarily arranged 
 in lines of mathematical straightness ; and, besides, the neces- 
 sity of avoiding districts frequented by hostile or suspected 
 tribes often obliges the Bedouin to adopt some unaccustomed 
 and circuitous route. 
 
 Nor was the society itself that we were actually in of a nature 
 much to reassure the mind, especially at the outset of such a 
 journey. On my own comrade, indeed — a native of the village of 
 Zahleh, in the plains of Coelo-Syria — I could fully rely. Hardy, 
 young, and enterprising, he belonged to a locality whose inhabit- 
 ants are accustomed to danger, while the contempt with which 
 they look down on the neighbouring populations renders them 
 habitually less susceptible than most of their countrymen to the 
 ordinary impressions of fear in a strange land. But our Bedouin 
 companions were a strange set : they were three in number ; their 
 leader, Salim-el-'Atneh, belonged to the Howeytat Arabs, a 
 numerous and energetic tribe inhabiting the mountain district 
 from Kerak on the Dead Sea shore to Ma'an. Our friend him- 
 self was a member of a powerful family among them, and near 
 akin to the chiefs of the clan ; but he had rendered himself so un- 
 fortunately conspicuous by repeated acts of robbery and pillage, 
 with a supplementary murder now and then, that his position 
 was at present hardly better than that of an outlaw. Lean in 
 make and swarthy of features, his thin compressed lips implied 
 settled resolution and daring purpose, while the calmness of his 
 grey eye showed a cool and thoughtful disposition, not without 
 some possible intimation of treachery. 
 
 I may here remark, that the favourable picture occasionally 
 drawn l)y travellers of the inviolability of Bedouin good faith is 
 not always in that exact accordance with real facts which one could
 
 4 THE DESERT AND ITS INHABITANTS [Cnvr. I 
 
 desire. On the contrary, deeds of tlie most cold-blooded perfidy 
 are by no means uncommon among these nomades; and 
 strangers under their guidance and protection, naj^, even their 
 own kindred brethren of the desert, are but too often the 
 victims of such conduct. To lead travellers astray in the 
 ^vilderness till they fall exhausted by thirst and weariness, and 
 then to plunder and leave them to die, is no unfrequent Bedouin 
 procedure ; and the instances on record are too many to be 
 considered as mere chance exceptions from a bettor rule. Thus, 
 for example, a numerous caravan, composed principally of 
 wealthy Jews, on their way across the desert from Damascus to 
 Bagdad, was, not many years since, betrayed by its Bedouin 
 guides ; and the travellers perished to a man, while their 
 faithless conductors, after keeping aloof till they were sure that 
 thirst and the burning sun had done their work, returned to the 
 scene of death and constituted themselves the sole and universal 
 legatees of the moveable goods, gear, and wealth of their too 
 confiding companions. I myself, during my stay at the town of 
 Ha'yel, in Central Arabia, met with a large Hebrew folio, once the 
 property of one of these unfortunate Israelites. The Bedouin 
 to whose lot it had fallen, amid his share of the plunder, had 
 lirought it thus far, in hope of rendering his treason so far pro- 
 fitable by the sale of a work all the more valuable in Eastern 
 opinion for being totally unintelligible. 
 
 However, as to Salim, whatever drawbacks might exist in his 
 outward appearance, or in his too well known personal history, 
 his good sense and manly character afforded some ground of 
 confidence in his present fidelity ; a brave and foresighted man, 
 however unprincipled, may always be trusted to a certain extent. 
 But I can hardly say so much for his two companions, 'Alee and 
 Djordee, Sherarat Bedouins, and utter barbarians in appearance 
 no less than in character, wild, tickle, reckless, and the capacity 
 of whose intellect was as scanty as its cultivation. Indeed, Salim 
 himself more than once advised us to avoid all familiarity with 
 them, lest it should diminish the involuntary awe of the savage 
 for civilized man. 
 
 A long and very dirty shirt, reaching nearly to the ankles, a 
 black cotton handkerchief over the head, fastened on by a twist 
 of camel's hair, a tattered cloak, striped white and brown, a
 
 Cn.vp. I] MA' AN TO THE DJOWF 5- 
 
 leather girdle, much the worse for wear, from which dano-led a 
 rusty knife, a long-barrelled and cumbrous matchlock, a yet 
 longer sharp-pointed spear, a powder-belt, broken and coarsely 
 patched up with thread — such was the accoutrement of these 
 worthies, and such, indeed, is the ordinary Bedouin guise on a 
 journey. Salim's own rigging out was of the same description, 
 only the respective items were of a somewhat better quality. 
 
 Myself and my companion were dressed like ordinary middle- 
 class travellers of inner Syria ; an equipment in which we had 
 already made our way from Gaza on the sea-coast to Ma'iin 
 without much remark or unseasonable questioning from those 
 whom we fell in with, while we traversed a country so often 
 described already by Pococke, Laborde, and downwards, under 
 the somewhat pedantic name of Arabia Petra^a, that it would be 
 superfluous for me to enter into any new account of it in the 
 present work. Our dress then consisted partly of a long stout 
 blouse of Egyptian hemp, and under it, unlike our Bedouin 
 fellow-travellers, we indulged in the luxury of the loose cotton 
 drawers common in the East, while our coloured head -kerchiefs, 
 though simple enough, were girt by 'akkals or head -bands of 
 some pretension to elegance ; the loose red leather boots of the 
 country completed our toilet. 
 
 But in the large travelling-sacks at our camels' sides were 
 contained suits of a more elegant appearance, carefully concealed 
 from Bedouin gaze, but destined for appearance when we should 
 reach better inhabited and more civilized districts. This reserve 
 toilet numbered articles like the following : coloured over- 
 dresses, the Syrian combaz, handkerchiefs where silk stripes 
 relieved the plebeian cotton, and girdles of good material and 
 tasteful colouring ; such clothes being absolutely requisite to 
 maintain our assumed character. Mine was that of a native 
 travelling doctor, a quack if you will; and accordingly a tolerable 
 dress was indispensable for the credit of my medical practice. 
 My comrade, who by a slight but necessary fiction passed for my 
 brother-in-law, appeared sometimes as a retail merchant, such as 
 not unfrequently visit these countries, and sometimes as my pupil 
 or associate in my assumed profession. 
 
 Our pharmacopoeia consisted of a few but well selected and 
 efficacious drugs, inclosed iu small tiglit-fitting tin boxes, stowed
 
 6 THE DESERT AND ITS INHABITANTS [Cn.vr. I 
 
 away for the present in the ample recesses of our travelling bags ; 
 about fifty of these little cases contained wherewithal to kill or 
 cure half the sick men of Arabia. Medicines of a liquid form 
 had been as much as possible omitted, not only from the difficulty 
 of ensuring them a safe transport amid so rough a mode of 
 journe3ang, but also on account of the rapid evaporation un- 
 avoidable in this dry and burning climate. In fact two or three 
 small bottles, whose contents had seemed to me of absolute 
 necessity, soon retained nothing save their labels to indicate what 
 they had held, in spite of air-tight stoppers and double coverings. 
 I record this, because the hint may be useful to any one who should 
 be inclined to embark in similar guise on the same adventures. 
 
 Some other objects requisite in medical practice, two or three 
 European books for my own private use, and kept carefully secret 
 from Arab curiosity, with a couple of Escidapian treatises in 
 good Arabic, intended for professional ostentation, completed this 
 part of our fitting-out. But besides these, an ample provision 
 of cloth, handkerchiefs, glass necklaces, pipe-bowls, and the like, 
 for sale in whatever localities might not offer sufficient facility 
 for the healing art, filled up our saddle-bags well nigh to bursting. 
 Last, but not least, two large sacks of coffee, the sheet-anchor 
 and main hope of our commerce, formed alone a sufficient load 
 for a vigorous camel. 
 
 Perhaps my reader may wonder at so complicated an apparatus 
 of disgidse, and even condemn it as at any rate superfluous. But 
 for those who desire to travel with anything like security in 
 Central Arabia, all these, or at least equivalent measures, are, if 
 not absolutely necessary, at least extremely advantageous ; the 
 Avhy and wherefore I shall leave to the course of my narrative to 
 explain. In the mean time my friendly readers may take it on 
 my word that had it not been for all this they would never have 
 had the satisfaction, whatever that may be, of making their 
 journey across the great Peninsula book in hand and by their 
 snug fireside, with somewhat less risk and discomfort than the 
 travellers themselves had in their time to undergo. 
 
 Could we, however, when first starting, have foreknown the 
 real nature of the countries before us, we might have very well 
 dispensed with a good part of our mercantile provisions, designed 
 mainly for Bedouin piu'chasers, and augmented on the other
 
 CnAr. I] MA' AN TO THE D JO WF y 
 
 hand our medical supplies, more adapted to townsmen and 
 villagers. But supposing, like most people, that Arabia was 
 almost exclusively the territory of nomades, and that the fixed 
 population must be proportionally small and unimportant, we 
 deemed the former class of articles at least as available as the 
 latter ; a grievous mistake, and of which we soon became aware. 
 For after once traversing this first stage of our journey, the rest 
 of our way across the inner provinces, and up to the very shores 
 of the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, lay, with very little 
 exception, through countries where Bedouins stand for little or 
 nothing, whereas, on the contrary, the settled inhabitants of the 
 soil, with their towns, tillage, and governments, are everything. 
 But all this we had yet to learn. 
 
 Already, indeed, our semi-mercantile appearance had caused us 
 serious inconveniences, while our medical character had on the 
 contrary preserved us from a total defeat. The occasion was as 
 follows : — 
 
 Ma'an, from which we had just parted, is a small town, or 
 rather village, situated on either side of the great pilgrim road 
 from Damascus to Mecca, at about thirteen days' march distant 
 from the former, and full twice as much from the latter. The 
 locality itself has been sufficiently described by Mr. Wallin in 
 his North- Arabian journey. Now as we happened to arrive 
 there, on our way from Wadi 'Akabah, just in the midmost of 
 the pilgrim season, we found the town occupied by a small 
 Turkish garrison, stationed there during the months of the 
 Hajj for the better protection of the route, while the whole 
 population was in an unusual state of alertness ; all untoward 
 circumstances for us, who wished to slip through as quietly and 
 unnoticed as possible. While we here awaited for ten weary 
 days the appearance of guides capable of serving our tiu-n in 
 our onward journey, the magistrates of the place, together with 
 the Turkish Effendis and garrison, fell to observing us rather 
 too closely, and could not exactly understand why merchants 
 like ourselves should abandon the sure prospect of a good and 
 profitable sale on the line of Mecca, especially at such a season, 
 for a wild-goose chase after traffic in the easterly desert. 
 Accordingly, out of sheer good will to us and our business, 
 though not, perhaps, without some degree of suspicion, they
 
 8 THE DESERT AXD ITS INHABITANTS [CuAr. I 
 
 used every effort to persuade us to take the Meccan road, and 
 our non-compliance could not but look very awkward and 
 unreasonable, not to say more. However, others, Avho had paid 
 more attention to our medical art and skill, made the lucky 
 conjecture that our real object in thus obstinately insisting on 
 going towards Djowf must be the search after treasures con- 
 cealed, heaven knows when and by whom, in the depths of 
 Arabia, and in quest of which Moghrebee adventurers, of equal 
 reputation for their proficiency in the healing and in the occult 
 sciences, occasionally traverse these frontiers. This happy idea 
 led our friends to favour our design in the hopes of coming in 
 for a share of the expected profit, and in consequence to set 
 themselves seriously at work to find us guides, whom otherwise 
 it would have proved no easy matter for us to have procured 
 by our own unassisted research ; and in this manner a very 
 unseasonable difficulty Avas safely got over. And now to our 
 march once more. 
 
 Several hours of a rapid trot had already borne us far from 
 Ma'an, and the reddening moonlight was almost faded from the 
 west, when our guides halted on a little patch of dry grass 
 amid the black and stony plain, and after interchanging a few 
 words, made the camels kneel down, discharged them of their 
 burdens, and then turned them loose to graze at will, while one 
 of the band kept watch, and the rest lay down for a few hours' 
 sleep near the baggage, which we had piled up close by ; it was, 
 however, a mere nap, and the first clear streak of light had 
 hardly appeared in the east below the silvery morning star, 
 when we were aroused to relade our beasts, and remount for 
 our onward journey. 
 
 The sun rose, and then for the first time I witnessed what 
 afterwards became a daily spectacle, the main act of Bedouin 
 worship in their own land. Hardly had the first clear rays 
 struck level across the horizon, than our nomade companions, 
 facing the rising disk, began to recite alternately, but \Adthout 
 any previous ablution or even dismounting from their beasts, 
 certain formulas of adoration and invocation, nor desisted till 
 the entire orb rode clear above the desert edge. Sun-wor- 
 shippers as they were before the days of Mahomet, they still 
 remain such ; and all that the Hejaz prophet could say, or the
 
 Chap. I] MA' AN TO THE DJOWF 9 
 
 doctors of his law repeat, touching the devil's horns between 
 which the great day-star rises, as true Mahometans know or 
 ought to know, and the consequently diabolical character of 
 worship at such a time, and in a posture, too, which directs prayers 
 and adorations then made exactly towards the Satanic head^ 
 gear, has been entirely thrown away on those obstinate adherents 
 to ancient customs. 
 
 The fact is, that among the great mass of the nomade popu- 
 lation, Mahometanism during the course of twelve whole cen- 
 tinies has made little or no impression either for good or ill ; 
 that it was equally ineffectual in this quarter at the period of 
 its very first establishment, we learn from the Coran itself, and 
 from early tradition of an authentic character. Not that the 
 Bedouins on their part had any particular aversion from their 
 inspired countryman or the Divine Unity, but simply because 
 they were themselves, as they still are, incapable of receiving or 
 retaining any of those serious influences and definite forms of 
 thought and practice which then gave a permanent mould to 
 the townsmen of Hejaz and many other provinces; just as 
 the impress of a seal is lost in water, while retained in wax. 
 " Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel," is an imprecation 
 which, if meant originally for Keuben, has descended in all its 
 plenitude on the Bedouins of Arabia. At the same time, sur- 
 rounded by, and often more or less dependent on, sincere and 
 even bigoted followers of Islam, they have occasionally deemed 
 it prudent to assume a kindred name and bearing, and thus to 
 style themselves Mahometans for the time being, and even go 
 through some prayer or religious formula, when indeed they can 
 manage to learn any. For these very reasons they are in 
 general yet more careful not to betray the existence among 
 them of belief and doings directly at variance with the dominant 
 creed of the land ; much as gipsies are said, truly or not I 
 cannot tell, to have done in Christian Europe for many cen- 
 turies. Hence it is only when they feel themselves quite at 
 home, and free from fear and restraint, that they venture to 
 hoist their true colours ; and it is seldom that a stranger has an 
 opportunity of seeing them under such conditions. As for the 
 half Bedouins of the Syrian, Egyptian, or Hejaz frontier, a 
 constant intercourse with towns and populations where Islam is
 
 lO THE DESERT AND ITS IXIIABITANTS [Chap. I 
 
 faith and law, has really given them some slight tincture of it 
 in their turn ; and hence the statement of several travellers 
 Avho have come in contact with such and only such, that 
 Bedouins are in general Mahometans like the rest, only lax 
 ones ; a statement only valid under the above limitations. 
 
 At a distant view most landscape seems level, and of a single 
 blended tint, but nearer inspection will often show broken ground 
 instead of plain, and many colours where we had seen but one. 
 Mr. Finlay, the clever but partial author of " The Byzantine 
 Empire," has declared in a sweeping way " that there is no greater 
 delusion than to speak of the vmity of the Christian Church." 
 However this may be, I can affirm the perfect applicability of 
 this sentence to Islam in the East. In no part of the world is 
 there more of secret division, aversion, misbelief (taking Ma- 
 hometanism for our standard) and unbelief than in those very 
 lands which to a superficial survey seem absolutely identified 
 in the one common creed of the Coran and its author. But to 
 this subject we shall have to recur more than once when we 
 advance further ; let us now content ourselves with the Sherarat, 
 whose isolated position in their " vast and howling wilderness " 
 renders them a fair specimen of the genuine and unalloyed 
 Bedouin species. 
 
 For them, I found them one and all no better acquainted than 
 any honest English drover might be with the customary forms of 
 Mahometan worship, with its prostrations and rehearsals, its ablu- 
 tions and rites ; of the pilgrimage they knew nothing, except in 
 the way of plundering the pilgrims; and to the obligations and 
 merits of the Fast of Eamadhan they seemed totally indifferent. 
 But, on the other hand, sacrifices in which sheep or camels are 
 devoutly slaughtered at the tombs of their dead kinsmen are 
 of frequent occurrence, and supply the deficiency of the 
 religious duties of Islam, perhaps with little disadvantage. 
 
 The extreme licence of Bedouin manners renders the restric- 
 tions or relaxations of Mahometan law on the subject of 
 marriage unavailing or superfluous. Community would, I fear, 
 better than polygamy, express their connubial condition, and no- 
 where has the phrase, " it is a clever child that knows its own 
 father," a wider application. Indeed, in regard to this, as well 
 as on many correlative points, into the details of which my
 
 Chap. I] MA' AN TO THE DJOWF II 
 
 readers must excuse me from entering, " dogs are better than 
 we are," was a common expression of theirs, often repeated by 
 them in my hearing, and I can give them credit for having so 
 far at least spoken the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but 
 the truth. And after this preliminary sketch of Bedouin life 
 and manners, to be completed a little farther on, let us now 
 return to the daily course of our narrative. 
 
 It was about two hours before noon, and the heat was most 
 oppressive, when we saw before us some scattered and dwarfish 
 trees, indications of the waters of Wokba, towards which our 
 course had been directed. While we were yet at some distance 
 from the spot, one of our Bedouins urged forward his camel to 
 a sort of canter, and set off in a circuitous line to assure him- 
 self that no individuals of a hostile tribe were lurking in the 
 neighbourhood of the wells. But friend or enemy, nobody was 
 there, all was silent; and the ruined walls of an abandoned 
 village, scattered up and down on the gravelly slopes and by 
 the dry bed of a winter torrent, looked hopelessly desolate in the 
 steady glare of noon. Here several shallow pits, some half 
 choked with stones, others offering a scanty supply of muddy 
 and rather brackish water, presented themselves close by the 
 thorny trees. From these wells we now filled the water-skins, 
 an operation performed all the more carefully and thorouglily, 
 since no other water whatever was to be had for four full days' 
 journey ahead, put to it what speed we might; a serious con- 
 sideration, especially in the latter days of June. 
 
 When all this was finished, we remounted, and set our 
 camels' heads once more due east, while I turned to look 
 round on the wide landscape. The blue range of Sheraa' was 
 yet visible, though fast sinking in the distance, while before us 
 and on either hand extended one weary plain in a black mono- 
 tony of lifelessness. Only on all sides lakes of mirage lay 
 mocking the eye with their clear and deceptive outline, whilst 
 here and there some dark basaltic rock, cropping up at random 
 through the level, was magnified by the refraction of the heated 
 atmosphere into the semblance of a fantastic crag or over- 
 hanging mountain. Dreary land of death, in which even the 
 face of an enemy were almost a relief amid such utter solitude. 
 But for five whole days the little dried-up lizard of the plain.
 
 12 THE DESERT AND ITS INHABITANTS [Cn.vr. I 
 
 that looks as if he had never a drop of moisture in his ugly- 
 body, and the jerboaa', or field-rat of Arabia, were the only- 
 living creatures to console our view. 
 
 And now began a march during which we might have almost 
 repented of our enterprise, had such a sentiment been any 
 longer possible or availing. Day after day found us urging 
 our camels to their utmost pace, for fifteen or sixteen hours 
 together out of the twenty-four, under a well-nigh vertical sun, 
 which the Ethiopians of Herodotus might reasonably be excused 
 for cursing, with nothing' either in the landscape around or in 
 the companions of our way to relieve for a moment the eye or 
 the mind. Then an insufficient halt for rest or sleep, at most 
 of two or three hours, soon interrupted by the oft-repeated 
 admonition, " if we linger here we all die of thirst," sounding 
 in our ears; and then to remount our jaded beasts and push 
 them on through the dark night, amid the constant pro- 
 bability of attack and plunder from roving marauders. For 
 myself, I was, to mend matters, under the depressing influence 
 of a tertian fever contracted at Ma'an, and what between weari- 
 ness and low spirits, began to imagine seriously that no waters 
 remained before us except the waters of death for us and of 
 oblivion for our friends. The days wore by like a delirious 
 dream, till we were often almost unconscious of the ground we 
 travelled over and of the journey on which we were engaged. 
 One only herb appeared at our feet to give some appearance of 
 variety and life; it was the bitter and poisonous colocynth of 
 the desert. 
 
 Our order of march was this. Long before dawn we were on 
 our way, and paced it till the sun, having attained about half- 
 way between the horizon and the zenith, assigned the moment 
 of alighting for our morning meal. This our Bedouins always 
 took good care should be in some hollow or low ground, for 
 concealment's sake ; in every other respect we had ample liberty 
 of choice, for one patch of black pebbles with a little sand and 
 withered grass between was just like another; shade or shelter, 
 or anything like them, was wholly out of the question in such 
 " nakedness of the land." We then alighted, and my com- 
 panion and myself would pile up the baggage into a sort of wall, 
 to afford a half-screen from the scorching sun-rays, and here
 
 Chap. I] MAAN TO THE DJOWF Ij 
 
 recline awhile. Next came the culinary preparations, in perfect 
 accordance with our provisions, which like those of genuine 
 Arab travellers were simple enough ; namely, a bag of coarse 
 flour mixed with salt, and a few dried dates, with no third item 
 on the bill of fare. We now took a few handfuls of flour, and 
 one of the Bedouins kneaded it with his unwashed hands or dirty 
 bit of leather, pouring over it a little of the dingy water con- 
 tained in the skins, and then patted out this exquisite paste into 
 a large round cake, about an inch thick, and five or six inches 
 across. Meanwhile another had lighted a fire of dry grass, 
 colocynth root^ and dried camel's dung, till he had prepared a 
 bed of glowing embers ; among these the cake was now cast, and 
 immediately covered up with hot ashes, and so left for a few 
 minutes, then taken out, turned, and covered again, till at last 
 half-kneaded, half-raw, half-roasted, and more than half-burnt, 
 it was taken out to be broken up between the hungry band, and 
 eaten scalding hot, before it should cool into an indescribable 
 leathery substance, capable of defying the keenest appetite. A 
 draught of dingy water was all its accompaniment. 
 
 The meal ended, we had again without loss of time to resume 
 our way from mirage to mirage, till " slowly flaming over all, 
 from heat to heat, the day decreased," and about an hour before 
 sunset we would stagger off our camels as best we might, to 
 prepare an evening feast of precisely the same description as 
 that of the forenoon, or more often, for fear lest the smoke of 
 our fire should give notice to some distant rover, to content 
 ourselves with dry dates, and half an hour's rest on the sand. 
 At last our dates, like Esop's bread sack, or that of Beyhas, his 
 Arab prototype, came to an end ; and then our supper was a 
 soldier's one ; what that is my military friends will know ; but 
 grit and pebbles excepted, there was no bed in our case. After 
 which, to remount, and travel on by moon or star light, till a 
 little before midnight we would lie down for just enough sleep 
 to tantalize, not refresh. 
 
 " Wilt thou go on with me ?" gentle reader, for an Arab trip ? 
 For myself, I confess that the remembrance of that exquisite 
 little tale entitled the " Sleeping Beauty," by a friend, if he will 
 allow me so to call him, whom to quote is to name, and of the 
 jnoral therein contained — though its author archly denies its
 
 14 THE DESERT AND ITS INHABITANTS [Chap. I 
 
 having any — did much to invigorate me on this and on similar 
 occasions ; it's " the many fail, the one succeeds," and the " trust 
 to light on something fair," kept up my courage, and thus may 
 he fairly said to have " hooked it to some useful end," though 
 perhaps not precisely the one intended by Mr. Tennyson. But 
 my reader, like myself, must labour yet awbile through the 
 difficulties of this desert " hedge," till he breaks in on the fair 
 one in all her Ijeauty, if, like the prince, his courage does not 
 fail him ; better things lie before us in the next chapter. 
 
 But in addition to what encouragement my comrade and 
 myself could gather from memory and inner thought, our com- 
 panions too cheered us ever and anon, by assuring us that 
 although this hasty manner of travelling was absolutely neces- 
 sary in a land alike beset by drought and danger, we might 
 hope for easier marches and lighter privations so soon as we 
 should have reached the boundary frontier of Telal-ebn-Rasheed, 
 the sovereign of Djebel Shomer. These desirable limits, said 
 they, commenced at Wadi Serhan, or the Valley of Serhan, 
 which we were fast approaching, and where water was good and 
 copious, while the mighty name of Telfd protected it far and 
 wide from fear of enemies and marauders by night and by 
 day. 
 
 Much did our Bedouins talk of Telal, and much extol his 
 vigour, his equity, his active vigilance, his military prowess, 
 though at the same time they repined at his unwarrantable 
 repression of Bedouin liberty, and the restraints he imposed on 
 the innate rights of nomades to plunder, rob, and murder at 
 their own free discretion — complaints which, contrary to the 
 intention of our informants, rather raised than diminished our 
 esteem for this ruler, be he who he might. We could, however, 
 as yet obtain but little exact information about the personal 
 history or the political position of this prince. Whether he was 
 of supreme or of subaltern power, whether founder of his king- 
 dom, or heir, what might be the extent or character of the 
 kingdom itself, and much else, we would fain have learnt, and 
 tried to gather from Salim, 'Alee, and Djordee, but to no end : 
 their ideas and langTiagfe on a matter so far above them were 
 alike confused. All that we could for the moment know with 
 certiiinty, was that this chief resided in a town called Ha'yel,
 
 Chap. I] 3IA'AN TO THE DJOWF I^ 
 
 situated in Djebel Sbomer, somewhere to the south-east; that 
 he was very powerful ; that in his dominions neither plunder nor 
 other violation of public order was permitted ; and that from 
 Wadi Serhan, south and east, his word was law. With such 
 information we were obliged to content ourselves for the present, 
 in hope that nearer approach would make all clear. 
 
 We knew already that Central Arabia belonged, at least in 
 part, to the Wahhabee dynasty. With the name " Wahhabee," 
 and its general import, my readers are doubtless too well ac- 
 quainted to require of me here an antecedent explanation, the 
 more that several chapters of this work will almost exclusively 
 regard the land and people who have given to that name its wide 
 celebrity. Of Telrd-ebn-Easheed in particular, as a ruler some- 
 how connected with the Wahhabee, I had also heard mention, 
 though vague, in Syria and at Damascus ; where some distin- 
 guished him from and others confounded him with the dynasty 
 of Nejed. So putting this and that together, we now guessed 
 that he must be a subordinate ruler, a sort of provincial governor 
 in Wahhabee behalf; a conjecture which, like many others, 
 proved neither exactly right nor entirely wrong. 
 
 It was now the 22nd of June, and the fifth day since our 
 departure from the wells of Wokba. The water in the skins 
 had little more to offer to our thirst than muddy dregs, and as 
 yet no sign appeared of a fresh supply. At last about noon we 
 drew near some hillocks of loose gravel and sandstone ; a little 
 on our right our Bedouins conversed together awhile, and then 
 turned their course and ours in that direction. " Hold fast on 
 your camels, for they are going to be startled and jump about," 
 said Salim to us. Why the camels should be startled I could 
 not understand ; when on crossing the mounds just mentioned, 
 we suddenly came on five or six black tents, of the very "poorest 
 description, pitched near some wells excavated in the gravelly 
 hollow below. The reason of Salim's precautionary hint now 
 became evident, for our silly beasts started at first sight of the 
 tents, as though they had never seen the like before, and then 
 scampered about, bounding friskily here and there, till what 
 between their jolting (for a camel's run much resembles that of 
 a cow) and our own laughing, we could hardly keep on their 
 backs. However, their thirst soon prevailed over their timidity.
 
 1 6 THE DESERT AND ITS IKHABITAXTS [CnAr. I 
 
 and they left off their pranks to approach the well's edge, and 
 sniff at the water below. 
 
 We alighted. Immediately the denizens of the tents, a few 
 women and one or two old men belonging to the Sherarat tribe, 
 which is scattered over the whole of this desert, approached to 
 give their " Marhaba," " Ya'hla," i.e., "welcome," " honom-ed 
 guests," and so forth, and to ask many questions why and 
 whence our journey. Nor was their curiosity without reason ; 
 the route which had brought us was one little travelled at any 
 time, especially by men from Damascus or its neighbourhood, 
 and for such our dress and accent gave us out to be ; and still 
 less at this period of the year, in the very height of summer. 
 But we were too tired for much discourse, and far more desirous 
 to get into a little shade after so long a running, than to hold pro- 
 tracted parley. So we left our Bedouins, themselves, too, well 
 nigh worn out with fatigue, to draw water as they could from the 
 wells and pour it into the little hollows close by for the benefit 
 of their camels, an operation in which we should have been more 
 of a hindrance than a help ; and, after due permission asked 
 and granted, we crept into a low and narrow tent, whose black 
 coverings were very exactly calculated for the exclusion of the 
 luminous and transmission of all the caloriferous rays of the mid- 
 day sun. Here we lay stretched out on the sand till it should 
 please our companions to come and force us to rise. This the 
 wretches attempted to do after a very short interval ; but we 
 answered, that as we had now got a good supply of water, and 
 had reached, or nearly so, the boundary limits of Ebn-Easheed, 
 they could have no sufficient motive for being in such a tremen- 
 dous haste. Salim, arch-weary as he was, admitted the force of 
 our argument, and we remained under cover till the declining 
 sun and cooler air. Meanwhile the mistress of the tent, an ugly 
 good-natured looking hag, like most Bedouin dames, entertained 
 us with a long diatribe on the tyranny of Ebn-Easheed, and the 
 coercion he exercised over her countrymen, from which we con- 
 cluded that he must be simply doing the duty of an order-loving 
 king, and esteemed him accordingly. 
 
 When in the afternoon we resumed our way once more, we 
 found the general appearance of the desert somewhat modified 
 by larger patches of sand or grass on its black surface, and these
 
 Chap. I] MA'AN TO THE DJOWF ly 
 
 continued to increase in number and size as we went on. Next 
 day, the 23rd of the month, yet clearer signs of our approach 
 to Wadi Sirhan became visible, and as we took a somewhat 
 northerly direction in order to join in with that valley, we 
 sighted far off in the extreme distance a blue range of hills, 
 running from west to east, and belonging to the Syro-Arabic 
 Waste, though unnoticed, to the best of my knowledge, in Euro- 
 pean maps, perhaps because undiscovered, or at least insuffi- 
 ciently explored. Meanwhile the sand-patches continued to 
 increase and deepen on all sides, and our Bedouins flattered 
 themselves with reaching Wadi Sirhan before nightfall. 
 
 Here, however, an incident occurred which had well nigh put 
 a premature end to the travels and the travellers together. My 
 readers, no less than myself, must have heard or read many a 
 story of the semoom, or deadly wind of the desert, but for me 
 I had never yet met it in full force ; and its modified form, or 
 shelook, to use the Arab phrase, that is, the sirocco of the Syrian 
 waste, though disagreeable enough, can hardly ever be termed 
 dangerous. Hence I had been almost inclined to set down the 
 tales told of the strange phenomena and fatal effects of this 
 " poisoned gale " in the same category with the moving pillars 
 of sand, recorded in many works of higher historical preten- 
 sions than "Thalaba." At those perambulatory columns and 
 sand-smothered caravans the Bedouins, whenever I interro- 
 gated them on the subject, laughed outright, and declared 
 that beyond an occasional dust storm, similar to those which 
 any one who has passed a summer in Scinde can hardly fail to 
 have experienced, nothing of the romantic kind just alluded to 
 occurred in Arabia. But when questioned about the semoom, 
 they always treated it as a much more serious matter, and such 
 in real earnest we now found it. 
 
 It was about noon, and such a noon as a summer solstice 
 can offer in the unclouded Arabian sky over a scorched desert, 
 when abrupt and burning gusts of wind began to blow by fits 
 from the south, while the oppressiveness of the air increased 
 every moment, till my companion and myself mutually asked 
 each other what this could mean, and what was to be its result. 
 We turned to enquire of Salem, but he had already wrapped up 
 his face in his mantle, and, bowed down and crouching on the 
 
 VOL. I. c
 
 1 8 THE DESERT AND ITS INHABITANTS [CnAr. I 
 
 neck of his camel, replied not a word. His comrades, the two 
 Sherarat Bedouins, had adopted a similar position, and were 
 equally silent. At last, after repeated interrogations, Salem, 
 instead of replying directly to our questioning, pointed to a 
 small black tent, providentially at no great distance in front, 
 and said, " try to reach that, if we can get there we are saved." 
 He added, " take care that your camels do not stop and lie 
 down ;" and then, giving his own several vigorous blows, relapsed 
 into muffled silence. 
 
 We looked anxiously towards the tent ; it was yet a hundred 
 yards off, or more. Meanwhile the gusts grew hotter and more 
 violent, and it was only by repeated efforts that we could urge 
 our beasts forward. The horizon rapidly darkened to a deep 
 violet hue, and seemed to draw in like a curtain on every side ; 
 while at the same time a stifling blast, as though from some 
 enormous oven opening right on our path, blew steadily under 
 the gloom ; our camels too began, in spite of all we could do, to 
 turn round and round and bend their knees preparing to lie 
 down. The semoom was fairly upon us. 
 
 Of course we had followed our Arabs' example by muffling 
 our faces, and now with blows and kicks we forced the stag- 
 gering animals onwards to the only asylum within reach. So 
 dark was the atmosphere, and so burning the heat, that it 
 seemed that hell had risen from the earth, or descended from 
 above. But we were yet in time, and at the moment w^hen the 
 worst of the concentrated poison-blast was coming around, we 
 were already prostrate one and all within the tent, with our 
 heads well wrapped up, almost suffocated indeed, but safe ; 
 while our camels lay without like dead, their long necks 
 stretched out on the sand awaiting the passing of the gale. 
 
 On our first arrival the tent contained a solitary Bedouin 
 woman, whose husband was away with his camels in the Wadi 
 Sirhan. When she saw five handsome men, like us, rush thus 
 suddenly into her dwelling without a word of leave or saluta- 
 tion, she very properly set up a scream to the tune of the four 
 crown pleas, murder, arson, robbery, and I know not what else. 
 Salem hastened to reassure her by calling out " friends," and 
 without more words threw himself flat on the ground. All 
 followed his example in silence.
 
 Chap. I] MA'AN TO THE DJOWF I 9 
 
 We remained thus for about ten minutes, during which a 
 still heat like that of red-hot iron slowly passing over us was 
 alone to be felt. Then the tent walls began again to flap in 
 the returning gusts, and announced that the worst of the 
 semoom had gone by. We got up, half dead with exhaustion, 
 and unmuffled our faces. My comrades appeared more like 
 corpses than living men, and so, I suppose, did I. However, 
 I could not forbear, in spite of warnings, to step out and look 
 at the camels ; they were still lying flat as though they had 
 been shot. The air was yet darkish, but before long it bright- 
 ened up to its usual dazzling clearness. During the whole 
 time that the semoom lasted, the atmosphere was entirely free 
 from sand or dust ; so that I hardly know how to account for 
 its singular obscurity. 
 
 Our hostess, once freed from her not unwarrantable alarms, 
 had also remained motionless and well wrapped-up in a corner 
 of the tent till the worst was over, and then, by the active 
 vivacity of her tongue, she gave the best possible proof that 
 the semoom left no dumbness by way of symptom behind it, 
 and satisfied all her pent-up curiosity regarding us after the 
 involuntary restraint imposed by the circumstances of our first 
 introduction. Late in the evening we continued our way ; and 
 next day early entered Wadi Sirhan, where the character of our 
 journey underwent a considerable modification. But before 
 narrating what befel us in this new locality, a few words about 
 its general situation, features, and its relative bearings to the 
 surrounding desert may here find a fitting place. Not that 
 Wadi Sirhan is by any means unknown to geographers or 
 travellers, but some particulars regarding it, especially in its 
 southerly branch, may interest the general reader, nor be wholly 
 unprofitable to scientific research. 
 
 South of the Syrian waste, and reaching from the neighbour- 
 hood of the Dead Sea right across to the valley of the Euphrates, 
 runs a broad desert belt, of a description for the most very 
 similar to that portion which we had just traversed. The soil 
 is hard and stony, with few sources of water rising to the sur- 
 face, even in the winter season ; in spring it is thinly sprinkled 
 with grass and herbs, in summer and autumn absolutely dry; 
 its general appearance level, monotonous, and desolate. Here
 
 20 THE DESERT AND ITS INHABITAKTS [Quxv. I 
 
 and there an isolated rock, or a cluster of low liills, more rarely 
 a continuous range of scanty elevation, but bold in outline, 
 interrupts its uniformity. This is the northerly segment of that 
 great desert-ring which encircles central Arabia, and renders so 
 difficult all regular communication between it and the outlying 
 lands of Syi'ia and Bagdad ; while it cuts it off from the mari- 
 time provinces, such as the Hedjaz, the Yemen, and 'Oman. 
 A little further southward this same desert circle, though 
 uninterrupted, assumes a different type, but of that we shall 
 have more to say hereafter, when our time comes to traverse 
 its onward spaces. 
 
 However, the northerly desert, with which we have at present 
 to do, offers, in spite of all its dreariness, some spots of a com- 
 paratively better cast, where water is less scanty and vegetation 
 less niggard. These spots are the favourite resorts of Bedouins, 
 and serve too to direct the ordinary routes of whatever travellers, 
 trade-led or from other motives, may venture on this wilder- 
 ness. These oases, if indeed they deserve the name, are formed 
 by a slight depression in the surrounding desert surface, and 
 take at times the form of a long valley, or of an oblong patch, 
 where rock and pebble give place to a light soil more or less 
 intermixed with sand, and concealing under its surface a 
 tolerable supply of moisture at no great distance below ground. 
 Here in consequence bushes and herbs spring up, and grass, if 
 not green all the year round, is at least of somewhat longer 
 duration than elsewhere; certain fruit-bearing plants, of a 
 nature to suffice for meagre Bedouin existence, grow here 
 spontaneously ; in a word, man and beast find not exactly com- 
 fortable accommodation, but the absolutely needful supply. 
 Such a spot is Wadi Sirhan, literally "the Valley of the Wolf," 
 probably so called from some old tradition in which that animal 
 made a principal figure, but the precise origin of the name is 
 lost amid the uncertainty of past Arab days. This long and 
 sinuous depression bears in the main from north-west to south- 
 east, or nearly so, and reaches across half the northern desert 
 like a long ladder whose head is placed near Bosra in the 
 Howran, at no great distance from Damascus, while its base 
 rests on the Djowf, the preliminary province and vestibule of 
 central Arabia. Thus it affords the customary route for mer-
 
 Chap. I] MA'AN TO THE DJOWF 2 1 
 
 cantile business to and fro between Syria and the Djowf. In 
 addition, the numerous Syro- Arabic tribe of the Eu'alah Bedouins 
 frequent its upper extremity, while the centre and south-eastern 
 portion are almost exclusively tenanted by the Sherarat Arabs 
 No other valley of equal length, and, I cannot say equal fertility, 
 but of less absolute barrenness, exists in this part of the country. 
 Water is almost everywhere to be found throughout Wadi Sirhao 
 at a depth varying from ten to twenty feet, and the vegetation 
 offers a certain degree of abundance and variety. 
 
 Here begins, or, to speak more correctly, began at the date 
 of our journey, the domain of Telal Ebn Easheed, prince of 
 Shomer, whose influence extends and whose name enforces 
 respect or even submission over the entire desert from Wadi 
 Sirhan eastward, and all along the valley itself, besides a disputed 
 title on the west and north. For although these wilds, no less 
 than Byron's ocean, defy all attempts of man to reclaim or 
 change them, yet the tracts which adjoin centres of authority 
 and organized rule may and do become in some measure amen- 
 able to civilized government, just as a portion of the sea bordering 
 some powerful coast may with right be said to belong to such 
 or such a flag, whose symbol the vessels which ply there are 
 in reason obliged to respect, unless indeed they be strong 
 enough to dispute. Much the same is the case of Bedouins 
 borne on their " ships of the desert " over this land-sea ; and 
 thus, through the medium of the Djowf and of its governor, 
 Telal makes his orders obeyed throughout the southern half of 
 Wadi Sirhan and the adjoining regions. 
 
 It was on the 24th of June that we entered this valley, glad 
 to find ourselves at last on the high road — though the phrase 
 hardly suits a land where no roads soever exist — to the Djowf; 
 while our Bedouins, equally tired with ourselves of chawing dry 
 dates and cinder-cake, entertained us with anticipatory descrip- 
 tions of the hospitable greeting we should daily meet with in 
 the Wadi of the Wolf. 
 
 In fact we had not long wound among the little sandy hills 
 which stud this low ground, when we saw far and near planted amid 
 the bushes numerous black tents, the dwellings of Kedar, doubt- 
 less much resembliug what they were when likened by Solomon 
 to his dusky Egyptian bride, (though I hardly know whether
 
 11 THE DESERT AND ITS INHABITANTS [Cnvp. I 
 
 the latter could have taken the simile for a compliment,) but 
 of so miserable an appearance that we felt little confidence 
 in the realization of the " flattering tale " told us by Bedouin 
 hope. The truth is, that among the miserable tribes of nomades 
 that infest Arabia, the Sherarat are the most miserable. They 
 own very few flocks of sheep; a horse is a rarity in the tribe; 
 their entire wealth, if wealth it be, consists in their camels, and 
 certainly of these last there is no want ; — unlike the northern 
 Bedouins, Seba'a, Ru'alah, Fidha'an, and their brethren, whose 
 large droves of sheep, joined to numerous studs of horses, 
 supply them with a certain opulence and means of trade, ena- 
 bling them to live if not altogether like civilized beings, at 
 least free from the privations and misery of mere savage life, 
 the melancholy lot of our new friends, the Sherarat Arabs. 
 
 Scattered over the whole belt of desert just described, with 
 Wadi Sirhan for their ordinary gathering-place, the Sherarat 
 acknowledge no common chief of their own, no general leader 
 or head. They are divided and subdivided into countless bands, 
 each of which has a separate chief, worthy in every respect of 
 his subjects. Almost all, however, chiefs and clansmen, have 
 been of late brought collectively under some kind of subser- 
 vience by the iron arm of Telal, and pay him accordingly their 
 tribute of yearly camels and daily grumbling. But the character 
 and condition of these nomades will be sufficiently illustrated by 
 our intercourse with them now about to commence. 
 
 Passing tent after tent, and leaving behind us many a tattered 
 Bedouin and grazing camel, Salem at last indicated to us a 
 group of habitations, two or three of which seemed of somewhat 
 more ample dimensions than the rest, and informed us that our 
 supper that night (for the afternoon was already on the decline) 
 would be at the cost of these dwellings. " Ajaweed," i, e., 
 "generous fellows," he subjoined, to encourage us by the pro- 
 spect of a handsome reception. Of course we could only defer 
 to his better judgment ; and in a few minutes were alongside of 
 the black goat's-hair coverings where lodged our intended hosts. 
 
 The chief or chieflet, for he was no less, came out, and inter- 
 changed a few words of masonic laconism with Salem. The 
 latter then came up to us, where we remained halted in expect- 
 ation, led our camels to a little distance from the tents, made
 
 Chap. I] MA' AN TO THE DJOWF 
 
 23 
 
 them kneel down, helped us to disburden them, and while we 
 installed ourselves on a sandy slope opposite to the abodes of 
 the tribe, recommended us to keep a sharp look-out after our 
 baggage, since there might be pickers and stealers among our 
 hosts, for all " Ajaweed " as they were. Disagreeable news ; for 
 " Ajaweed " in an Arab mouth corresponds the nearest pos- 
 sible to our English " gentlemen." Now, if the gentlemen were 
 thieves, what must the blackguards be ? We put a good face 
 on it, and then seated ourselves in dignified gravity on the sand 
 awaiting the further results of our guide's negotiations. 
 
 For some time we remained undisturbed, though not un- 
 noticed ; a group of Arabs had collected round our companions 
 at the tent door, and were engaged in getting from them all 
 possible information, especially about us and our baggage, which 
 last was an object of much curiosity, not to say cupidity. Next 
 came our turn. The chief, his family (women excepted), his 
 intimate followers, and some twenty others, young and old, 
 boys and men, came up, and after a brief salutation. Bedouin- 
 wise, for the complimentary preludes that Turkish or Persian 
 ceremoniousness has introduced elsewhere are not here in fashion, 
 seated themselves in a semicircle before us. Every man held a 
 short crooked stick for camel-driving in his hand, to gesticulate 
 with when speaking, or to play with in the intervals of con- 
 versation, while the younger members of society, less prompt in 
 discourse, politely employed their leisure in staring at us, or in 
 picking up dried pellets of dirt from the sand and tossing them 
 about. 
 
 But how am I to describe their conversation, their questions 
 and answers, their manners and gests ? "A sensible person in 
 this city is like a man tied up among a drove of mules in a 
 stable," I once heard from a respectable stranger in the 
 Syrian town of Horns, a locality proverbial for the sullen 
 stupidity of its denizens. But among Bedouins in the desert, 
 where the advantages of the stable are wanting, the guest rather 
 resembles a man in the middle of a field among untied mules 
 frisking and kicking their heels in all directions around him. 
 Here you may see human nature at its lowest stage, or very 
 nearly ; one sprawls stretched out on the sand, another draws 
 unmeaning lines with the end of his stick, a third grins, a
 
 24 THE DESERT AND ITS INHABITANTS [CiiAr. I 
 
 fourth asks purportless or impertinent questions, or cuts jokes 
 meant for witty, but in fact only coarse in the extreme. Mean- 
 while the boys thrust themselves forward without restraint, and 
 interrupt their elders, their betters I can hardly say, without 
 the smallest respect or deference. 
 
 And yet in all this there is no real intention of rudeness, no 
 desire to annoy ; quite the reverse. They sincerely wish to make 
 themselves agreeable to the new comers, to put them at their 
 ease, nay, to do them what good service they can, only they do 
 not exactly know how to set about it; if they violate all 
 laws of decorum or courtesy, it is out of sheer ignorance, not 
 malice prepense ; and amid the aimlessness of an utterly un- 
 cultivated mind they occasionally show indications of considerable 
 innate tact and shrewdness ; while through all the fickleness 
 proper to men accustomed to no moral or physical restraint, 
 there appears the groundwork of a manly and generous character, 
 such as a Persian or a Turk seldom, if ever, offers. Their 
 defects are inherent to their condition, their redeeming qualities 
 are their own. 
 
 What better, in fact, can be expected of men whose whole 
 lives have passed in driving camels about open wastes, without 
 law, without religion, without instruction, without examjjle? And 
 instead of all these, amid extreme want, unceasing privation, 
 frequent danger, and security never. It is the education of a 
 savage ; and that such a school should send out such pupils is 
 perfectly natural. I only wish that those who indulge their 
 imagination in ideal portraits of desert life, and conceive the 
 Bedouins and their condition to be worthy of admiration or of 
 envy, would pass but three days in a Sherarat encampment, 
 and see, not through the medium of romancing narratives, 
 written a priori, as they say, for ready currency, but with their 
 own eyes, to what a depth of degradation one of the noblest 
 races earth affords can descend under the secular influence of 
 nomade life. 
 
 I say one of the noblest races of earth, for that the Arabs of 
 inhabited lands and organized governments really are. Indeed, 
 after having travelled much and made pretty intimate ac- 
 quaintance wiih many races, African, Asiatic, and European, I 
 should hardly be inclined to give the preference to any over the
 
 CHAP. I] 3IAAN TO THE DJOWF 25 
 
 genuine unmixed clans of central and Eastern Arabia. Now 
 these last-mentioned populations are identical in blood and in 
 tongue with the nomades of this desert, yet how immeasurably 
 superior ! The difference between a barbarous Highlander and 
 an English gentleman, in "Rob Roy "or " Waverley," is hardly less 
 striking. Let me subjoin a specimen of Bedouin conversation 
 for my reader's fuller information. 
 
 *' What are you ? what is your business ?" so runs the ordinary 
 and unprefaced opening of the discourse. To which we answer, 
 " Physicians from Damascus, and our business is whatsoever 
 Grod may put in our way." The next question will be about 
 the baggage ; some one pokes it with a stick, to draw attention 
 to it, and says, " What is this ? have you any little object to 
 sell us?" 
 
 Any one acquainted with the niceties of the Arab language 
 might at first intercourse with this people remark that, however 
 deteriorated may be their social condition, their idiom is, with 
 very slight exceptions, entirely unvitiated, and follows in general 
 the minute rules and exigencies of what is sometimes, though 
 very incorrectly, called the " grammatical dialect." But to 
 this subject we shall have again to recur, and add fuller ex- 
 planation, when we reach Djebel Shomer, where the current 
 language has attained, or, to say better, preserved, its purest 
 and most seductively eloquent form. Leaving, therefore, phi- 
 lology for the moment, let us return to our Bedouins, whom 
 we left in a great state of excitement about the baggage. 
 
 We fight shy of selling : to open out our wares and chattels 
 in full air, on the sand, and amid a crowd whose appearance 
 and circumstances offer but a poor guarantee for the exact ob- 
 servance of the eighth commandment, would be hardly prudent 
 or worth our while. After several fruitless trials, they desist 
 from their request. Another, who is troubled by some bodily 
 infirmity, for which all the united faculties of London and 
 Paris might prescribe in vain, a withered hand, for instance, 
 or stone-blind of an eye, asks for medicine, which no sooner 
 applied shall, in his expectation, suddenly restore him 
 to perfect health and corporal integrity. But I had been 
 already forewarned that to doctor a Bedouin, even under the 
 most favourable circumstances, or a camel, is pretty much the
 
 26 THE DESERT AND ITS INHABITANTS [CnAr. I 
 
 same thing, and ^vith about an equal chance of success ov 
 advantage. I politely decline. He insists; I turn him off with 
 a joke. 
 
 " So you laugh at us, 3"ou inhabitants of towns. We are 
 Bedouins, we do not know your customs," replies he, in a 
 whining tone ; while the boys grin unconscionably at the dis- 
 comfiture of their tribesman. 
 
 " Ya woleyd," or " young fellow " (for so they style every 
 human male from eight to eighty without distinction), " will 
 you not fill my pipe ? " says one, who has observed that mine 
 was not idle, and who, though well provided with a good stock 
 of dry tobacco tied up in a rag at his greasy waist-belt, thinks 
 the moment a fair opportunity for a little begging, since neither 
 medicine nor merchandize is to be had. 
 
 But Salem, seated amid the circle, makes me a sign not 
 to comply. Accordingly I evade the demand. However, my 
 petitioner goes on begging, and is imitated by two or three 
 others, each of whom thrusts forward, (a true Irish hint,) a bit 
 of marrow-bone with a hole drilled in one side to act for a 
 pipe, or a porous stone, not uncommon throughout the desert, 
 clumsily fashioned into a smoking apparatus, a sort of primitive 
 meerschaum. 
 
 As they grow rude, I pretend to become angry, thus to cut 
 the matter short. " We are your guests, you Bedouins ; are 
 you not ashamed to beg of us?" "Never mind, excuse us; 
 those are ignorant fellows, ill-bred clowns, &c.," interposes one 
 close by the chief's side, and whose dress is in somewhat better 
 condition than that of the other half and three-quarter naked 
 individuals who complete the assembly. 
 
 "Will you not people the pipe for your little brother?" 
 subjoins the chief himself, producing an empty one with a 
 modest air. Bedouin language, like that of most Orientals, 
 abounds with not ungraceful imagery, and accordingly "people" 
 here means " fill." Salem gives me a wink of compliance ; I 
 take out a handful of tobacco, and put it on his long shirt- 
 sleeve, which he knots over it, and looks uncommonly well 
 pleased. At any rate they are easily satisfied, these Bedouins. 
 
 In such conversation, and more of like tenor, the hour wears 
 away. Some get up and depart, others take their places, all
 
 Chap. I] 3IA'AN TO THE DJOWF 2y 
 
 have their observations or enquiries to make ; and we have 
 full opportunity of studying their character, propensities, and 
 customs ; the more so as, because, not guessing who we really 
 are, they are completely off their guard. 
 
 But the chieflet, after getting his supply of tobacco, the 
 main object of his visit, were truth to be told, has retired to 
 his tent, there to give suitable orders for the coming entertain- 
 ment. Shortly after we see a knot of idle individuals gathered 
 together a little in the background ; this indicates the spot 
 where a sheep or camel, according to circumstances, is being 
 slaughtered for the evening's feast. A little after we see its 
 carcase stretched out near the corner of the tent, to be cut up 
 by several operators amid a crowd of spectators deeply inter- 
 ested in the process, for the whole encampment is to share in 
 the banquet prepared on occasion of the guests. 
 
 We are now left awhile alone, for cooking is too important 
 an affair to permit the absence of any unoccupied neighbours. 
 In Europe too many cooks are said to have an injurious effect 
 upon the broth, but here the process is far too simple for 
 spoiling. To light a fire under a huge never-scoured cauldron, 
 to set the water boiling, and then to throw in the quarters of 
 the slaughtered animal to seethe in their own unskimmed grease, 
 till about two-thirds cooked ; that is the whole culinary art and 
 the ne 'plus ultra of a Bedouin feast. 
 
 All this, however, takes some time ; fires lighted in the open 
 air do not act so quickly as they would in a stove and kitchen, 
 and large masses of meat cannot be speedily reduced to some- 
 thing like an edible condition. Accordingly the stars are already 
 in the sky, and the night breeze has cooled the sands, before an 
 unusual bustle among the bystanders and a burst of sparks 
 show that the cauldron has been at last removed off the stones 
 which served it for fire-place. The water is then poured off, 
 the meat piled pell-mell into a large and very dirty wooden 
 bowl, and thus, without any other accompaniment, seasoning, or 
 aught else, placed on the ground about half way between us 
 and the tents. 
 
 The chief, or some unbreeched youngster of his family, 
 comes up to us with the customary " Tefaddaloo," or " do us 
 the favour," that is, of accepting the invitation. We approach
 
 28 THE DESERT AND ITS INHABITANTS [Cnw. I 
 
 the bowl, but ere we can take our place a rush has already been 
 made from all quarters towards the common centre of attrac- 
 tion, and a large circle is awaiting in silence the signal to begin. 
 This is given by the chief, who again repeats the formula of 
 welcome, and Salem and my comrade (for I confess myself to 
 have been always rather backward on these occasions, not for 
 want of hunger, but of liking,) fish out a large joint of half 
 raw meat, and pulling at it in opposite directions, divide it into 
 more manageable morsels. Then every one falls to. Thirty or 
 more unwashed hands are in the bowl, and within five minutes' 
 space, bones too clean picked to offer much solace to the lean 
 dogs on guard around are all that remains of the banquet. 
 
 " Why do you not eat ? eat ; go to work at it ; 0, a hundred 
 welcomes to you, our worthy guests," reiterates at short inter- 
 vals our host, and shows the way by his own good example. I may 
 remark, that were the sultan himself in our place, he would get 
 no greater variety or choicer fare, for the simple reason that the 
 Sherarat have nothing better to present. 
 
 Water, with a strong ammoniacal flavour, acquired from the 
 over-proximity of camels to the wells whence it has been drawn, 
 is now passed round to whoever desires drink in a sort of small 
 pail, which might in England find its appropriate place at a colt's 
 muzzle. However, while we partake of its contents, our next 
 hand neighbour will not fail to say " Hena'," or " good health," 
 by way of a compliment, and a hint too to pass him the bowl. 
 
 We then retire to our sand slope and baggage ; for to sleep 
 within the host's tent is not customary in genuine Bedouin life. 
 The smallness of the habitation where a family of all sexes and 
 ages are crowded together, and its non-partition into separate 
 chambers, fully explains and justifies this precautionary usage, 
 which has nothing to do with want of hospitality. 
 
 The night air in these wilds is life and health itself. W"e 
 sleep soundly, unharassed by the anticipation of an early sum- 
 mons to march next morning, for both men and beasts have alike 
 need of a full day's repose. When the sun has risen we are 
 invited to enter the chief's tent and to bring our baggage under 
 its shelter. A main object of our entertainer's, in proposing 
 this move, is to try whether he cannot render our visit some way 
 profitable to himself, by present or purchase. Whatever polite-
 
 Chap. I] MA' AN TO THE DJOWF ig 
 
 ness he can muster is accordingly brought into play, and a large 
 bowl of fresh camel's milk, an excellent beverage, now appears 
 on the stage. I must leave to chemical analysts to decide why 
 this milk will not furnish butter, for such is the fact, and 
 content mj^self with bearing witness to its very nutritious and 
 agreeable qualities. 
 
 We then, at the earnest request of the chief, his wife, 
 sisters, and cousins, and for their sole and private inspection, 
 open a corner of our sacks, and after much haggling sell a 
 piece of cloth, a head-dress, or some similar object. The diffi- 
 culty lies in the paying ; for not only our friend is by no means 
 over-ready to part with his cash, but he is moreover quite igno- 
 rant respecting the specific value of its component pieces. 
 Accordingly a council of the wisest heads in the tribe has to be 
 called to decide on the value of each separate coin, and, after 
 that, to sum-totalize, which is, for Bedouins, a yet more 
 Herculean effort of intellect, and the account must be cast up 
 item by item full a dozen times before he knows whether he had 
 twenty or thirty piastres in his dirty hand. 
 
 Of the coinage current in Arabia I will speak when we arrive 
 at Djebel Shomer or Nejed ; for to convey a clear idea of this 
 matter would require too long a digression from the Bedouins. 
 
 The day passes on. About noon our host naturally enough 
 supposes us hungry, and accordingly a new dish is brought in ; 
 it looks much like a bowl full of coarse red paste, or bran mixed 
 with ochre. This is Samh, a main article of subsistence 
 to the Bedouins of Northern Arabia. Throughout this part of 
 the desert grows a small herbaceous and tufted plant, with 
 juicy stalks and a little ovate yellow-tinted leaf; the flowers 
 are of a brighter yellow, with many stamens and pistils. When 
 the blossoms fall off, there remains in place of each a four- 
 leaved capsule about the size of an ordinary pea, and this, when 
 ripe, opens to show a mass of minute reddish seeds, resembling 
 grit in feel and appearance, but farinaceous in substance. The 
 ripening season is in July, when old and young, men and women, 
 all are out to collect the unsown and untoiled-for harvest. The 
 capsules are gathered, the seed separated from them, and kept 
 like a stock of flour for the ensuing year. These seeds, when 
 wanted for use, are coarsely ground in a hand-mill, then mixed
 
 30 THE DESERT AND ITS INHABITANTS [Chap. I 
 
 with water, and boiled into the substance which we now had 
 before us. Its taste and quality were pretty well hit off by 
 Salem, who described it, " not so good as wheat, and rather 
 better than barley-meal." 
 
 Much did we admire the care of Providence in thus providing 
 a subsistence for these nomades, who might else be often exposed 
 to all the horrors of absolute famine. Too lazy by far to till the 
 earth, even where a sufficient abundance of subterraneous water 
 renders it susceptible of cultivation, they w^ould, but for this 
 plant, have been reduced to live on the milk and flesh of their 
 camels, an insufficient resource if no other were at hand. But 
 the Samh, growing up everywhere without labour, and produc- 
 tive without culture, supplies the deficiency and forms their 
 staple article of food, their very staff of life ; and although it 
 may not prove entirely satisfactory or over-palata])le to those 
 accustomed to better fare, it suffices for men who have seldom 
 or never tasted anything better or more nutritious. 
 
 Another gift of nature is the Mesa'a, a fruit well known to 
 Bedouins, though neglected by all else. Its shrub attains two 
 or three feet in height, woody and tangled, with small and 
 pointed leaves of a lively green, and a little red star-like flower. 
 This in June gives place to a berry much resembling in size, 
 colour, and taste our own red currant, though inferior to it in 
 flavour, while its sweetness predominates too much over its 
 acidity. The Bedouins collect and greedily devour it, or, 
 boiling it down with a little water, procure a sort of molasses, 
 much esteemed by them, but by them alone. This, with the 
 Samh just mentioned, camel's milk, and an occasional repast of 
 butcher's meat, though that is a rare luxury, forms all their list 
 of eatables. 
 
 No one throughout the entire Sherarat tribe can boast a 
 coffee-pot or coffee. Such articles are indeed common among 
 the Syro-Arab Bedouins, enriched by the possession of sheep 
 and horses and the neighbourhood of towns, not to mention 
 frequent acquisitions of plunder from peasants or travellers, 
 thanks to the weakness of that shadow of shadows for all 
 good, Ottoman rule. But here, in Arabia proper, sheep are 
 the almost exclusive property of townsmen and villagers, and 
 they are strong enough to keep their ovm, while vigorous
 
 CnAr. I] MA'AN TO THE DJOWF 3I 
 
 goveraments have for years pressed on the Bedouins with a rod 
 of iron, and reduced them to their normal condition, that of 
 mere camel-drivers, and nothing more. But if they are some- 
 what the losers under such a system, the land is much a gainer ; 
 and I think most of my readers will easily admit that wealth 
 and security for peasants and merchants may well outweigh the 
 advantages of nomade licence and the insolent lawlessness of 
 the clans of the Syrian desert — only desert because in the 
 possession of Bedouins. 
 
 Yet those very lands — my readers will pardon me a moment's 
 digression from Arabia to Syria — those very lands, now so utterly 
 waste, were in old times and under a better rule widely cul- 
 tivated and full of populous life, as the numerous ruins strewn 
 over their desolation yet attest ; while the traces of many a well, 
 now choked with sand and stones, shew where water might 
 readily be had and tillage abound. 
 
 But for this skill and steadiness in labour is required, and 
 the Bedouins, whom Turkish misrule has made lords of the soil, 
 possess neither ; all they require or care about is open pasture, 
 and in that view the less cultivation encroaches on their wilds 
 the better. Hence not only do they decline for themselves any 
 endeavour to improve their territory, or draw out its hidden 
 resources, but even oppose such an attempt when made by 
 others as injurious to their own rights ; and in consequence are 
 the hereditary enemies of governments, villages, and peasants, 
 not out of mere rapacity alone, but on a set system, like the 
 dog of the story in the manger, who, though he did not himself 
 eat the straw, yet at least wanted it to lie upon. Enough of 
 this ; let us return to Arabia and the Sherarat. 
 
 The military strength of the tribe, as may be gathered from 
 what I have already said concerning them, is small, too scattered 
 for collective action, and too poor to provide themselves with 
 effective arms. What weapons they have consist merely of 
 clumsy matchlocks and rusty spears. 
 
 Further on, in central Arabia, there exist tribes of much 
 greater wealth, strength, and organization ; such are the 
 Shomer, south of Djowf, the Meteyr and 'Oteybah in the mid- 
 lands, the Ajman and Benoo-Khalid to the east, of whom more 
 hereafter. But all these taken together are very few in number
 
 3 2 THE DESERT AND ITS INHABITANTS [Chap. I 
 
 when compared to the fixed population, a six or seventh at best, 
 judging from the muster-rolls of the different Arab provinces, 
 and only appear in war time under the character of auxiliaries 
 to the one or other faction among the townsmen, not as inde- 
 pendent or hostile troops. The Wahhabee government has, 
 blow after blow, " broken their thorn," to use a significant Arab 
 phrase ; and though all are not equally poor or barbarous in their 
 customs with the Sherarat, they are even more submissive to 
 the ruling power, nor dare stir save at its bidding. 
 
 All this will receive further and more complete elucidation in 
 the course of the present work. But considering that we shall 
 before long meet with subjects of much greater importance and 
 higher interest, I have thought it advisable to give on this first 
 occasion a general view of these nomade tribes who will here- 
 after hold a less prominent position in our narrative, as in 
 our advance towards more civilized lands we in great measure 
 exchange deserts and Bedouins for towns and townsmen. 
 
 A day's rest had now put us in condition to resume our way 
 next morning amid shrubs and sand-hills down the valley that 
 winds between its stony banks like a broad shallow river to the 
 south. We fell in with many Bedouins of course, and passed 
 several large encampments, sometimes halting in them for a 
 meal, and sometimes not, besides some occasional sale of trifling 
 value to keep up our mercantile character. No particular 
 adventure here occurred worth recording, though our journey 
 was far from dull, thanks to much amusement in laughing, now 
 with, now at, our companions or hosts. They on their side 
 entertained us with long stories of wandering life and adventures, 
 of stray or stolen camels, of swaggering war heroes, and lovers 
 full as adventurous as any Eomeo but somewhat less delicate ; 
 of divorces without the Act, and alliances in which the turning 
 point and main object seemed to be the supper of butcher's 
 meat, exactly like what we had ourselves enjoyed more than 
 once ; and on this subject, often introduced, they expatiated 
 with more than wonted eloquence, and very rightly, for it is the 
 Paradise of the Bedouin, who little knows of or cares for any 
 other either in this world or elsewhere. 
 
 " What will you do on coming into Grod's presence for judg- 
 ment after so graceless a life ? " said I one day to a spirited
 
 Chap. I] MA' AN TO THE DJOWF 33 
 
 young Sherarat, whose long matted lovelocks, and some pre- 
 tension to dandihood, for the desert has its dandies too, amid all 
 his ragged accoutrements, accorded very well with his conver- 
 sation, which was nowise of the most edifying- description. 
 " What will we do?" was his unhesitating answer, "why, we 
 will go up to God and salute him, and if he proves hospitable 
 (gives us meat and tobacco), we will stay with him; if other- 
 wise, we will mount our horses and ride off." This is a fair 
 specimen of Bedouin ideas touching another world, and were I 
 not afraid of an indictment for profaneness, I might relate fifty 
 similar anecdotes at least. Nor did I ever meet, among the 
 genuine nomade tribes, with any individual who took a more 
 spiritual view whether of the Deity, of the soul of man, or of 
 any other disembodied being soever. Grod is for them a chief, 
 residing mainly, it would seem, in the sun, with which indeed 
 they in a manner identify him, as we have already noticed, some- 
 what more powerful of course than their own head man, or even 
 than Telal himself, but in other respects of much the same style 
 and character. The spirits of their frequent ghost stories, such 
 as Ghool, Djann, Maradah, and the like, frightful beings by all 
 accounts, and somewhat resembling the Kobolds, Nixes, and 
 Wild Hunters of our German neighbours, are, for all their 
 diabolical propensities, very corporeal beings, and can even 
 intermarry with the human race, though the children arising 
 from such alliances are said to be, and no wonder, of a remark- 
 ably bad disposition. The souls of the dead, for their part, are 
 little better ; they are pleased with, nay, require, sacrifices at 
 their tombs, and the blood thus shed nourishes and satiates 
 them. 
 
 However, with all this coarse materialism of thought. Bedouins 
 know how to distinguish between virtue and vice, at least in 
 their broader forms ; all admit that miu-der, treachery, robbery, 
 and adultery are Sheyn, i. e., " a shame," though they allow 
 such doings, and especially the two latter, to be not unfrequent 
 among them. However, to do them justice, they are not a 
 bloodthirsty race, and avoid murder as much as is consistent 
 with a state of habitual brigandage. 
 
 Their feuds are continual, but at little cost of life; the main 
 •object of a raid is booty, not slaughter ; and the Bedouin, though 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 THE DESERT AND ITS INHABITANTS [Cn.\r. 1 
 
 ;i terrible braggart, has at heart little inclination for killing or 
 being killed. They will relate for hours together raw-head and 
 bloody-bones stories of their wars and combats with this or that 
 tribe, and give in a gazette worthy of Balaclava or Waterloo, 
 till when you come to examine coolly into the number of the 
 victims, thus dashingly designated by " thousands," your 
 humanity will be consoled by finding them reduced to the more 
 moderate numbers of " two " or " three," and even these you 
 must not set down at once for dead, as they were probably only 
 " slightly wounded," and will reappear alive and well in next 
 day's report. 
 
 One cause of this great sparing of human life is the absence 
 of all those national and religious principles which so often in 
 other countries, and even more in Asia than in Europe, urge on 
 men to bloodshed. The Bedouin does not fight for his home, 
 he has none ; nor for his country, that is anywhere ; nor for his 
 honour, he never heard of it ; nor for his religion, he owns and 
 cares for none. His only object in w'ar is the temporary occupa- 
 tion of some bit of miserable pasture-land or the use of a 
 brackish well ; perhaps the desire to get such a one's horse or 
 camel into his own possession — all objects which imply little 
 animosity, and, if not attained in the campaign, can easily be 
 made up for in other ways, nor entail the bitterness and cruelty 
 that attend or follow civil and religious strife. 
 
 In all these respects it is fully evident to such as have studied 
 the earlier records of this Peninsula, that the Bedouins have 
 gained or lost little for some two thousand years. But what I 
 wish my readers to remember is, that these wanderers must not 
 be taken for a true sample of the Arab race, or for its genuine 
 type ; they are only a degenerate branch of that great tree, not 
 its root or main stock. In a word, they are a pastoral popu- 
 lation grown out of and around the fixed nation, of which we 
 shall soon see more, and condemned to savage life, with all its 
 concomitants of ignorance and vice, by the circumstances of 
 their condition, or fostered into insolence and open rapine by 
 the weakness and negligence of those who should have kept 
 them within due limits. 
 
 But to understand this thoroughly, it is important to state in 
 a few words what is the groundw^ork of the whole Arab frame
 
 Chap. I] MA'AN TO THE IJJOWF 3^ 
 
 of society and nationality ; and I trust that my reader will not 
 hold ill spent a few minutes given to the consideration of the 
 topic ; correct views on this point will render much more 
 intelligible, and thereby more profitable, the perusal not only 
 of the present narrative, but of many others also relating more 
 or less to this people and country. This matter once sufficiently 
 explained, we can continue on our way with much fewer digres- 
 sions ; indeed, the whole of the ground hitherto gone over may 
 be looked on rather as a sort of introduction to the journey 
 than as the journey itself, which, strictly speaking, commences 
 at the Djowf, and not before. 
 
 Arab nationality — thus far like that of the historical Jew 
 or the Highlander — is and always has been from the very 
 earliest times based on the divisions of families and clans, 
 tribes as they are often called ; nor is the name misapplied 
 if taken in its original sense of hereditary alliance, without the 
 additional idea of barbarism and unsettled life often annexed to 
 it in its modern application. These tribes, or clans, were soon, 
 by the nature of the land itself, divided each and every one 
 into two branches, correlative, indeed, but of unequal size and 
 importance. The greater section remained as townsmen or 
 peasants in the districts best susceptible of culture and perma- 
 nent occupation, where they still kept up much of their original 
 clannish denominations and forms, though often blended, and 
 even at times obliterated by the fusion inseparable from civil 
 and social organization. The other and lesser portion devoted 
 themselves to a pastoral life, for which the desert, that is, about 
 a third in extent of the Arabian Peninsula, affords ample 
 scope. They, too, retained their original clannish and family 
 demarcations, but unsoftened by civilization and unblended by 
 the links of close-drav/n society ; so that in this point, and indeed 
 in this alone, they have continued to be the faithful depositaries 
 of primeval Arab tradition, and constitute a sort of standard 
 rule for the whole nation. Hence, when genealogical doubts 
 and questions of descent aris^, as they often do, among the 
 fixed inhabitants — or "dwellers in brick," to give citizens and 
 villao-ers their collective Arab denomination — recourse is often 
 had to the neighbouring Bedouins for a decision unattainable 
 in the complicated records of town life; whereas the living 
 
 D 2
 
 ^6 THE DESERT AND ITS INHABITANTS [Chap. I 
 
 Gwillym of the desert can readily explain every quartering and 
 surcharging in every scutcheon of Arab nobility. But in all 
 other respects, in religion, arts, science, and civilization, these 
 heralds of the wilds have naturally enough retrograded rather 
 than advanced one step beyond their first condition. How, 
 indeed^ could it be otherwise, with the desert for their only 
 teacher, and camels and ostriches for fellow-scholars ? Hence, 
 while the fixed population have added to their first stock- 
 in-hand of knowledge and arts many of the new acquire- 
 ments and ameliorations which the progressive law of the 
 human mind, when under favourable circumstances, never fails 
 to bring among men, the Bedouins have, on the other hand, 
 receded to the utmost limit of barbarism possible among Arabs, 
 and have at last become such as we now see them ; till they 
 bear the same relation to the rest of their fellow-countrymen 
 that a wild crab offshoot below does to the thriving and fruit- 
 laden branches above. 
 
 Herdsmen by profession, it is from their herds that the 
 Bedouins derive their principal means of subsistence. Their 
 trade is in camels, and in sheep when they have them, besides 
 a little in the horse-dealing line, especially to the north. In 
 requital for flesh and wool, they obtain the scanty articles of 
 dress, food, and furniture which their mode of life requires: 
 these are not multifarious ; in fact, a better exemplification of 
 the poet's "man wants but little here below," can hardly be 
 imagined. The chase of gazelles and ostriches furnishes them 
 with supplementary occupation and profit, while the desert 
 itself, untilled by hand of man, offers to their vagabond idleness 
 the scanty harvests described a little further back. Plunder, 
 too, whether of travellers or of villagers, makes another sub- 
 sidiary resource, but this is a luxury rarely obtainable within 
 the Arab territory itself, though of frequent occurrence in the 
 dominions of Constantinopolitan allegiance. 
 
 One word more, and I have done with our nomade friends. 
 Their hospitality, of which we haj^e just seen a specimen, nay, 
 their generosity, have been a favourite theme much dilated on 
 and oft repeated. Nor do I wish to deprive them of all credit 
 for these good qualities, though here also they are really, no less 
 than in other respects, far inferior to the mass of their more
 
 Chap. I] MA'AN TO THE DJOWF jy 
 
 civilized countrymen. But their open-handedness often springs 
 more from the childish levity of the savage than from true and 
 praiseworthy liberality of character. Like an infant that 
 stretches out its small hands and opens its little mouth for 
 whatever comes within its reach, be it a guinea or a cherry, and 
 with almost equal readiness lets its new acquisition drop no 
 sooner than grasped, the Bedouin is at once rapacious and 
 profuse, coveting all he sees, without much distinction of its 
 worth, and lightly parting with what he has already appropriated, 
 from very incapacity to estimate or appreciate its value. To 
 give, to beg, or to plunder are for him correlative acts, all 
 arising in the main from the same immense ignorance of what 
 property really is, and what its importance ; and thus he is often 
 scarce more entitled to commendation for the one act than 
 liable to serious blame for the other ; in a word, he knows no 
 better. Besides, he has in general but little to offer, and for 
 that very little he not unfrequently promises himself an ample 
 retribution, by plundering his last-night's guest when a few 
 hours distant on his morning journey. Still, a certain kindness 
 of feeling towards strangers, the same which forms a very 
 prominent feature in the Arab family likeness, is not wholly 
 extinct in the breast of this half-savage ; and what he offers 
 in the way of hospitality is accompanied by a heartiness of 
 welcome and an uncouth attempt to please, which certainly 
 has its merit, and often obtains encomiums very agreeable to 
 Bedouin ears. But he is at best an ill-educated child, whose 
 natural good qualities have remained undeveloped or half stifled ' 
 by bad treatment and extreme neglect. 
 
 From all this my readers may draw, if they choose, two con- 
 clusions, general indeed, yet seldom misapplied. The first, that 
 the respective prosperity and importance of the dwellers in tents 
 and the dwellers in brick are in a nearly exact but an inverse 
 proportion ; the second, that when these same Bedouins are by 
 wise regulations and an energetic government kept within the 
 limits of their proper sphere, simple shepherds and herdsmen, 
 without being allowed to acquire a degree of strength and 
 influence to which they have no right, and of which they are 
 sure to make a bad use, it is the better for all parties. 
 
 Want of attention, perhaps of knowledge, on these points has.
 
 38 THE DESERT AXJ) ITS IXII ABIT ANTS [Qnw. I 
 
 it seems, given rise to many inexact theories and statements, 
 embodied in books or current in men's mouths, regarding the 
 Arab nation, and I have therefore thought it not amiss to take 
 occasion from the Sherarat, and to attempt giving a truer view 
 of the matter. It may serve, at least I hope it will, as a 
 corrective to the romances of many authors, especially French, 
 on the score of the desert and its indwellers. Besides, facts like 
 these have their practical bearing, and their knowledge may be 
 useful in more than one way to those who have to deal with 
 Arabs collectively or even individually. Treating with a people 
 one does not understand is like reading a book in an unknown 
 language, and can only give rise to erroneous ideas and some- 
 times to erroneous doings. 
 
 Of course my comrade and myself were not long in perceiving 
 that whatever might be the available object or result intended 
 by our journey, we could not expect to find it among the un- 
 settled clans. Hence, we looked forward with eagerness to the 
 inhabited districts further on, described to us by the Bedouins 
 with all the emphasis and exaggeration of a cottager from the 
 Isle of Man painting London or Liverpool after a first visit 
 thither. But even after mentally making all suitable deductions 
 from these highly coloured recitals, we yet concluded that what 
 lay before us must anyhow be very different both in land and 
 inhabitants from the regions we had hitherto traversed between 
 Gaza and the Djowf, and so indeed we found it on our arrival at 
 the latter locality four days later. 
 
 On the 27th of the month we passed with some difficulty a 
 series of abrupt sand-hills that close in the direct course of Wadi 
 Sirhan. Here, for the first time, we saw the Ghada, a shrub 
 peculiar, I believe, to the Arabian Peninsula, and often alluded to 
 by its poets. It is of the genus Euphorbia, with a woody stem, 
 often five or six feet in height, and innumerable round green 
 twigs, very slender and flexible, forming a large feathery tuft, 
 not ungraceful to the eye, while it affords some kind of shelter 
 to the traveller and food to his camels. These last are pas- 
 sionately fond of Ghada, and will continually turn right out 
 of their way, in spite of blows and kicks, to crop a mouthful 
 of it, and then swing back their long necks into the former 
 direction, ready to repeat the same manoeuvre at the next bush
 
 CnAP. I] MA' AN TO THE D JO WF 39 
 
 as though they had never received a beating for their past 
 voracit}'. 
 
 I have, while in England, heard and read more than once of 
 the "docile camel." If "docile " means stupid, well and good ; 
 in such a case the camel is the very model of docility. But if 
 the epithet is intended to designate an animal that takes an 
 interest in its rider so far as a beast can, that in some way 
 understands his intentions or shares them in a subordinate 
 fashion, that obeys from a sort of submissive or half fellow- 
 feeling with his master, like the horse and elephant, then I say 
 that the camel is by no means docile, very much the contrary ; 
 he takes no heed of his rider, pays no attention whether he be oh 
 his back or not, walks straight on when once set a going, merely 
 because he is too stupid to turn aside ; and then, should some 
 tempting thorn or green branch allure him out of the path, con- 
 tinues to walk on in this new direction simply because he is too 
 dull to turn back into the right road. His only care is to cross as 
 much pasture as he conveniently can while pacing mechanically 
 onwards ; and for effecting this his long flexible neck sets him at 
 great advantage, and a hard blow or a downright kick alone has 
 any influence on him whether to direct or impel. He will never 
 attempt to throw you off his back, such a trick being far beyond 
 his limited comprehension; but if you fall off, he will never 
 dream of stopping for you, and walks on just the same, grazing 
 while he goes, without knowing or caring an atom what has 
 become of you. If turned loose, it is a thousand to one that 
 he will never find his way back to his accustomed home or 
 pasture, and the first comer who picks him up will have no 
 particular shyness to get over ; Jack or Tom are all the same 
 to him, and the loss of his old master and of his former cameline 
 companions gives him no regret and occasions no endeavour to 
 find them again. One only symptom will he give that he is 
 aware of his rider, and that is when the latter is about to mount 
 him, for on such an occasion, instead of addressing him in the 
 style of old Balaam's more intelligent beast, " Am not I thy 
 camel upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine, 
 unto this day?" he will bend back his long snaky neck towards 
 his master, open his enormous jaws to bite if he dared, and roar 
 out a tremendous sort of groan, as if to complain of some entirely
 
 40 THE DESERT AND ITS INHABITANTS [Cn.vr. I 
 
 new and unparalleled injustice about to be done bim. In a 
 word, be is from first to last an undomesticated and savage 
 animal, rendered serviceable by stupidity alone, witliout much 
 skill on bis master's part or any co-operation on his OAvn, save 
 that of an extreme passiveness. Neither attachment nor even 
 habit impress bim ; never tame, though not wide awake enough 
 to be exactly wild. 
 
 One passion alone he possesses, namely revenge, of which he 
 furnishes many a hideous example, while in carrying it out he 
 shows an unexpected degree of far-thoughted malice, united 
 meanwhile with all the cold stupidity of his usual character. 
 One instance of this I well remember ; it occurred hard by a small 
 town in the plain of Ba'albec, where I was at the time residing. 
 A lad of about fourteen had conducted a large camel, laden with 
 wood, from that very village to another at half an hour's dis- 
 tance or so. As the animal loitered or turned out of the way, 
 its conductor struck it repeatedly, and harder than it seems to 
 have thought he had a right to do. But not finding the occa- 
 sion favourable for taking immediate quits, it " bode its time ;" 
 nor was that time long in coming. A few days later the same 
 lad had to reconduct the beast, but unladen, to his own village. 
 When they were about half way on the road, and at some dis- 
 tance from any habitation, the camel suddenly stopped, looked 
 deliberately round in every direction to assure itself that no one 
 was within sight, and, finding the road far and near clear of 
 passers-by, made a step forward, seized the unlucky boy's head 
 in its monstrous mouth, and lifting him up in the air flung him 
 down again on the earth with the upper part of his skull com- 
 pletely torn off, and his brains scattered on the ground. Having 
 thus satisfied its revenge, the brute quietly resumed its pace 
 towards the village as though nothing were the matter, till some 
 men who had observed the whole, though unfortunately at too 
 great a distance to be able to afford timely help, came up and 
 killed it. 
 
 Indeed, so marked is tliis unamiable propensity, that some 
 philosophers, doubtless of Professor Gorres' school, have ascribed 
 the revengeful character of the Arabs to the great share which 
 the flesh and milk of the camel have in their sustenance, and 
 which are supposed to communicate to those who partake of
 
 Chap. I] MA'AN TO THE DJOWF 4 1 
 
 them over-la rgely the moral or immoral qualities of the animal 
 to which they belonged. I do not feel myself cajsaLle of pro- 
 nouncing an opinion on so intricate a question ; but thus much 
 I can sa}', that the camel and his Bedouin master do afford so 
 many and such obvious points of resemblance, that I did not 
 think an Arab of Shomer far in the wrong when I once of a 
 time heard him say, " God created the Bedouin for the camel, 
 and the camel for the Bedouin." Pity that the bard of Twick- 
 enham was not by to hear ; it might have afforded his " Essay 
 on Man " a somewhat more dignified illustration of the crea- 
 tional scheme than the " pampered goose." But let us now 
 drive our camels past the Ghada bushes, where riders and ridden 
 have been alike diverging, and resume our onward way. 
 
 After passing the sand-hills lately mentioned, we left the 
 direct line of the valley, and entered on a new scene. The 
 country was still open and desei't, but much modified in aspect 
 from the black uplands that had preceded Wadi Sirhan. The 
 plain, though strewn with gravel, was of a yellowish hue, nor 
 was its surface so absolutely and hopelessly barren ; while on 
 the left a long range of abrupt hills, the Djebal-el-Djowf, or 
 " mountains of Djowf," extended far into the distance. Our 
 course lay in a kind of groove, a side embranchment of Sirhan, 
 and leading ahnost due south. A little after noon we came 
 upon a large hollow, where, amid two hundred Sherarat tents at 
 the least, (myself and my companion counted them till we grew 
 tired,) lay the waters of Magooa', a collection of deep and 
 perennial wells, whose water would not be altogether bad, were 
 dirt and camels kept a little further from the rim. The Bedouin 
 encampment belonged to Sa'eed, chief of the 'Azzam branch of 
 the Sherarat tribe, and for some time past amenable to the 
 authority of Telfd-ebn-Raslieed. 
 
 Here we were obliged to pass the rest of that day and the 
 following also. For Salem, who could not enter the Djowf 
 along with us in person, on account of a murder there com- 
 mitted by him at a previous date, was here compelled to stop 
 and look out for us a companion capable of conducting us safe 
 within the limits of that territory, and who once there might 
 receive from us a written attestation of our having duly reached 
 our journey's end. This pajjor, duly signed and sealed, was to be
 
 42 THE DESERT AND ITS INHABITANTS [Chap. I 
 
 delivered to Salem, wlio without it could not receive his stipu- 
 lated hire, which at the outset of the journey had bee?i deposited 
 in the hands of a worthy town-magistrate of Ma'an, Ibraheem 
 by name. From him our Koweytat guide was to receive his 
 guerdon on presenting," by way of letter of credit, the docu- 
 ment just alluded to, in which we were to declare that we had 
 arrived in due form and comfort at our journey's end, without 
 having had auy subject of complaint or dissatisfaction with our 
 escort. 
 
 It is always prudent in him whoever desires to travel with 
 tolerable security in these deserts, to take some similar measure, 
 and to render those he journeys with responsible to those he 
 leaves behind him, and, if joossible, to those also who lie before. 
 Thus, for instance, besides precautions like that just described, 
 it is highly desirable and advantageous to be able to say that 
 one bears with one letters of importance to such or such a 
 governor, and to shoY a scrap of folded and sealed paper bearing 
 his address, little matters what may be within, since not one 
 Bedouin among fifty thousand can read a syllable. Such docu- 
 ments we took good care to provide ourselves with from stage to 
 stage of our journe}^, and to this, under Providence, we owed in 
 great measure our safe return at last from a land Avhere it is 
 hard to enter, but often yet harder to return. But at any rate 
 let no one who has to do with Bedouins pay their services 
 beforehand; by so doing he would be much less likely to secure 
 their fidelity for wages received, than to excite their cupidity for 
 wealth supposed to remain in store. For the same reason it is 
 moreover advisable to drive as hard a bargain with them as 
 l^ossible, not perhaps for the sake of spai'ing a piastre or two, 
 but in order to impress them with the idea that one has veiy 
 little cash in hand, and cannot afford to be lavish of it. Better 
 by far to appear in need of their liberality than to make them 
 debtors to your own, for a debtor's person is too valuable to 
 be tampered with, whereas the position of a creditor is by no 
 means equally safe among men whose gratitude and high 
 feeling are much less sure in the reckoning than rapacity and 
 treachery. The civilized man is their prey, and they will not 
 fail to treat him for such if they have reason to think him 
 worth pre3dng on. BesideSj, to show oneself careless about
 
 CnAr. I] IIA'AN TO Till! DJOWF 43 
 
 expenditure is to mark oneself a European, the last thing a 
 prudent man should do in Arabia ; whereas to appear stingy is 
 an excellent passport for being held a native of Damascus, Cairo, 
 or Bagdad. This may be a hint for travellers, whether in the 
 Arabian desert, or among analogous lands and people. 
 
 After much search and many proffers canvassed and rejected, 
 Salem ended by finding a good-natured but somewhat timid 
 individual, Suleyman-el-'Azzamee, who undertook our guidance 
 to the Djowf. Meanwhile Sey'eed and his relations, desirous to 
 secure from us a favourable report of their conduct on our 
 coming before the governor of that district, treated us fairly 
 well; meat and milk, dates and samh, came before us in succes- 
 sion, and we passed our day not uncomfortably on the whole, 
 chatting in the tents, or strolling about the sand-hills round the 
 hollow, in spite of the overpowering heat, enough to have 
 made a Bengalee complain, and a Madrassee pronounce it 
 utterly intolerable. 
 
 Early on the 29th of the month we were again on our way 
 in company of Suleyman, and several other individuals of the 
 tribe who had business with Hamood, the vicegerent of 
 Djowf; Salem, with 'Alee and Djordee, remained behind in the 
 encampment. Before us lay an upland and barren tract, open- 
 ing out to the north through the gaps of Djebal-el-Djowf, and 
 another similar range bordering on the great Syro-Arabic waste, 
 whose restless tenants, the 'Anezeh Bedouins of clan Bishr, often 
 infest the intervening space. Here we sighted a large troop of 
 ostriches ; no bird on earth is more timid or more difficult of 
 approach. When we saw them far ahead running in a long 
 line one after the other as though their very hves depended on 
 it, we almost took them for a string of scared camels. The 
 Sherarat hunt them, as their plumage is eagerly bought up on 
 the frontiers to be resold in Egypt or Syria, whence it often passes 
 on to Europe. But their greatest enemies are the Solibah 
 Bedouins, of whom more hereafter. 
 
 No water is to be fovuid in this steppe. We journeyed on all 
 the long summer day, and only halted for an hour at sunset to 
 prepare a cinder-seasoned meal ; then remounted, and passed 
 close under the south-easteni spur of Djebal-el-DjoAvf, till after 
 midnight a short halt afforded us a little rest and sleep.
 
 44 THE DESERT AND ITS INHABITANTS [Cn.vp. I 
 
 Mine was, however, somewhat disturbed by a scorpion bite: not 
 so serious an accident, indeed, as it sounds, considering the genus 
 of the aggressor, but painful enougli, though soon passing off. 
 These desert scorpions are curious little creatures, about a fourth 
 of an inch in length, and, apparently, all claws and tail, of a 
 deep reddish brown colour, and very active. They abound 
 throughout the sandy soil. In the daytime they wisely keep 
 out of the way, but at night come out to take the cooler air. 
 Their sting is exactly like the smart of a white-hot iron point 
 firmly pressed on the skin, and when I felt my forehead thus 
 assaulted, I jumped up exceedingly quick, anticipating twenty- 
 four hours of suffering, the usual period allotted, at least in 
 popular credence, to the duration of scorpion torture ; but I was 
 agreeably disappointed, for the pain did not last above an hour, 
 was accompanied by a little swelling, and then went entirely 
 off, hardly leaving any perceptible mark. 
 
 We remounted by the light of the morning star, anxious to 
 enter the Djowf before the intense heat of noon should come 
 on ; but we had yet a long way to go, and our track followed 
 endless windings among low hills and basaltic ledges, without 
 any symptom of ajoproach to cultivated regions. At last the 
 slopes grew greener, and a small knot of houses with traces of 
 tillage close by appeared. It was the little village of Djoon, 
 the most westerly appendage of Djowf itself. I counted between 
 twenty and thirty houses. We next entered a long and narrow 
 pass, whose precipitous banks shut in the view on either side. 
 Suddenly several horsemen appeared on the opposite cliff; and 
 one of them, a handsome youth, with long curling hair, well 
 armed and well mounted (we shall make his more special 
 acquaintance in the next chapter), called out to our guide to 
 halt, and answer in his own behalf and ours. This Suleyman 
 did, not without those marks of timidity in his voice and 
 gesture which a Bedouin seldom fails to show on his approach 
 to a town, for when once in it he is apt to sneak about much like 
 a dog who has just received a beating for theft. On his answer, 
 delivered in a most submissive tone, the horsemen held a brief 
 consultation, and we then saw two of them turn their horses' 
 heads, and gallop off in the direction of the Djowf, while our 
 origiual interlocutor called out to Suleyman, " All right, go on.
 
 ChxIP. I] MA' AN TO THE DJOWF 45 
 
 and fear nothing," and then disappeared after the rest of the 
 band behind the verge of the upland. 
 
 We had yet to drag on for an hour of tedious march ; my 
 camel fairly broke down, and fell again and again ; his bad 
 example was followed by the coffee-laden beast ; the heat was 
 terrible in these gorges, and noon was approaching. At last we 
 cleared the pass, but found the onward prospect still shut out by 
 an intervening mass of rocks. The water in our skins was spent, 
 and we had eaten nothing that morning. When shall we get in 
 sight of the Djowf ? or has it flown away from before us ? While 
 thus wearily labouring on our way, we turned a huge pile of 
 crags, and a new and beautiful scene burst upon our view. 
 
 But that view, and what followed on this our first transition 
 from desert to inhabited Arabia, deserves a separate chapter.
 
 46 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Djowf 
 
 Thus far into the bowels of the land 
 Ilavo we marched on without impediment. 
 
 Shakcsprarr. 
 
 VIKW OF DJO-\VF PEOM THE NORTH — MEETING OF GHAFIL AND DAFEE — 
 GHAFIL's house; THE k'haWAH — FORMALITIES OF SOCIETY — COFFEE 
 MAKING — DATES — GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE DJOWF — ITS HOXISES, 
 WAR-TOWERS, GARDENS, AND PALM-GROVES — CLIMATE — POPULATION — 
 OTHER VILLAGES — PAST HISTORY ; AVAHHABEE CONQUEST, SUBSEQUENT 
 ANARCHY — INTERVENTION OF 'ABD-ALLAH-EBN-RASHEED — THE RU'aLA. 
 INVASION OF TELAL; he CONQUERS THE DJOWF AND REDUCES IT TO A 
 PROVINCE — HAMOOD MADE GOVERNOR — PHYSICAL, MORAL, AND RELIGIOUS 
 CHARACTER OF THE INHABITANTS — RELIGIOUS INDIFFERENCE OF THE 
 ARABS — POINTS OF RESEMBLANCE AVITH THE ENGLISH — COMMERCE AND 
 PROGRESS — OUR NEW LODGINGS — DAILY LIFE — A DJOWF SUPPER — 
 ACCUSATION BROUGHT AGAINST US— VISIT TO THE CASTLE — ITS ARCHI- 
 TECTURE — TOWER OF MARID — HAMOOD; HIS k'hIwAH, HIS SHOMER 
 RETINUE — ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE — MOSQUE — ANNOYANCES EXPE- 
 RIENCED — SOCIETY IN DJOWF — ARRIVAL OF THE 'aZZAM DEPUTATION ; 
 
 AVE AGREE TO ACCOMPANY THEM TO Ha'yEL OUR NEAV GUIDE — 
 
 DEPARTURE FROM DJOAVF — ROUTE SOUTHAVARDS — BE'eR SHEKEEK, ITS 
 CONSTRUCTION — REFLECTIONS ON THE PAST AND FUTURE OF ARABIA, 
 
 A BROAD deep valley, descending ledge after ledge till its 
 innermost depths are hidden from sight amid far-reaching 
 shelves of reddish rock, below everywhere studded with tufts of 
 palm groves and clustering fruit-trees in dark green patches 
 down to the furthest end of its Avindings ; a large brown mass of 
 irregular masonry crowning a central hill ; beyond a tall and 
 solitary toAver overlooking the opposite bank of the hollow, and 
 fui'ther down small round turrets and flat house-tops half buried 
 amid the garden foliage, the whole plunged in a perpendicular 
 flood of light and heat; such Avas the first aspect of the DjoAvf 
 as we now approached it from the west. It Avas a lovely scene, 
 and seemed yet more so to our eyes weary of the long desolation 
 through which we had with hardly an exception journeyed day 
 after day since our last fareAvell glimpse of Gaza and Palestine up
 
 Chap. II] THE IJJO IFF 47 
 
 to the first entrance on inhabited Arabia. " Like the Paradise 
 of eternity, none can enter it till after having previously passed 
 over hell-bridge," says an Arab poet, describing some similar 
 locality in Algerian lands. 
 
 Eeanimated by the view, we pushed on our jaded beasts, and 
 were already descending the first craggy slope of the valley, 
 when two horsemen, well dressed and fully armed after the 
 fashion of these parts, came up toward us from the town, and 
 at once saluted us with a loud and hearty " Marhaba," or 
 " welcome ;" and without further preface they added, " alight 
 and eat," giving themselves the example of the former by 
 descending briskly from their light-limbed horses, and untying 
 a large leather bag full of excellent dates, and a water-skin, 
 filled from the running spring ; then spreading out these most 
 opportune refreshments on the rock, and adding, " we were 
 sure that you must be hungry and thirsty, so we have come 
 ready provided," they invited us once more to sit down and 
 begin. 
 
 Hungry and thirsty we indeed were ; the dates were those of 
 Djowf, the choicest in their kind to be met with in northern 
 Arabia, the water was freshly drawn, cool and clear, no slight 
 recommendations after the ammoniacal wells of Magowa' and 
 Ovveysit, so that altogether we thought it unnecessary to make 
 our new friends repeat their invitation, and without delay set 
 ourselves to enjoy the present good, leaving the future with all 
 its cares to Providence and the course of events. Meanwhile I 
 took the occasion of studying more minutely the outward man 
 of our benefactors. 
 
 The elder of the cavaliers was a man apparently of about forty 
 years of age, tall, well-made, dark-complexioned, and with a 
 look that inspired some mistrust, while it denoted much intel- 
 ligence and more habitual haughtiness. He was handsomely 
 dressed for an Arab, wearing a red cloth vest with large 
 hansincr sleeves over his long: white shirt, with a silk handker- 
 chief, striped red and yellow, on his head, and a silver-hilted 
 sword at his side. In short, all about him denoted a person of 
 some wealth and importance. This was Grhafil-el-Haboob, the 
 cliief of the most important and the most turbulent family of 
 the Djowf, Beyt-Haboob, who were not long since the rulers of
 
 48 THE DJOWF [Cn.vp. II 
 
 the town, but are now, like all the rest of their countrymen, 
 humble subjects to Hamood, vicegerent of Teliil, the prince of 
 Djebel Shomer. 
 
 His companion, Diifee by name, seemed younger in years and 
 slenderer of make ; he was less richly dressed, though carrying, 
 like Grhafil, the silver-hilted sword common in Arabia to all men 
 of good birth and circumstances ; his family name was also 
 Haboob, but his features bespoke a much milder and opener 
 character than that of the chief, his cousin at the fourth or 
 fifth remove. 
 
 After taking our meal, we remained awhile where we were 
 in question and answer. Having been previously informed that 
 the governor Hamood resided in the town itself, we suggested 
 to Grhafil whether it might not be suitable for us to pay that 
 important personage the compliment of a first visit at our very 
 entrance. But the chief had several reasons, which my readers 
 will afterwards learn, for not desiring our so doing. Accordingly 
 he answered that we were his personal guests, and that he him- 
 self had in consequence the right to our first reception ; that as 
 for Hamood, we should visit him a little later, and in his own 
 company ; that it would be time enough for such ceremonies 
 after a day or two, and that in the meanwhile he was himself a 
 sufficient guarantee of the governor's good will. 
 
 But on this Dafee put in his claim to be om- host, saying that 
 his house was the nearer at hand ; that he also had come in 
 person to meet us ; and that in consequence he had as good a 
 right as Ghilfil to have us for his guests. However, he was in 
 his turn obliged to yield to the superior authority of his kins- 
 man. We then all rode on slowly together, and when we were 
 on the point of reaching the lower level of the valley, and had 
 already begun to enter amid the deep shadows of the palm- 
 groves, Dafee tendered his apologies for letting us thus pass by 
 his domicile without partaking its hospitality ; and having added 
 an invitation for the nearest day, he turned aside between the 
 high garden walls to his abode, where we will leave him for the 
 present. But on parting he gave a look of much meaning, first 
 at Ghafil, and then at us, the import of which we did not as 
 yet fully understand. 
 
 Meanwhile we passed on in the company of our new host, who
 
 CnAP. II] THE DJOWF 49 
 
 continued all tbe way his welcomes and protestations of readiness 
 to render us every imaginable service, and leaving a little on 
 our right the castle hill and tower, threaded between grove after 
 grove, and garden after garden, till a high gateway gave us 
 admittance to a cluster of houses around aa open space, where 
 seats of beaten earth and stone bordering the walls here and 
 there formed a sort of Arab antechamber or waiting-room for 
 visitors not yet received within the interior precincts, and thus 
 bespoke the importance of the neighbouring house, and con- 
 sequently of its owner. 
 
 Here Gfhafil halted before a portal high enough to admit a 
 camel and rider, and, while we modestly dismounted to await 
 further orders, entered alone the dwelling to see if all had been 
 duly got ready for our reception, and then quickly returned, 
 and invited us to follow him indoors. 
 
 We traversed a second entrance, and now found ourselves in 
 a small courtyard, three sides of which were formed by different 
 apartments; the fourth consisted of a stable for horses and 
 camels. In front rose a high wall, with several small windows 
 pierced in it (no glass, of course, in this warm climate) close 
 under the roof, and one large door in the centre. This belonged 
 to the K'hawah, or G'hawah, as they here call it, that is, the 
 coffee-room, or reception-room, if you will ; inasmuch as ladies 
 never honour its precincts, I cannot suitably dignify it with 
 the title of drawing-room. The description of one such apart- 
 ment may suffice, with little variation, for all the K'hawahs of 
 Arabia ; it is an indispensable feature in every decent house 
 throughout the Peninsula from end to end, and offers every- 
 where very little variation, save that of larger or smaller, better 
 or worse furnished, according to the circumstances of its owner. 
 For this reason I shall now permit myself some minuteness of 
 detail in Ghafil's mansion ; it may stand sample for thousands of 
 others. 
 
 The K'hawah was a large oblong hall, about twenty feet in 
 height, fifty in length, and sixteen, or thereabouts, in breadth ; 
 the walls were coloured in a rudely decorative manner with 
 brown and white wash, and sunk here and there into small 
 triangidar recesses, destined to the reception of books, though 
 of these Ghafil at least had no over-abundance, lamps, and 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 THE DJOWF [Chap. II 
 
 other sucli like objects. The roof of timber, and flat; the floor 
 was strewed with fine clean sand, and garnished all round 
 alongside of the walls with long strips of carpet, upon which 
 cushions, covered with faded silk, were disposed at suitable 
 intervals. In poorer houses felt rugs usually take the place of 
 carpets. In one corner, namely, that furthest removed from 
 the door, stood a small fireplace, or, to speak more exactly, 
 furnace, formed of a large square block of granite, or some 
 other hard stone, about twenty inches each way; this is 
 hollowed inwardly into a deep funnel, open above, and com- 
 municating below with a small horizontal tube or pipe-hole, 
 through which the air passes, bellows-driven, to the lighted 
 charcoal piled up on a grating about half-way inside the cone. 
 In this manner the fuel is soon brought to a white heat, and the 
 water in the coffee-pot placed above the funnel's mouth is 
 readily brought to boil. This system of coffee furnaces is 
 universal in Djowf and Djebel Shomer, but in Nejed itself, and 
 indeed in whatever other yet more distant regions of Arabia I 
 visited to the south and east, the furnace is replaced by an open 
 fii'eplace hollowed in the ground floor, with a raised stone 
 border, and dog-irons for the fuel, and so forth, just like what 
 may be yet seen in Spain, and even in some old English manor- 
 houses. This diversity of arrangement, so far as Arabia is 
 concerned, is due to the greater abundance of fire-wood in the 
 south, whereby the inhabitants are enabled to light up on a 
 larger scale ; whereas throughout the Djowf and Djebel Shomer 
 wood is very scarce, and the only fuel at hand is bad charcoal, 
 often brought from a considerable distance, and carefully 
 husbanded. 
 
 This corner of the K'hawah is also the place of distinction, 
 whence honour and coffee radiate by progressive degrees round 
 the apartment, and hereabouts accordingly sits the master of 
 the house himself, or the guests whom he more especially 
 delighteth to honour. 
 
 On the broad edge of the furnace or fireplace, as the case 
 may be, stands an ostentatious range of copper coffee-pots, 
 varying in size and form. Here in the Djowf their make 
 resembles that in vogue at Damascus; but in Nejed and the 
 eastern districts they are of a different and much more onia-
 
 Chap. II] THE JJJOWF 5 1 
 
 mental fashioning, very tall and slender, with several ornamental 
 circles and mouldings in elegant relief, besides boasting long 
 beak-shaped spouts and h%h steeples for covers. The number 
 of these utensils is often ridiculously great. I have seen a 
 dozen at a time in a row by one fireside, though cofFee-making 
 requires, in fact, only three at most. Here in the Djowf five or 
 six are considered to be the thing ; for the south this number 
 must be doubled ; all this to indicate the riches and muni- 
 ficence of their owner, by implying the frequency of his guests 
 and the large amount of coffee that he is in consequence obliged 
 to have made for them. 
 
 Behind this stove sits, at least in wealthy houses, a black 
 slave, whose name is generally a diminutive, in token of 
 familiarity or affection ; in the present case it was Soweylim, the 
 diminutive of Salem. His occupation is to make and pour out 
 the coffee ; where there is no slave in the family, the master of 
 the premises himself, or perhaps one of his sons, performs that 
 hospitable duty ; rather a tedious one, as we shall soon see. 
 
 Of slaves, and of their condition in central Arabia, I shall 
 give a fuller account when we arrive at the central provinces, 
 where these gentlemen are much more numerous than in the 
 Djowf. 
 
 We enter. On passing the threshold it is proper to say, 
 "Bismillah,"'i.e., "in the name ofGrod;" not to do so would be 
 looked on as a bad augury alike for him who enters and for 
 those within. The visitor next advances in silence, till on 
 coming about half-way across the room, he gives to all present, 
 but looking specially at the master of the house, the customary 
 " Es-salamu 'aleykum," or " Peace be with you," literally, " on 
 you." All this while every one else in the room has kept his 
 place, motionless, and without saying a word. But on receiving 
 the salaam of etiquette, the master of the house rises, and if a 
 strict Wahhabee, or at any rate desirous of seeming such, replies 
 with the full-length traditionary formula, " W 'aleykumu-s- 
 salamu, w'rahmat' Ullaln w'barakatuh," which is, as every one 
 knows, " And with (or, on) you be peace, and the mercy of Grod, 
 and his blessings." But should he happen to be of anti- 
 Wahhabee tendencies, the odds are that he will say " Marhaba," 
 or " Ahlan w' sahlan," i.e., " welcome," or " worthy, and plea- 
 
 E 2
 
 52 THE DJOWF [Chap. II 
 
 surable," or the like; for of such phrases there is an infinite, 
 but elegant variety. All present follow the example thus given, 
 by rising" and saluting. The guest then goes up to the master 
 of the house, who has also made a step or two forwards, and 
 places his open hand in the palm of his host's, but without 
 grasping or shaking, which would hardly pass for decorous, 
 and at the same time each repeats once more his greeting, 
 followed by the set phrases of polite enquiry, "How are you?" 
 *'How goes the world with you?" and so forth, all in a tone of 
 great interest, and to be gone over three or four times, till one 
 or other has the discretion to say " El hamdu I'illah," " Praise 
 be to God," or, in equivalent value, " all right," and this is 
 a signal for a seasonable diversion to the ceremonious inter- 
 rogatory. 
 
 The guest then, after a little contest of courtesy, takes his 
 seat in the honoured post by the fireplace, after an apologetical 
 salutation to the black slave on the one side, and to his nearest 
 neighbour on the other. The best cushions and newest-looking 
 carpets have been of course prepared for his honoured weight. 
 Shoes or sandals, for in truth the latter alone are used in 
 Arabia, are slipped off on the sand just before reaching the 
 carpet, and there they remain on the floor close by. But the 
 riding stick or wand, the inseparable companion of every true 
 Arab, whether Bedouin or townsman, rich or poor, gentle or 
 simple, is to be retained in the hand, and will serve for playing 
 with during the pauses of conversation, like the fan of our great- 
 grandmothers in their days of conquest. 
 
 Without delay Soweylim begins his preparations for coffee. 
 These open by about five minutes of blowing with the bellows and 
 arranging the charcoal till a sufficient heat has been produced. 
 Next he places the largest of the coffee-pots, a huge machine, 
 and about two-thirds full of clear water, close by the edge of the 
 glowing coal-pit, that its contents may become gradually warm 
 while other operations are in progress. He then takes a dirty 
 knotted rag out of a niche in the wall close by, and having 
 untied it, empties out of it three or four handfuls of unroasted 
 coffee, the which he places on a little trencher of platted grass, 
 and picks carefully out any blackened grains, or other non- 
 homologous substances, commonly to be found intermixed with
 
 Chap. II] THE DJOWF ^j 
 
 the berries when purchased in gross ; then, after much cleansing 
 and shaking, he pours the grain so cleansed into a large open iron 
 ladle, and places it over the mouth of the funnel, at the same time 
 blowing the bellows and stirring the grains gently round and 
 round till they crackle, redden, and smoke a little, but carefully 
 withdrawing them from the heat long before they turn black 
 or charred, after the erroneous fashion of Turkey and Europe ; 
 after which he puts them to cool a moment on the grass platter. 
 He then sets the warm water in the large coffee-pot over the 
 fire aperture, that it may be ready boiling at the right moment, 
 and draws in close between his own trouserless legs a large 
 stone mortar, with a narrow pit in the middle, just enough to 
 admit the black stone pestle of a foot long and an inch and 
 half thick, which he now takes in hand. Next, pouring the 
 half-roasted berries into the mortar, he proceeds to pound them, 
 striking right into the narrow hollow with wonderful dexterity, 
 nor ever missing his blow till the beans are smashed, but not 
 reduced into powder. He then scoops them out, now reduced 
 to a sort of coarse reddish grit, very unlike the fine charcoal 
 dust which passes in some countries for coffee, and out of which 
 every particle of real aroma has long since been burnt or 
 ground. After all these operations, each performed with as 
 intense a seriousness and deliberate nicety as if the welfare of 
 the entire Djowf depended on it, he takes a smaller coffee-pot 
 in hand, fills it more than half with hot water from the larger 
 vessel, and then shaking the pounded coffee into it, sets it on 
 the fire to boil, occasionally stirring it with a small stick as the 
 water rises to check the ebullition and prevent overflowing. 
 Nor is the boiling stage to be long or vehement ; on the con- 
 trary, it is and should be as slight as possible. In the interim 
 he takes out of another rag-knot a few aromatic seeds called 
 heyl, an Indian product, but of whose scientific name I regret 
 to be wholly ignorant, or a little saffron, and after slightly 
 pounding these ingredients, throws them into the simmering 
 coffee to improve its flavour, for such an additional spicing is 
 held indispensable in Arabia, though often omitted elsewhere in 
 the East. Sugar, I may say, would be a totally unheard-of 
 profanation. Last of all, he strains off the liquor through some 
 fibres of the inner palm-bark placed fur that purpose in the
 
 54 THE DJOWF [Chap. II 
 
 jug-spout, and gets ready the tray of delicate parti-coloured 
 grass, and the small coffee cups ready for pouring out. All 
 these preliminaries have taken up a good half-hour. 
 
 Meantime we have become engaged in active conversation 
 with our host and his friends. But our Sherarat guide, Suley- 
 man, like a true Bedouin, feels too awkward when among towns- 
 folk to venture on the upper places, though repeatedly invited, 
 and accordingly has squatted down on the sand near the 
 entrance. Many of Grhafil's relations are present ; their silver- 
 decorated swords proclaim the importance of the family. Others, 
 too, have come to receive us, for our arrival, announced before- 
 hand b}^ those we had met at the entrance pass, is a sort of 
 event in the town ; the dress of some betokens poverty, others 
 are better clad, but all have a very polite and decorovis manner. 
 Many a question is asked about our native land and town, that 
 is to say, Syria and Damascus, conformably to the disguise 
 already adopted, and which it was highly important to keep 
 well up ; then follow enquiries regarding our journey, our 
 business, what we have brought with us, about our medicines, 
 our goods and wares, &c. &c. From the very first it is easy 
 for us to perceive that purchasers and patients are likely to 
 abound. For my part, being still harassed by my intermittent 
 fever, and very tired, I gave my comrade a hint to shirk the 
 Esculapian topic, and to put the mercantile interest as much 
 as possible in the foreground. Very few travelling merchants, 
 if any, visit the Djowf at this time of year, for one must be 
 mad, or next door to it, to rush into the vast desert around 
 during the heats of June and July ; I for one have certainly 
 no intention of doing it again. Hence we had small danger 
 of competitors, and found the market almost at our absolute 
 disposal. 
 
 But before a quarter of an hour has passe d, and while 
 blacky is still roasting or pounding his coffee, a tall thin lad, 
 Ghafil's eldest son, appears, charged with a large circular dish, 
 grass-platted like the rest, and throws it with a graceful jerk 
 on the sandy floor close before us. He then produces a large 
 wooden bowl full of dates, bearing in the midst of the heap a 
 cup full of melted butter ; all this he places on the circular 
 mat, and says, " Semmoo," literally, " pronounce the Name,"
 
 Chap. 11] THE BJOWF 55 
 
 of God, understood ; this means, " set to work at it." Hereon 
 the master of the house quits his place by the fii-eside, and seats 
 himself on the sand opposite to us ; we draw nearer to the 
 dish, and four or five others, after some respectful coyness, 
 join the circle. Every one then picks out a date or two from 
 the juicy half-amalgamated mass, dips them into the butter, 
 and thus goes on eating till he has had enough, when he rises 
 and washes his hands. 
 
 By this time the coffee is ready, and Soweylim begins his 
 round, the coffee-pot in one hand, the tray and cups on the 
 other. The first pouring out he must in etiquette drink him- 
 self, by way of a practical assurance that there is no " death 
 in the pot ;" the guests are next served, beginning with those 
 next the honourable fireside ; the master of the house receives 
 his cup last of all. To refuse would be a positive and un- 
 pardonable insult ; but one has not much to swallow at a time, 
 for the coffee-cups, or finjans, are about the size of a large egg- 
 shell at most, and are never more than half filled. This is 
 considered essential to good breeding, and a brimmer would 
 here imply exactly the reverse of what it does in Europe; 
 why it should be so I hardly know, unless perhaps the rareness 
 of cup-stands or " zarfs " (see Lane's Modern Egyptians, 
 Chapter V) in Arabia, though these implements are universal in 
 Egypt and Syria, might render an over-full cup inconveniently 
 hot for the fingers that must grasp it without medium. 
 Be that as it may, " fill the cup for your enemy " is an adage 
 common to all. Bedouins or townsmen, throughout the Penin- 
 sula. The beverage itself is singularly aromatic and refreshing, 
 a real tonic, and utterly different from the black mud sucked 
 by the Osmanli, or the watery roast-bean preparations of France. 
 When the slave or freeman, according to circumstances, presents 
 you with a cup, he never fails to accompany it with a " Semm'," 
 "say the name of God," nor must you take it without answering 
 " bismillah." 
 
 When all have been thus served, a second round is poured 
 out, but in inverse order, for the host this time drinks first, 
 and the guests last. On special occasions, a first reception, 
 for instance, the ruddy liquor is a third time handed round; 
 nay, a fourth cup is sometimes added. But all these put
 
 56 THE DJOWF [CnAP. II 
 
 together do not come up to one-fourth of what a European 
 imbibes in a single draught at breakfast. 
 
 Ghfifil would have greatly wished us to set up shop and medi- 
 cine in his own house, nor without reason, for his domestic 
 stock of coffee was almost at an end, and he trusted, under cover 
 of hospitality, to drive an advantageous bargain with us for that 
 which we had brought. But on our part, my comrade and 
 myself were very desirous of finding means for being sometimes 
 alone together ; we had much to talk over and consult about, 
 and that of a nature not always exactly fitted for our friend's 
 hearing ; besides, I had my journal to write up, and for this and 
 such like matters we had not as yet enjoyed a moment free from 
 prying observation from the moment of our leaving Ma'an on 
 the 16th up to this the 30th of June. Nor could we, while 
 remaiuing as mere guests under another man's roof, obtain the 
 independent position so desirable for rightly studying the land 
 and its inhabitants. We therefore declined the chiefs repeated 
 proffer, and insisted, under various decent pretexts, on the 
 necessity of a separate lodging-place. 
 
 With this Grhafil was at last obliged to comply, and promised 
 us that we should next day be installed in a convenient and 
 central dwelling. The rest of the afternoon was devoted to 
 repose, and it was near sunset when our host invited us to visit 
 his gardens in the cool of the evening. I will take the oppor- 
 tunity of leading my readers over the whole of the Djowf, as 
 a general view will help better to understand what follows in 
 the narrative, besides offering much that will be in part new, I 
 should fancy, to the greater number. 
 
 This province is a sort of oasis, a large oval depression of 
 sixty or seventy miles long, by ten or twelve broad, lying between 
 the northern desert that separates it from Syria and Euphrates, 
 and the southern Nefood, or sandy waste, and interposed between 
 it and the nearest mountains of the central Arabian plateau, where 
 it first rises at Djebel Shomer. However, from its comparative 
 proximity to the latter, no less than from the character of its 
 climate and productions, it belongs hardly so much to northern 
 as to central Arabia, of which it is a kind of porch or vestibule. 
 If an equilateral triangle were to be drawn, having its base from 
 Damascus to Bagdad, the vertex would find itself pretty exactly
 
 Chap. II] THE DJOWF ^y 
 
 at the Djowf, which is thus at a nearly equal distance, south-east 
 and south-west, from the two localities just mentioned, while the 
 same cross-lines, if continued, will give at about the same intervals 
 of space in the opposite direction, Medinah on the one hand, and 
 Zulphah, the great commercial door of Eastern Nejed, on the 
 other. Djebel Shomer lies almost due south, and much nearer 
 than any other of the places above specified. Partly to this 
 central position, and partly to its own excavated form, the 
 province owes its appropriate name of Djowf, or " belly." The 
 " Gut," so familiar to Oxford men, is a case of analogous, nor 
 less uncourtly nomenclature. 
 
 The principal, or rather the only town of the district, all the 
 rest being mere hamlets, bears the name of the entire region. 
 It is composed of eight villages, once distinct, but which have in 
 process of time coalesced into one, and exchanged their separate 
 existence and name for that of Sook, or " quarter," of the common 
 borough. Of these Sooks (Aswak would be the Arabic plural), 
 the principal is that belonging to the family Haboob, and in 
 which we were now lodged. It includes the central castle already 
 mentioned, and numbers about four hundred houses. The other 
 quarters, some larger, others smaller, stretch up and down the 
 valley, but are connected together by their extensive gardens. 
 The entire length of the town thus formed, with the cultivation 
 immediately annexed, is full four miles, but the average breadth 
 does not exceed half a mile, and sometimes falls short of it. 
 
 The size of the domiciles varies with the condition of their 
 occupants, and the poor are contented with narrow lodgings, 
 though always separate ; for I doubt if throughout the whole of 
 Arabia two families, however needy, inhabit the same dwelling. 
 Ghafil's abode, already described, may give a fair idea of the 
 better kind ; in such we have an outer court, for unlading camels 
 and the like, an inner court, a large reception room, and several 
 other smaller apartments, to which entrance is given by a 
 private door, and where the family itself is lodged. 
 
 But another and a very characteristic feature of domestic 
 architecture is the frequent addition, throughout the Djowf, 
 of a round tower, from thirty to forty feet in height and 
 twelve or more in breadth, with a nan-ow entrance and loop- 
 holes above. This construction is sometimes coutiiruous to the
 
 58 THE DJOWF [Chap. II 
 
 dwelling place, and sometimes isolated in a neighbouring garden 
 belonsfinsr to the same master. These towers once answered 
 exactly the same purposes as the " torri," well known to travel- 
 lers in many cities of Italy, at Bologna, Sienna, Rome, and 
 elsewhere, and denoted a somewhat analogous state of society to 
 what formerly prevailed there. Hither, in time of the ever- 
 recurring feuds between rival chiefs and factions, the leaders 
 and their partisans used to retire for refuge and defence, and 
 hence they would make their sallies to burn and destroy. These 
 towers, like all the modern edifices of the Djowf, are of unbaked 
 brick ; their great thickness and solidity of make, along with 
 the extreme tenacity of the soil, joined to a very dry climate, 
 renders the material a rival almost of stonework in strength and 
 endurance. Indeed, the dismantled walls, when left to them- 
 selves without roof or repair, will, and this I have often wit- 
 nessed, defy all the vicissitudes of winter rains and spring gales 
 for an entire century, nor even then give much token of their 
 age. Since the final occupation of this region by the forces of 
 Telal, an event to be described a few pages further on, all these 
 towers have, without exception, been rendered unfit for defence, 
 and some are even half ruined. Here again the phenomena of 
 Europe have repeated themselves in Arabia. 
 
 The houses are not unfrequently isolated each from the 
 other by their gardens and plantation ; and this is especially the 
 case with the dwellings of chiefs and their families. What 
 has just been said about the towers renders the reasons of this 
 isolation sufficiently obvious. But the dwellings of the com- 
 moner sort are generally clustered together, though without 
 symmetry or method. Equally irregular in form are the spaces 
 of which every Sook is possessed for the commimal meetings of 
 its inhabitants, and which no more resemble, in mathematical 
 correctness of outline, Grosvenor or Cavendish Square, than the 
 rows of houses do Regent or Oxford Street. 
 
 The gardens of the Djowf are much celebrated in this part of 
 the East, and justly so. They are of a productiveness and 
 variety superior to those of Djebel Shomer or of Upper Nejed, 
 and far beyond whatever the Hedjaz and its neighbourhood can 
 offer. Here, for the first time in our southward course, we 
 found the date-palm a main object of cultivation ; and if its
 
 Chap. II] THE BJOWF ^^ 
 
 produce be inferior to that of the same tree in Nejed and Hasa, 
 it is far, very far, above whatever Egypt, Africa, or the valley of 
 the Tigris from Bagdad to Basra can show. However, the palm 
 is by no means alone here. The apricot and the peach, the fig- 
 tree and the vine, abound throughout these orchards, and their 
 fruit surpasses in copiousness and flavour that supplied by the 
 gardens of Damascus or the hills of Syria and Palestine. In 
 the intervals between the trees or in the fields beyond, corn, 
 leguminous plants, gourds, melons, &c. &c., are widely culti- 
 vated. Here, too, for the last time, the traveller bound for the 
 interior sees the irrigation indispensable to all growth and 
 tillage in this droughty climate kept up by running streams of 
 clear water, whereas in the Nejed and its neighbourhood it has 
 to be laboriously procured from wells and cisterns. 
 
 The ripening season of the different kinds of fruit or harvest 
 is, of course, earlier here than in Syria, not to say Europe. 
 Djowf apricots ai-e in full maturity by the end of May, and the 
 vintage falls in July ; peaches delay till August, dates till August 
 and September. Further south, in Nejed, for instance, all these 
 periods are respectively anticipated by about a month, and in 
 'Oman by two months at least. Much did I regret in these 
 places my inability to have with me either thermometer or any 
 similar instrument for ascertaining the niceties of the tempera- 
 ture and atmosphere ; but such kind of baggage would have 
 been too inconsistent in Arab eyes with my assumed character, 
 too European, in short; besides that, what between jolting 
 camels and roughly-packed saddle-bags, a long glass tube would 
 have run but an indifferent chance of preserving its integritv, 
 even so far as the Djowf. But some rough estimate of the 
 average temperature maybe gathered from what I have just said 
 of the fruit-ripening periods in these regions and from other 
 analogous circumstances ; and were we to place the general 
 standard of the Djowf thermometer in the shade at noon during 
 the months of June, July, and August at about 90° or 95° Fahr., 
 we should not, I think, be far wrong for t?iis valley. At night 
 the air is, with very few exceptions, cool, at least comparatively, 
 so that a variation of twenty or more degrees often occurs within 
 a very short period. 
 
 The gardens just described are everywhere enclosed by high
 
 6o THE DJOWF [Chap. II 
 
 walls of unbaked brick, and are intersected by a labyrinth of 
 little watercourses passing from tree to tree and from furrow to 
 furrow. Among all their different kinds of produce one only is 
 considered as a regular article of sale and export — the date ; 
 and from this the inhabitants derive a tolerable revenue, not, 
 indeed, by traffic within the limits of the Djowf itself, where 
 every one is supplied from his own trees, but from the price 
 received in exchange at Tabook or Ha'yel, Damascus and 
 Bagdad, for even so far is this fruit carried. It is almost in- 
 credible how large a part the date plays in Arab sustenance ; it 
 is the bread of the land, the staff of life, and the staple of 
 commerce. Mahomet, who owed his wonderful success at least 
 as much to his intense nationality as to any other cause, 
 whether natural or supernatural, is said to have addressed his 
 followers on the subject in these words : " Honour the date- 
 tree, for she is your mother;" a slight extension of the fifth 
 commandment, though hardly, perhaps, exceeding the legisla- 
 tive powers of a prophet. Yet, with all due deference for 
 authority and experience, I cannot exactly agree with him in 
 thinking this leafy mother fully entitled to so unreserved a 
 commendation. The date is too luscious a food not to weary at 
 last, and is, besides, when dried, too heating to be healthy when 
 devoured in the enormous quantities which are here taken. 
 Indeed, if I may be allowed the conjecture, I am inclined to 
 ascribe in great measure a form of chronic gastritis, nay, even of 
 fatal ulceration of the stomach, remarkably common among the 
 Arabs of the interior, to their over-continuance in a date diet. 
 
 The Djowf, being a mere collection of houses and gardens 
 intermingled as it were at random, is naturally unwalled ; the 
 number and bravery of its inhabitants may well suffice to guard 
 them against Bedouin inciu'sions, nor had they any otiier 
 enemy to dread for many years, till in the last century Wahhabee 
 despotism, and at a yet later period the growing power of Djebel 
 Shoraer and its chief, successively assailed and absorbed them. 
 
 The castle and the solitary tower of Marid are objects re- 
 quiring a separate description, and such may accordingly be 
 better reserved to the visit which we shall soon pay them. 
 
 Besides the Djowf itself, or capital, there exist several other 
 villages belonging to the same homonymous province, and all
 
 Chap. II] THE DJOWF " 6 1 
 
 subject to the same central governor. Of these the largest is 
 Sekakah ; it lies at about twelve miles distant to the north-east, 
 and though inferior to the principal town in importance and 
 fertility of soil, almost equals it in the number of its inhabitants. 
 I should reckon the united populations of these two localities — 
 men, women, and children — at about thirty-three or thirty-four 
 thousand souls. This calculation, like many others before us 
 in the course of the work, rests partly on an approximate survey 
 of the number of dwellings, partly on the military muster, and 
 partly on what I heard on the subject from the natives them- 
 selves. A census is here unknown, and no register records 
 birth, marriage, or death. Yet, by aid of the war list, which 
 generally represents about one-tenth of the entire population, 
 a fair, though not an absolute, idea may be obtained on this 
 point. 
 
 Lastly, around and at no great distance from these main 
 centres are several small villages or hamlets, eight or ten in 
 number, as I was told, and containing each of them from twenty 
 to fifty or sixty houses. But I had neither time nor opportunity 
 to visit each separately. Such a village is Djoon, mentioned 
 near the close of the preceding chapter ; Kara, in the opposite 
 or easterly direction ; Dorrali, close by the Djowf on the road to 
 Sekakah, and others. They cluster round lesser water springs, 
 and offer in miniature features much resembling those of the 
 capital. The entire population of the province cannot exceed 
 forty or forty-two thousand, but it is a brave one. 
 
 •The inhabitants have not much to say regarding their own 
 origin or the date of their first settlement here, nor do they 
 possess any records of historical value on such topics. Thus far 
 only can they affirm, that they were once Christians, and that 
 their earliest conversion to Islamism was effected by that most 
 trenchant of all arguments, the sword, in the hands of 'Alee and 
 Khalid-ebn-Waleed. At a later period, like the inhabitants of 
 Arabia in general, they relapsed into semi-paganism, and the 
 worship of local genii, or Djann, as they call them, till the sword 
 of the Wahhabee conqueror revived their Islam, to what purpose 
 or extent we shall soon see. In pedigree they lay claim to be 
 descended from the great clan of Ta'i, celebrated in old Arab 
 history ; and indeed, whatever we know for certain of the locali-
 
 62 THE njOWF [Chap. II 
 
 zation and extent of that tribe in Northern AraLia, and a certain 
 similarity of ways and customs, so far as we can institute a com- 
 parison between present condition and the scanty records of the 
 past, seems to confirm their title to that lineage, though inter- 
 mixed, it would seem, with other neighbouring tribes, especially 
 Bekr and Howazin. All beyond this is mere matter of con- 
 jecture, ingenious, perhaps, but not very profitable. Nowhere 
 in Arabia have I met with scantier popular reminiscences and 
 less of the old clannish feeling than in Djowf. 
 
 Nor did I hear any details worth recording about the events 
 which signalized their subjection to the Wahhabee monarch 
 towards the end of the last century or the beginning of this. 
 But after the overthrow of the Nejdean empire by the conquest 
 of Ibraheem Bacha in 1817 and 1818, the Djowf recovered an 
 independence which her weakened condition could hardly enable 
 her to maintain. In addition to the effects of Wahhabee 
 pillage and despotism, the people had much to suffer from con- 
 tinual and sanguinary contests between the several Sooks or 
 quarters of the capital, and each petty chief of the province 
 strove to extend his authority, or rather his tyranny, over the 
 rest. Hence they were plunged with scarce an interval in a 
 complicated and ruinous civil war, so much so that many of the 
 older inhabitants assured me that in those times it was not 
 uncommon for a man to be born, live, and die at one end of the 
 Djowf without any intermission of hostilities sufficient to permit 
 him to visit the other end in safety throughout the whole of 
 that period. 
 
 Thus ruined, as they well might be, by the consequences of 
 foreign invasion and internal discord, the unfortunate Djowfites 
 became more and more subject to the insults of the Bedouins 
 around, and at last the powerful tribe of the Ru'alas, whose 
 summer pastures, as I have already noticed, are in Syria, while 
 their winter is generally passed in this neighbourhood, so far 
 gained the mastery over them, that the Djowf was compelled to 
 pay an annual tribute, entitled Khoo'wah, or fraternity, by 
 way of ransom from worse molestation, much like the black 
 mail of the Borders, or the Dane-gelt of our Saxon ancestors. 
 
 Meanwhile 'Abd-Allah-ebn-Kasheed, father of the present 
 monarch Telal, was occupied in founding and consolidating his
 
 Chap. II] THE DJOWF ^^ 
 
 new kingdom of Djebel Shorn er at no great distance to the 
 south. The mutual contests of the different chiefs gave him a 
 suitable pretext for interfering in the affairs of the Djowf, whose 
 possession he could not but covet. When at last he thought the 
 moment favourable he ordered his brother 'Obeyd to conduct 
 thither an army fully sufficient for the subjugation of that pro- 
 vince. But whether 'Obeyd did not feel himself strong enough 
 to maintain his conquest, or from other reasons, he contented 
 himself with arranging in a temporary manner the disputes of 
 the several chiefs and Sooks, and after appointing one of the 
 family Haboob as vice-governor in his brother's name, he com- 
 pelled the people to reassume the neglected practices of Maho- 
 metan worship, and having exacted a yearly tribute to the 
 treasury of Djebel Shomer, he then retired. 
 
 Disputes, a moment suppressed by common fear, were not 
 long in breaking out anew ; and on the death of the chief whom 
 'Obeyd had named as governor, the family of Haboob divided 
 itself into two hostile sections, each headed by its pretender to 
 rule and power. One of the most active in this ill-timed family 
 broil was our host Ghafil. 'Abd-Allah-ebn-Rasheed was by this 
 time dead, and had been succeeded on the throne of Shomer 
 by his eldest son Telal, a warrior even more energetic than his 
 father, and infinitely his superior in the arts of statesmanship. 
 To this prince, Ghafil and his faction, who had been worsted 
 in their late contest, now applied for help. This took place in 
 1855. Telal thought the occasion a good one for completing 
 what his father and uncle had begun. While he flattered the 
 refugees with delusive promises, he collected a considerable 
 force, backed up by two heav}" pieces of artillery, and thus 
 attended marched in person to tlie Djowf. When at a certain 
 distance from the capital he pitched his camp, and for many 
 days together amused the inhabitants with various proposals 
 and negotiations, showing the while an affected reluctance to 
 bring matters to the arbitration of the sword. The family 
 Haboob, already over-confident in the stone walls of their old 
 citadel, were readily brought by this apparently dilatory con- 
 duct of Telal's to despise their crafty enemy more and more, 
 and accordingly refused to come to terms. Telal then began 
 active hostilities, but at first on a small scale, sending out
 
 64 THE DJOWF [Chap. II 
 
 skirmishers and plundering parties, calculated to provoke and 
 harass rather than subdue, while he kept his main strength in 
 reserve for the decisive moment. The artifice succeeded ; his 
 enemies grew still bolder, and offered a general battle, which 
 he more than once declined. At last one morning he availed 
 himself of an autumn mist, such as occasionally covers the low 
 grounds even in this clear climate, and concealed the main body 
 of his troops in the windings of the valley close by, while his 
 cavalry provoked the men of Djowf to come out against them 
 in larger numbers than usual. When the conflict was fully 
 engaged, the prince of Shomer suddenly brought forward his 
 two cannons, old clumsy articles indeed, but formidable engines 
 of war for these countries, and directed their fire against the 
 masonry of the castle, never intended to resist such a shock. 
 At the dreaded report of the guns, and still more when they 
 saw the ramparts of their strength fast crumbling piecemeal 
 before the bullets, the Haboob chieftains with their followers 
 fell into panic confusion. This was what Telal had waited for ; 
 he immediately ordered up his entire array, and in a moment 
 the rout of the enemy was complete. Pursued and pursuers 
 entered the town pell-mell, great slaughter wes made, the castle 
 was taken, and the Djowf conquered before noon. 
 
 The first thing TeUll did on coming thus into possession was 
 to destroy all the dwellings belonging to the hostile faction of 
 Beyt Haboob, to cut down their palm-trees, and to drive the 
 surviving chiefs of the party out of the town into a distant exile, 
 whence, in spite of many entreaties made in their behalf by their 
 friends and relatives, he has never suffered them to return. Ghafil 
 now expected his nomination as governor ; but the conqueror had 
 resolved to make the Djowf entirely his own, and for this a diffe- 
 rent and more durable system of rule was absolutely necessary. 
 Without delay he constituted one of his own personal followers, 
 Hamood by name, governor of the town and province, while he 
 at the same time deprived the local chiefs, and Ghufil among 
 the rest, of every vestige of administrative authority. In their 
 stead he placed three of his confidential retainers, natives of his 
 own capital, Ha'yel, to act as auxiliaries, council, or check on 
 the new governor, as circumstances might require ; and, lastly, 
 he selected from among the common people of the Djowf itself
 
 Chap. II] THE BJOWI 65 
 
 a certain number of men, whom he formed into a kind of body- 
 guard for his vicegerent, taking care that they should receive 
 arms and salary from Hamood alone. After this he took with 
 him four of the principal nobles yet remaining as hostages for 
 the good conduct of their countrymen, and conducted them back 
 with himself to Djebel Shomer. 
 
 Since that time the Djowf has been administered by Hamood 
 and his three associates in Telal's name. No intestine squabbles 
 are permitted, and instead of Khoo'wah or black mail to the 
 profit of Eu'alas and their fellow nomades, a moderate but 
 regular land and cattle tax is paid to the established govern- 
 ment. Under the new arrangements the entire district has 
 regained much of its former strength and prosperity, and the 
 inhabitants, once degraded by licence and social quarrels almost 
 to the level of Bedouins, have made a certain advance towards 
 civilized life, while they have also gone on steadily increasing in 
 wealth, numbers, and commercial activity. And it is to their own 
 consciousness of these very advantages, quite as much or more 
 than to the awe inspired by superior power, that we should 
 ascribe the readiness with which the greater number have con- 
 tinued to bear, up to the present date, the yoke of a foreign 
 rule and ruler without any symptom of disobedience, or any 
 attempt, however partial, at insurrection. 
 
 These descendants of Ta'i, if such they really be, are very 
 liberally provided with the physical endowments of which it 
 has been acutely said that they are seldom despised save by those 
 who do not themselves possess them. Tall, well-proportioned, 
 of a tolerably fair complexion, set off by long curling locks of 
 jet-black hair, with features for the most part regular and intel- 
 ligent, and a dignified carriage, they are eminently good speci- 
 mens of what may be called the pure northern or Ismaelitish 
 Arab type, and in all these respects yield the palm to the 
 inhabitants of Djebel Shomer alone. Their large-developed 
 forms and open countenance contrast strongly with the somewhat 
 dwarfish stature and suspicious under-glance of the Bedouin. 
 They are, besides, a very healthy people, and keep up their 
 strength and activity even to an advanced age. It is no uncom- 
 mon occurrence here to see an old man of seventy set out 
 full-armed among a band of youths ; though, by the way, such 
 
 VOL. I. r
 
 66 THE DJOWF [Chap. II 
 
 " green old age " is often to be met with also in the central 
 provinces further south, as I have had frequent opportunity of 
 witnessing. The climate, too, is good and dry, and habits of 
 out-duor life contribute not a little to the maintenance of health 
 and vigour. 
 
 In manners, as in locality, the worthies of Djowf occupy a 
 sort of half-way position between Bedouins and the inhabitants 
 of the cultivated districts. Thus they partake largely in the 
 nomade's aversion to mechanical occupations, in his indifference 
 to literary acquirements, in his aimless fickleness too, and even 
 in his treacherous ways. And though in general much superior 
 in politeness and in self-respect to the Sherarat and their fel- 
 lows, they are equally far from displaying the dignified and 
 even polished courtesy usual in Shomer and Nejed, much less 
 that of Hasa and 'Oman. On the other hand, in cleanliness of 
 person and habitation, in agricultural skill, in reasoning powers, 
 in a sort of local patriotism, in capacity for treating with stran- 
 gers and conducting commerce, and even in an occasional 
 desire of instruction and progress, they come nearer to the 
 remaining townsmen and villagers of the Peninsula. They 
 were, in fact, originally, to judge by the annals of Ta'i, a fairly 
 civilized race after the old Arab fashion, and have still a positive 
 tendency to become so once more, though long held back by 
 the untoward circumstances of war and faction, beside the de- 
 teriorating influence of the savage tribes amongst whom they 
 are in a way isolated by their geographical situation. The fol- 
 lowing incident, in which we ourselves had nearly played a 
 very prominent, though by no means an equally agreeable 
 part, may serve for a tolerable illustration of their actual 
 state between these conflicting tendencies. 
 
 I have said in the preceding chapter, that while we were yet 
 threading the narrow gorge near the first entrance of the valley, 
 several horsemen appeared on the upper margin of the pass, 
 and one of them questioned our guide, and then, after a short 
 consultation with his companions, called out to us to go on and 
 fear nothing. Now the name of this individual w^as Sulman- 
 ebn-Dahir, a very adventurous and fairly intelligent young 
 fellow, with whom next-door neighbourhood and frequent inter- 
 course rendered us intimate during our stay at the Djowf. One
 
 Chap. U] THE DJOWF 6y 
 
 day, while we were engaged in friendly conversation, he said, 
 half laughing, " Do you know what we were consulting about 
 while you were in the pass below on the morning of your 
 arrival ? It was whether we should make you a good recep- 
 tion, and thus procure ourselves the advantage of having you 
 residents amongst us, or whether we should not do better to 
 kill you all three, and take our gain from the booty to be 
 found in your baggage." I replied with equal coolness, " It 
 might have proved an awkward affair for yourself and your 
 friends, since Hamood your governor could hardly have failed 
 to get wind of the matter, and would have taken it out of 
 you." " Pooh I " replied our friend, " never a bit ; as if a 
 present out of the plunder would not have tied Hamood's 
 tongue." "Bedouins that you are," said I, laughing. " Of 
 course we are," answered Sulman, "for such we all were till 
 quite lately, and the present system is too recent to have 
 much changed us." However, he admitted that they all had, 
 on second thoughts, congratulated themselves on not having 
 preferred bloodshed to hospitality, though perhaps the better 
 resolution was rather owing to interested than to moral 
 motives. 
 
 The most distinctive good feature of the inhabitants of Djowf 
 is their liberality. Nowhere else, even in Arabia, is the guest, 
 so at least he be not murdered before admittance, better treated, 
 or more cordially invited to become in every way one of them- 
 selves. Courage, too, no one denies them, and they are equally 
 lavish of their own lives and property as of their neighbours'. 
 Their central position, already explained, is favourable to com- 
 merce, though the long distances which must be traversed to or 
 from their valley limits this commerce, with few exceptions, to 
 certain fixed seasons of the year, namely, the cooler months of 
 winter and spring. Yet they have not yet learnt to appreciate 
 the advantages of establishing a regular market-place for their 
 wares, nor does a single shop exist even in the capital. Buying 
 and selling are carried on in the private dwelling-places them- 
 selves, and the workshop of the artisan is also his domicile. 
 This system has been established and is still maintained in 
 favour of the monopoly thus thrown into the hands of the local 
 chief in the respective quarters of the town, but it seems likely 
 
 F 2
 
 68 THE DJOWF [Cn.vr. II 
 
 to be abandoned for a better, at least if the present rule be 
 maintained for some years to come. 
 
 In religion the Djowf affords all the anomalies customary in 
 Arabia on that subject, and even something- more. Like the 
 most of their brethren, they had long since abandoned the very 
 name of ]\Iahometanism for a local fetichism and a semi-Sabsean 
 worship, for prayers to the sun, and sacrifices to the dead. But 
 under the Wahhabee denomination Islam in its purest, its most 
 uncompromising form, had been awhile forced upon them under 
 penalty of the sword. This was not much to their taste, and 
 met with a very limited and only a superficial success. 
 
 My readers may have already observed that my narrative 
 resembles somewhat the journey it describes, full of divergences 
 and circuitous passages. Let me then be here allowed a moment's 
 pause on the way to consider that curious and important object, 
 the religious aspect of the Arab race in general ; we shall 
 hardly meet with a more fitting opportunity. The Arabs are, 
 generally speaking, rather a believing than a religious nation ; 
 nor is the phase of mind hereby indicated a mere paradox, as 
 one might at first sight hold it to be. ]\Ien who readily grant an 
 abstract belief to everything are not unlikely to reconcile, in a 
 practical way, the many contradictions thus admitted into their 
 theory by acting on nothing. Christian, Jewish, Mahometan, or 
 Pagan creeds and forms, — the Arab, when left to himself, does 
 not see why they should not all be equally true, equally 
 estimable, while at the same time he does not either see any 
 very cogent reason for following one rather than the other ; 
 and thus comes to the happy conclusion of binding himself to 
 none. Not that he entertains the smallest doubt regarding the 
 divine mission of any of the six hundred prophets generally 
 enumerated from Adam down to Mahomet inclusively, and even 
 El-Mokannaa' himself, as we shall ultimately see in 'Oman, but 
 he is unwilling to give any one of them in particular an ad- 
 herence prejudicial to the rights of the rest. Besides he is fond 
 of ease and impatient of restraint ; stated prayers annoy him, 
 long prayers tire him, ablutions are inconvenient, and fasting, 
 especially in presence of a fat sheep, is quite out of the 
 question, if indeed his ordinary allowance of nutriment might 
 not be called a perj)etual fast, and even a severe one.
 
 Chap. II] THE DJOWF 5q 
 
 It is true that among a very large number this immense 
 latitude of belief has led to an equally or even a more logical 
 consequence, namely, entire scepticism, and a settled resolution 
 to prefer the certain to the uncertain, the present to the 
 future. 
 
 Sliall I abimdon the pleasures of the pure wine-gol^lct 
 
 For all they tell me about milk aud honey hereafter? 
 
 Life, and death, and resurrection to follow, 
 
 — StuiFand nonsense, my dear Madam : 
 
 are the too celebrated lines of a very popular Arab poet, and I 
 have often heard them quoted in moments of unreserved con- 
 versation with unequivocal approval on the part of all present. 
 Not that even thus the Arab exactly disbelieves, but that he has 
 made up his mind not to " fash his thumb " about the matter. 
 
 That the Turks are in their way a religious people may be 
 fully admitted. That the Mogols, the inhabitants of Balkh 
 and Bokhara, of Herat and Beloochistan, are even more 
 religious nationally and individually, I am entirel}- convinced. 
 But at whatever risk of startling my readers, accustomed 
 perhaps to a popularly opposite view of the case, I must 
 protest against the right of the Arabs as such to be in any way 
 entitled a religious nation. Had the Mahometan scheme been 
 entrusted to Arab keeping alone, had not Persian, Mogol, 
 Turkish, nay, at times European influence and race come in to 
 its aid, few would have been ere this the readers of the Goran 
 and the fasters of Ramadan. 
 
 A reverential is not necessarily a religious people. With few 
 nations throughout Europe has religion proved more sparingly 
 a direct cause of action than with the English ; the fact is 
 acknowledged by all ; yet perhaps no nation in Europe is 
 equally reverential. The Italian, the Spaniard, the Greek are, 
 in a certam sense of the word, each and all more religious 
 than the Englishman ; yet blasphemy and manifold irreverence 
 of word and deed are much more common in Italy, Spain, and 
 Gfreece than in England. This I say simply in order to throw a 
 light, somewhat novel it may be, yet, I think, true, on the Arab 
 mind, which here, and in many other respects besides, bears a 
 certain resemblance to the English. Some travellers have said 
 that the Persians are the Frenchmen of the East ; perhaps they 
 said it in haste, indeed I hope so ; for to compare Europeans with
 
 yo THE DJOWF [Chap. II 
 
 Persians is but a bad compliment to the former. If, however, 
 such like vague and incomplete assimilations can bear a real 
 meaning, I Avould unhesitatingly affirm Arabs to be the English 
 of the Oriental world. 
 
 A strong love and a high appreciation of national and 
 personal liberty, a hatred of minute interference and special 
 regulations, a great respect for authority so long as it be 
 decently well exercised, joined with a remarkable freedom from 
 anything like caste-feeling in what concerns ruling families and 
 dynasties ; much practical good sense, much love of commercial 
 enterprise, a great readiness to undertake long journeys and 
 volimtary expatriation by land and sea in search of gain and 
 power ; patience to endure, and perseverance in the employment 
 of means to ends, courage in war, vigour in peace, and lastly, 
 the mai'ked predominance of a superior race over whomever they 
 come in contact with among their Asiatic or African neighbours, 
 a superiority admitted by these last as a matter of course and an 
 acknowledged right; — all these are features hardly less charac- 
 teristic of the Englishman than of the Arab ; yet that these 
 are features distinctive of the Arab nation, taken, of course, on 
 its more favourable side, will hardly, I think, be denied by any 
 experienced and unprejudiced man. This, I need not say, like 
 most other broad statements, admits of many exceptions, and 
 requires much illustration and explanatory proof, and such will, 
 I trust, be furnished by the course of our narrative, interwoven 
 as it will be with the history, political or moral, of the provinces 
 we visit and the localities we traverse, while it conveys those 
 particulars which may aid to reconcile apparent contradiction 
 or rectify partial views. But it is now high time to find our 
 way back from digression after digression to matters of a more 
 personal and individual nature. 
 
 On the morning after our arrival — it was now the 1st of July — 
 Ghafil caused a small house in the neighbourhood, belonging to 
 one of his dependants, to be put at our entire disposal, according 
 to our previous request. This our new abode consisted of a 
 small court, with two rooms, one on each side, for warehouse 
 and habitation, the whole being surrounded with an outer wall, 
 whose door was closed by lock and bolt. Of a kitchen -room there 
 was small need, so constant and hospitable are the invitations
 
 Chap. II] THE DJOWF yi 
 
 of the good folks here to strangers ; and if our house was not 
 over spacious, it afforded at least what we most desired, namely, 
 seclusion and privacy at will ; it was, moreover, at our host's 
 c ost, rent and reparations. 
 
 Hither accordingly we transferred baggage and chattels, and 
 arranged everything as comfortably as we best could. And as 
 we had already concluded from the style and conversation of 
 those around us, that their state of society was hardly far 
 enough advanced to offer a sufficiently good prospect for medical 
 art, whose exercise to be generally advantageous requires a 
 certain amount of culture and aptitude in the patient, no less 
 than of skill in the physician, we resolved to make commerce 
 our main affair here, trusting that by so doing we should gain 
 a second advantage, that of lightening our more bulky goods, 
 such as coffee and cloth, whose transport had already annoyed 
 us not a little. 
 
 But in fact we were not more desirous to sell than the men, 
 women, and children of the Djowf were to bu}^ From the very 
 outset our little court-yard was crowded with customers, and the 
 most amusing scenes of Arab haggling, in all its mixed shrewd- 
 ness and simplicity, diverted us through the week. Handker- 
 chief after handkerchief, yard after yard of cloth, beads for the 
 women, knives, combs, looking-glasses, and what not ? (for our 
 stock was a thorough miscellany), were soon sold off, some for 
 ready money, others on credit ; and it is but justice to say that 
 all debts so contracted were soon paid in very honestly ; Oxford 
 High Street tradesmen, at least in former times, were not 
 always equally fortunate. 
 
 Meanwhile we had the very best opportunity of becoming 
 acquainted with and appreciating all classes, nay, almost all 
 individuals of the place. Peasants too from Sakakah, from Kara, 
 and from the other hamlets arrived, led by rumour, whose 
 trumpet, prone to exaggerate under every sky, had proclaimed 
 us throughout the valley of Djowf for much more important 
 characters and possessed of a much larger stock in hand than 
 was really the case. All crowded in, and before long there 
 were more customers than wares assembled in the store-room. 
 
 Ghafil, for his part, employed a hundred petty artifices to 
 prevent our selling the coffee, which he vehemently desired to
 
 72 THE DJOWF [Chap. II 
 
 reserve for his own bargain. No sooner bad we an offer for it, 
 tban be sent some of bis relations or friends to dissuade us from 
 coming to terms ; and tbougb we bad early perceived bis aim, 
 we tbougbt it best to wink at it, willing to gratify our first and 
 principal host, even at the cost of some slight loss to ourselves. 
 
 I say, our principal host, for everybody who had a dinner or 
 a supper to offer was also our host at the Djowf ; invitations 
 rained in on all sides, and it would have been considered a 
 shame on the hospitality of the people in general, and a blot on 
 their fair name, bad we ever been left to dine twice under the 
 same roof. Our manner of passing the time was as follows. 
 We used to rise at early dawn, lock up the bouse, and go out in 
 the pure cool air of the morning to some quiet spot among the 
 neighbouring palm-groves, or scale the wall of some garden, or 
 pass right on through the b5^e-lanes to where cultivation merges 
 in the adjoining sands of the valley ; in short, to any convenient 
 place where we might hope to pass an hour of quiet undisturbed 
 by Arab sociability, and have leisure to plan our work for the 
 day. We would then return home about sunrise, and find out- 
 side the door some tall lad sent by bis father, generally one of 
 the wealthier and more influential inhabitants of the quarter, 
 yet unvisited by us, waiting our return, to invite us to an early 
 breakfast. We would now accompany our Mercury to his domi- 
 cile, where a hearty reception, and some neighbours collected 
 for the occasion, or attracted by a cup of good coffee, (at which 
 any true Arab would make a spring were it placed on the other 
 side of the bottomless pit, more surely than an Englishman 
 would at his roast beef,) were sure to be in attendance. Here 
 an hour or so would wear away, and some medical or mercantile 
 transaction be sketched out. We of course would bring the 
 conversation, whenever it was possible, on local topics, according 
 as those present seemed likely to afford us exacter knowledge 
 and insight into the real state and circumstances of the land. 
 We would then return to our own quarters, where a crowd 
 of customers awaiting us, would allow us neither rest nor 
 pause till noon. Then a short interval for date or pumpkin 
 eating in some neighbour's bouse would occur, and after that 
 business be again resumed for three or four hours. A walk 
 among the gardens, rarely alone, more often in company with
 
 Chap. II] THE DJOWF 73 
 
 friends and acquaintances, would follow ; and meanwhile an in- 
 vitation to supper somewhere had unfailingly been given and 
 accepted. 
 
 This important meal is here, as almost everywhere else in 
 Arab towns, a little before sunset. The staple article of Djowf 
 fare, and in Djebel Sbomer also, is Djereeshah, that is, wheat 
 coarsely ground, and then boiled ; butter and meat are added, 
 sometimes vegetables, gourds, cucumbers, and the like; eggs, 
 hard-boiled by the way, occasionally come in ; but however 
 various the items, the whole is piled up heapwise on one large 
 copper dish, of circular form, and often a foot and a half or even 
 two feet in diameter. The food itself is served scalding hot, but 
 is to be eaten with the hand alone ; not that any philosophical 
 or moral objection exists to forks and spoons, as I have seen 
 ingeniously stated by an author — French, of course — but simply 
 that those articles are not to be had here, nor are they indeed 
 any way requisite where soup and joints of roast meat are alike 
 out of the question. Bread never iigures at a Djowf supper, 
 though it is common enough at breakfast. This article assumes 
 in Arabia infinite varieties of form and quality ; here it consists 
 of large unleavened cakes of a moderate thickness, less than that 
 of the Jewish Massoth in these times. Dates are often added to 
 represent garnish at supper; from what meal indeed are they 
 . absent ? No drink but water is known hereabouts, though date- 
 tree wine might easily be manufactured, and the old poets and 
 writers of Northern Arabia often mention it ; but it has now gone 
 out of fashion, and even remembrance. 
 
 After supper all rise, wash their hands, and then go out into the 
 open air to sit and smoke a quiet pipe under the still transparent 
 sky of the summer evening. Neither mist nor vapour, much 
 less a cloud, appears ; the moon dips down in silvery whiteness 
 to the very verge of the palm-tree tops, and the last rays of day- 
 light are almost as sharp and clear as the dawn itself. Chat and 
 society continue for an hour or two, and then every one goes 
 home, most to sleep, I fancy, for few Penseroso lamps are here 
 to be seen at midnight hour, nor does the spirit of Plato stand 
 much risk of unsphering from the nocturnal studies of the 
 Djowf; we, to write our journal, or to compare observations and 
 estimate characters.
 
 74 THE DJOWF [Chap. II 
 
 Sometimes a comfortable landed proprietor would invite us 
 to pass an extemporary holiday morning in his garden, or rather 
 orchard, there to eat grapes and enjoy ourselves at will, seated 
 under clustering vine-trellises, with palm-trees above and run- 
 ning streams around. How pleasant it was after the desert ! 
 At other times visits of patients, prescriptions, and similar duties 
 would take up a part of the day ; or some young fellow, par- 
 ticularly desirous of information about Syria or Egypt, to 
 which he might have a mind to travel on a "spree," or perhaps 
 curious after history and moral science, would hold us for a 
 couple of hours in serious and sensible talk, at any rate to our 
 advantage. 
 
 We were known to all for Christians, and welcomed as such ; 
 but very seldom does an Arab render himself guilty of the 
 " indiscretion " of talking in a personal way about religion to a 
 stranger ; though a more general style of discussion, accom- 
 panied by distant and hardly perceptible allusions to the parties 
 present, is not uncommon. Of our medical or mercantile 
 character very few affected to doubt. However, some more 
 malicious or more perspicacious than the rest, suspected some- 
 thing too near the truth to be precisely pleasant or safe for us, 
 and whispered Hamood that the two Syrians or Egyptians were 
 at bottom " mufsideen," that is, " innovators," or revolutionists, 
 whom it would be good service to the country to put effectually 
 out of the way. But the governor took a more favourable, if 
 not a more correct, view of our case, and answered that we had 
 as yet given no indications of innovating or revolutionary con- 
 duct, and that mere suspicions could not be deemed sufticient 
 warrant for extreme measures ; that, besides, we were on our way 
 to Tela], whose clear-sightedness was not to be imposed on 
 by any " mufsideen " soever ; and who, should we be really such, 
 would not fail soon to find us out, and treat us according to our 
 deserts. And with such replies he dismissed the informers, who 
 belonged, I need hardly say, to the fanatic or Wahhabee 
 faction. 
 
 Such a faction does really exist even here, but it is far from 
 prevalent. Of the policy which leads Telal to tolerate that 
 party in his dominions, and sometimes to encourage, sometimes 
 repress, and of the influence exerted l)y it on the governpient
 
 Chap. II] THE DJOWF y^ 
 
 and people, we shall find fitter occasion to speak when arrived 
 at the monarch's residence, Ha'yel. 
 
 Let us now pay our official visit to Hamood. To this Ghafil, 
 after delaying as long as he decently could, at last consented on 
 the fourth day after our arrival. We accordingly set out from 
 his house all together, in great state and gravity, accompanied by 
 a bevy of Haboob kinsmen, and wound for a full quarter of an 
 hour through narrow garden alleys, overshaded by palms and 
 moist with flowing waters, till we emerged on a large open 
 space just at the rise of the castle mound. On one side, but at 
 some distance, rose the solitary round tower of " Marid," or 
 " the Rebellious," whose massive stone walls are more than once 
 mentioned in Arab poetry. But its architecture offers no trace 
 of Grreek or Roman skill ; it is clearly the work of Arab labour 
 and on an Arab plan, and being such presents but little to the 
 study of the artist or the archaeologist. However, the actual 
 tenants of the soil, themselves incapable of similar constructions, 
 gaze on it with an admiration in which a European can hardly 
 share. 
 
 To avoid, however, all injustice to Arab architecture and arts, 
 we ought to remark that this district, including Teymah and 
 Djebel Shomer, has always been among all the inhabited por- 
 tions of the Peninsula the most backward in the march of 
 civilization both in time and degree, and inferior not only in 
 building-craft, but in every other acquirement, to the centre, 
 south, and east of the land. Nor is the reason far to seek. A 
 fertile soil is generally the first condition and often the propor- 
 tional measure, at least for the time, of the civilization of a 
 people. Thus the three most productive spots known in the 
 early world, namely, Egypt, the valley of Euphrates, and that 
 of the G-anges, are also the first recorded cradles of art and 
 science ; while the forests and swamps of Grermany, the steppes 
 of Russia, and the Mongolian plateau, long remained — indeed, 
 the last still remains so — far behind in the " increasing purpose " 
 of the ages, abodes of barbarism, and but tardily accessible 
 to advancement. Now of all the districts into which Arabia is 
 geographically or politically divided, that of which we are now 
 speaking, and whose principal centres lie at the Djowf, Shomer, 
 and Teymah, is in a general way the least fertile; the desert
 
 76 THE LJOWF [Chap. II 
 
 itself, of course, always excepted. Nejed, more favoured by 
 nature, far outstripped these northerly tracts in arts also, and 
 was herself in her turn outdone by the still more fertile Hnsa, 
 while 'Oman and Yemen, the two provinces of the Peninsula 
 richest in natural resources, became also at an early date pos- 
 sessors of civilization and attainments far surpassing those of all 
 other regions then tenanted by the Arab race. In a word, 
 though man may complete, nature must take the lead. I am 
 aware that to this rule a few exceptions may indeed be adduced, 
 but here special causes have been probably at work. 
 
 Below us where we now stand on the uprising ground of the 
 citadel lie the ruined dwellings of the chiefs of Haboob, 
 slaughtered or exiled ; and all around them the stumps of palm- 
 trees cut down or burnt, and the traces of now un watered gardens 
 bear witness to the late war. Above in front of us rises the 
 castle itself, now the residence of Hamood. It is a large irregular 
 mass of rough masonry, patched up and added to again and again, 
 till its original rectangular form has almost disappeared. Indeed, 
 the southerly side is the only one that has preserved its first line 
 of construction tolerably unbroken, and here the huge size and 
 exact squaring of the stones in the lower tiers indicates the early 
 date of the fabric, while several small windows, at a height of 
 about ten or twelve feet from the ground, are topped by what, if 
 I remember right, is called the Cyclopean arch — a specimen of 
 which may yet be seen in the so-called Palace of Atreus at 
 Mycense — that most primitive of constructions, in which two flat 
 stones are placed slantways against each other. Near the centre 
 of the castle stands a square tower, very broad for its height, 
 which hardly exceeds fifty feet, while the sides have each a 
 breadth of twenty, or thereabouts. It seems to belong to a later 
 period than the southern wall, and has narrow loopholes for 
 defence. A large semicircular curtain, coming round from this 
 keep to a corner of the outer enclosure, is evidently of yet more 
 recent fabrication, being built roughly and unsymmetrically 
 with rubble and coarse blocks, whereas in the stonework of the 
 tower some attempt at regularity has been kept up. The en- 
 trance gate, placed at the southern angle of this motley pile, seems 
 coeval with the main tower rather than with the older remains ; 
 it is arched, and in this differs from the style used in Nejed,
 
 Chap. II] THE DJOWF 77 
 
 where doors and roofs alike are always flat ; a projecting parapet 
 crowns it above, and its approach is somewhat guarded Ly the 
 flanking walls, between which it retreats a little. Within, the 
 castle courts and galleries are paved with large irregular flags, 
 well fitted together, much like what we see in some streets of 
 Florence ; and the passages that lead to the interior are long, 
 dark, and vaulted. Here on one of the lateral walls I noticed 
 two deeply cut crosses, certainly of ancient date, and such as 
 not unfrequently occur amid the ruins of Hauran in Syria; 
 they supply an additional testimony to the prevalence of the 
 Christian religion here in a former age. 
 
 The entrances, at the moment of our arrival, were almost filled 
 up by the attendants of Hamood, all armed with swords or guns, 
 and tolerably well dressed, but without any distinctive badge or 
 livery. We passed through the midst of them, receiving the 
 stares of the idle and the salutations of the polite, till we reached 
 a second inner court, close under the keep just described, and 
 there Hamood was seated in his K'hawah, or reception room, a 
 large and gloomy apartment, with high raised seats of stone 
 against the two sides farthest from the fireplace ; this last was 
 placed, as usual, in the corner farthest from the entrance. 
 
 There, in the place of distinction, which he never yields to 
 any individual of Djowf, whatever be his birth or wealth, appeared 
 the governor, a strong, broad-shoiddered, dark-browed, dark-eyed 
 man, clad in the long white shirt of the country, and over it a 
 handsome black cloak, embroidered with crimson silk ; on his 
 august head a silken handkerchief or Keffee'yeh, girt by a white 
 band of finely woven camel's hair ; and in his fingers a grass fan. 
 He rose graciously on our approach, extended to us the palm of 
 his hand, and made us sit down near his side, keeping, however, 
 Ghufil, as an old acquaintance, between himself and us, perhaps 
 as a precautionary arrangement against any sudden assault or 
 treasonable intention on our part, for an Arab, be he who he 
 may, is never off his guard when new faces are in presence. In 
 other respects he showed us much courtesy and good will, made 
 many civil enquiries about our health after so fatiguing a journey, 
 praised Damascus and the Damascenes, by way of an . indirect 
 compliment, and offered us a lodging in the castle. But here 
 Ghafil availed himself of the j)rivileges conceded by Arab
 
 78 THE DJOWF [CnAr. II 
 
 custom to priority of hostship to put in his negative on our 
 behalf; nor were we anxious to press the matter. A pound or 
 so of our choicest coffee, with which we on this occasion pre- 
 sented his excellency, Loth as a mute witness to the object of 
 our journey, and the better to secure his good will, was accepted 
 very readily by the great man, who in due return offered us his 
 best services. We replied that we stood in need of nothing save 
 his long life, this being the Arab formula for rejoinder to such fair 
 speeches ; and, next in order, of means to get safe on to Ha'yel 
 so soon as our business at the Djowf should permit, being 
 desirous to establish ourselves under the immediate patronage 
 of Telal. In this he promised to aid us, and he kept his word. 
 Of course coffee was served and dates eaten. Meanwhile the 
 three men of Shomer, whom I have mentioned as Hamood's 
 council or check-weight, after keeping silence awhile where 
 they sat on the raised stone platform opposite to the governor, 
 now entered into familiar conversation. They were all three 
 well-lookino' middle-aofed individuals, wearins^ the lisjht cotton 
 handkerchief spotted with red or blue, which is almost peculiar 
 to Djebel Shomer, and everything in their personal appearance 
 bespoke a degree of culture and intelligence placing them con- 
 siderably above the inhabitants of the Djowf, and even above 
 Hamood himself, who, although prudent and skilful enough in 
 his affairs, is yet half a Bedouin in manners, and thereby all 
 the better suited to the peo^Dle he rules. With much ease and 
 ofif-handedness they drew us into talk, showed great intei'est in 
 our well-doing, and united in encouraging us to lose no time in 
 making our way to Ha'yel, where they assured us of an excellent 
 welcome from Telal. This was the first time that we heard the 
 genuine Arabic of the interior spoken, and we were both of us 
 much struck by its extreme purity and grace, accompanied by 
 an extreme elegance of enunciation ; it is in fact the language 
 of the Coran, neither more nor less, with all its niceties, inflections, 
 and desinences, not one is lost or slurred over. Our ears were 
 further charmed by the desire they manifested to witness some 
 display of medical skill, and by the jiromise that our art would 
 be duly appreciated and earnestly sought after in Djebel Shomer, 
 while Telal himself was by their account a sort of Augustus and 
 Maecenas in one, and not a whit less superior to Hamood than
 
 Chap. II] THE BJOWF 79 
 
 the town of Ha'yel to the semi -Bedouin village where we now 
 were. 
 
 Close by these lords of the privy council sat the Metowwaa', 
 or minister — clergyman, if you will, (the literal meaning of the 
 Arabic word is, " one who enforces obedience," to Grod, under- 
 stood,)— an old sour-faced gentleman sent hither to teach the men 
 of Djowf their catechism, and little liked either by his scholars 
 or his companions ; a circumstance nowise tending to improve 
 his habitually bad temper. In a Friday's sermon, at which I was 
 present, he gave vent to his zealous wrath at the irremediable 
 lukewarmness of the Djowfite Gallios, and threatened them with 
 such an outpouring of Divine vengence, that he quite overdid 
 his subject, and provoked a sarcastic laugh where he calculated 
 on terror and contrition. From this worthy, as my readers may 
 expect, we met with no especial tokens of benevolence. 
 
 During the eighteen days which went by in the Djowf, 
 Hamood, with all his council, very politely returned our visit ; 
 and we on our part made frequent excursions to the castle, and 
 more than once partook of its hospitality, or passed a spare hour 
 in studying the various and interesting scenes it presented. 
 For Hamood, in virtue of his judicial and executive powers, 
 held every morning, and some afternoons also, long audiences 
 in behalf of whoever had grievances to redress or claims to 
 advance ; the contending parties would on such occasions come 
 to plead their cause in person before him in the K'hawah ; and 
 the governor himself, after a patient hearing, would pronounce 
 sentence. I ought to say that cases of life and death, along 
 with all permanent legislative acts, are reserved for the head 
 jurisdiction of Ha'yel ; whatever falls short of these is left to the 
 vicegerent, who has accordingly plenty of work to go through, 
 the more so that it has almost all to be done personally. A 
 lawyer would have but an indifferent chance of livelihood in 
 Arabia, where every one, the very Bedouins included, has 
 eloquence and presence of mind enough to defend his own 
 cause ; and the chicane of courts would be of little purpose in 
 such an assembly, though bribery is not always absent nor 
 unsuccessful. I was much amused by the simplicity and 
 straightforwardness of all parties in these tribunals ; a court- 
 martial is complicated in comparison. But when the plaintiff
 
 8o THE DJOWF [Cn.vr. II 
 
 or defendant chances to be a Bedouin, we have a thorough 
 comedy ; the following, for instance. 
 
 One day my comrade and myself were on a visit of mere 
 politeness at the castle, the customary ceremonies had been gone 
 through, and business, at first interrupted by our entrance, had 
 resumed its course, A Bedouin of the Ma'az tribe was pleading 
 his cause before Hamood, and accusing some one of having 
 forcibly taken away his camel. The governor was seated with 
 an air of intense gravity in his corner, half leaning on a 
 cushion, while the Bedouin, cross-legged on the ground before 
 him, and within six feet of his person, flourished in his hand 
 a large reaping-hook, identically that which is here used for 
 cutting grass. Energetically gesticulating with this graceful 
 implement, he thus challenged his judge's attention. " You, 
 Hamood, do you hear ? " (stretching out at the same time the 
 hook towards the governor, so as almost to reach his body, as 
 though he meant to rip him open) ; " he has taken from me my 
 camel ; have you called God to mind ? " (again putting his 
 weapon close to the unflinching magistrate) ; " the camel is my 
 camel ; do you hear ? " (with another reminder from the reaping- 
 hook) ; " he is mine, by God's award and yours too ; do you hear, 
 child?" and so on, while Hamood sat without moving a muscle 
 of face or limb, imperturbable and impassible, till some one of 
 the 'counsellors quieted the plaintiff, with " Eemember God, 
 child ; it is of no consequence, you shall not be wronged." 
 Then the judge called on the witnesses, men of the Djowf, to 
 say their say, and on their confirmation of the Bedouin's state- 
 ment, gave orders to two of his satellites to search for and bring 
 before him the accused party ; while he added to the Ma'azee, 
 *' All right, daddy, you shall have your own ; put3'our confidence 
 in God," and composedly motioned him back to his place. 
 
 Of the practical working of this kind of administration, and 
 the character it often assumes, we shall be better able to speak, 
 and my readers to judge, when we exchange the miniature for 
 the full-size, Hamood for Telal. 
 
 Within the castle limits is enclosed the spacious Mesjid, or 
 Mosque, constructed by order of 'Obeyd when on his first visit to 
 theDjowf. But though large, it is a very simple and unadorned 
 construction, being nothing more than a sort of portico, fourteen
 
 CnAP. II] THE DJOWF 8i 
 
 columns in length by three in depth ; and since the space from 
 pillar to pillar is about twelve feet, the entire edifice may be a 
 hundred and eighty long, and nearly forty broad. The supports 
 are of wood, the walls of earth, and the roof of flat rafters. In 
 this meeting-place the stated Friday prayers are read, and the 
 Khotbah or stereotyped sermon pronounced ; all who can attend 
 ought to do so ; but Hamood takes little pains to enforce such 
 regularity ; and in absence of positive constraint, the orthodox 
 injunctions to attendance have too feeble an echo in Djowf 
 hearts to bring about even a tolerable assembly. The sultan's 
 name, 'Abd-el-'Azeez Khan, is mentioned in the Khotbah, 
 and that is all his Ottoman Majesty gets of subjection from the 
 Djowf, or indeed throughout the dominions of Telal. Farther 
 south the lord of the two continents and of the two seas, 
 as he styles himself, is denied even the empty honour of name 
 or recognition. It may be of some consolation to the Grreat 
 Turk, should he know it, that the coin of liis mint passes 
 current here, and so does also the European ; but in the centre 
 and east he and his money are equally unrecognized. 
 
 Ten days of active intercourse and varied conversation had 
 not gone by before we were masters of whatever information we 
 more particularly desired at the Djowf. A rising civilization, 
 contending against preceding and surrounding barbarism, a 
 simple organization just put in place of absolute chaos, a tinc- 
 tiu'e of Mahometanism, nay, even of Wahhabee fanaticism, thin- 
 laid here and there over Arab materialism and indifference, a 
 love of commerce and advancement, gaining gi-ound, though 
 slowly, over habits of spoil and rapine ; much hospitality and 
 little good faith, sufficient politeness and no morals, such was 
 this province in the summer of 1862, and such we soon under- 
 stood it to be. Meanwhile the glimpse we had already caught 
 of the natives of Djebel Shomer, along with all that we heard 
 of their country and of its ruler, led us to believe that whatever 
 reward awaited our laborious curiosity must needs lie there. 
 For of inner Nejed and 'Oman we as yet knew no more than 
 most in Syria do, that is, very little. So that, in conclusion, all 
 our desire was to quit the Djowf and advance to Ha'yel without 
 loss of time. 
 
 Besides, all the good will of the people towards us and all 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 THE DJOWF [Cn-vr. II 
 
 their hospitality, could not free us from many annoyances and 
 from serious privations. I have said that a wearisome fever had 
 hung about me through the whole of our desert journey, and 
 though comparative rest and an excellent climate, fresh grapes 
 and running water, had at last made it quit its hold, my health 
 stood in need, or at least I thought so, of something better than 
 half-boiled meat, bad Djereeschah, and dates, even though the 
 dates of Djowf. Now all agreed that at Ha'yel much else and 
 of better quality was to be had in the way of provisions ; our 
 hopes were even flattered by a rumour of leavened bread. 
 Moreover, continual haggling about the price of cloth and 
 looking-glasses, innumerable little intrigues of our honoured 
 customers to get our wares at the lowest value, and last, not 
 least, the pretensions of the overbearing Ghafil to regulate 
 everything after his own will and pleasure, and for his own 
 profit, could not but tire in the long run. I must add, though 
 I regret to say it, that we had continually to see and hear 
 such barefaced demonstrations of the grossest licentiousness of 
 manners, to be almost or quite witnesses of so many domestic 
 or imdomestic intrigues, of such very loose conversation and 
 vicious practice, that a Villiers might have been ashamed of it 
 and a Wycherley disgusted. 
 
 Now all this we needs had to bear, without the smallest 
 sign of amazement or displeasure, under penalty of belying 
 our character of travelling Arab quacks or pedlars, who are 
 naturally enough supposed to be fully inured to such society. 
 The necessity of keeping up to the life this same character 
 obliged us to appear, if possible, equally tenacious of gain, 
 equally anxious not to be overreached in a bargain for cotfee 
 or physic, for cloth or attendance, as these good folks them- 
 selves were to overreach us. It was, in Scotch phrase, " a kittle 
 part to play," and we could not but repeat to ourselves more 
 than once, " This is the goodliest sport ! would it were done." 
 
 Only in a passing way I would beg leave to deprecate 
 the censure of any strait-laced reader who may be inclined to 
 blame us for not having cut short improper tales with moral 
 sentences, or edified the Djowf with a public sermon against 
 vice and immorality. Nor does any other apology appear needful 
 in our behalf, beyond that implied in certain old sayings as to not
 
 Chap. II] THE DJOWF 83 
 
 giving everything' indiscriminately to the dogs, or casting pearls 
 before such and such animals ; as it must, I think, by this time 
 be sufficiently clear that had we acted otherwise, both the adage 
 itself and the consequences intimated as likely to ensue on its 
 non-observance would have received a very thorough-going 
 illustration, much to our own cost, and very little to the benefit 
 of any one else. 
 
 With two families alone were we really at our ease, and in a 
 manner at home ; they were that of Dafee, the same who along 
 with Ghafil came to meet us on our first arrival ; and that of 
 Salim, a respectable, and, in his way, a literary old man, our 
 near neighbour, and surrounded by a large family of fine 
 strapping youths, all of them brought up more or less in the 
 fear of Grod and in good example. Hither we used to retire 
 when wearied of Grhafil and his like, and pass a quiet hour in 
 their K'hawah, reciting or hearing Arab poetry, talking over the 
 condition of the country and its future prospects, discussing 
 points of morality, or commenting on the ways and fashions of 
 the day. In either of these houses we were always sure of 
 finding a hearty welcome and a reluctant farewell ; and when 
 afterwards far off in Ha'yel we continued to receive messages 
 from Dafee and Srdim to beg the realization of our ambiguous 
 and indefinite promises of a future return. 
 
 However, in very truth, all, or almost all, were our friends at 
 heart, and really meant us well, with a hearty desire to see us 
 established among them. Proffers of partnership in business, 
 nay, of marriage alliance, were not uncommon, and we had to 
 defend ourselves more strenuously than Ulysses against the 
 charms of more than one half-unveiled Calypso. Even Ghafil 
 was, to a certain extent, sincere ; and it is a general feature in 
 the Arab character, that the heartiest friendship and the most 
 profuse generosity are nowise incompatible with a hard bargain 
 or taking an advantage in affairs, of which this worthy's conduct 
 was an excellent illustration. 
 
 But how were we to get on to Djebel Shomer ? Between it 
 and us lay the formidable sand-passes, called the Nefood, where 
 Arab travellers, however bold, are in no hurry to adventure at 
 any season of the year, and to pass which in the latter half of 
 July might be reckoned almost as difficult an exploit, though 
 
 G 2
 
 84 THE DJO IFF [Cn.vr. II 
 
 for a somewhat contrary reason, as to sail tlirongh Behring's 
 Straits in tlie mouth of January. In fact, from May to 
 September few and far between are those who commit their 
 beasts or themselves to the hazards of these burning sands. So 
 that to all our enquiries on this subject, " wait till the dates be 
 ripe " was the only answer, and these same dates were not to 
 ripen till the rise of Solieyl, or Canopus, here coincident with 
 the first week of September, and the beginning of the new year 
 in popular computation. 
 
 "What to do?" as I once heard a Frenchman say, thus 
 translating his "quoi faire?" a thought too literally into Eng- 
 lish. We did not well know, only we were terribly annoyed at 
 the prospect of so long a delay, when Providence furnished ns 
 with a very favourable and unlooked-for opportunit}^ of accom- 
 plishing our wishes. 
 
 Telal, soon after taking possession of the Djowf, had begun to 
 use that province as a basis for extending his power thence over 
 the whole of the surrounding desert and its indwellers, up to 
 the Pilgrim road on the west and Syria on the north. Tl.e 
 intervening space is, as we have already seen, occupied chiefly by 
 the Sherarat Bedouins. A little farther on three powerful 
 tribes, the Howeytat, the Tey'yahha, and the Ru'ala, with some 
 less important clans, like Bishr and INIa'az, form an outer circle. 
 Towards all these last the prudent ruler of Djebel Shomer 
 contented himself with employing for the moment negotiation 
 and intimidation, while against the Sherarat he directed an 
 open attack, terminated the very year of our visit, 1862, by the 
 submission of the 'Azzam, the last independent branch of the 
 tribe- Just at this nick of time about a dozen chiefs of that 
 clan arrived at the Djowf, on their way to Djebel Shomer, where 
 they purposed to win Telal's good graces by tendering him their 
 allegiance in his very capital. Hamood received them, and 
 lodged them for several days, while they rested from their past 
 fatigues, and prepared themselves for what yet lay before them. 
 Some inhabitants of the Djowf, whose business required their 
 presence at Ha'yel, were to join the party. Hamood sent for us, 
 and gave us notice of this expedition, and on our declaring that 
 we desired to profit by it, he handed us a scrap of paper, 
 addressed to TelTd himself, wherein he certified that we had
 
 Chap. II] THE DJOWF 85 
 
 duly paid the entrance fee exacted from strangers on their 
 coming within the limits of Shomer rule, and that we were 
 indeed respectable individuals, worthy of all good treatment. 
 Now, as the toll thus levied on the frontiers amounts to only 
 four shillings or somewhat less per individual, one cannot say 
 that it is too much to pay in quittance of all custom-house 
 duties or passport fees soever. Nor is anything else required 
 or expected. We then, in presence of Hamootl, struck our 
 bargain with one of the band for a couple of camels, whose 
 price, including all the services of their master as guide and 
 companion for ten days of July travelling, was not extravagant 
 either ; it came up to just a hundred and ten piastres, equiva- 
 lent to eighteen or nineteen shillings of English money. 
 
 We now laid in provisions for the way in dates and flour, 
 repaired our water-skins, recovered what arrears of debt yet 
 remained in our favour, and awaited the moment for starting; 
 while our Djowf friends did their best to dissuade us from such 
 a journey at such a season. As we could not of course explain 
 to them our precise reasons for so ill-timed an adventure, our 
 obstinacy in rejecting their well-meant advice seemed almost 
 incomprehensible ; till they ended by setting it down to our 
 being "Sho'wam" or Damascenes; the inhabitants of Syria in 
 general, and those of the capital yet more specially, being- 
 famous for headiness and the spirit of contradiction. 
 
 Many delays occurred, and it was not till the 18th of July, 
 when the figs were fully ripe — a circumstance which furnished 
 the natives of Djowf with new cause of wonder at our rushing 
 away, in lieu of waiting like rational beings to enjoy the good 
 things of the land — that we received our final " Son of Hodeirah, 
 depart." This was intimated to us, not by a locust, but by 
 a creature almost as queer, namely, our new conductor, a half- 
 cracked Arab, neither peasant nor Bedouin, but something 
 anomalous between the two, hight Djedey', and a native of the 
 outskirts of Djebel Shomer, who darkened our door in the fore- 
 noon, and warned us to make our final packing up and get ready 
 for starting the same day. Near the hour called by Arabs the 
 'Asr, that is, between three and four after midday, we took 
 leave of our neighbours and mounted our camels, now much 
 lighter laden than when we set out for Ma'an, while Dafee,
 
 86 THE DJOWF [CnAr. II 
 
 'Okeyl (the eldest son of Gluifil, for his father was just then 
 absent from the Djowf on a hunting party), and some othiors of 
 our acquaintance, accompanied us, according to Eastern custom, 
 for a short way on the outset of our journey, heartily sorry 
 to see us go, and wuth many invitations for a prompt return. 
 " Insha' Allah," " if God wills," was our reply. What better 
 could we say ? 
 
 When once clear of the houses and gai'deus, Djedey' led us by 
 a road skirting the southern side of the valley, till we arrived, 
 defore sunset, at the other or eastern extremity of the town. 
 Here was the rendezvous agreed on by our companions ; but 
 they did not appear, and reason good, for they had right to a 
 supper more under Hamood's roof, and were loth to lose it. So 
 we halted and alighted alone. The chief of this quarter, which 
 is above two miles distant from the castle, invited us to supper, 
 and thence we returned to our baggage, there to sleep. To pass 
 a summer's night in the open air on a soft sand-bed implies no 
 great privation in these countries, nor is any one looked on as a 
 hero for so doing. 
 
 Early next morning, while Venus yet shone like a drop of 
 melted silver on the slaty blue, three of our party arrived and 
 announced that the rest of our companions would soon come 
 up. Encouraged by the news, we determined to march on 
 without further tarrying, and ere sunrise we climbed the steep 
 ascent of the southerly bank, whence we had a magnificent 
 view of the whole length of the Djowf, its castle and towers, its 
 groves and gardens, in the ruddy light of morning, and beyond 
 the drear northern deserts stretching far away. We then 
 dijDped down the other side of the bordering hill, not again to 
 see the Djowf till — who know^s when? 
 
 Our way was now to the south-east, across a large plain 
 varied with sand-mounds and covered with the Ghada bush 
 already described, so that our camels were much more inclined 
 to crop pasture than to do their business in journeying ahead. 
 About noon we halted near a large tuft of this shrub, at least 
 ten feet high. We constructed a sort of cabin with boughs 
 broken off the neighbouring plants and suitably arranged shed- 
 wise, and thus passed the noon liours of intolerable heat till the 
 whole band came in sicfht.
 
 CnAP. II] THE DJOWF 87 
 
 They were barbarous, uay, almost savage fellows, like most 
 Sherarat, whether chiefs or people ; but they had beeu some- 
 what awed by the grandeurs of Hamood, and yet more so by 
 the prospect of coming so soon before the terrible majesty of 
 Telal himself; for such a prince, of however small account in 
 European ideas, is, if I may be allowed the expression, a Yery 
 God Almighty for a Bedouin. " Who is your Grod ? "• said an 
 Arab traveller of my acquaintance to a Mesaleekh nomade, not 
 far from Basra. " It was Fadee," answered the man, naming a 
 powerful provincial governor of those lands, lately deceased ; 
 " but since his death I really do not know who is Gfod at the 
 present moment." My readers (who may, perhaps, remember 
 a parallel saying in North Wales, namely, " When Gr — dies, 
 Sir Watkin will succeed him ") will, I hope, excuse the ap- 
 parent irreverence of the story. But the Bedouin, poor fellow, 
 was not irreverent in meaning, though incorrect in phrase. 
 
 Our Sherarat were all duly armed, and had put on their best 
 suits of apparel, an equipment worthy of a scarecrow or an 
 Irishman at a wake. Tattered red overalls ; cloaks with more 
 patches than original substance, or, worse yet, which opened 
 laj-ge mouths to cry for patching, but had not got it ; little 
 broken tobacco pipes, and no trowsers soever (by the way, all 
 genuine Arabs are sans culottes) ; faces meagre with habitual 
 hunger, and black with dirt and weather stains ; — such were the 
 high-born chiefs of 'Azzam, on their way to the king's levee. 
 Along with them were two Bedouins of the Shomer tribe, a 
 degree better in guise and person than the Sherarat ; and lastly, 
 three men of Djowf, who looked almost like gentlemen among 
 such ragamuffins. As to my comrade and myself, I trust that 
 the reader will charitably suppose us the exquisites of the party. 
 So we rode on together. 
 
 Next morning, a little after sunrise, we arrived at a white 
 calcareous valley, girt around with low hills of marl and sand. 
 Here was the famous Be'er Shekeek, or " well of Shekeek," 
 whence we were to fill our water-skins, and that thoroughly, 
 since no other source lay before us for four days' march amid 
 the sand passes, up to the very verge of Djebel Shomer. This 
 well is very deep, eighty feet at least, judging by the length of 
 cord let down into it before reaching water ; it is about three
 
 88 THE DJOWF [Chap. II 
 
 feet iu breadth at its orifice, though widening out cistern-like 
 below. Around it is a raised stone parapet, and the interior 
 also is coated with masonry. Early writers mention it, and 
 attest its ancient date, though nothing is known of the Shekeek, 
 who has given it name ; if one asks the Arabs of the country, 
 they will answer, " It is a work of the Christians ;" and thus 
 much indeed they say throughout the whole of Northern Arabia 
 of every ancient and solid construction, be it what it may. Nor 
 are they perhaps altogether in the wrong. For the principal 
 clans of this neighbourhood, Ta'i, Taghleb, and Tenookh, were, 
 the latter entirely, and the two former in great part, of the 
 Christian faith, nor that in a passing way, but for many centuries 
 toofether. 
 
 Literature, monuments, and oral tradition, to which last the 
 peculiar isolation of Arabia gives more value than it can well claim 
 elsewhere, concur to show that long before Mahometanism took 
 rise, Christianity was pretty widely diffused throughout Northern 
 Arabia, not to mention the Nejran of Yemen and Hadramaut ; 
 and no less that this country was then far more populous and 
 enjoying a higher degree of prosperity and civilization than has 
 since been its lot. The obvious inference, that Christianity as 
 such is somehow connected with national well-being and advance- 
 ment, has not escaped Arabian political economists, many of 
 whom go so far as to draw from it a practical conclusion, whoso 
 expediency they readily acknowledge, though many and weighty 
 obstacles might occur to its execution. Yet Avere it one day or 
 other to find such execution, I for one should be not sur- 
 prised, after what I have heard and seen in several localities, 
 though, indeed, a similar event could only, it would seem, be 
 brought about by indigenous action on native ground. For 
 between Asiatics and Europeans in general there is but little 
 sympathy and less amalgamation ; a truth of which, to overstep 
 for a moment the Arabian frontier, a marked example may be 
 but too clearly read in the blood-stained annals of the late Indian 
 rebellion. Besides, so little is the East and its inhabitants 
 vmderstood by the West, so few in the latter have of the former 
 even that degree of knowledge which is the first necessary step 
 to influence, that I do not see much probability of serious moral 
 or religious change being brought about in Arabia or in any
 
 Chap. II] THE DJOWF 89 
 
 Asiatic elsewhere by European agency, unless indeed for the 
 worse. But I find myself entering on a subject deeper than 
 Be'er Shekeek itself, and, perhaps, scarcely less dark for many 
 of my readers, so let us without delay emerge once more on the 
 ordinary light of day and the occurrences of the surface. 
 
 For while we have been thus philosophizing, our Arabs, 
 shouting, laughing, and pulling, have drawn up bucket after 
 bucket, and filled the skins to bursting. Noon too has passed, 
 and there is no time to lose ; indeed, the stock of water now laid 
 in will barely suffice its allotted period, especially in such a heat 
 as this. So we all mount our camels, who have been wisely for 
 once employed in storing a good provision of moisture in their 
 complicated stomachs, and pursue our way. In less than half 
 an hour we have cleared the chalky hollow, and enter at once 
 on the Nefood. But here, travellers and readers, let us pause 
 for a moment before encountering the severest fatigue of the 
 whole journey.
 
 90 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 The Nefood and Djebel Shomer 
 
 Per corrcr miglior acqii;i alza \c velo 
 Omai la navicolla del mio ingegno, 
 Che lascia dietro a se mar si cradele. — Dante 
 
 NEFOOD — GENERAL IDEA OF THE DESERT — DESCRIPTIOX OF THE NEFOOD — 
 CONDUCT OF THE BEDOtTINS IN OTTR PARTY — 'a.AXAJI-ES-Sa'aD — NEWS OF 
 'ONEYZAH — DISTAKT VIEW OF DJEBEL DJOBBAH — BAND OF SHOMER 
 HORSEMEN — DJOBBAH, IIS NEIGHBOURHOOD — THE GOVERNOR — 'AAKIL 
 — SECOND NEFOOD — SAND HOLLOW AND WELLS — DJEBEL SHOMER — 
 KENAH, LAKEETAH, AND W'OSEYTAH — MEANING OF THE AVORD " NEJED " — 
 FIRST VIEW OF Ha'YEL — THE PALACE, ITS BUILDINGS AND OUTER COURT 
 
 ATTEND.\JSrTS AND PEOPLE — SEYF THE CHAMBERLAIN — UNEXPECTED 
 
 RECOGNITION — TELAL's ARSENAL; HIS JBI'hIWAH — STATE PRISONERS — 
 TELIl's OWlf PERSON AND RETINUE — FIRST MEETING — SUPPER AND 
 LODGINGS — OUR POSITION — 'abD-EL-MAHSIN, HIS HISTORY AND CHARAC- 
 TER — HISTORY OF SHOMER — ITS EARLY POPULATION — CONDITION UNDER 
 THE CALIPHS — SUBSEQUENT ANARCHY — 'aBD-ALLAH-EBN-RASHEED — HIS 
 FIRST ATTEMPT AND ADVENTURES — HIS ENLISTMENT UNDER TURKEE-EBN- 
 SA'oOD at RIAD — EXPEDITION AGAINST HASA — 'aBD-ALLAH AND ME- 
 SHAREE — FOUNDATION OF THE NEW SHOMER DYNASTY — DESTRUCTION OF 
 BEYT-'ALEE — REIGN OF 'ABD-ALLAH — PRINCIPAL EVENTS — WARS AND 
 CONQUESTS — HE BEGINS THE NEW QUARTER AND PALACE OF Ha'YEL — 
 TELAL SUCCEEDS — HIS CONQUESTS — INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL POLICY — 
 POSITION TOAVARDS NEJED, THE OTTOMAN GOVERNMENT, EGYPT, AND PERSIA 
 — PERSONAL QUALITIES, AND FAMILY — AUDIENCE GIVEN TO THE 'aZZAM 
 SHERARAT. 
 
 Daughters of the Great Desert, to use an Arab phrase, the 
 " Nefood," or sand passes, bear but too strong a family resem- 
 blance to their imamial)le mother. What has been said 
 elsewhere about their origin, their extent, their bearings, and 
 their connection with the D'hana, or main sand waste of 
 the south, may exempt me from here entering on a minute 
 enarration of all their geographical details ; let it suffice for 
 the present that they are offshoots — inlets, one might not un- 
 suitably call them — of the great ocean of sand that covers about 
 one-third of the Peninsula, into whose central and comparatively 
 fertile plateau they make deep inroads, nay, in some places
 
 Chap. Ill] HA'YEL AND TELAL ni 
 
 almost intersect it. Their general character, of which the 
 following pages will, I trust, give a tolerably correct idea, is 
 also that of the Dahna, or '' red desert," itself. The Arabs, 
 always prone to localize rather than generalize, count these 
 sand-streams by scores, but they may all be referred to four 
 principal courses, and he who would traverse the centre must 
 necessarily cross two of them, perhaps even three, as we did. 
 
 The general type of Arabia is that of a central table-land, 
 surrounded by a desert ring, sandy to the south, west, and east, 
 and stony to the north. This outlying circle is in its turn girt by 
 a line of mountains, low and sterile for the most, but attaining 
 in Yemen and 'Oman considerable height, breadth, and fertility, 
 while beyond these a narrow rim of coast is bordered by the 
 sea. The surface of the midmost table-land equals somewhat 
 less than one-half of the entire Peninsula, and its special 
 demarcations are much affected, nay, often absolutely fixed, 
 by the windings and in-runnings of the Nefood. If to these 
 central high-lands, or Nejed, taking that word in its wider 
 sense, we add the Djowf, the Ta'yif, Djebel 'Aaseer, Yemen, 
 'Oman, and Hasa, in short, whatever spots of fertility belong 
 to the outer circles, we shall find that Arabia contains about 
 two-thirds of cultivated, or at least of cultivable land, with a 
 remaining third of irreclaimable desert, chiefly to the south. 
 In most other directions the great blank spaces often left in 
 njaps of this country are quite as frequently indications of 
 non-information as of real non-inhabitation. However, we 
 have just now a strip, though fortunately only a strip, of pure 
 unmitigated desert before us, after which better lands await 
 us ; and in this hope let us take courage with the old poet, 
 who has kindly furnished me with a very appropriate heading 
 to this chapter, and boldly enter the Nefood. 
 
 Much had we heard of them from Bedouins and countrymen, 
 so that we had made up our minds to something very terrible 
 and very impracticable. But the reality, especially in these 
 dog-days, proved worse than aught heard or imagined. 
 
 We were now traversing an immense ocean of loose reddisli 
 sand, unlimited to the eye, and heaped up in enormous ridges 
 running parallel to each other from north to south, undulation 
 after undulation, each swell two or three hundred feet in average
 
 92 THE XEFOOD AX J) DJEBEL SIIOMER [Chap, III 
 
 heiglit, witli slant sides and rounded crests furrowed in every 
 direction by the capricious gales of the desert. In the depths 
 between the traveller finds himself as it were imprisoned in a 
 suffocating sand-pit, hemmed in by burning walls on every side ; 
 while at other times, while labouring up the slope, he overlooks 
 what seems a vast sea of fire, swelling under a heavy monsoon 
 wind, and ruffled by a cross-blast into little red-hot waves. 
 Neither shelter nor rest for eye or limb amid torrents of light 
 and heat poured from above on an answering glare reflected 
 below. 
 
 Tale seendeva 1' eternalo ardore ; 
 Ondc la rena s' accendea com' esca 
 Sotto focile, a doppiar lo dolore. 
 
 Add to this the weariness of long summer days of toiling — I 
 might better say wading — through the loose and scorching soil, 
 on drooping half-stupefied beasts, with few and interrvipted hours 
 of sleep at night, and no rest by day because no shelter, little 
 to eat and less to drink, while the tepid and discoloured water in 
 the skins rapidly diminishes even more by evaporation than by 
 use, and a vertical sun, such a sun, strikes blazing down till 
 clothes, baggage, and housings all take the smell of burning, 
 and scarce permit the touch. " Were this eternal it were hell," 
 said I to my comrade, who, drooping on his camel, gave no 
 answer. The boisterous gaiety of the Bedouins was soon ex- 
 pended, and scattered, one to front, another behind, each 
 pursued his way in a silence only broken by the angry snarl of 
 the camels when struck, as they often were, to improve their 
 pace. 
 
 It was on the 20th of Jul}^, a little after noon, that we had 
 left Be'er Shekeek. The rest of that day and almost all night 
 we journeyed on, for here three or four hours of repose at a 
 time, supper included, was all that could be taken, since, if we 
 did not reach the other side of the Nefood before our store of 
 water was exhausted, we were lost for certain. Indeed, during 
 the last twenty-four hours of these passes, to call them by 
 their Arab name, we had only one hour of halt. Monday, the 
 21st of July, wore slowly away, most slowly it seemed, in the 
 same labour, and amid the same unvarying scene. The loose 
 sand hardly admits of any vegetation ; even the Ghada, which.
 
 Chap. Ill] HA'YEL AND TELAL ^j 
 
 like many other Euphorbias, seems hardly to require either 
 earth or moisture for its sustenance, is here scant and miserably 
 stunted ; none can afford either shelter or pasture. Sometimes 
 a sort of track appears, more often none ; the moving- surface 
 has long since lost the traces of those who last crossed it. 
 
 About this time we noticed in the manner of our Sherarat 
 companions, especially the younger ones, a certain insolent 
 familiarity which put us much on our guard ; for it is the custom 
 of the Bedouin, when meditating plunder or treachery, to try 
 the ground first in this fashion, and if he sees any signs of 
 timidity or yielding in his intended victim, he takes it as a 
 signal for proceeding further. The best plan in such cases is to 
 put on a sour face and keep silence, with now and then a sharp 
 reprimand by way of intimidation, and this often cows the 
 savage just as a barking dog will shrink back under a steady 
 look. Such was accordingly our conduct on the present 
 occasion. We kept apart for hours at a time, and when along- 
 side of the brigands, said little, and that little anything but 
 friendly. Before long the more impudent appeared abashed 
 or embarrassed and fell back, while an old 'Azzam chief, with 
 a dry face like a withered crab-apple, pushed his dromedary 
 up alongside of mine, under pretext of seeking medical advice, 
 but in reality to make thus a proffer of friendliness and respect. 
 Of course I met his advances with cold and sullen reserve ; and 
 hereon he began to apologize for the " Ghushm," "ill-bred 
 clowns " of his party, assuring us that they had, however, no 
 bad intention ; that it was merely want of good education ; that 
 all were our brothers, our servants, &c. &c. We received his 
 apology with an air of dignified importance, talked big of what 
 we could or would do — very little, I fear, had matters been 
 brought to the test — and then condescended to friendly chat and 
 professional information, according to what his ailments might 
 require or his intelligence admit. 
 
 But I afterwards learnt from the Shomer Bedouins and from 
 the men of Djowf, that the worthy Sherarats, supposing us to 
 have amassed great wealth under Hamood's patronage, had 
 seriously proposed to take the opportunity of this desert solitude 
 to pillage us, and then leave us without water or camels to find 
 our way out of the Nefood as best we might, that is, never.
 
 94 THE NEFOOD AND DJEBEL SIIOMER [Chap. Ill 
 
 This little scheme tliey liad communicated to the Shomer, hoping 
 for their compliance and aid. But these last, more accustomed 
 to the restraints of neighbouring rule, were afraid of the con- 
 sequences; knowing, too, that Telfd, if anyhow informed of 
 such proceedings, might very possibly constitute himself oiu* 
 sole legatee, executor, and something more. Accordingly they 
 refused to join, and the conspirators, who perceived from our 
 manner that we already had some suspicion about their inten- 
 tions, hastened to plaster matters over before we should be in a 
 way to compromise their position at Hay el, by complaints of 
 their meditated treachery. 
 
 If accompanied on a journey by Bedouins of a number less 
 than or equal to your own, do as you think best — talk, joke, or 
 keep silence, it is all one. But should they be many and you 
 few, your only security is in a serious, steady, and rather sulky 
 manner. Above all, never let them grow familiar ; the proverb 
 of giving an inch and taking an ell, must have been first made 
 for these people. 
 
 Near sunset of the second day we came in sight of two lonely 
 pyramidal peaks of dark granite, rising amid the sand-waves 
 full in our way. " 'Aalam-es-Sa'ad," the people call them, that 
 is, " the signs of good luck," because they indicate that about 
 one-third of the distance from Be'er-Shekeek to Djebel Shomer 
 has been here passed. They stand out like islands, or rather 
 like the rocks that start from the sea near the mouth of the 
 Tagus, or like the Maldive group in the midst of the deep 
 Indian Ocean. Their roots must be in the rocky base over 
 which this upper layer of sand is strewn like the sea-water over 
 its bed ; we shall afterwards meet with similar phenomena in 
 other desert spots. Here the under stratum is evidently of 
 granite, often it is of basalt, sometimes it is calcareous. As 
 to the average depth of the sand, I should estimate it at about 
 four hundred feet, but it may not unfrequently be much more ; 
 at least I have met with hollows of full six hundred feet in 
 perpendicular descent. 
 
 On we journeyed with the 'Aalam-es-Sa'ad looming dark 
 before us, till when near midnight, so far as I could calculate 
 by the stars, our only timepiece (and not a bad one in these 
 clear skies), we passed close under the huge black masses of
 
 CiiAP. ni] IlA'YEL AND TELAL ^^ 
 
 rock. Vainly had I flattered myself with a halt, were it Liit 
 of half an hour, on the occasion. " On we swept," and not till 
 the morninsf star rose close beneath the Pleiades was the word 
 given to dismount. We tumbled rather than lay down on the 
 ground ; and before sunrise were once more on our way. 
 
 Soon we reached the summit of a gigantic sand ridge. " Look 
 there," said Djedey' to us, and pointed forwards. Far off on 
 the extreme horizon a blue cloud-like peak appeared, and 
 another somewhat lower at its side. " Those are the mountains 
 of Djobbah, and the nearest limits of Djebel Shomer," said 
 our guide. Considering how loose the w^ater-skins now flapped 
 at the camel's side, my first thought was, " how are we to reach 
 them ?" : all the band seemed much of the same mind, for they 
 pushed on harder than before. 
 
 Near this we fell in with a small party of roving Bedouins, 
 from the south ; and by their conversation received our first 
 news of the war then raging in the province of Kaseem, between 
 the Wahhabee monarch and the partisans of 'Oneyzah, — war of 
 which we shall afterwards see and hear our fill, and of which we 
 shall learn also, though not till the following year and when 
 on the very point of quitting Arabia, the disastrous conclusion. 
 
 Meanwhile with no slight difficulty we slid down the sand, 
 descending from our elevated position, and at once lost sight, 
 much to my regret, of the peaks of Djobbah ; nor did we 
 view them again till when close under their base, at the verge 
 of the Nefood. 
 
 But the further we advanced the worse did the desert grow, 
 more desolate, more hopeless in its barren waves ; and at noon 
 our band broke up into a thorough " sauve qui pent ;" some had 
 already exhausted their provisions, solid or liquid, and others 
 were scarcely better furnished ; every one goaded on his beast 
 to reach the land of rest and safety.' Djedey', my comrade, and 
 myself, kept naturally together. On a sudden my attention 
 was called to two or three sparrows, twittering under a shrub by 
 the wayside. They were the first birds we had met with in this 
 desert, and indicated our approach to cidtivation and life. I 
 bethought me of tales heard in childhood, at a comfortable fire- 
 side, how some far- wandering sailors, Columbus and his crew, if 
 my memory serves me riglit, after days and months of dreary
 
 g6 THE NEFOOD AND B.TEBEL SIIOMER [CnAr. Ill 
 
 ocean, welcomed a bird that, borne from some yet undiscovered 
 coast, first settled on their mast. My comrade fell a crying for 
 very joy. 
 
 However we had yet a long course before us, and we ploughed 
 on all that evening with scarce an hour's halt for a most scanty 
 supper, and then all niglit up and down the imdulating laby- 
 rinth, like men in an enchanter's circle, foted always to journey 
 and never to advance. During the dark hours that immediately 
 precede the dawn, we fell in with a band of some sixty horse- 
 men, armed with matchlocks and lances ; they formed part of a 
 military expedition directed by order of Telal against the inso- 
 lence of some Tey'yahha Bedouins in the neighbourhood of 
 Teymah. 
 
 The morning broke on us still toiling amid the sands. By 
 daylight we saw our straggling companions like black specks 
 here and there, one far ahead on a yet vigorous dromedary, 
 another in the rear, dismounted, and urging his fallen beast to 
 rise by plunging a knife a good inch deep into its haunches, a 
 third lagging in the extreme distance. Every one for himself 
 and Grod for us all ; so we quickened our pace, looking anxiously 
 before us for the hills of Djobbali, which could not now be 
 distant. At noon we came in sight of them all at once, close 
 on our right, wild and fantastic cliffs, rising sheer on the margin 
 of the sand sea. We coasted them awhile, till at a turn the 
 whole plain of Djobbah and its landscape opened on our view. 
 
 Here we had before us a cluster of black granite rocks, 
 streaked with red, and about seven hundred feet, at a rough 
 guess, in height ; beyond them a large barren plain, partly 
 white and encrusted with salt, partly green with tillage, and 
 studded with palm groves, amongst which we could discern, 
 not far off, the village of Djobbah, much resembling that of 
 Djowf in arrangement and general appearance, only smaller, 
 and without castle or tower. Beyond the valley glistered a 
 second line of sand-hills, but less wild and desolate looking 
 than those behind us, and far in the distance the main range of 
 Djebel Shomer, a long purple sierra of most picturesque outline. 
 Had we there and then mounted, as we afterwards did, the 
 heights on our right, we should have also seen in the extreme 
 south-west a green patch near the horizon, where cluster the palm
 
 Chap. Ill] HA'YEL AND T^L.^JL 9-7 
 
 plantations of Teymah, a place famed in Arab history, and by 
 some supposed identical with the Teman of Holy Writ. 
 
 But for the moment a drop of fresh water and a shelter from the 
 July sun was much more in our thoughts than all the Teymahs 
 or Temans that ever existed. My camel, too, was not at his 
 wits' end, for he never had any, but quite at the end of his legs, 
 aud hardly capable of advance, while I was myself too tired 
 to urge him vigorously, and we took a fair hour to cross a 
 narrow white strip of mingled salt and sand that yet intervened 
 between us and the village. 
 
 Without its garden walls was pitched the very identical tent 
 of our noble guide, and here his wife and family were anxiously 
 awaiting their lord. Djedey' invited us — indeed he could not con- 
 formably with Shomer customs do less — to partake of his board 
 and lodging, and we had no better course than to accept of both. 
 So we let our camels fling themselves out like dead or dying 
 alongside of the tabernacle, and entered to drink water mixed 
 with sour milk, and to repose in the equivocal shade afforded 
 by a single tattered covering of black goafs hair. 
 
 As evening drew on, Djedey', after giving his camels a well- 
 earned draught from the garden well close by, invited us to pay 
 a visit of ceremony to the local governor 'Aakil, a native of the 
 village itself, but invested by Telal with vicarious authority. 
 Now our friend's real object in calling in at this hour was to 
 ensure a good supper, a thing which his own domicile could 
 hardly have mustered. No dowager lady in Young's time or 
 our own ever better deserved the satirical description of one 
 who 
 
 For her own breakfast will devise a scheme, 
 Nor take her tea without a stratagem, 
 
 than does a Bedouin on parallel occasions. But you must sub- 
 stitute " supper " for " breakfast," and " dates " for " tea." 
 
 To the great delight of my comrade, whom the wretchedness 
 of Djedey's hovel had led to anticipate a correspondingly 
 miserable kitchen, our guide's manoeuvres, the most intellectual 
 of which a Bedouin is capable, met with deserved success. 
 'Aakil honoured us with the desired invitation ; and the day 
 closed in a good supper and a lively evening, during which 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 THE NEFOOD AND DJEBEL SIIOMER [Cn.vr. Ill 
 
 Djedey' amused tlie wliole part}^ by an uncouth dance with the 
 coffee-making negro of the governor. 
 
 Next day we remained quiet ; all glad of an interval of repose 
 before the three days' journey which was to lead us to Ha'yel. 
 Sometimes we climbed the heights to get a wider range of view, 
 sometimes we strolled about the irregular village and talked 
 with its inhabitants ; and here first we met with unmistakable 
 proofs of that deep half-idolizing attachment which the very 
 name of Telfd claims throughout the whole of Djebel Shomer. 
 The quiet and settled state of all things here much contrasted 
 with the half anarchical condition lately witnessed in the Djowf, 
 and its war-seamed features. But the soil of Djobbah is poor, 
 and its produce, though of the same kind with that we had left 
 behind us, was in every way inferior to it. A curiosity of this 
 valley is the capricious intermixture of salt and fresh water 
 springs ; they are often separated from each other by only a 
 few yards of distance, and jotted seemingly at random all over 
 the level. 
 
 The village itself so far resembles the Djowf, that I may be 
 excused from entering on particular details regarding houses, 
 gardens, and the like. I may here add, as an apology for 
 brevity of description, while we pass by the different localities 
 of Djebel Shomer, that they have almost all of them, whether 
 large or small, much the same straggling appearance, the same 
 mixture of dwellings and cultivation, of plantations and byeways, 
 the same neglect of fortification and defence, which distinguishes 
 them from the compact and well-guarded villages of Nejed 
 Proper, and denotes habitual security ; but also, alas ! a total 
 disregard for whatever is known in Europe by the name of 
 symmetry, of Avhich no true Ai-ab of the north, whether sleeping 
 or waking, had ever an idea. I say of the north, for in 
 Hasa and 'Oman the laws of architectural proportion are known 
 and observed, nor are they wholly absent from middle and 
 southern Nejed. 
 
 About sunrise on the 25th of July we left Djobbah, crossed 
 the valley to the south-east, and entered once more on a sandy 
 desert ; but a desert, as I have before hinted, of a milder and 
 less inhospitable character than the dreary Nefood of two days 
 back. Here the and is thickly sprinkled with shrubs, and not
 
 Chap. Ill] HA'YEL AND TELAL ^g 
 
 altogether devoid of herbs and grass ; while the undulations of 
 the surface, running invariably from north to south, according 
 to the general rule of that phenomenon, are much less deeply- 
 traced, though never wholly absent. We paced on all day ; at 
 nightfall we found ourselves on the edge of a vast funnel-like 
 depression, where the sand recedes on all sides to leave bare the 
 chalky bottom-strata below ; here lights glimmering amid 
 Bedouin tents in the depths of the valley invited us to try our 
 chance of a preliminary supper before the repose of the night. 
 We had, however, much ado to descend the cavity, so steep was 
 the sandy slope; while its circular form and spiral marking 
 would have reminded me of Edgar Poe's " Maelstroom," had I 
 then been acquainted with that most authentic narrative. The 
 Arabs to whom the watch-fires belonged were shepherds of the 
 numerous Shomer tribe, whence the district, plain and mountain, 
 takes its name. They welcomed us to a share of their supper ; 
 and a good dish of rice, instead of insipid samh or pasty 
 Djereeshah, augured a certain approach to civilization. The 
 limestone rock, at whose edge the tents were pitched, furnishes 
 through its clefts a copious suppl}^ of water, and hence this 
 hollow is a common resort for Bedouins and their beasts, like 
 the wells of Magoowa' mentioned in a former chapter. 
 
 Such cavities are not uncommon amidst the sands, and occur 
 in a very arbitrary manner, independent it would seem of the 
 general laws of the desert ; nor could I hit on any passable 
 hypothesis to explain their formation. Their great size secures 
 them against filling up ; the pit in which we passed that night 
 could not have measured much less than a quarter of a mile at 
 its upper diameter, from rim to rim, and its depth was certainly 
 about eight hundred feet. The huge undulations of sand, 
 rolling appai-ently from west to east, and never failing in the 
 Nefood of Arabia, may, if a hypothesis be permitted, find 
 their cause in the diurnal rotation of the globe, and the "im- 
 perfect communication of its rapid surface movement to the 
 loose material here strewn over it. But this affords no clue 
 to the capricious pits dug out by nature from time to time 
 in these very wastes, and hollowed with an exactness of circular 
 form truly surprising. I met them alike in the Nefood and 
 Dahna, in the northern and southern desert ; the phenomenon 
 
 H 2
 
 lOO THE XEFOOD AND BJEBEL SIIOMER [Chap. Ill 
 
 belongs to the vast aggregation of sand, not to any particulai" 
 wind, or meteorological phase of a local nature. The parallel 
 waves of the desert are also the same everywhere, on condition 
 of a sufficient depth in -the sand itself. 
 
 At break of day we resumed our march, and met with camels 
 and camel-drivers in abundance, besides a few sheep and goats. 
 Before noon we had got clear of the sandy patch, and entered in 
 its stead on a firm gravelly soil. Here we enjoyed an hour of 
 midda}^ halt and shade in a natural cavern, hollowed out in a 
 high granite rock ; itself an advanced guard of the main body of 
 Djebel Shomer. This moimtain range now rose before us, 
 wholly unlike any other that I had ever seen ; a huge mass of 
 crag and stone, piled up in fantastic disorder, with green valleys 
 and habitations intervening. The sun had not yet set when we 
 reached the pretty village of Kenah, amid groves and waters, no 
 more, however, running streams like those of Djowf, but an 
 artificial irrigation by means of wells and buckets. At some 
 distance from the houses stood a cluster of three or four large 
 over- shadowing trees, objects of peasant veneration here, as once 
 in Palestine. The welcome of the inhabitants, when we dis- 
 mounted at their doors, was hearty and hospitable, nay, even 
 polite and considerate ; and a good meal, with a dish of fresh 
 grapes for dessert, was soon set before us in the verandah of a 
 pleasant little house, much reminding me of an English farm- 
 cottage, whither the good man of the dwelling had invited us for 
 the evening. All expressed great desire to profit by our medical 
 skill ; and on our reply that we could not conveniently open sliop 
 except at the capital Ha'yel, several announced their resolution 
 to visit us there ; and subsequently kept their word, though at 
 the cost of about twenty-four miles of journey. 
 
 We rose very early. Our path, well tracked and trodden, 
 now lay between ridges of precipitous rock, rising abruptly from 
 a level and grassy plain ; sometimes the road was sunk in deep 
 gorges, sometimes it opened out on wider spaces, where trees and 
 villagers appeared, while the number of wayfarers, on foot or 
 mounted, single or in bands, still increased as we drew nearer to 
 the capital. About noon we came opposite to a large village 
 called Lakeetah, where we turned aside to rest a little during the 
 heat in the house of a wealthv inhabitant. There was an air uf
 
 Chap. IIIJ HA'YEL AND TELAL lOI 
 
 newness and security about the dwellings and plantations hardly 
 to be found now-a-days in any other part of Arabia, 'Oman 
 alone excepted. I may add also the great frequency of young 
 trees and ground newly enclosed, a cheerful sight, yet further 
 enhanced by the total absence of ruins, so common in the East, 
 and above all in the Ottoman dominions ; hence the general effect 
 produced by Djebel Shomer, when contrasted with most other 
 provinces or kingdoms around, near and far, is that of a newly 
 coined piece, in all its sharpness and shine, amid a dingy heap 
 of defaced currency. It is a fresh creation, and shows what Arabia 
 might be under better rule than it enjoys for the most part : an 
 inference rendered the more conclusive by the fact that in natural 
 and unaided fertility Djebel Shomer is perhaps the least favoured 
 district in the entire central peninsula. 
 
 Lakeetah contains about four hundred houses, and in con- 
 sequence two thousand four hundred inhabitants, more or less, 
 according to the broad computation common in these countries, 
 which allows six or seven individuals for each domicile. After 
 remounting and riding a little further on, we saw, not far from 
 the main road, the larger village of Woseytah, whither Djedey' 
 would fain .have turned aside for the evening. But we were 
 now thoroughly impatient to be at our journey's end, and stoutly 
 declared that we would not, on any consideration, halt short of 
 Ha'yel itself. 
 
 We were here close under the backbone of Djebel Shomer, 
 whose reddish crao-s rose in the strangest forms on our right and 
 left, while a narrow cleft down to the plain-level below gave 
 opening to the capital. Very hard to bring an army through 
 this against the will of the inhabitants, thought I ; fifty 
 resolute men could, in fact, hold the pass against thousands ; 
 nor is there any other approach to Ha'yel from the northern 
 direction. The town is situated near the very centre of the 
 mountains ; it was as yet entirely concealed from our view by the 
 windings of the road amid huge piles of rock. Meanwhile from 
 Djobbah to Ha'yel, the whole plain gradually rises, running up 
 Ijetween the sierras, whose course from north-east to south- 
 west crosses two-thirds of the upper peninsula, and forms the 
 outwork of the central high country. Hence the name of 
 Nejed, literally " highland," in contradistinction to the coast
 
 I02 THE NEFOOD AND DJEBEL SHOMER [Cnxv. Ill 
 
 and the outlying provinces of lesser elevation. Hence, too, in 
 popular phrase, the word " talaa', " or "went up," is applied to 
 those who journey from the circumference inland ; while 
 " anhader," that is, " went down," is said of travellers whose 
 way lies from the centre to Mecca, Hasa, the Djowf, and so 
 forth. 
 
 I nmst insert a line or two of explanation regarding the deno- 
 mination "Nejed" itself. It is commonly enough applied to 
 the whole space included between Djebel Shomer on the north 
 and the great desert to the south, from the extreme range of 
 Djebel Toweyk on the east to the neighbourhood of the Turk- 
 ish pilgrim-road, or Derb-el-Hajj, on the west. However, this 
 central district, forming a huge parallelogram, placed almost 
 diagonally across the midmost of Arabia, from north-east-by-east 
 to south-west-by-west, as a glance at the map may show, is 
 again subdivided by the natives of the country into the Nejed-el- 
 'aala, or Upper Nejed, and the Nejed-el-owta, or Lower Nejed, 
 a distinction of which more hereafter, while Djebel Shomer is 
 generally considered as a sort of appendage to Nejed, rather 
 than as belonging to that district itself. But the Djowf is 
 always excluded by the Arabs from the catalogue of upland 
 provinces, though strangers sometimes admit it also to the title 
 of Nejed by an error on their part, since it is a solitary oasis, 
 and a door to highland or inner Arabia — not, in any strict 
 sense, a portion of it. 
 
 I trust that these topographical details, and more are yet to 
 come, may perhaps lend an aid to rectify in some degree the 
 current but too often erroneous nomenclature which has crept 
 into maps of the region ; not that a name is in itself of any 
 great importance, but that mistakes on these points give rise at 
 times to incorrect ideas, and thus the whole picture of Arabia 
 in all its bearings comes to be distorted. 
 
 The sun was yet two hours' distance above the western 
 horizon, when we threaded the narrow and winding defile, till we 
 arrived at its further end. Here we found ourselves on the verge 
 of a large plain, many miles in length and breadth, and girt on 
 every side by a high mountain rampart, while right in front of 
 us, at scarce a quarter of an hour's march, lay the town of 
 Ha'yel surrounded by fortifications of about twenty feet in
 
 Cn.vr. Ill] HA'YEL AND TELAL lOJ 
 
 lieig-ht, with bastion-towers, some round, some square, and 
 large folding gates at intervals ; it offered the same show of 
 freshness and even of something like irregular elegance that had 
 before struck us in the villages on our way. But this was a full- 
 grown town, and its area might readily hold three hundred 
 thousand inhabitants or more, were its streets and houses close 
 packed like those of Brussels or Paris. But the number of 
 citizens does not, in fact, exceed twenty or twenty-two thousand, 
 thanks to the many large gardens, open spaces, and even plan- 
 tations, included within the outer walls, while the immense 
 palace of the monarch alone, with its pleasure grounds annexed, 
 occupies about one-tenth of the entire city. Our attention was 
 attracted by a lofty tower, some seventy feet in height, of recent 
 construction and oval form, belonging to the royal residence. 
 The plain all around the town is studded with isolated houses 
 and gardens, the property of wealthy citizens, or of members of 
 the kingly family, and on the far-off skirts of the plain appear 
 the groves belonging to Kafar, 'Adwah, and other villages, 
 placed at the openings of the mountain gorges that conduct to 
 the capital. The town walls and buildings shoce yellow in the 
 evening sun, and the whole prospect was one of thriving 
 security, delightful to view, though wanting in the peculiar 
 luxuriance of vegetation offered by the valley of Djowf. A few 
 Bedouin tents lay clustered close by the ramparts, and the great 
 number of horsemen, footmen, camels, asses, peasants, towns- 
 men, boys, women, and other like, all passing to and fro on 
 their various avocations, gave cheerfulness and animation to the 
 scene. 
 
 We crossed the plain, and made for the town gate opposite 
 the castle ; next, with no little difficulty, prevailed on our camels 
 to pace the high-walled street, and at last arrived at the open 
 space in front of the palace. It was yet an hour before sunset, 
 or rather more ; the business of the day was over in Ha'yel, and 
 the outer courtyard where we now stood was crowded with 
 loiterers of all shapes and sizes. We made our camels kneel down 
 close by the palace gate, alongside of some forty or fifty others, 
 and then stepped back to repose our very weary limbs on a stone 
 bench opposite the portal, and waited what might next occur. 
 
 But before we verify the Arab proverb which attributes ill-
 
 104 THE NEFOOD AXI) DJEBEL SnOMER [Cu.\r. Ill 
 
 luck to occurrences of the evening, let us cast around a look on this 
 strange scene, strange, that is, to a foreigner, but completely in 
 harmony with the genius of the country and people. Before us 
 are the long earth walls of the palace, enormously thick, and about 
 thirty feet in height, pierced near the summit with loopholes 
 rather than windows, and occup3ang an extent of four hundred 
 and fifty to five hundred feet in length. The principal gate is 
 placed, according to approved custom, in a receding angle of the 
 wall, and flanked by high square towers ; semicircular bastions 
 advance too from space to space all the length of the front. 
 Immediately under the shadow of the wall runs a long bench of 
 beaten earth and stone ; we observe too, about half way in its 
 line, a sort of throne or raised seat, to be occupied by the 
 monarch's most sacred person when giving public audience. 
 The palace of Meta'ab, the king's second brother, is included in 
 the same mass of building, but has its own entrance apart. 
 
 On the other side of the open area, that is, where we are now 
 seated, stands a long range of warehouses and small apartments, 
 each under lock and key. Here is stowed away the merchan- 
 dize which belongs exclusively to the government ; here, too, 
 Telrd, as a general rule, lodges his guests ; for no stranger, be he 
 who he may, is ever allowed to sleep within the palace walls. 
 In the same direction, but farther up the area, and opposite to 
 the residence of Meta'ab, is the large public mosque, or Djrimia'. 
 At its angle the court opens out into the new market-place, 
 which we will visit to-morrow. On the other side of this 
 opening, but on the same line as the Djamia', rises the sump- 
 tuous house of Zamil, the chief treasurer and prime minister too. 
 I do not say that the union of such offices in one person is exactly 
 constitutional, but it seems to work here very well, besides 
 simplifying government salaries, a positive advantage in poor 
 Arab states. Lastly, a tall gate ends the area, and gives ad- 
 mittance into the more plebeian High Street, which here crosses 
 at right angles, and leads up and down through the whole 
 breadth of the town. 
 
 At the opposite extremity of this great courtyard, and com- 
 municating with a second gate through which we had just passed, 
 enters another large street, leading out at some distance on the 
 plain. Towards this end of the enclosure, and still opposite the
 
 Chap. Ill] IlA'YEL AND TELAL I05 
 
 palace itself, are the dwellings of two or three principal officers 
 of the household ; and lastly, a low door, in all " the pride that 
 apes humility," gives entrance to the abode and spacious gardens 
 of 'Obeyd, the present king's uncle, a very important character 
 he, and already mentioned on occasion of his first expedition 
 against the Djowf. Enough of him for the present ; he will end 
 by becoming a personal and even too intimate an acquaintance. 
 
 About the portal, some standing, some seated on the stone 
 platform near its entrance, are several of the subordinate officers 
 in waiting. These men are neatly and, all things considered, 
 cleanly clothed, in white robes and black cloaks, much like 
 Hamood, whose dress we have not long since described ; long 
 silver-tipped wands, strongly resembling those wielded by that 
 venerable class of men whom mortals call Beadles, distinguish 
 those among them who are charged with household employ- 
 ment ; but the greater number are of a military character, and 
 wear silver-hilted swords. The neighbouring benches on one 
 side of the court and on the other are thronged by a crowd of 
 the better sort of citizens, come from their shops or houses to 
 hear and chat over news, and to take the evening air. Few of 
 them, save those of noble birth, wear arms ; but their general 
 appearance is every way decorous. Some, in plainer clothes, 
 have a peculiar and puritanical look, they will be from Nejed; 
 a slightly rakish air, on the contrary, points out the man of 
 Kaseem. In the middle of the courtyard itself, or seated 
 among the well-dressed citizens with true Arab fraternity and 
 equality, are not a few whose dingy garments and coarse features 
 bespeak them of mechanical profession, or at least poor. Some 
 Bedouins are mixed with the rest, and may at once be known 
 by their scanty ragged dress and cringing attitude. The lowest 
 in the nomade scale here present are the uncouth Sherarat, 
 and the still more uncouth Solibah ; while the Shomer, near 
 akin to many of the townsmen, and somewhat polished by 
 more frequent intercourse with the civilized world, may stand 
 highest in this category. 
 
 At our first appearance a slight stir takes place. The 
 customary salutations are given and returned by those nearest at 
 hand ; and a small knot of inquisitive idlers, come up to see 
 what and whence we are, soon thickens into a dense circle. Many
 
 Io6 THE NEFOOD AND DJEBEL SIIOMER [Chap. Ill 
 
 questions are asked, first of our conductor, Djedey', and next 
 of ourselves ; our answers are tolerably laconic. Meanwhile 
 a thin middle-sized individual, whose countenance bears the 
 type of smiling urbanity and precise etiquette, befitting his 
 office at court, approaches us. His neat and simple dress, the 
 long silver-circled staff in his hand, his respectful salutation, his 
 politely imi^ortant manner, all denote him one of the palace 
 retinue. It is Seyf, the court chamberlain, whose special duty 
 is the reception and presentation of strangers. We rise to 
 receive him, and are greeted with a decorous, " Peace be with 
 you, brothers," in the fullness of every inflection and accent 
 that the most scrupulous grammarian could desire. We return 
 an equally Priscianic salutation. "Whence have you come? 
 may good attend you !" is the first question. Of course we 
 declare ourselves physicians from Syria, for our bulkier wares 
 had been disposed of in the Djowf, and we were now resolved 
 to depend on medical practice alone. " And what do you 
 desire here in our town? may God grant you success !" says 
 Seyf. " We desire the favour of Grod most high, and, secondly, 
 that of Telal," is our anawer, conforming our style to the 
 correctest formulas of the country, which we had already begun 
 to pick up. Whereupon Seyf, looking very sweet the while, 
 begins, as in duty bound, a little encomium on his master's 
 generosity and other excellent qualities, and assures us that we 
 have exactly reached right quarters. 
 
 But alas ! while my comrade and myself were exchanging 
 side-glances of mutual felicitation at such fair beginnings. 
 Nemesis suddenly awoke to claim her due, and the serenity of 
 our horizon was at once overcast by an unexpected and most 
 unwelcome cloud. My readers are doubtless already aware 
 that nothing was of higher importance for us than the most 
 absolute incognito, above all in whatever regarded European 
 origin and character. In fact, were we once known for 
 Europeans, all intimate access and sincerity of intercourse with 
 the people of the land would have been irretrievably lost, and 
 our onward progress to Nejed rendered totally impossible. 
 These were the very least inconveniences that could follow such 
 a detection ; others much more disagreeable might also be well 
 apprehended. Now thus far nothing had occurred capable of
 
 Chap. Ill] IIA'YEL AND TELAL 107 
 
 exciting serious suspicion, no one had recognized us, or pre- 
 tended to recognize. We, too, on our part, had thought that 
 Gaza, Ma'an, and perhaps the Djowf, were the only localities 
 where this kind of recognition had to be feared. But we had 
 reckoned without our host ; the first real danger was reserved 
 for Ha'yel, within the very limits of Nejed, and with all the 
 desert-belt between us and our old acquaintances. 
 
 For while Seyf was running through the preliminaries of his 
 politeness, I saw to my horror amid the circle of bystanders a 
 figure, a face well known to me scarce six months before in 
 Damascus, and well known to many others also, now merchant, 
 now trader, now post-contractor, shrewd, enterprising and active, 
 though nigh fifty years of age, a zealous JMahometan, yet inti- 
 mate with many Europeans of considerable standing in Syria 
 and Bagdad — one, in short, accustomed to all kinds of men, and 
 not to be easily imposed on by any. 
 
 While I involuntarily stared dismay on my friend, and yet 
 doubted if it could possibly be he, all incertitude was dispelled 
 by his cheerful salutation, in the confidential tone of an old 
 acquaintance, followed by wondering enquiries as to what wind 
 had blown me hither, and what I meant to do here in Ha'yel. 
 
 Wishing him most heartily — somewhere else, I had nothing 
 for it but to "fix a vacant stare," to give a formal retm-n of 
 greeting, and then silence. 
 
 But misfortunes never come single. While I was thus on my 
 defensive against so dangerous an antagonist in the person of 
 my free and easy friend, lo ! a tall, sinister-featured individual 
 comes up, clad in the dress of an inhabitant of Kaseem, and 
 abruptly breaks in with, " And I too have seen him at Damas- 
 cus," naming at the same time the place and date of the meeting, 
 and specifying exactly the circumstances most calculated to set 
 me down for a European bone and marrow, body and soul. 
 
 Had he really met me as he said ? I cannot precisely say ; 
 the place he mentioned was one whither men, half spies, half 
 travellers, and whole intriguers from the interior districts, nay, 
 even from Nejed itself, not unfrequently resort ; and as I myself 
 was conscious of having paid more than one visit there, my 
 officious interlocutor might very possibly have been one of those 
 present on some such occasion. So that although I did not now
 
 Io8 THE NEFOOD AND DJEBEL SHOMER [Cn.vp. Ill 
 
 recognize him in particulai-, there was a strong intrinsic proba- 
 bility in favour of his ill-timed vei-acity ; and his thus coming 
 in to support the first witness in his assertions, rendered my 
 predicament, already unsafe, yet worse. 
 
 But ere I could frame an answer or resolve what course to 
 hold, up came a third, who, by overshooting the mark, put the 
 game into our hands. He too salaams me as an old friend, and 
 then, turning to those around, now worked up to a most extra- 
 ordinary pitch of amazed curiosity, says, " And I also know liim 
 perfectly well, I have often met him at Cairo, where he lives 
 in great wealth in a large house near the Kasr-el-'Eynee ; liis 
 name is 'Abd-es-Saleeb, he is married, and has a very beautiful 
 daughter, who rides an expensive horse," &c. &c. &c. 
 
 Here at last was a pure invention or mistake (for I know not 
 which it was) that admitted of a flat denial. " Aslahek' Allah," 
 " May God set you right," said I ; " never did I live at Cairo, 
 nor have I the blessing of any horse-riding young ladies for 
 daughters." Then, looking very hard at my second detector, 
 towards whom I had all the right of doubt, " I do not remember 
 having ever seen you ; think well as to what you say ; many a 
 man besides myself has a reddish beard and straw-coloured 
 mustachios," taking pains however not to seem particularly 
 " careful to answer him in this matter," but as if merely ques- 
 tioning the precise identity. But for the first of the trio I knew 
 not what to do or to reply, so I continued to look at him 
 with a killing air of inquisitive stupidity, as though not fully 
 understanding his meaning. 
 
 But Seyf, who had appeared at first somewhat staggered by 
 this sudden doNvnpour of recognition, was now reassured by 
 the discomfiture of the third witness, and came to the con- 
 venient conclusion that the two others were no better worthy 
 of credit. "Never mind them," exclaimed he, addressing 
 himself to us, " they are talkative liars, mere gossipers ; let 
 them alone, they do not deserve attention ; come along with 
 me to the K'hawah in the palace, and rest yourselves." Then 
 turning to my poor Damascene friend, whose only wrong was to 
 have been over much in the right, he sharply chid him, and 
 next the rest, and led us off, most glad to follow the leader, 
 through the narrow and dark portal into the royal residence.
 
 Chap. Ill] HAYEL AND TELAL IO9 
 
 After passing between files of wandsmen and swordsmen, 
 Arabs and negroes, we entered on a small court, where, under 
 a shed, was arranged the dreaded artillery of Telal, nine pieces 
 in all, of different calibre, four only mounted on gun carriages, 
 and out of the four just three serviceable. Of this last number 
 were the two large iron mortars that had played so important 
 a part in the siege of the Djowf. The third, a long brass 
 field -piece, bore the date of 1810, with a very English " Gr. E." 
 (illegible, I need hardly say, for its actual possessors) embossed 
 above. The other guns were all more or less injured, and 
 quite unfit for duty, but this was a circumstance unknown 
 to the Arabs around, and perhaps to Telal himself, and " all 
 the nine " military muses seemed to impress equal awe on the 
 minds of the beholders. This tremendous battery had been 
 in part furnished by the Wahhabee monarch to 'Abd-Allah, 
 father and predecessor of Telal, and in part procured by the 
 agents of the present reign at the seaport of Koweyt on the 
 Persian Gulf, an active and thriving little town, of whose 
 doings with the Wahhabees on the south, and with Telal on the 
 west, we shall see more hereafter. 
 
 We traversed this court, and entered a second, one side of 
 which was formed by the ladies' apartments, duly separated by a 
 high blind wall from profane intercourse, and the other by the 
 K'hawah or guest-room. This apartment was about eighty 
 feet in leng-th by thirty or more in breadth, and of height 
 proportionate ; the beams of the flat roof (for vaulting is here 
 unknown) rested on six large round columns in a central row. 
 It was of evidently recent construction, well lighted, and per- 
 fectly neat. The coffee furnace was of dimensions proportionate 
 to those of the hall, and by its side was seated a sturdy negro, 
 who rose at our approach. A few guests from the neighbouring 
 provinces, and some of the court attendants, were present. Two 
 men, whose feet were loosely chained with heavy iron links, 
 shuffled about the hall. They were state prisoners, and con- 
 demned to incarceration at his Majesty's royal will and 
 pleasure, but were permitted the entrance of the K'hawah by 
 way of recreation ; a curious instance of the humanity of the 
 Arab character, even in the infliction of punishment. Imagine 
 how the appearance of a convicted rebel in the saloons of the
 
 I I o THE NEFOOD AND DJEBEL SHOMER [Chap. Ill 
 
 Tuileries or of Buckingham Palace would surprise the court ! 
 One of these men was a chieflet of Djowf, brought hither by 
 Telul on his conquest of that district, and not yet liberated, nor 
 likely to be so in a hurry. But neither he nor his companion 
 looked particularly miserable. 
 
 Here we remained whilst coffee was, as wont, prepared and 
 served. Seyf, who had left us awhile, now came back to say 
 that Telal would soon return from his afternoon walk in a 
 garden where he had been taking the air, and that if we would 
 pass into the outer court we should then and there have the 
 opportunity of paying him our introductory respects. He 
 added that we should afterwards find our supper ready, and be 
 provided also with good lodgings for the night ; finally, that 
 the K'hawah and what it contained were always at our disposition 
 so long as we should honour Ha'j^el by our presence. 
 
 We rose accordingly and returned with Seyf to the outside 
 area. It was fuller than ever, on account of the expected 
 appearance of the monarch. A few minutes later we saw a 
 crowd approach from the upper extremity of the place, namely, 
 that towards the market. When the new-comers drew near, 
 we saw them to be almost exclusively armed men, with some 
 of the more important-looking citizens, but all on foot. In 
 the midst of this circle, though detached from those around 
 them, slowly advanced three personages, whose dress and 
 deportment, together with the respectful distance observed 
 by the rest, announced superior rank. " Here comes Telal," 
 said Seyf, in an undertone. 
 
 The midmost figure was in fact that of the prince himself. 
 Short of stature, broad-shouldered, and strongly built, of a very 
 dusky complexion, with long black hair, dark and piercing eyes, 
 and a countenance rather severe than open, Telfd might readily 
 be supposed above forty years in age, though he is in fact 
 thirty-seven or thirty-eight at most. His step was measured, 
 his demeanour grave and somewhat haughty. His dress, a 
 long robe of Cachemire shawl, covered the white Arab shirt, 
 and over all he wore a delicately worked cloak of camel's hair 
 from 'Oman, a great rarity and highly valued in this part of 
 Arabia. His head was adorned by a broidered handkerchief, in 
 which silk and gold thread had not been spared, and girt by a
 
 Chap. Ill] HA' YEL AND TELAL III 
 
 broad band of camel's hair entwined with red silk, the manu- 
 facture of Meshid 'Alee. A gold-mounted sword hung by his 
 side, and his dress was perfumed with musk in a degree better 
 adapted to Arab than to European nostrils. His glance never 
 rested for a moment ; sometimes it turned on his nearer com- 
 panions, sometimes on the crowd ; I have seldom seen so truly 
 an " eagle eye " in rapidity and in brilliancy. 
 
 By his side walked a tall thin individual clad in garments of 
 somewhat less costly material, but of gayer colours and em- 
 broidery than those of the king himself. His face announced 
 unusual intelligence and courtly politeness ; his sword was not, 
 however, adorned with gold, the exclusive privilege of the royal 
 family, but with silver only. 
 
 This was Zamil, the treasurer and prime minister — sole 
 minister, indeed, of the autocrat. Eaised from beggary by 
 'Abd-AUah the late king, who had seen in the ragged orphan 
 signs of rare capacity, he continued to merit the uninterrupted 
 favour of his patron, and after his death had become equally, or 
 yet more dear to Telal, who raised him from post to post till 
 he at last occupied the highest position in the kingdom after 
 the monarch himself. Faithful to his master, and placed by his 
 plebeian extraction beyond reach of rival family jealousy, his 
 even and amiable temper had made him eminently popular 
 without the palace, and as cherished by his master within, while 
 his extraordinary application to business, joined with a ready 
 but calm mind, and the great services he rendered the state in 
 his double duty, merited, in the opinion of all, those personal 
 riches of which he made a very free and munificent display. 
 
 Of the demurely smiling 'Abd~el-Mahsin, the second com- 
 panion of the king's evening walk, I will say nothing for the 
 moment ; we shall have him before long for a very intimate 
 acquaintance and a steady friend. 
 
 Every one stood up as Telal drew nigh. Seyf gave us a sign 
 to follow him, made way through the crowd, and saluted his 
 sovei-eign with the authorized formula of " Peace be with you, 
 the Protected of God!"— no worse a title than "Protector" 
 anyhow, and more modest. Telal at once cast on us a penetrating 
 glance, and addressed a question in a low voice to Seyf, whose 
 answer was in the same tone. The prince then looked again
 
 I 1 2 THE NEFOOD AND DJEBEL SIIOMEE [Chap. Ill 
 
 towards us, but with u friendlier expression of face. We ap- 
 proached and touched his open hand, repeating the same salu- 
 tation as that used by Seyf. No bow, haud-kissing, or other 
 ceremony is customary on these occasions. Telfd returned our 
 greeting, and then, without a word more to us, whispered a 
 moment to Seyf, and passed on tli rough the palace gate. 
 
 " He will give you a private audience to-morrow," said Seyf, 
 " and I will take care that you have notice of it in due time ; 
 meanwhile come to suppei'." The sun had already set when 
 we re-entered the palace. This time, after passing the arsenal, 
 we turned aside into a large square court, distinct from the 
 former, and surrounded by an open verandah spread with mats. 
 Two large ostriches, presents offered to Tehll by some chiefs of 
 the Solibah tribe, strutted about the enclosure, and afforded 
 much amusement to the negro-boys and scullions of the esta- 
 blishment. Seyf conducted us to the further side of the court, 
 where we seated ourselves under the portico. 
 
 Hither some black slaves immediately brought the supper ; 
 the " piece de resistance " was, as usual, a huge dish of rice and 
 boiled meat, with some thin cakes of unleavened bread and 
 dates, and small onions with chopjDed gourds intermixed. The 
 cookery was better than what we had heretofore tasted, though 
 it would, perhaps, have hardly passed muster with a Vatel. 
 We made a hearty meal, took coffee in the K'hawah, and then 
 returned to sit awhile and smoke our pipes in the open air. 
 Needs not say how lovely are the summer evenings, how cool 
 the breeze, how pure the sky, in these mountainous districts. 
 
 Seyf, on his side, got our night quarters ready, and, by his 
 orders, one of the king's magazines (I have already mentioned 
 them) had been emptied, swept, and matted for our reception. 
 My readers are, I should think, sufficiently acquainted with 
 eastern customs to know that neither chairs nor tables, tubs nor 
 Avashhand basins, can reasonably be expected. We entered our 
 lodgings, closed and locked the outer door, and then fell into 
 deep consultation and weighty debate. 
 
 What were we to say to TeLal on our morrow's meeting? 
 what line of conduct to hold ? how obviate suspicion ? Such 
 and similar topics were now long and carefully discussed. A 
 reception evidently favourable, and good promises for the future,
 
 Chap. Ill] HA'YEL AND TELAL II3 
 
 were so far encouraging signs. But the untimely encounter 
 of our Damascene acquaintances, though patched up for the 
 moment, could not but have produced a certain sinister effect 
 on the public mind. Besides, Tehll was, if fame said true, the 
 most discerning of men, and certainly he looked it. Might it 
 not, all things considered, be the better plan to let him at once, 
 though privately, into our full confidence, and thus prevent the 
 dangers of an afterhand detection ? But again, we did not, we 
 could not, as yet precisely know what might be his feelings 
 towards foreigners, Europeans especially. All we had for 
 certain was, that his kingdom had been originally founded by 
 Wahhabee influence and support ; but whether he himself was 
 an independent sovereign or merely a vassal of Nejed, was a point 
 far from clear to us amid the contradictory statements given on 
 the matter thus far. With the extreme aversion of the Wahha- 
 bees for Europeans we were already acquainted : now Telal 
 might perhaps be of their way of thinking. On the other hand, 
 I could not but suspect the existence of something like that 
 rival jealousy and ill-feeling between him and his Nejdean 
 neighbours, which, as we ere long found out, was really the 
 case. But the ground was at best uncertain, and might prove 
 a quicksand. 
 
 Our final conclusion was to be extremely cautious, to stick 
 close by our original disguise, and to give Teliil those answers, 
 and those only, which might serve to fix his ideas on Syria and 
 on our medical profession. Perhaps had we then known all that 
 we discovered some days later, our determination might have 
 taken a different turn. But for our then circumstances and 
 degree of information, I do not think that we resolved or 
 acted unwisely, much less, I am sure, will my readers censure 
 the corollary of our conference, which was to betake ourselves 
 to a sound and early sleep. 
 
 While we are thus, to borrow Madge Wildfire's phrase, " in 
 the land of Nod," it may perhaps be well, instead of recounting 
 our dreams, to gratify the curiosity of those who would desire 
 to learn whether we had any further encounter with our un- 
 welcome friends from the north, and what was the sequel of 
 their history. Be it known, then, that the first and worthiest 
 of the two, the trader-post-contractor, had been so utterly 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 f 1 4 THE NEFOOD AND DJEBEL SHOMER [CnAr. Ill 
 
 puzzled l)y our chilling "cut," and subsequently by the rebukes 
 he received from Seyf and others, that he ended in doubting 
 his own eyes, and concluded that he must have made some 
 strange mistake about our identity, or perhaps even his own ; 
 for, on the third day, when we once more came across each 
 other in the street, he began a confused discourse much like 
 that of the old woman in the ballad, " Oh dear me, it is not 
 I," and made such very humble apologies for his past conduct, 
 that I felt half disposed out of sheer pity to set his mind at 
 ease with a "no mistake at all, old fellow, you were perfectly 
 in the right." But prudence would not permit of this extra 
 kindness ; and besides, his public abj uration produced the best 
 imaginable effect on those present, so I left him to his regrets, 
 in which he may be plunged up to the present day, for aught I 
 know. The following morning he left Ha'yel, nor have I since 
 seen him anywhere. 
 
 For the man of Kaseem, his stay in this capital was yet 
 shorter, and the next day saw him on his way home, nor did 
 we again meet him ; thus his tale, true or not, fell to the ground 
 for want of repetition and confirmation. 
 
 As to the third, who had so obligingly set me up with house 
 and family, he was a citizen of the town itself, and we had in 
 consequence frequent interviews during the following weeks. 
 But he readily gave up his unfounded pretensions to previous 
 intimacy, and declared before all that he had mistaken his man. 
 And thus the triple cloud, fraught with distrust and danger, 
 passed away without further ill consequences, at least of a direct 
 nature. But the morrow's sun is up, and we must up with him. 
 
 Our door was yet unopened, when a low rap announces a 
 visitor. My companion undoes the bolt with a " samm'," 
 equivalent on these occasions to " come in." 
 
 It is 'Abd-el-Mahsin, the same whom we had seen the evening 
 before as companion of Tekll. He enters with a " hope I don't 
 intrude " air, and begins by excusing himself for breaking in on 
 us so early, asks after our health, trusts that we are somewhat 
 refreshed from the fatigues of our journey; in short, makes no 
 leps display of politeness, though without any overdoing or 
 affectation soever, than a French marquis of the old school 
 could to guests newly arrived at his chateau. He then proceeds
 
 Chap, nr] HA'YEL AND TELAL II5 
 
 to enquiries about our road hither, how we had fared on the 
 way, laments over the coarse manners and ill breeding of 
 Bedouins, and the heat of the desert. Next he shows a great 
 desire to be instructed in medicine, adding that he is not 
 altogether ignorant of the healing art, and in a word directs 
 his whole conversation so as to make us feel perfectly at home, 
 and thus proceeds to sound us on the purport of our visit to 
 Ha'yel, and who we really were. 
 
 His appearance was certainly much in his favour, and one 
 that inspired confidence, or even familiarity. He could not have 
 been under fifty, but bore his years well ; his complexion equal 
 in fairness to that of most Italians, his eye large and intelligent, 
 his features regular; in youth he must have been positively 
 handsome ; his person was slender and a little bent by advancing 
 age ; his dress extremely neat, though unadorned ; a plain wand 
 in his hand bespoke his pacific and unmilitary turn ; in short, 
 he had the look of a scientific or literary courtier, perhaps 
 an author, certainly a gentleman. A curious half-smile, but 
 partially disguised by the ceremonious gravity of a first visit, 
 showed him to be no enemy to a joke, while it tempered the 
 thoughtful expression of his large forehead and meaning eye. 
 
 Such was 'Abd-el-Mahsin, the intimate friend and inseparable 
 companion of the prince. He belonged to the ancient and 
 noble family of 'Aleyyan, chiefs of the town and district of 
 Bereydah in Kaseem. There he had once enjoyed the confidence 
 of his own fellow-citizens, and the boon fellowship of Khursheed 
 Basha the Egyptian governor, during the period that this latter 
 held Kaseem before the final re-establishment of the Wahhabee 
 dynasty. Avoiding any open part in political affairs, and 
 devoting himself in appearance to literature and society, he 
 was, in fact, the deepest intriguer of the province, and guided 
 all the machinations of his relatives to deliver his country from 
 foreign occupation. How this was at last brought about, and 
 the part borne by the Wahhabee prince, Feysul, in the execution 
 of the scheme, belongs to the history of the Nejdean dynasty, 
 and we must reserve it accordingly for a future chapter. . But 
 when a few years later 'Abd-el-Mahsin found that Feysul luul 
 only concurred in freeing them from the tyranny of Egypt in 
 order the better to subject them to his own, he became once 
 
 I 2
 
 I I 6 THE NEFOOD AND DJEBEL SIIOMER [Chap. Ill 
 
 more the active though secret agent of his powerful family in 
 opposing the progress of Wahhabee preponderance and rule. 
 At last came the rain of the 'Aleyyan family, consummated by 
 one of the blackest acts of perfidy that stain the annals of 
 central Arabia. 'Abd-el-Mahsin escaped the first fury of the 
 massacre that destroj^ed most of his relatives, but was involved 
 in the proscription which followed immediately after, and had 
 to flee for his life. After some months of concealment on the 
 outskirts of the province, finding that no hope was left in his 
 native country, he took refuge with Telal, and had now lived 
 for about ten years in the palace of the Shomer prince, first a 
 guest, then a friend and favourite, welcomed in moments of 
 relaxation on account of his gaiety, his natural elegance, and his 
 extensive knowledge of Arab history and anecdote ; but prized 
 in more serious hours for his shrewd advice and wise counsel. 
 When on our way home a year later my companion and myself 
 beguiled the long hours of horseback in the plains of Mosool 
 or the hills of Orfah by passing in review the events of our 
 Arabian journey, we readily agreed that from Graza to Eas-el- 
 Hadd we had not met with any one superior, or perhaps equal, 
 in natural endowments and cultivated intellect to 'Abd-el- 
 Mahsin 'Aleyyan. 
 
 Hardly had he entered on conversation than we guessed, and 
 rightly guessed, that he had been sent by Telal in a preparatory 
 way to the audience fixed by the king for a few hours later. 
 We were accordingly on our guard, and stuck perseveringly to 
 Damascus, Syria, and doctoring. On any other topics started 
 by our friend while beating the bush, we gave very off-hand 
 answers, implying that these things did not regard us, and to a 
 few hesitating questions about Egypt, and even about Europe, 
 we put on an appearance of great ignorance and unconcern. 
 
 Meanwhile it was our turn to find out everything possible 
 about Telal and his real position, especially in what regarded 
 the Wahhabee dynasty, and his own fashion of government. 
 'Abd-el-Mahsin's answers were naturally cautious and guarded 
 enough ; yet we wore able this very morning to discover much 
 that we had been previously ignorant of. My readers may 
 think this a suitable place, before we go any further in our 
 narrative, to put together these first glimpses obtained from
 
 Chap. Ill] HA'YEL AND TELAL I 17 
 
 'Abd-el-Mahsin with the fuller information of a few days later, 
 and to give here a brief account, derived from the past history 
 of Djebel Shomer, and the foundation and progress of its present 
 prosperity. 
 
 And here, as an apology necessary perhaps in regard to some 
 who may think unworthy of even this slight record the history of 
 a small country, little known beyond the homogeneous limits of 
 its peninsula, and almost isolated century after century by the 
 encircling desert, I shall venture to make my own the elegant 
 paragraph with which the author of " Waverley " concludes the 
 fifth chapter of that incomparable tale, and copy his very words, 
 with a few slight substitutions alone required by the difference 
 of subject. So, " I beg pardon, once and for all, of those readers 
 who take up travels merely for amusement, for plaguing them 
 so long with Arab politics and history, with Bedouin and 
 Wahhabee, Shomer and Nejed. The truth is, I cannot pro- 
 mise them that this narrative shall be intelligible, not to say 
 probable, without it.. My plan requires that I should explain 
 the motives on which events proceeded, and these motives 
 necessarily arose from the feelings, prejudices, and parties of 
 the times. I do not invite my fair readers, whose sex and 
 impatience give them the greatest right to complain of these 
 circumstances, into a flying chariot drawn by hippogriffs or 
 moved by enchantment. Mine is a humble English post- 
 chaise, drawn upon four wheels, and keeping his Majesty's 
 highway. Such as dislike the vehicle may leave it at the 
 next halt, and wait for the conveyance of Prince Hussein's 
 tapestry, or Malek the weaver's flying sentry-box. Those who 
 are contented to remain with me will be occasionally exposed 
 to the dulness inseparable from heavy roads, steep hills, 
 sloughs, and other terrestrial retardations ; but with tolerable 
 horses and a civil driver, as the advertisements have it, I 
 engage to get as soon as possible into a more picturesque and 
 romantic country, if my passengers incline to have some 
 patience with me during my first stages." And having thus 
 invoked the Muse, or better, the Grenius of Abbotsford to my 
 aid, I continue. 
 
 At an early, indeed the earliest known period in the history of 
 central Arabia, the numerous and powerful tribe of Ta'i, first
 
 1 1 8 THE XEFOOD AXD DJEBEL SIIOMER [Cuvr. Ill 
 
 arrived from Yemen, occupied the district included by the parallel 
 mountain chains of Avhich the northernmost was then entitled 
 Djebel 'Aja, now Djebel Shomer, and its southerly sister Djebel 
 Salma, a name it has preserved to the present day. Some of 
 the clan dwelt in the towns and villages scattered through the 
 valleys, while others followed the roving life which forms and 
 maintains the Bedouin, 
 
 About the year 500 of our era occurred the celebrated conflict 
 between the tribes of Nejed, headed by Koleyb Wii'il, chief of 
 Taghleb, and the armies of Yemen led by the Laklimite chiefs, 
 which ended in the overthrow of the latter, and the entire 
 deliverance of Nejed from the Kahtanite yoke. In this war 
 Ta'i, though of Yemenite origin, sided with the Nejdean clans 
 of Eebeea'. Soon after followed the civil war between those 
 very clans, on occasion of the death of Koleyb, treacherously 
 murdered by his kinsman Djessas. This caused many impor- 
 tant changes in the relative position of the central tribes, and a 
 large settlement of Beni Taghleb, Beni 'Abs, and Howazin took 
 place within the limits of Djebel Shomer, where the new settlers 
 united with the elder inhabitants, or Beni Ta'i, and from this 
 union sprang the tribe of Shomer, whose appellation has re- 
 mained unchanged to our time. Such is at least the account 
 given by the inhabitants themselves ; and though imaginative 
 fiction has been busy at adorning it with many marvellous 
 episodes, yet its historical veracity in the main cannot, I think, 
 reasonably be called in doubt. 
 
 Coming down to the earlier 3^ears of Mahometan rule, we 
 find this district still powerful and independent, resisting 
 successfully all the efforts of the Ommiade Caliphs, whose armies 
 suffered a signal defeat at the entrance of these very mountains 
 during the reign of Merwan, towards the beginning of the 
 eighth century. This event is followed by a long period of time 
 during which little or nothing authentic has been recorded 
 in Shomer history. One principal reason of this silence was 
 that these mountains lay at a considerable distance from 
 the ordinary pilgrim roads to Mecca, and* were too far re- 
 moved from Bagdad or Cairo to be much influenced by the 
 Abbaside or Fatimite caliphates, and by the various dynas- 
 ties or anarchies that succeeded them, down to the final
 
 Chap, III] IlA'YEL AND TELAL II9 
 
 conquest of Syria and Egypt by the Ottoman Sultans in the 
 sixteenth century. Hence they were left with the rest of Nejed 
 to their own resources, nor perhaps fared the worse for that, 
 while at the same time want of external communication cut 
 them out of the general volume of Oriental annals. A large 
 portion of the tribes that had coalesced to form the great 
 clan of Shomer had once been Christians, and they a,ppear to 
 have remained so still, at the epoch when they repelled the 
 invasion of the Omrniade troops. The clan of Bedr, to whom 
 belonged the easterly range of 'Aja, was entirely Christian. 
 Probabl}'' a time came when all more or less professed Islamism. 
 But at last we find them relapsed into a state of semi-barbarism, 
 having resumed the old Pagan forms of worship, and subdivided 
 themselves into as many rival or hostile chieftainships as there 
 were villages in the land ; nay often a single town was rent into 
 two or more contending factions, resembling what we have 
 seen exemplified in the Djowf, to the utter ruin of all civi- 
 lization and prosperity. Here again we are reminded of the 
 European middle ages. Arabia repeats, so to speak, in a faint 
 reflection the course of the Western world. " There is a kind 
 of circle in events," says Tacitus ; history comes round like the 
 seasons. 
 
 There has been a tendency, I hardly know why, to praise the 
 clannish system, and decorate it with the title of " patriarchal." 
 But the patriarchs were not a nation, nor even a people, and 
 when the Jewish race did at last become such, one has only to 
 look over their national history from Judges to Chronicles, to 
 find painful evidence that the ruin of Israel was, humanly 
 speaking, owing for the most part to that very clannish spirit, 
 which set "Manasses against Ephraim and Ephraim against 
 Manasses, and these together against Judah." But whatever 
 may have been the case with the Jews, it is certain that this 
 persistence in hereditary classification, stronger habitually 
 among the Arabs than all ties of government and of patri- 
 otism, or even of religion, has been and always will be a bar 
 to the permanence of institutions for the common good, and 
 to any general advancement of the entire race. The rods, 
 so long as some strong hand binds them together, may seem to 
 unite and form themselves into a single stem ; but no sooner
 
 I 20 THE NEFOOD AND DJEBEL SHOMER [Cn.vr. Ill 
 
 is the blending Land withdrawn, thcan they start asunder, 
 and resume tlieir former severance. Or, to take another and a 
 not inappropriate metaphor, if the elements mix together 
 awhile, it is only mechanically, never chemically. This remark 
 applies more especially to the inhabitants of the north and 
 centre ; those of Southern Arabia present, as we shall afterwards 
 see, a remarkable and advantageous difference in this respect. 
 80 much for " clans " in general ; let us now return to Djebel 
 Shomer, and its more recent phases. 
 
 This province, in common with the rest of the peninsula, 
 underwent the short-lived tyranny of the first Wahhabee 
 empire at the beginning of the present century, and, like many 
 other districts, was but transiently affected t)y it. The storm 
 soon blew over, and left matters religious and political pretty 
 much where they were before. At this period the town of 
 Hil'yel was already looked on as in a manner the capital 
 of Djebel Shomer, a distinction which it owed partly to its 
 superior size and resources and partly to its central position; 
 yet its chiefs could not enforce their authority over any great 
 distance beyond the walls of the town, at least in a regular way. 
 The supreme rule was held by the family of Beyt 'Alee, ancient 
 denizens of the city, and who seem to have fully appreciated 
 both in theory and practice " the right divine of kings to govern 
 •wrong." 
 
 But there lived then in the same town of Ha'yel a young and 
 enterprising chief, of the family Easheed, belonging to the 
 clan of Dja'afer, the noblest branch of the Shomer tribe. 
 Many of his near relations were Bedouins, though his own direct 
 ancestors had long occupied the social position of townsmen. 
 His name was 'Abd-AUah-ebn-Easheed ; wealthy, as wealth 
 here goes, high-born, and conscious of ability and vigour, he 
 aspired to wrest their hitherto undisputed pre-eminence from 
 the chiefs of Beyt 'Alee ; his own powerful and numerous rela- 
 tives lent their aid to his endeavour. The inhabitants of Ha'yel 
 favoured some the one and some the other party, and on the 
 whole 'Abd-Allah"s faction was the stronger within the walls of 
 the capital. But the neighbouring village of Kefar held to 
 a man for Beyt 'Alee, and Kefar was at that time almost 
 equal in strength and population to Ha'yel ; indeed, to judge by
 
 CnAr.III] JIA'YEL AND TELAL 121 
 
 popular song and local tradition, onr only guide here, Kefar was 
 considered the more aristocratic town of the two. 
 
 After many preliminary bickerings, the struggle between 
 'Abd-Allah and Beyt 'Alee began ; but the result proved un- 
 favourable to the young competitor for sovereignty, and he was 
 driven into exile. This happened about the year 1818 or 1820. 
 
 With a few of his relatives, fugitives like himself, he took the 
 road of the Djowf, in hopes of refuge and alliance; but not 
 finding either, he passed on to Wadi Sirhan, whose depths have 
 ever been a common asylum for men in a similar predicament 
 up to the present time. While he and his followers were wan- 
 dering amid the labyrinths of the valley, they were suddenly 
 attacked by a strong party of 'Anezeh Bedouins, hereditary 
 enemies of the Shomer clan. 'Abd-Allah and his companions 
 fought well, but numbers gained the day. The Benoo-Dja'afer 
 fell without exception on the field of battle ; the victorious 
 'Anezeh " stripped and gashed the slain ;" none of 'Abd-Allah 's 
 companions remained alive, and he himself was left for dead 
 amid the corpses on the sand. 
 
 What follows, I give as I heard it in Djebel Shomer, without 
 anywise vouching for its accuracy or even veracity ; Arab 
 imagination, that most inventive faculty, has here done its 
 utmost ; yet the tale is worth recording for the illustration it 
 at least affords of the mind of those who tell or who believe it. 
 
 The 'Anezeh had, as is often their wont, " made assurance 
 doubly sure " by cutting the throats of the wounded where they 
 lay on the ground ; and in this respect 'Abd-Allah had fared no 
 better than his comrades. But the destined possessor of a throne 
 was not thus to perish before his time. While he lay senseless, 
 his blood fast ebbing from the gaping gash, the locusts of the 
 desert surrounded the chief, and with their wings and feet 
 cast the hot sand into his wounds, till this rude styptic stayed 
 the life-stream in its flow. Meanwhile a flock of Kata, a 
 partridge-like bird common in these regions, hovered over 
 him to protect him from the biirning sun— a service for which 
 unwounded travellers in the Arabian wilds would be hardly 
 less grateful. 
 
 A merchant of Damascus, accompanied by a small caravan, 
 was on his way home to Syria from the Djowf, and chanced to
 
 122 THE NEFOOD AND DJEBEL SIIOMER [Chap. Ill 
 
 pass close by the scene of carnage and miracle. He saw the 
 wounded youth, and the wondrous intervention of Heaven in 
 his behalf. Amazed at the spectacle, and conjecturing no ordi- 
 nary future for one whose life was so dear to Providence, he 
 alighted by his side, bound up his wouuds,*applied what means 
 fur reviving suspended animation the place and circumstances 
 could allow of, placed him on one of his camels, and took him 
 to Damascus. 
 
 There 'Abd-Allah, now the charitable merchant's guest, and 
 treated by him like a son, speedily recovered strength and 
 vigour. His generous preserver then supplied him with arms 
 and provision for the way, and sent him back with a well-stored 
 girdle to Arabia once more. 
 
 But to Djebel Shomer he could not return as a prince, 
 and would not return as a subject. So, following a circuitous 
 track, he passed on to the inner Nejed, and there offered his 
 services in quality of " condottiere " to Turkee, son of 'Abd- 
 Allah-ebn-Sa'ood, a prince whose despotic reign and tragical 
 end we shall relate further on, with the fortunes of his dynasty. 
 Turkee was then actively engaged in reconstructing his father's 
 kingdom, ruined by the Egyptian invasion, and in recovering 
 one after another tlie provinces formerly subject to Wahhabee 
 domination. From such a prince 'Abd-Allah naturally found 
 a ready welcome, and work in abundance. He was the foremost 
 in every fray, and soon became the head of a considerable 
 division in the Wahhabee army. 
 
 In 1830 or thereabouts, for I have been unable to procure 
 from Arab negligence the exact date of this and of many other 
 important incidents, Turkee resolved on the conquest of Ha^a, 
 one of the richest appanages of the old Nejdean crown. But 
 since public affairs did not permit the withdrawing of his own 
 personal presence from Ei'ad, his capital, he placed his eldest 
 son Fej^sul at the head of the royal armies, and sent them to the 
 invasion of the eastern coast. 'Abd-Allah as a matter of course 
 joined the expedition, and, though a stranger by birth, was much 
 looked up to by Feysul and his officers, and was almost their 
 leader in all military operations. 
 
 Hardly had the Wahhabee army reached the frontiers of 
 Ha§a, and, having passed the narrow defiles of Ghoweyr, where
 
 Chap. Ill] HA' YEL AND TELAL I 23 
 
 we too, gentle reader, will pass in due time, were just proceeding 
 to lay siege to the town of Hofhoof, when news reached them 
 that Turkee had been treacherously assassinated during the 
 evening prayers in the great mosque of the city by his own 
 cousin Mesharee, and that the murderer had already occupied 
 the vacant throne. 
 
 A council of war was at once called. The " Hushais " there 
 present, and they were the greater number, advised Fey^ul to 
 continue the war in Ha§a, and after the conquest of that opulent 
 province, return rich with its spoils to wrest the crown from his 
 usurping relative. But 'Abd-Allah, a very Ahithophel in 
 counsel, observed that such delay would only serve to give 
 Mesharee better leisure for collecting troops, fortifying the 
 capital, and thus becoming a yet more dangerous, if not an 
 insurmountable enemy. Accordingly, he insisted on Feysul's 
 immediate return with all his troops to Ei'ad, as the surest 
 way to take Mesharee unprepared, avenge the yet warm blood 
 of Turkee, and secure the capital and the central provinces for 
 the rightful heir. For what concerned Hasa, its conquest could 
 be only all the more certain for being a moment deferred. 
 
 Feysul, wiser than Absalom, subscribed to 'Abd-AUah's 
 opinion, and the event fully justified him. Without loss of 
 time the camp was broken up, and the whole army in move- 
 ment on its backward way for Ei'ad, under whose walls forced 
 marches speedily brought them, while Mesharee yet imagined 
 his competitor far off on the other side of the passes in the 
 distant plains of Hasa. 
 
 On the first appearance of the lawful prince, all Nejed rose 
 round his banner. The capital followed the example, the gates 
 were thrown open, and Fey§ul entered Ei'ad amid enthusiastic 
 acclamations, and without striking a blow. 
 
 But Mesharee still occupied the palace, whose high walls and 
 massive outworks could stand a long siege, as sieges go in 
 Arabia ; while within the fortress he had at his disposition all 
 the state treasury, artillery, and ammunition, beside good store 
 of provisions in case of blockade ; lastly, he was protected by a 
 powerful garrison of his own retainers, well paid and well 
 armed. Thus provided, he determined to hold out, and Avait a 
 turn of fortune. It came, but against him.
 
 1 24 THE NEFOOD AND DJEBEL SIIOMER [Chap. Ill 
 
 Feysul, on his side, ordered an immediate assault on the 
 fortress. It was delivered, but the thick walls and iron-bound 
 gates, joined to the desperate valour of the defenders, baffled 
 all efforts ; and the assailants were reduced to wait the slow 
 results of a regular siege. 
 
 This lasted twenty days without bringing material advantage 
 to either party. But on the twenty-first night, 'Abd-Allah, 
 desirous to bring matters to a conclusion by any means, how- 
 ever hazardous, took with him two sturdy companions of his 
 Shomer kinsmen, refugees like himself, and, under cover of 
 darkness, went roaming round the castle walls in hopes of 
 detecting some iinguarded spot. At a narrow window high up 
 under the battlements (it was afterwards pointed out to me 
 when I was at the very place) a light was glimmering. 'Abd- 
 Allah drew close underneath, took a pebble, and threw it up 
 against the window. A head appeared and called out in a 
 muffled tone, " Who are you ?" 'Abd-Allah recognized the 
 voice of an old palace retainer, long in the service of the 
 deceased monarch, and his own intimate friend. He answered 
 by his name. " What is your purpose ? " said the old man. 
 " Let us dowm a cord, and we will arrange the rest." 
 
 Presently the rustling of a rope came down the wall. 'Abd- 
 Allah and his two companions clambered up one after the other, 
 and soon stood together within the palace chamber. "Where 
 does Mesharee sleep?" was the ominous question. The servant 
 of Turkee indicated the way. Threading the dark corridors, 
 barefoot and in silence, the three adventurers reached the door 
 of the usurper's bedchamber. They tried it ; it was bolted 
 from within. " In the name of God ! " exclaimed 'Abd-Allah, 
 and with one vigorous thrust burst the lock, and the room lay 
 open. 
 
 There lay Mesharee, with a pair of loaded pistols under his 
 pillow. At the noise he started up, and saw three dark outlines 
 before him. Seizing his weapons, he fired them off in quick 
 succession, and the two companions of 'Abd-Allah fell, one 
 dead, the other death-wounded, yet alive. But 'Abd-Allah 
 remained unscathed, and rushed on his victim, sword in hand. 
 Mesharee, a man of herculean size, seized the arms of his enemy 
 and grappled with him. Both fell on the floor, but Mesharee
 
 Chap. Ill] HA'YEL AND TELAL 1 25 
 
 kept firm hold on the sword-arm of 'Abd- Allah, and bent him- 
 self to wrest the weapon from his hand. While thus they rolled 
 together in doubtful struggle, the dying comrade of 'Abd-Allah, 
 collecting his last strength, dragged himself to their side, and 
 seized the wrist of Mesharee with such convulsive force, that it 
 made him for an instant relax his hold. That instant 'Abd- 
 Allah freed his sword, and plunged it again and again into the 
 body of his antagonist, who expired without a struggle. 
 
 Not a cry had been raised, not an alarm given. 'Abd-Allali 
 cut off the head of Mesharee where he lay, and with it in his 
 hand returned to the chamber where the servant of Turkee 
 awaited trembling the result of the attempt. By the lamplight 
 both made themselves sure that the disfigured features were 
 indeed those of the usurper. Then without a moment's loss 
 'Abd-Allah went to the window and, leaning out, raised his 
 voice to its utmost pitch to alarm the camp of Feysul, whose 
 advanced guard was not far from the palace. Several soldiers 
 started up, and when they approached the wall, " Take the dog's 
 head," exclaimed 'Abd-Allah, and flung his bloody trophy in 
 the midst. A shout of triumph echoed throughout the city. 
 Meanwhile the servant of Turkee rushed down to the outer 
 palace gates, and threw them open, proclaiming Amiin, or 
 quarter, to all of Mesharee's . retinue who would acknowledge 
 Feysul for their master. A few minutes more, and Feysul 
 himself stood within his father's walls, now his own. 
 
 No resistance was offered. " Grod has willed it," was the only 
 comment of Mesharee's followers as they presented unhesitating- 
 allegiance to their new sovereign. Feysul was now undisputed 
 master throughout Nejed, and the circumstances of his accession 
 only secured him the more the attachment of his subjects. 
 
 The son of Turkee was not ungrateful to him whose intre- 
 pidity had placed him on his father's throne. He openly ac- 
 knowledged — an honourable proceeding in a king — the eminent 
 services of 'Abd-Allah, and determined to requite his daring 
 mercenary with a crown, bestowed in return for the crown thus 
 acquired. To this end he named him absolute governor of his 
 native province, Shomer, with right of succession, and supplied 
 him with troops and all other means for the establishment of 
 his rule.
 
 I 26 THE NEFOOD AND DJEBEL SHOMER [Cn.vr. Ill 
 
 'Abd-Allah returned to Ha'yel, now no longer a proscribed 
 exile, but a powerful and dreaded chieftain, with an army at his 
 bidding. He soon drove out the rival family of Beyt 'Alee 
 from the town, where his own authority was henceforth supreme. 
 Here he fixed his residence, while he intrusted the fullness of 
 his vengeance on the ill-fated chieftains of Beyt 'Alee to his 
 younger brother 'Obeyd, "the Wolf," to give him the name by 
 which he is commonly known, a name well earned by his 
 unrelenting cruelty and deep deceit. 'Obeyd with his horsemen 
 dislodged Beyt 'Alee from Kefar, though not till after an 
 obstinate struggle, and then pursued them from town to town 
 till he drove them into Kaseem. The inhabitants of Kaseem 
 rose to defend the fugitives. 'Obeyd called for fresh troops 
 from Nejed, and engaged to put his conquests at the disposal of 
 Fey9ul. On this condition supplies were furnished, and " the 
 Wolf" at their head laid waste the fertile lands of Kaseem 
 with such savage fury, that to this day his name is a curse 
 throughout the province, like that of Cromwell or Claverhouse 
 in Ireland and Scotland. The Beyt 'Alee were cut off root and 
 branch ; one child alone, hidden in a small village on the out- 
 skirts of Kaseem, escaped the slayers. When Telfd years after 
 ascended the throne, he sent for the lad, the only representative 
 now surviving of his hereditary enemies, gave him estates and 
 riches, and installed him in a handsome dwelling within the 
 capital itself, thus with rare but politic generosity obviating 
 the last chances of a rival faction. 
 
 WTiile 'Obeyd was wolfing it in Kaseem, 'Abd- Allah's main 
 care was to consolidate his power in Djebel Shomer itself. 
 Kefar had been already won, next the large and neighbouring 
 villages of Woseytah, Lakeetah, Mokah, and others, fell one by 
 one under his rule in spite of much opposition and bloodshed, 
 and before long he saw himself sole master of the whole mountain 
 district. But beyond 'Aja' and Solma his sway did not extend, 
 and the conquests made by his brother in the south were 
 according to the previous stipulation given over to the Wahha- 
 bee monarch. 'Abd-Allah too all his lifetime paid a stated 
 tribute to Fey§ul, of whom he was in fact a mere viceroy, while, 
 the more to ensure the support of his powerful neighbour and 
 jealous benefactor, he caused the Wahhabee religion to be re-
 
 Chap. Ill] IIA' YEL AND TELAL I 27 
 
 cognized officially for that of the new state, and encouraged the 
 Nejdean Metow'wa'as (a term ah'eady explained) in their zeal 
 for the extirpation of the many local superstitious practices 
 still observed in DJebel Shomer. This was a very unpopular 
 measure, nor did 'Abd-AUah adopt it from any motive, it 
 would seem, of real religious conviction, but merely to avoid 
 being deposed sooner or later by the same hand that had 
 raised him to the throne. He did not, however, neglect the 
 while to strengthen his own national influence, and to this 
 end he had at an early period contracted a marriage alliance 
 with a powerful chieftain's family of Dja'afer, his near kinsma,n 
 by blood. Strong in the support of this restless clan, who 
 cared little about Wahhabee dogmas and enactments which 
 they well knew could never reach them, he subdued with their 
 help the rivalry of town and country nobles, and gratified at 
 once his own ambition and the rapacity of his Bedouin allies 
 by the measures that crushed his domestic enemies and 
 ensured his pre-eminence. Plots were formed against him, 
 broken, and formed again; hired assassins dogged him in the 
 streets, open rebellion broke out in the province, but 'Abd-Allah 
 escaped every danger and prostrated every opponent, till his 
 " star," less fickle if less famous than that of the Corsican, 
 became a proverb for good fortune in Shomer ; it was no other 
 than his own calculating courage and inflexible resolve. Yet 
 his memory is scarcely a favourite with the citizens of Ha'yel, 
 little disposed to sympathize with Wahhabees and Bedouins ; 
 and the weight of the new government pressed heaviest, as 
 needs was, on the best and most thriving portion of the general 
 population. 
 
 Towards the latter part of his reign 'Abd-Allah took a mea- 
 sure eminently calculated, at least under the actual circum- 
 stances, to secure the permanence of his dynasty. Hitherto he 
 had dwelt in a quarter of the capital which the old chieftains 
 and the nobility had mainly chosen for their domicile, and 
 where the new monarch was surrounded by men his equals in 
 birth and of even more ancient title to command. But now he 
 added a new quarter to the town, and there laid the foundations 
 of a vast palace destined for the future abode of the king and 
 the display of all his grandeur, amid streets and nobles of his
 
 I 28 THE NEFOOD AND DJEBEL SHOMER [Cn.vr. Ill 
 
 own creation. The walls of the projected edifice were fast 
 rising when he died, almost suddenly, in 1844 or 1845, leaving 
 three sons, Telal, Meta'ab, and Mohammed, the eldest scarce 
 twenty years of age, besides his only surviving brother 'Obeyd, 
 who could not then have been much under fifty. 
 
 Telal was already highly popular, much more so than his 
 father, and had given early tokens of those superior qualities 
 which accompanied him to the throne. All parties united to 
 proclaim him sole heir to the kingdom and lawful successor to 
 the regal power, and thus the rival pretensions of 'Obeyd, hated 
 by many and feared by all, were smothered at the outset and 
 put aside without a contest. 
 
 The young sovereign possessed, in fact, all that Arab ideas 
 require to ensure good government and lasting popularity. 
 Affable towards the common people, reserved and haughty with 
 the aristocracy, courageous and skilful in war, a lover of com- 
 merce and building in time of peace, liberal even to profusion, 
 yet always careful to maintain and augment the state revenue, 
 neither over strict nor yet scandalously lax in religion, secret 
 in his designs, but never known to break a promise once given, 
 or violate a plighted faith ; severe in administration, yet averse 
 to bloodshed, he offered the very type of what an Arab prince 
 should be. I might add, that among all rulers or governors, 
 European or Asiatic, with whose acquaintance I have ever 
 chanced to be honoured, I know few equal in the true art of 
 government to Telal, son of 'Abd-Allah-ebn-Easheed. 
 
 His first cares were directed to adorn and civilize the capital. 
 Under his orders, enforced by personal superintendence, the 
 palace commenced by his father was soon brought to completion. 
 But he added, what probably his father would hardly have 
 thought of, a long row of warehouses, the dependencies and 
 property of the same palace ; next he built a market-place 
 consisting of about eighty shops or magazines, destined for 
 public commerce and trade, and lastly constructed a large 
 mosque for the ofl&cial prayers of Friday. Eound the palace, 
 and in many other parts of the town, he opened streets, dug 
 wells, and laid out extensive gardens, besides strengthening 
 the old fortifications all round and adding new ones. At the 
 same time he managed to secure at once the fidelity and the
 
 Chap. Ill] HA'YEL AND TELAL \ig 
 
 absence of his dangerous uncle by giving him charge of those 
 military expeditions which best satisfied the restless energy 
 of 'Obeyd. The first of these wars was directed, I know not on 
 what pretext, against Kheybar. But as Telal intended rather 
 to enforce submission than to inflict ruin, he associated with 
 'Obeyd in the military command his own brother Meta'ab, to 
 put a check on the ferocity of the former. Kheybar was 
 conquered, and Telal sent thither, as governor in his name, a 
 young man of Ha'yel, prudent and gentle, whom I subsequently 
 met when he was on a visit at the capital. 
 
 Not long after, the inhabitants of Kaseem, weary of Wah- 
 habee tyranny, turned their eyes towards Teliil, who had already 
 given a generous and inviolable asylum to the numerous poli- 
 tical exiles of that district. Secret negotiations took place, and 
 at a favourable moment the entire uplands of that province — 
 after a fashion not indeed peculiar to Arabia — annexed them- 
 selves to the kingdom of Shomer by universal and unanimous 
 suffrage. Telal made suitable apologies to the Nejdean monarch, 
 the original sovereign of the annexed district ; he could not resist 
 the popular wish ; it had been forced on him, &c. &c. &c. ; — 
 but Western Europe is familiar with the style. Fey§ul felt 
 the inopportuneness of a quarrel with the rapidly growing 
 power to which he himself had given origin only a few years 
 before, and, after a wry face or two, swallowed the pill. Mean- 
 while Telal, knowing the necessity of a high military reputation 
 both at home and abroad, undertook in person a series of 
 operations against Teyma' and its neighbourhood. Everywhere 
 his arms were successful, and his moderation in victory secured 
 the attachment of the vanquished themselves. 
 
 Of the war of Djowf and the conquest of that province 
 I have already spoken. Other expeditions of minor conse- 
 quence, but always fortunate in their result, were headed by 
 Telal ; while 'Obeyd is said to have taken the field above 
 forty times. These military doings, in which there was often 
 more display than slaughter, were principally directed against 
 the Bedouins, who occupied, as a glance at the map will show, 
 a very large portion of TeUirs domains, and whom that prince 
 made it his capital business to put down everywhere. With 
 the nomades of the outer districts he had no great difficulty ; 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 I JO THE NEFOOD AND DJEBEL SJIOMER [Cnxr. Ill 
 
 but he found much more with his own kinsmen and near 
 neighbours, the Arabs of Shomer. 
 
 In order to carry out his views for enriching the country by 
 the benefits of free and regular commerce, security on the 
 high roads and the cessation of pkmdering forays were indis- 
 pensable. Now the tribe of Dja'afar, his own blood relations, 
 had grown especially insolent through the favour of 'Abd- 
 Allah, whose instruments they had been in subduing the 
 towns and villages of the mountain. Telal, who had not the 
 same need of them, now played his father's game backwards, 
 subduing these same Bedouins by the means of the very popu- 
 lations whom they had formerly oppressed, and who were 
 naturally eager for their turn of revenge ; while the quarrels 
 of the clansmen among themselves afforded him frequent occa- 
 sion for setting them one against another, till, weakened and 
 divided, they all in common submitted to his yoke. " Divide 
 et impera," is a maxim known to Arab, no less than to 
 European statesmanship. Henceforth no Bedouin in Djebel 
 Shomer, or throughout the whole kingdom, could dare to molest 
 traveller or peasant. 
 
 This obstacle removed, Telal applied himself with charac- 
 teristic vigour and good sense to the execution of more pacific 
 projects. Merchants from Ba§rah, from Meshid 'Alee and 
 Wasit, shopkeepers from Medinah and even from Yemen, were 
 invited by liberal offers to come and establish themselves in 
 the new market of Ha'yel. With some Telal made govern- 
 ment contracts equally lucrative to himself and to them ; to 
 others he granted privileges and immunities; to all, protection 
 and countenance. Many of these traders belonged to the 
 Shiya'a sect, hated by all good Sonnites, doubly hated by the 
 Wahhabees. But Telfd affected not to perceive their religious 
 discrepancies, and silenced all murmurs by marks of special 
 favour towards these very dissenters, and also by the advantages 
 which their presence was not long in procuring for the town. 
 He even exerted his ability to persuade Jews and Christians from 
 the north to take up their abode in his capital, where he pro- 
 mised them entire security and free exercise of religion. But 
 the great distance of Ha'yel from all Christian or Jewish 
 centres has hitherto hindered this liberal-minded desiofn from
 
 Chap. Ill] JIA'YEL AND TELAL Ijl 
 
 taking effect. Meanwhile the desired impulse had been given ; 
 the town became a centre of trade and industry, and many of 
 its inhabitants followed the example of the foreigners thus settled 
 among them, and rivalled them in diligence and in wealth. 
 
 All this, however, could not but irritate the Wahhabee faction 
 of the country, at whose head stood the sanguinary fanatic 
 'Obeyd. Feysul, too, already annoyed by the Kaseem annexa- 
 tion, now sent forth from his Nejdean fastnesses loud protestations 
 against the laxity of his " brother," Telal. Besides, horrible to 
 Wahhabee thought and hearing, Telill was rumoured to indulge 
 in the heretical pleasures of tobacco, to wear silk, and to be very 
 seldom seen in the mosque ; though indeed it might be chari- 
 tably hoped that he said his prayers at home. Lastly, and 
 this was no good sign in Wahhabee eyes, he showed much more 
 disposition to pardon prisoners or criminals than to behead 
 them ; and the encouragement he gave to commerce did not 
 seem at all consistent with the character of a true Muslim, 
 who should only know three legitimate sources of profit or 
 pleasure — war, prayer, and women. 
 
 In spite of all Tehll steadily pursued his way, while his 
 dexterous prudence threw over these enormities a veil sufficient 
 for decency, if not for absolute concealment. If he smoked, it 
 was only in private, and by way of remedy, prescribed by the 
 best physicians, for some occult disease, which admitted of no 
 other means of cure ; no sooner shall the malady be removed, 
 than he will give it up. If he harboured Shiya'as, it was that 
 they had to his own personal knowledge declared themselves 
 sincere converts to the Sonnee creed. The commerce of Ha'yel 
 was not his, but the work of private individuals, with whom, 
 much to his regret, he could not interfere. What excuse he 
 made for his unorthodox leniency in war and judgment I did 
 not hear, but I doubt not that it was a plausible one. And 
 finally, if he was obliged by business to absent himself some- 
 times from the mosque, he always took care that his uncle or 
 some one of the family should be there to represent him : — 
 
 Ne'er went to church, 't was such a busy life ; 
 But duly sent his family and M'ife. 
 
 But above and besides apologies, judicious presents despatched 
 
 K 2
 
 132 THE NEFOOD AND BJEBEL SHOMEli [Chap. Ill 
 
 from time to time to the Nejed, and an alliance brought about 
 with one of Fey-sul's numerous daughters, went far to appease 
 the Wahhabee. In his own kingdom also Telill made suitable 
 concessions to orthodox zeal. The public sale of tobacco was 
 prohibited ; and if any went on in a contraband way in back- 
 shops or under private roofs, government could not be held 
 responsible. Although silk was tolerated for wear, orders were 
 given that the ungodly material should be mixed with so much 
 cotton as to render it no longer an object of strict and legal 
 animadversion. In the capital, where Nejdean spies often 
 came, the inhabitants were requested to pay fitting attendance 
 on public prayers, and the mosque became tolerably full. 
 Besides 'Obeyd was so regular and devout, so far from the 
 abominations of silk and tobacco, so frequent in long recita- 
 tions of the Coran and invectives against infidels, that his good 
 example might almost atone for and cover the scandals given 
 by his nephew, and yet more by Meta'ab, a very " wild young 
 man," whose eternal Nargheelah and silken dress, unsanctified 
 by a single thread of cotton, shocked pious noses and eyes, 
 and constituted a crime of which said one day a Nejdean 
 Metow'waa', pointing to the gay head-dress of the prince, "all 
 other wickedness may be forgiven by God, but that never." 
 But of Wahhabee action in these countries, and of the Arab re- 
 action against it, I shall have afterwards occasion to say more ; 
 let us now return to Telal. 
 
 His conduct towards the Ottoman government is not less 
 skilful, nor is the position a w^hit less delicate. For if his 
 southern and eastern frontiers border the Wahhabee, his 
 northern boundaries are marked out by the pashalics of Bagdad 
 and Damascus ; while the great Mecca road, itself regarded as 
 Ottoman territory, forms his western limit beyond Teyma and 
 Kheybar. Constant commerce with Meshid 'Alee, with Sook- 
 esh-Sheyook, and other localities near the Euphrates, bring him 
 into frequent contact with Turkish subjects, and even with Turks 
 themselves ; while an equally active trading intercourse with 
 Medinah and the pilgrim caravans produces the same result on 
 the opposite side of the kingdom. Hence he is continually 
 obliged to conciliate favour and to elude quarrels ; while every 
 forward step in these directions, however desirable, is fraught
 
 Chap. Ill] HA'YEL AND TELAL I33 
 
 with danger. In truth, whatever passes at Hii'yel is sure to be 
 reported sooner or later at Bagdad and Medinah, nay even at 
 Damascus ; this my readers may well understand from the very 
 events of our own first arrival here. I should add that the know- 
 ledge so acquired of what passes in Arabia seldom goes beyond 
 Mahometan limits, nor is shared in by others than men of office 
 and government ; the Bashas learn something, the ordinary 
 crowd less, and Europeans least of all. From these last, indeed, 
 even though long resident in the East, I have heard few state- 
 ments relative to inner Arabia which were corroborated, or even 
 which were not contradicted, by facts on the spot. 
 
 In accordance with the policy just described, the name of the 
 Sultan, with its pompous appendix of now unmeaning titles, is 
 proclaimed every Friday with a loud voice in the public prayer 
 of Ha'yel, and profession is made that Telfd is only his vicegerent, 
 and from him derives all authority. Not- that a single "para" 
 is ever sent from Djebel Shomer to the treasuries of Con- 
 stantinople, nor a soldier furnished to the Turkish battalions 
 from the entire extent of Telal's dominion. But no one is 
 allowed to speak otherwise than with respect of 'Abd-el-'Azeez, 
 who is always to be styled " Sultan " and Euler ; and though 
 Wahhabees call him an " infidel," and the men of Shomer " a 
 Turkish mule," such courteous sayings can only be uttered 
 in private. Should a Turkish officer, and this will some- 
 times happen, take his returning course from the pilgrimage 
 by the passes of Ha'yel, or direct his route that way to Medinah, 
 he meets with nothing but courtesy, hears nothing but loyalty. 
 And, to come to more ticklish matters, if Telal himself conquers 
 Kheybar and Teyma, both within the imaginary limits of the 
 Porte, and attacks and subdues the western tribes from Meda' in 
 Saleh to Kerak, on the very ground of the Sultan, it is all in 
 the service of his Ottoman Majesty, and to ensure the tranquillity 
 and subordination of the Turkish frontier. Nay, if he place 
 governors in the Djowf, without a single with your leave or 
 by your leave from Constantinople, and send expeditions to 
 the limits of the Belka, and under the walls of Meshid 'Alee, 
 it is in the name of 'Abd-el-'Azeez, and all for his Majesty's 
 profit. 
 
 Thus, closely watched on all sides by rivals and enemies, and
 
 134 THE NEFOOD AND DJEBEL SIIOMER [Chap. Ill 
 
 guiding his newly-constructed bark between the Wahhabee Scylla 
 and the Ottoman Charybdis, Telfd has to look out for allies and 
 friends against the hour of danger, which, with all his prudence, 
 he can hardly hope to avert for many years. With Europeans, 
 indeed, of whatever nation, he wisely declines any intercourse, 
 except that of mere courtesy, should occasion offer, well persuaded 
 by the events of other and even of neighbouring countries, that 
 the interference of such is but too often either unavailing or 
 pernicious. But with Egypt to the west and with Persia to the 
 east, he keeps up a very frequent and a more congenial inter- 
 course ; from the latter he procures considerable commercial 
 advantages, besides moral support at Bagdad, while from the 
 former he may reckon on military aid and a strong arm, should 
 need require. 
 
 Towards his own subjects his conduct is uniformly of a nature 
 to merit their obedience and attachment, and few sovereigns 
 have here met with better success. Once a day, often twice, he 
 gives public audience, hears patiently, and decides in person, 
 the minutest causes with great good sense. To the Bed- 
 ouins, no insignificant portion of his rule, he makes up for 
 the restraint he imposes, and the tribute he levies from them, 
 by a profusion of hospitality not to be found elsewhere in the 
 whole of Arabia from 'Akabah to 'Aden. His guests at the 
 midday and evening meal are never less than fifty or sixty, and 
 I have often counted up to two hundred at a banquet, while 
 presents of dress and arms are of frequent if not of daily occur- 
 rence. It is hard for Evu'opeans to estimate how much popularity 
 such conduct brings an Asiatic prince. Meanwhile the towns- 
 folk and villagers love him for the more solid advantages of 
 undisturbed peace at home, of flourishing commerce, of extended 
 dominion, and military glory. 
 
 Very seldom does this remarkable sovereign inflict capital 
 punishment, and the severest penalty with which he has hitherto 
 chastised political oifences is banishment or prison. Indeed, 
 even in cases of homicide or murder, he has been known not 
 unfrequently to avail himself of the option allowed by Arab custom 
 between a fine and retaliation, and to buy off the offender, by 
 bestowing on the family of the deceased the allotted price of 
 blood from his own private treasury, and that from a pure motive
 
 Chap. Ill] HA'YEL AND TELAL 
 
 3S 
 
 of humanity. When execution does take place, it is always by 
 beheading ; nor is any other mode of putting to death customary 
 in Arabia ; indeed Ottoman and Persian barbarity, with their 
 impalings, burnings, and the like, are strongly reprobated here. 
 In Nejed we shall afterwards meet with one and one only ex- 
 ception to this general rule. Stripes, however, are not uncommon 
 though administered on the broad back, not on the sole of the 
 foot. They are the common chastisement for minor offences, 
 like stealing, cursing, or quarrelling; in this last case both 
 parties usually come in for their share. 
 
 With his numerous retainers he is almost over-indulgent, and 
 readily pardons a mistake or a negligence ; falsehood alone he 
 never forgives ; and it is notorious that whoever has once lied to 
 Telal must give up all hopes of future favour. 
 
 In private life he relaxes much of his official gravity ; laughs, 
 jokes, chats, enjoys poetry and tales, and smokes, but only in 
 presence of his more intimate friends. He has three wives, 
 taken each and all, it would seem, from some political motive. 
 One is the daughter of Fey§ul, the Wahhabee monarch, a 
 second belongs to a noble family of Ha'yel, a third is from 
 among his kinswomen of the tribe of Dja'afar; thus in a way 
 conciliating three different interests, but uniting them in one 
 household. He has three sons : the eldest named Bedr, a clever 
 and handsome lad of twelve, or thereabouts ; the second. Bander; 
 the third is 'Abd-Allah, a very pretty and intelligent child of 
 five or six. He has some daughters, too, but I do not know 
 their number, for here, as elsewhere in the East, they are 
 looked on as something rather to be ashamed of than otherwise, 
 and accordingly are never mentioned. It will be long before this 
 ungallant indication of ancient barbarism, fostered by Mahome- 
 tan influences, disappears from Oriental manners. 
 
 Such is Telrd. His reign has now lasted nearly twenty years, 
 and hitherto with unvaried and well-deserved prosperity. He 
 has gone fer to civilize the most barbarous third of the Arabian 
 continent, and has established law and security where they had 
 been unknown for ages past. We shall now see him in a more 
 intimate and personal point of view. 
 
 'Abd-el-Mahsin stayed with us awhile, and then left us, saying 
 that the public audience of the day was drawing nigh, and that
 
 136 THE XEFOOD AND DJEBEL SHOMER [Chap. Ill 
 
 his attendance there would be expected; for ourselves we were 
 to be admitted immediately afterwards to a private interview. 
 Meanwhile we may reasonably conjecture that he went to tell 
 Telal of his own espionage, and conjectures regarding the Syrian 
 adventurers. 
 
 The sun was now tolerably high in heaven ; but as the long 
 palace wall faced the west, the seats beneath it and even a good 
 part of the courtyard were yet in shade. When morning 
 advanced this space gradually filled up with groups of citizens, 
 countrymen, and Bedouins, some to despatch business, others 
 merely as lookers on. About nine, if I judged correctly of the 
 time from the solar altitude, Telal, " dressed in all his best," 
 and surrounded by a score of armed attendants, with his third 
 brother Mohammed at his side (for the second, ]Meta'ab, was 
 absent from Ha'yel, nor did he return till some da3^s later), 
 issued in due state and gravity from the palace portal, and took 
 his seat on the raised dais in the centre against the wall. 'Abd- 
 el-Mahsin and Zamil placed themselves close by, while officers 
 and attendants, to the number of sixty or thereabouts, filled up 
 the line. Immediately in front of Telal, but squatted on the 
 bare ground, were our Sherarat companions, the 'Azzam chiefs, 
 every one with his never-failing camel-switch in his hand ; 
 aromid and behind sat or stood a crowd of spectators, for the 
 occasion was one of some solemnity. 
 
 " How many of those I know would give half their having to 
 be present at such a scene and in such a locality," thought 
 I, while almost wondering at our own quiet and secure position 
 amid the multitude ; for, to say truth, how little of Arab rule 
 or life has yet been witnessed by Europeans, how little faithfidly 
 described ? Half romantic and always over-coloured scenes of 
 wild Bedouins, painted up into a sort of chivalresque knight- 
 errants and representatives of unthralled freedom ; or, perhaps, 
 the heavy and hollow formalities of some coast or frontier 
 courtlet, more than half Ottomanized : apocryphal legends, like 
 those of Lamartine, and the sentimental superficialities of his 
 school, — such is almost all that we possess on these subjects, and 
 from which we are invited to form our criterion and appreciation 
 of Arabia and its people. But not in the Syrian desert, nor on 
 the limits of the Hejiiz, not in the streets of Mokha, nor in the
 
 CnAr. Ill] HA'YEL AND TELAL T37 
 
 markets of Meshid 'Alee, still less at Bagdad or Damascus, is 
 the true idea of genuine Arab ways and manners to be sought 
 or found. 
 
 The researches of Pococke, the incompai'able exactitude 
 of Niebuhr, the varied information of Burckhardt, the minute 
 accuracy of Wallen, the sailor-like daring of Welsted, deserve 
 indeed the highest praise as well as the fullest confidence. Nor 
 is it in a spirit of idle rivalry, far less of depreciation, that while 
 mentioning names of such justly earned celebrity, I beg per- 
 mission to point out the limits within which circumstances, 
 those impassable boundary-walls of human life and enterprise, 
 confined their experience of Arabia. This was for the most part 
 derived from the frontier provinces and the outer surface ; of 
 the interior, whether physical or moral, they have less to tell. 
 Yet a description of the foot or of the hand, however trustworthy, 
 does not always furnish a complete idea of the body or the head, 
 still less of the anatomical structure within. " Ex pede Her- 
 culem," is an excellent adage, but not always applicable to 
 living nations and to human nature. 
 
 While I was occupied in these reflections, and my companion 
 in his, of which I cannot pretend to give an account, but I 
 suppose them to have been what a youth of Zahlah might be 
 expected to make in similar circumstances, the audience went 
 on ; and the 'Azzam chieftains or ragamuffins presented their 
 coarse Bedouin submission, much like runaway hounds crouch- 
 ing before their whipper-in, when brought back to the kennel 
 and the lash. Telrd accepted it, though without giving them 
 to understand his own personal intentions respecting them and 
 their clansmen, and detained them for several days without any 
 decisive answer, thus affording them suitable leisure to ex- 
 perience the profusion of his hospitality, and to become yet 
 more deeply impressed with the display of his power. 
 
 " The Arab's understanding is in his eyes," is here a common 
 proverb, and current among all, whether Bedouins or townsmen. 
 It implies, " the Arab judges of things as he sees them present 
 before him, not in their causes or consequences :" keen and 
 superfiicial. This is eminently true of the Bedouin, though 
 more or less of eveiy Arab whatsoever; it is also true in a 
 measure of all children, even European, who in this resemble
 
 IjS THE XEFOOD AXB DJEBEL SHOMER [Chap. Ill 
 
 not a little the "gray barbarian." A buge palace, a few large 
 pieces of artillery, armed men in gay dresses, a copious supper, 
 a great crowd, there are no better arguments for persuading 
 nomades into submission and awe ; and one may feel perfectly 
 safe that they will never enquire too deeply whether the cannon 
 are serviceable, the armed men faithful, the income of the 
 treasury sure, or the supper of wholesome digestion. This 
 Telrd knows right well, and in this he seems to have the 
 advantage over many who have attempted to establish their 
 influence, partial or total, over the Arab race. 
 
 Other minor affairs are now concluded ; the audience is at 
 last over, Telal rises, and, accompanied by Zamil, Mohammed, 
 Sa'eed (his head cavalry officer), a Meshid merchant named 
 Hasan, and two or three others, slowly moves off towards the 
 farther end of the court where it joins the market-place. Seyf 
 comes up to us, and bids us follow.
 
 High 
 
 
 FliAM' @f HiikXELi. 
 
 
 /li;^ 
 
 ,/ /^yi/^'//^'' 
 
 Mvilmali 
 
 (*prri P/ aorv 
 
 P^ 
 
 
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 # 1 .y5VA /?^7/^- 
 y-# C(!^.?« U> (he 
 To nil 
 
 '"^^ ^.' .r./,// 
 
 '*tti# 
 
 
 HlLU 
 
 /// //s 
 
 I leltl/ii PuImt 
 1' Oval J'owef- 
 2. Meta'ai's Palace 
 .?. Gmrf, yajd, i/i fronl 
 4. OftRyd's PoJmc^'^ 
 
 ■"''.PuMjjiMosijjie^ ' /{?. CerUra/- Sgruare 
 
 6 Marke^y Flo^. i // I'lbe/ el MaA^/ns /wu^^e 
 
 7. y.d/niJJ-i house. , 12. Quar/.er of Uie oicC town^ 
 
 8 . Pala/ie^ Gaml/-ju-; ^13. OiA^-qnar/^^vf (Aeysa7ne, 
 .9 tICf//,, S/jPt-lf, I M iJo/teyrws fiouse 
 
 15. /Jff/ieyi /i/>tf.fe 
 
 16' (kird/yi6- wUfwi iJie Ifall^f 
 
 17 'Ofejy//s fiou^SR 
 
 18 CAirden^; and^ lAi/d (/lui/Z/y- 
 
 A9 Jffw qiiaj/^er 
 
 20 Ga/s /£adj/i^ /^ /Jie /Jjoivf /^./jad 
 2122.23. 24. 26. 26. 27. 28 2ff. o/Aa-,/a/fi6 
 30. Our own /u>TM» 
 31 K'fiaM'aA.acenec/' Tf/a/.i /i/s/ aotdiefUX'. 
 
 ^'inc^it^Brooici. hth. London
 
 139 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Life in Ha'yel 
 
 Ueberall regt sicli Eildiing imd Strebeii, 
 Alles will sich mit Farben beleben, 
 Doch an Bhimen fehlfs in Reyier, 
 Sie nimmt geputzte Menschen dafilr. 
 Kehre dich um von diesen Hohen 
 Nach der Stadt ziu'iick zu sehen. — GociJic 
 
 PRIVATE AUDIENCE OF TELAL — HIS SUSPICIONS — OVR HOUSE — EEMAEKS ON 
 NATIONALITY — "VVE BEGIN DOCTORING — PLAN OP LIFE AND ACTION — 
 STATE OF MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE PAST AND PRESENT IN ARABIA — INFLU- 
 ENCE OF MAHOMETANISM — NATIVE REMEDIES AND PRACTITIONERS — 
 THE §OLIBAH — OUR DAILY LIFE — A WALK OUT OF TOWN ; VIEW ROUND 
 IIAY'eL— MARKET-PLACE EARLY — VISITORS AND PATIENTS — 'OJEYL AND 
 HIS BROTHER — 'aBD-EL-MAHSIN AND TELAL'S THREE CHILDREN — MOHAM- 
 MED-EL-5ADEE — PEASANT OF MOGAH — DOHEYM— :IS:ASEEM IMMIGRATION 
 — MARKET NEAR NOON — INTERIOR OF HA'yEL — DOHEYM'S HOUSE AND 
 FAMILY — A FEVER CASE — KASEEM POLITICS; STATE OF THE PROVINCE 
 UNDER TELAL — THE 'aLEY'YANS OF BEREYDAH — THEIR DESTRUCTION — 
 FIRST WAR OF 'ONEYZAH — INTERVENTION OF THE SHEREEF OF MECCA — 
 SECOND WAR — ZAMIL AND HIS PARTISANS — CHARACTER AND PROGRESS 
 OF THE WAR^REFLECTIONS ON ARAB CAPABILITY OF PROGRESS — WALK 
 THROUGH THE TOWN — MIRAGE — PRAYERS OF THE 'AGR AND SERMON — 
 PURITY OF ELOCUTION IN HA'yEL — TELAL AT THE MOSQUE — HIS AFTER- 
 NOON AUDIENCES — THE EMEER ROSHEYD — DOHEY'S HOUSE AND FAMILY 
 — LITERARY MEETINGS IN A GARDEN — EVENINGS AT HA'yEL — NEW 
 COURSE OF EVENTS. 
 
 Telal once free from the mixed crowd, pauses a moment till 
 we rejoin him. The simple and customary salutations are given 
 and returned. I then present him with our only avaihible 
 testimonial, the scrap written by Hamood from the Djowf. He 
 opens it, and hands it over to Zfimil, better skilled in reading 
 than his master. Then laying aside all his Avonted gravity, and 
 assuming a good-humoured smile, he takes my hand in his light 
 and my companion's in his left, and thus walks on with us 
 through the court, past the moscpie, and down the market- 
 place, while his attendants form a moving wall behind and on 
 either side.
 
 T4O LIFE IX IJA'YEL [Chap. IV 
 
 He was in his OAvn mind thoroughly persuaded that we were, 
 as we appeared, Syrians; but imagined, nor was he entirely in 
 the wrong thus far, that we had other objects in view than mere 
 medical practice. But if he was right in so much, he was less 
 fortunate in the interpretation he chose to put on our riddle, 
 having imagined that our real scope must he to buy horses for 
 some government, of which we must be the agents ; a conjecture 
 which had certainly the merit of plausibility. However, Telfd 
 had, I believe, no doubt on the matter, and had already deter- 
 mined to treat us well in the horse business, and to let us have 
 a good bargain, as it shortly appeared. 
 
 Accordingly he began a series of questions and cross-questions, 
 all in a jocose way, but so that the very drift of his enquiries 
 soon allowed us to perceive what he really esteemed us. We, 
 following our previous resolution, stuck to medicine, a family 
 in want, hopes of good success under the royal patronage, and 
 much of the same tenor. But Telfd was not so easily to be 
 blinkered, and kept to his first judgment. Meanwhile we 
 passed down the street, lined with starers at the king and us, 
 and at last arrived at the outer door of a large house near the 
 further end of the Sook or market-place ; it belonged to Hasan, 
 the merchant from Meshid 'Alee. 
 
 Three of the retinue stationed themselves by way of guard 
 at the street door, sword in hand. The rest entered with the 
 king and ourselves ; we traversed the courtyard, where the 
 remainder of the armed men took position, while we went on to 
 the K'hasvah. It was small, but well furnished and carpeted. 
 Here Telrd placed us amicably by his side in the highest place ; 
 his brother Mohammed and five or six others were admitted, 
 and seated themselves each according to his rank, while Hasan, 
 being master of the house, did the honours. 
 
 Coffee was brought and pipes lighted. jNIeantime Ebn-Rasheed 
 renewed his interrogatory, skilfully throwing out side remarks, 
 now on the government of Syria, now on that of Egypt, then 
 on the Bedouins to the north of Djowf, or on the tribes of 
 Hejjiz or the banks of Euphrates, thus to gain light whence and 
 to what end we had in fact come. Next he questioned us on 
 medicine, perhaps to discover whether we had the right pro- 
 fessional tone; then on horses, about which same noble animals
 
 Chap. IV] NORTH CENTRAL ARABIA I4I 
 
 we affected an ignorance unnatural and very unpardonable in an 
 Englishman ; but for which I hope afterwards to make amends 
 to my readers. All was in vain ; and after a full hour our 
 noble friend had only managed by his cleverness to get himself 
 farther off the right track than he had been at the outset. He 
 felt it, and determined to let matters have their own course, 
 and to await the result of time. So he ended by assuring us 
 of his entire confidence and protection, offering us to boot a 
 lodging on the palace grounds. But this we declined, being 
 desirous of studying the country as it was in itself, not through 
 the medium of a court atmosphere ; so we begged that an abode 
 might be assigned us as near the market-place as possible : 
 and this he promised, though evidently rather put out by our 
 independent ways. 
 
 Excellent water-melons, ready peeled and cut up, with 
 peaches hardly ripe, for it was the beginning of the season, were 
 now brought in, and we all partook in common. This was the 
 signal for breaking up ; Telal renewed his proffers of favour and 
 patronage ; and we were at last reconducted to our lodgings by 
 one of the royal guard. 
 
 Seyf how went in search of a permanent dwelling-place 
 wherein to instal us ; and before evening succeeded in finding 
 one situated in a street leading at right angles to the market, 
 and at no unreasonable distance from the palace. The house 
 itself consisted of two apartments, separated by an unroofed 
 court, with an outer door opening on the road ; over the rooms 
 was a flat roof surrounded by a very high parapet, thus making 
 an excellent sleeping-place for summer. The locality had been 
 occupied by one of the palace retinue, Hoseyn-el-Misree, who 
 at Seyf's bidding evacuated the premises in our favour, and 
 moved off to take up his quarters in the neighbourhood. We 
 examined the dwelling-place, and found it tolerably convenient; 
 the rooms were each about sixteen feet in length by eight or 
 nine in breadth, and of corresponding height ; one of them 
 might officiate as a store-room and kitchen, while the other 
 should be fitted up for a dwelling apartment. It was the zenith 
 of the dog-days, and a bedchamber would have been a mere 
 superfluity ; the roof and open air were every way preferable, 
 nor had we to fear intrusion, the court-walls being sixteen
 
 142 LIFE IN JTA'YEL [Chap. IV 
 
 feet high or more. Every door was provided with its own 
 distinct lock ; the keys here are made of iron, and in this 
 respect Hu'ycl has the Letter of any other Arab town it was my 
 chance to visit, where the keys were invariably wooden, and 
 thus very liable to break and get out of order. 
 . Before nightfall we had transferred all our goods and chattels 
 to our new abode, and taken leave of Seyf, who, sweetly smiling, 
 informed us that whenever we chose to take our meals at the 
 palace we should always find them ready, and that our present 
 lodgings were entirely at the king's cost, whose guests we were 
 accordingly to consider ourselves, however long our stay might 
 prove. We begged him to express our gratitude to Teliil, and 
 once arrived " at home," shut the street door, made sundry 
 arrangements the result of which shall be visible on the morrow, 
 and thanked Grod for dangers averted, and for a prosperous 
 outset to the more important part of our journey. Hitherto we 
 had been merely on the threshold, now we were fairly in the 
 " promised land," and we felt all the importance of every step 
 and every word. 
 
 Besides, in our quality of civilized men, more or less, the 
 general appearance of power, of order, of populousness and pro- 
 sperity, of vigour and rule, the extent of the palace, the fortifi- 
 cations, in a word, the whole " ensemble " of the capital, added 
 to the person and character of its ruler, had not failed to produce 
 a certain impression on our minds and senses, habituated for 
 some months past to the loneliness of the desert, the semi- 
 barbarism of Ma'an and Djowf, nay, and before that, to the 
 anarchy of Turkish misrule or no-rule in Syria. " This is a 
 government in good earnest " said, at his first arrival, my 
 companion, who had all his life before seen nothing better than 
 the squabbles of Lebanon and the anarchy of its districts. 
 Indeed Telal's administration is in no respect less unquestionably 
 superior to the Ottoman than the English or Prussian may be to 
 Telal's. 
 
 After all, nationality is a good thing, and foreign rule but a 
 poor compensation for it. Here was an Arab governing Arabs 
 after their own native Arab fashion, and thus succeeding infi- 
 nitely better in securing the peace of his lands, the happiness of 
 his subjects, the regular administration of law and justice, and
 
 Chap. IV] NORTH CENTRAL ARABIA 1 43 
 
 the maintenance of quiet and good order, than any Constanti- 
 nople-sent Khoorshid Basha, or Foo'ad Basha, or 'Omar Basha 
 ever did in their respective provinces, or ever can. Needs hardly 
 say the why and wherefore ; a thinking mind (and Eastern poli- 
 tics require one) may fill up the rest. But it would be well 
 for Syria, well for Bagdad, well for the valley of Mosool and the 
 Mesopotamian uplands, were the same principles that preside 
 at Ha'yel applied there. It is beyond the writer's province to 
 speak of Europe, where Poles, Servians, Sicilians, and other 
 races may have to work out the same problem. But of Asia, 
 at least so much of it as lies between Kara-Dagh and 'Aden, 
 I would unhesitatingly say that its specific remedy (and very 
 sick it is wherever it forms part of the great " sick man") is to 
 be found first and foremost in the redintegration of its nation- 
 ality. Forsan — hoic olim meminisse javabit. 
 
 Next morning, the 29th of July, about an hour after sunrise, 
 the loiterers of the town — and they are numerous here as those 
 who ever hung on the bridge at Coventry — had in us and our 
 dwelling a new centre of curiosity and attraction. This was 
 just what we wanted ; so our outer door had been purposely left 
 open, and the interior sijectacle displayed to the delighted 
 beholders. 
 
 Eound the walls of the courtyard and following the shade 
 they afforded, we had arranged ends of carpet, empty saddle-bags, 
 and the like, for the convenience of whoever might come to 
 visit or to consult the great doctor. Once for all, I beg pardon 
 of the medical faculty for my assumed title. I had taken no 
 degree, not even at Aberdeen. In short, it was a horrid, a most 
 scandalous imposture, an unpardonable cheat, whatever you 
 choose ; but I could not help it. I trust that extenuating 
 circumstances and previous good character may save me from a 
 " prosecution according to law." True, I had seriously availed 
 m3^self, during past years, of opportunities for the European 
 study and the Asiatic practice of an amateur in the " leech's " 
 art, and might securely trust to acquired experience for 
 ordinary cases. The inner room on the left of the court 
 had been decently carpeted, and tliere I sat in cross-legged 
 state, with a pair of scales before me, a brass mortar, a glass 
 ditto, and fifty or sixty boxes of drugs, with a small flanking
 
 .144 LIFE IN HA'YEL [Chap. IV 
 
 line of Lotties. Two Arab books of medical science by my side 
 answered all the purposes of a diploma ; of English or French 
 " vade-mecums " I had but two, and they were concealed behind 
 the cushion at the back, to be consulted in secret, if necessary. 
 jNIy companion, who did his best to look like a doctor's serving- 
 man, sat outside near the door ; his duty was to enquire of 
 comers-in what they wanted, and to admit them one by one 
 to the professional sanctuary. In the opposite room, to the 
 right, a cavddron, a pile of wood, two or three melons, bread, 
 dates, and so forth, promised something better than the purga- 
 tives and emetics on the left. We had, of course, put on our 
 Sunday's best, that is, clean shirts, a more decent head-gear, and 
 an upper garment or Combaz — Zaboon they here style it — in 
 England it would pass for a flowered dressing-gown. Such was 
 our appearance on setting up business in Ha'yel, while we 
 awaited the first onset of its custom. 
 
 Nor had we long to wait. The courtyard was soon thronged 
 with visitors, some from the palace, others from the town. One 
 ]iad a sick relation, whom he begged us to come and see, 
 another some personal ailment, a third had called out of mere 
 l)oliteness or curiosity ; in short, men of all conditions and of 
 all ages, but for the most part open and friendly in manner, so 
 that we could already anticipate a very speedy acquaintance 
 with the town and whatever it contained. In order not to lose 
 time, and to preserve at once the dignity and the popularity of 
 our position, we concerted a methodical system, to which I 
 adhered in every town we stopped in throughout the rest of our 
 journey : it succeeded admirably well both for our real and 
 apparent ends ; and I shall here explain it accordingly, for the 
 benefit of quacks, impostors, and travellers. 
 
 In the first place, it was resolved to refuse steadily all 
 medical practice among women and small children. A measure 
 absolutely necessary, considering the very limited bounds of our 
 science, if we wished to avoid failure, and to husband leisure 
 for more interesting game. 
 
 Secondly, though not till after some observation of Arab 
 town-life, we arranged our daily occupations on a settled plan, 
 of which I will subsequently give some description. 
 
 Thirdly, it was resolved that among the men of a reasonable
 
 Chap. IV] NORTH CENTRAL ARABIA 
 
 '45 
 
 age who should visit or apply to us, we would reject no one 
 at first sight, but give a courteous welcome to one and all, 
 nor let any individual go away till after drawing him out in 
 conversation to the best of our ability ; but that, at the same 
 time, we would undertake a regular treatment of no one with 
 whose social position, general tenor of life, and other circum- 
 stances, we should not have first rendered ourselves sufficiently 
 familiar. 
 
 Obvious motives of prudence in a strange land might suffice 
 to make these precautions advisable, but there was here a 
 special reason for taking them. Arabs never, or hardly ever, 
 pay the physician except in case of a recovery. Their way is to 
 make from the very first a stipulation or agreement " 'Ala-el - 
 bar','' as they call it, that is, " under contingency of cure : " 
 and offer payment in such event, of a larger or smaller sum, 
 according to the gravity, tediousness, or other circumstances of 
 the case. Should recovery not follow, the doctor has nothing to 
 expect. 
 
 I do not know how far this system would be relished by our 
 own M.D.'s; though mayhap the patients might occasionally be 
 the gainers by it. But this way of proceeding exacts, it is 
 evident, many precautions on the part of the doctor, if he 
 would not see his labour and fair fame speedily thrown away. 
 Good assurance touching the character and solvency of the con- 
 tracting party is, above all, necessary. Then witnesses must be 
 called in, and the definition of what is precisely meant by " re- 
 covery " be exactly fixed, to ensure against evasion and chicane. 
 And, lastly, the doctor, (if, at any rate, no better a one than 
 myself, though I should be sorry to think that,) would do 
 well to assure himself, so far as possible, of the prognosis of the 
 disease, and if he sees the case to be an unfavourable one, let 
 him decline it. 
 
 But since this, if done in too straightforward a way, might 
 give the public a limited idea of his skill, he must resort to 
 sundry little expedients, according to the circumstances before 
 him. Thus if he sees that death is certainly imminent, let him 
 at once declare that the Divine decrees must have their course, 
 and that from Heaven alone can any suspension or alleviation 
 be expected. More than once, where the signs of approaching 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 LIFE IN IIA'YEL [CnAr. IV 
 
 dissolution, though unmistakeable enough to practised eyes and 
 fingers, were yet of a character to escape the notice of the very 
 unscientific bystanders, the sudden verification within a few days 
 or hours of some similar announcement on my part, pro- 
 cured me a wonderful name for extraordinary science. So easy 
 a task has monoculus inter ccvcos. 
 
 In less ominous but still unfavourable cases, I found it an 
 excellent plan to exact for price of cure, something very exorbi- 
 tant, say, the value of ten pounds or thereabouts, and which I 
 was confident that no Arab would dream of agreeing to ; and 
 thus get off -svith fair words and a steady refusal. 
 
 However, now and then I did come across some exceptionally 
 reasonable individuals, who when informed that all the resources 
 of art could only act as palliatives, or if they chanced to be fol- 
 lowed by amelioration, it must be after much time and attend- 
 ance, consented even thus to accept of my aid, offered a fixed 
 sum to be paid whatever the result might be, and conscien- 
 tiously kept their word. But these Avere very rare exceptions 
 to a far more general rule. 
 
 My readers must already understand that to distribute medi- 
 cine or to afford assistance " gratis " in the usual way, in Arabia, 
 would be sheer madness ; such a line of conduct would inevitably 
 betray the stranger, and perhaps imply the spy. One should, 
 on the contrary, appear more eager than any attorney after one's 
 fees, and make it seem that they are the main or indeed the 
 only object of one's travels. 
 
 However, whatever dexterity the real or pretended man of 
 prescriptions may possess, he will find the Arabs of the interior 
 queer patients, and "kittle cattle" to shoe behind or before. 
 For although they are fairly civilized in many other respects, 
 and do not want either clearness of perception or local know- 
 ledge, they are mere children in medical matters, and do not 
 muster the very first data or ideas of that science. Hence their 
 iEsculapius has need of much patience and good-humour, and 
 even of a little innocent quackery from time to time. For his 
 clients will look on the medicines asked for or administered as 
 hardly less than charms expected to produce a visible and tan- 
 gible amendment on the very spot, and that quite independently 
 of any regulations respecting diet, clothing, and the like, from
 
 Chap. IV] NORTH CENTRAL ARABIA 1 4-7 
 
 which in real fact two-thirds of success must often depend in 
 Asia quite as much as in Europe. If after a day or two the 
 sick man does not appear cured, or at least on the high road to 
 being so, they will say, " We do not see any good come of it," and 
 forthwith abandon physic and physician. In consequence it is 
 best to adopt, when one can in conscience do it, an energetic 
 treatment from the very outset; homoeopathy and " la medeclne 
 expectante^^ would here have little success. I may add that 
 the tough Arab fibre generally requires doses which might be 
 almost fatal in Europe ; and experience soon taught me to 
 multiply by two most of the prescription-formulas at the end of 
 my manual. 
 
 Perhaps my readers may wish to hear what is the exact 
 degree of medical lore or ignorance in Modern Arabia : the 
 more so because Arabs are not uncommonly supposed in Europe 
 to have been if not the authors at least the restorers of the 
 healing art. 
 
 But this is a popular error. Whatever the Eastern physicians 
 of Bagdad, or their westerly brethren of Cordova, might know, 
 was derived from translations of Hippocrates or Gralen, from the 
 Physics of Aristotle and the treatises of Celsus, embodied in 
 Byzantine compilations, and the works of modern Greeks. These, 
 rendered with more or less accuracy into the vernacular tongue, 
 and in the hands of men who had, without exception, so far as 
 I have been able to investigate, nothing of the Arab except that 
 they wrote in Arabic, (much in the way that a Prussian of Dussel- 
 dorf may occasionally publish in French,) and that they professed 
 the Mahometan belief, became at once the base and the super- 
 structure, the alpha and the omega, of the whole science ; to this 
 their successors added nothing, unless it be some scanty and 
 inaccurate lists of Persian, African, or Egyptian herbs ; and their 
 confused and unscientific treatises have remained to the present 
 day the ne plus ultra of Arab medical learning. 
 
 But even their first glimmerings of science and of method 
 were soon effectually closed and cross-barred by Islamitic im- 
 mobility, and its misplaced supernaturalism. The traditional 
 sayings of Mahomet, whether really his or not, but which at 
 any rate are little calculated to give the Prophet place among 
 the ranks of those who can heal the body, were intermixed with 
 
 L 2
 
 148 LIFE IX IlA-YEL [Chap. IV 
 
 or substituted for the formulas of Galen and the precepts of 
 Hippocrates ; and to deny or evade the hygienic theories of the 
 Meccan camel-driver might render one suspected of heresy at 
 the least, and bring down the most awkward consequences. 
 The fated and all-pervading interference, for such Islam makes 
 it, of the Divine Omnipotence came in to preclude research, by 
 reducing every phenomenon at once to the one immediate 
 universal and arbitrary cause, and thus cut every knot instead 
 of untying it. Moreover, autopsy and anatomical studies were 
 held, and still are so, in horror, because a violation of the rights 
 of Munkar and Nekeer, the grave-angels ; while to insist on the 
 healing or noxious qualities of this or that, appears a downright 
 transfer made to the creature of an honour exclusively due to 
 the Creator. This is no exaggeration ; not one of these ideas 
 but I have heard fifty and a hundred times from orthodox and 
 otherwise intelligent Muslims. Thus, without knowledge alike 
 of the human frame and of the chemical pharmacopoeia, pre- 
 cluded from experimental science, and rejecting theoretical, 
 they came at the very outset to a dead stand, and there to the 
 present day they have remained crystallized, one might almost 
 say, in complacent and conscientious ignorance. 
 
 Thus much for the schools of Syria, Bagdad, Spain, and even 
 of Egypt down to the reign of Mahommed 'Alee. The Arabs 
 of Arabia itself, though much freer in general from the stifling 
 influences of Islam, which their practical good-sense rejected 
 even where they admitted it in speculation and name, could 
 however only learn of the medical sciences so much as its 
 masters chose to teach them in the few torn and dingy manu- 
 scripts that might eke their way into the interior of the 
 Peninsula. Iron sharpens iron, and man's wits sharpen man's, 
 and intercourse is the first and most essential condition of 
 advancement. But of this, the Arabs were almost totally 
 deprived by their isolated position girdled round by the sand 
 sea of their country, and thus they have been left without most 
 of those • intellectual advantages which a freer communication 
 with other nations might and would have bestowed on them. 
 The wonder is not that they failed to acquire new civilization 
 and learning, but that they managed to maintain their own ; 
 not that they did not advance, but that they lost so little
 
 Chap. IV] NORTH CENTRAL ARABIA 1 40 
 
 ground. Less unfavourable circumstances have sufficed to sink 
 many races into utter barbarism. Here the soil was good, but, 
 for the sciences we are now speaking of, there was neither seed 
 nor sower. And at last the noxious Wahhabee atmosphere, the 
 purest azote of Mahoraetanism, overspread the better half of 
 the land, to stifle what latent vitality it yet retained. 
 
 The result is what might naturally be expected. To come to 
 particulars : senna and colocynth, both indigenous products, 
 and whose effect on the animal economy is equally evident and 
 energetic, are almost the only vegetable drugs used or under- 
 stood. Sulphur, the sulphuret of mercury, and that of arsenic, 
 constitute the entire ordinary list of external applications. On 
 a certain draught derived from the cameline kingdom, and 
 much in use among constipated Bedouins, no need to dilate. 
 Bleeding, especially from the arm, is known, but seldom practised, 
 few having either the skill or the instruments necessary for the 
 operation. A friend of mine, by name Hannoosh, once per- 
 formed it with a hatchet ! and, stranger still, without cutting off 
 the arm or causing phlebitis. One only remedy is lavishly em- 
 ployed, and borne with amazing patience, — the actual cautery. 
 Whatever be the ailment, wherever the pain fixes itself, the hot 
 iron is forthwith applied ; and should an individual be so 
 unlucky or so unadvised as to complain of pain " all over," he 
 is pretty sure to be seamed all over also. 
 
 But ignorance would be a trifle, were it not united with a 
 pretence to knowledge. Everyone, even the very negro slaves, 
 have learned by rote the famous quadruple division of the 
 human constitution ; and " am I bilious ? or sanguine ? or 
 lymphatic ? or melancholic ? " is asked by each and all, and 
 they attach the greatest importance to the answer on this abstruse 
 point. Any theory that they have, and no man however unin- 
 structed can do without one altogether, is founded on the four 
 temperamects. And accordingly the real or soi-disant doctor, 
 whatever value he may in his own mind assign to this superan- 
 nuated classification, will do well to bear it in mind, and to 
 bring it perforce into his decisions, if he wishes not to pass for 
 an absolute ignoramus in Nejed and Ha'yel. 
 
 However, the prevailing good humour and urbanity of this 
 people, joined with their large stock of natural sound sense and
 
 I ^o LIFE IN pA'YEL [Chap. IV 
 
 keen thougli not deep observation, does much to alleviate the 
 difficulties of the physician. So let no one despair ; should 
 London or Brussels prove unkind, a few years of Nejdean 
 practice may perhaps mend matters. 
 
 Before leaving this subject, I must add a concluding word 
 on the ordinary practitioners now in vogue throughout Arabia 
 Proper. From the frontiers of Syria to the innermost valleys of 
 Nejed is scattered a tribe of a very peculiar character and name, 
 everywhere the same, and everywhere distinct from the sur- 
 rounding clans, easily distinguishable, and well known to all 
 conversant with the desert and its wanderers. Should any one of 
 my readers be of this number, he will readily understand that I 
 speak of the Solibah tribe, whose very title, immediately derived 
 as it is from Saleeb, or the Cross, together with external and in- 
 ternal tradition, may seem to confirm their Christian origin. But 
 this betrays itself too in other ways. Among these is their mode of 
 life, never taking part in the wars and disputes of the remaining 
 clans, never allying with them in marriage or otherwise ; their 
 main, indeed almost their only occupation, is the chase of ostriches 
 and gazelles, and in this they are unrivalled. Though retain- 
 ing, so far as I could discover, but very faint traces of the more 
 positive features of Christianity, they have yet one of its negative 
 marks in a strong unchanging hatred to Mahometanism, which 
 they not only neglect in common with the great mass of Bedouins, 
 but openly and positively disavow. They are evidently strangers 
 to the Arab stem, and by their own account belong to a more 
 northerly extraction. And in support of this, their fair com- 
 plexion and open, sometimes handsome, features and light eyes 
 show the Syrian rather than the Arabian type; "while their 
 careless gaiety of manner strongly contrasts with the cloudy and 
 suspicious physiognomy of the wanderers among whom they live. 
 I often fell in with these men, and mention will be made of them 
 again in the course of this work. 
 
 Now to these same Solibah Bedouins the ordinary inhabitants 
 of the peninsula attribute a knowledge of the healing art far 
 exceeding their own ; nor, it would seem, altogether without 
 reason. It is a common saying among Mahometans that medical 
 science is the offspring and heritage of the Christians ; and they 
 readily avow their own inferiority in this respect. Hence they
 
 Chap. IV] NORTH CENTRAL ARABIA I5I 
 
 thiuk it natural enough to look for it among the Solibali. Of 
 these, and of their skill, I have heard many stories, some wild 
 enough, though not totally incredible. Eut having never had 
 the good luck to see any fact of the sort with my own eyes, I do 
 not think it advisable to prolong my tale with episodes of but a 
 doubtful value ; suffices to say that paracentesis, lithotomy, and 
 still more difficult operations worthy of an Astley Cooper or 
 a Brodie, have been often in my hearing ascribed to the Solibah 
 surgeons, and that with such circumstantial detail in the nar- 
 rative as to give it at least an air of truth, besides medical 
 treatments of all kinds and qualities for sundry and complicated 
 diseases. So that I really suppose the reputation of this errant 
 faculty to be somehow founded in fact. 
 
 Besides these rather mysterious practitioners, Mughrabee and 
 Belooch quacks occasionally wander over the peninsula, and 
 profess to heal, but with little success either for the bodies of 
 their patients or for their own pockets. 1 never heard them 
 well spoken of, nor should I indeed have expected it. 
 
 What has been now said may be enough to give an idea of 
 the line we had to hold in our simulated profession. Throughout 
 the remainder of our travels, we kept up our medical character, 
 making it our exclusive title of introduction among whatever 
 people we had to deal with, and never permitted anyone of low 
 or high degree to know anything else of us, unless some very 
 peculiar circumstances rendered an opposite conduct necessary 
 or expedient in individual instances, one of which happened in 
 fact only a few weeks later. 
 
 The nature of our occupations now led to a certain daily 
 routine, thovigh it was often agreeably diversified by incidental 
 occurrences. Perhaps a leaf taken at random from my journal, 
 now regularly kept, may serve to set before my readers a 
 tolerable sample of our ordinary course of life and society at 
 Ha'yel, while it will at the same time give a more distinct idea 
 of the town and people than we have yet supplied. It is, 
 besides, a pleasure to retrace the memories of a pleasant time, 
 and such on the whole was ours here ; and I trust that the 
 reader will not be wholly devoid of some share in my feelings. 
 
 Be it, then, the 10th of August, whose jotted notes I will put 
 together and fill up the blanks. I might equally have taken
 
 152 LIFE IN JIAYEL [Chap. IV 
 
 the 9th or the 11th, they are all much the same; but the day 
 I have chosen looks a little the closer written of the two, and 
 for that sole reason I prefer giving it ; nor does it seem to me 
 devoid of calm and real though not stirring interest. However, 
 for the consolation of those who delight in recitals of desperate 
 battles, grisly murder, and all that, I forewarn that an episode 
 thick-set with these agreeable and soul-stirring events must of 
 necessity be introduced into its course like a crimson patch on 
 a ground of quiet green. 
 
 On that day, then, in 1862, about a fortnight after our 
 establishment at Ha'yel, and when we were, in consequence, 
 fully inured to our town existence, Seleem Abou Mahmood- 
 el-'Eys and Barakat-esh-Shamee, that is, my companion and 
 myself, rose, not from our beds, for we had none, but from 
 our roof-spread carpets, and took advantage of the silent 
 hour of the first faint dawn, while the stars yet kept watch 
 in the sky over the slumbering inhabitants of Shomer, to 
 leave the house for a cool and undisturbed walk ere the 
 sun should arise and man go forth unto his work and to his 
 labour. We locked the outer door, and then passed into the 
 still twilight gloom down the cross-street leading to the market- 
 place, which we next followed up to its farther or south- 
 western end, where large folding-gates separate it from the rest 
 of the town. The wolfish city-dogs, whose bark and bite too 
 render walking the streets at night a rather precarious business, 
 now tamely stalked away in the gloaming, while here and there 
 a crouching camel, the packages yet on his back, and his 
 sleeping driver close by, awaited the opening of the warehouse 
 at whose door they had passed the night. Early though it was, 
 the market-gates were already unclosed, and the guardian sat 
 wakeful in his niche. On leaving the market we had yet to go 
 down a broad street of houses and gardens cheerfully inter- 
 mixed, till at last we reached the western wall of the town, or, 
 rather, of the new quarter added by 'Abd-Allah, where the high 
 portal between round flanking tow^ers gave us issue on the open 
 plain, blown over at this hour by a light gale of life and cool- 
 ness. To the west, but some four or five miles distant, rose the 
 serrated mass of Djebel Shomer, thro\^^ng up its black fantastic 
 peaks, now reddened by the reflected dawn, against the lead-
 
 Chap. IV] NORTH CENTRAL ARABIA I ^3 
 
 Ijlue sky. Northward the same chain bends round till it meets 
 the town, and then stretches away for a length of ten or twelve 
 days' journey, gradually losing in height on its approach to 
 Meshid 'Alee and the valley of the Euphrates. On our south we 
 have a little isolated knot of rocks, and far off the extreme 
 ranges of Djebel Shomer or 'Aja', to give it its historical name, 
 intersected by the broad passes that lead on in the same direc- 
 tion to Djebel Solma. Behind us lies the capital. Telrd's 
 palace, with its high oval keep, houses, gardens, walls, and 
 towers, all coming out black against the ruddy bars of eastern 
 light, and behind, a huge pyramidical peak almost overhanging 
 the town, and connected by lower rocks with the main moun- 
 tain range to north and south, those stony ribs that protect the 
 central heart of the kingdom. In the plain itself we can just 
 distinguish by the doubtful twilight several blackish patches ir- 
 regularly scattered over its face, or seen as though leaning upward 
 against its craggy verge; these are the gardens and country- 
 houses of 'Obeyd and other chiefs, besides hamlets and villages, 
 such as Kefar and 'Adwah, with their groves of palm and "Ithel " 
 (a tree which I will describe farther on), now blended in the 
 dusk. One solitary traveller on his camel, a troop of jackals 
 sneaking off to their rocky caverns, a few dingy tents of Shomer 
 Bedouins, such are the last details of the landscape. Far away 
 over the southern hills beams the glory of Canopus, and an- 
 nounces a new Arab year ; the pole-star to the north lies low 
 over the mountain tops. 
 
 We pace the pebble-strewn flat to the south, till we leave behind 
 us the length of the town wall, and reach the little cluster of 
 rocks already mentioned. We scramble vip to a sort of niche 
 near its summit, whence, at a height of a hundred feet or more, 
 we can overlook the whole extent of the plain and wait the sun- 
 rise. Yet before the highest crags of Shomer are gilt with its 
 first rays, or the long giant shadows of the easterly chain have 
 crossed the level, we see groups of peasants, who drawing their 
 fruit and vegetable-laden asses before them, issue like little 
 bands of ants from the mountain gorges around, and slowly 
 approach on the tracks converging to the capital. Horsemen 
 from the town ride out to the gardens, and a long line of camels 
 on the westerly Medinah road winds up towards Ha'yel. We
 
 154 LIFE IN JjA'YEL [Cn.vr. IV 
 
 wait esconced hi our rocky look-out and enjoy the view till the 
 Sim has risen, and the coolness of the night air warms rapidly 
 into the sultry day; it is time to return. So we quit our 
 solitary perch, and descend to the j^lain, where keeping in 
 the shadow of the western fortifications we regain the town 
 gate and thence the market. There all is now life and move- 
 ment; some of the warehouses, filled with rice, floiu-, spices^ or 
 coffee, and often concealing in their inner recesses stores of the 
 prohibited American weed, are already open ; we salute the 
 owners while we pass, and they return a polite and friendly 
 greeting. Camels are unloading in the streets, and Bedouins 
 standing by, looking anything but at home in the town. The 
 shoemaker and the blacksmith, those two main props of Arab 
 handicraft, are already at their work, and some gossiping by- 
 standers are collected around them. At the corner where our 
 cross street falls into the market place, three or four country 
 women are seated, with piles of melons, gourds, egg-plant 
 fruits, and the other garden produce before them for sale. ]\Iy 
 companion falls a haggling with one of these village nymphs, and 
 ends by obtaining a dozen " badinjans " and a couple of water 
 melons, each bigger than a man's head, for the equivalent of an 
 English twopence. With this purchase we return home, where 
 we shut and bolt the outer door, then take out of a flat basket 
 what has remained from over night of our wafer-like Ha'yel 
 bread, and with this and a melon make a hasty breakfast. I 
 say a hasty one, for although it is only half an hour after sun- 
 rise, repeated knocks at our portal show the arrival of patients 
 and visitors : early rising being here the fashion, and reason 
 must wherever artificial lighting is scanty. However, we do not 
 at once open to our friends, nor will they take offence at the 
 delay, but remain where they are chatting together before our 
 door till we admit them ; of so little value is time here. Our 
 drink is water, for which we address ourselves to a goat-skin 
 filled from the neighbouring well by Fatimah, daughter of our 
 landlord Hasan-el-]Misree, and suspended against the wall in 
 the shady corner of the court. We untie its mouth where it 
 hangs, and let out the contents into a very rude but strong- 
 brass cup of town manufacture, and with this teetotaller draught 
 content ourselves. I hardly know why we had not yet begun
 
 Chai'. IV] NORTH CENTRAL ARABIA I^£ 
 
 at Ha'yel to make our own coffee; we became better house- 
 keepers in the after course of the journey. We then arrange 
 the carpets, and I retire to my doctoral seat within, taking care 
 to have the scales and an Arab book in ostentatious evidence 
 before me, while Barakiit-esh-Shamee opens the entrance. 
 
 In comes a young man of good appearance, clad in the black 
 cloak common to all of the middle or uj^per classes in central 
 Arabia ; in his hand he bears a wand of the Sidr or lotos-wood. 
 A silver-hilted sword and a glistering Kafee'yah announce him 
 to be a person of some importance, while his long black ringlets, 
 handsome features and slightly olive complexion, with a tall 
 stature and easy gait, declare him native of Djebel Shomer, 
 and townsman of Ha'yel ; it is 'Ojeyl, the eldest born of a 
 large family, and successor to the comfortable house and garden 
 of his father not long since deceased, in a quarter of the town 
 some twenty minutes' walk distant. He leads by the hand his 
 younger brother, a modest-looking lad of fair complexion and 
 slim make, but almost blind, and evidently out of health also. 
 After passing through the preliminary ceremonies of intro- 
 duction to Barakat, he approaches my recess, and standing 
 without, salutes me with the greatest deference. Thinking 
 him a desirable acquaintance, I receive him very graciously, 
 and he begs me to see what is the matter with his brother, 
 describing to me all the boy's various ailments with much 
 exactness, though with scrupulous decorum in the choice of 
 words, a point in which the Arabs of the towns are remark- 
 ably skilful, unless perhaps when they choose to be rude on 
 purpose. I examine the case, and find it to be within the 
 limits of my skill, nor likely to require more than a very simple 
 course of treatment. Accordingly I make my bargain for the 
 chances of recovery, and find 'Ojeyl docile to the terms pro- 
 posed, and with little disposition, all things considered, to 
 backwardness in payment. Arabs, indeed, are in general close 
 in driving a bargain and open in downright giving ; they will 
 chaffer half a day about a penny, while they will throw away 
 the worth of pounds on the first asker. But 'Ojeyl was one of 
 the best specimens of the Ha'yel character, and of the clan 
 Ta'i, renowned in all times for their liberal ways and high 
 sense of honour. I next proceed to administer to my patient
 
 1 56 LIFE IN JIA'YEL [Chap. IV 
 
 such drugs as his state requires, and he receives them with 
 that air of absolute and half religious confidence which well- 
 educated Arabs show to their physician, whom they regard as 
 possessed of an almost sacred and supernatural power — a feeling, 
 by the way, hardly less advantageous to the patient than to the 
 practitioner, and which may often contribute much to the 
 success of the treatment. 
 
 During the rest of my stay at Ha'yel, 'Ojeyl continued to be 
 one of my best friends, I had almost said disciples ; our mutual 
 visits were frequent, and always pleasing and hearty. His 
 brother's cure, which followed in less than a fortnight, confirmed 
 his attachment, nor had I reason to complain of scantiness in 
 his retribution. From him also I obtained what I valued much 
 more, namely, considerable information about the political and 
 religious state of the " past and present " of Shomer ; I will 
 give it interwoven into the course of the narrative when occasion 
 offers. 
 
 Meanwhile the courtyard has become full of visitors. Close 
 by my door I see the intelligent and demurely-smiling face of 
 'Abd-el-Mahsin, where he sits between two pretty and well- 
 dressed boys ; they are the two elder children of Telal, Bedr and 
 Bander ; their guardsman, a negro slave with a handsome cloak 
 and sword, is seated a little lower down. Farther on are two 
 townsmen, one armed, the other with a wand at his side. A 
 rough good-natured youth of a bronzed complexion, and whose 
 dingy clothes bespeak his mechanical profession, is talking with 
 another of a dress somewhat different in form and coarser in 
 material than that usually worn in Ha'yel ; this latter must be a 
 peasant from some one of the mountain villages. Two Bedouins, 
 ragged and uncouth like all their compeers, have straggled in 
 with the rest ; while a tall dark-featured youth, with a gilded 
 hilt to his sword, and more silk about him than a Wahhabee 
 would approve, has taken his place opposite to 'Abd-el-Mahsin, 
 and is trying to draw him into conversation. But this last has 
 asked Barakat to lend him one of my Arabic books to read, and 
 is deeply engaged in its perusal. 
 
 'Ojeyl has taken leave, and I give the next turn of course to 
 'Abd-el-Mahsin. He informs me that Telal has sent me his 
 two sons Bedr and Bander that I may examine their state of
 
 Chap. IV] NORTH CENTRAL ARABIA 15- 
 
 health, and see if they require doctoring. This is in truth a little 
 stroke of policy on Telrd's part, who knows equally with myself 
 that the boys are perfectly well and want nothing at all. But 
 he wishes to give us a mark of his confidence, and at the same 
 time to help us in establishing our medical reputation in the 
 town ; for though by no means himself persuaded of the reality 
 of our doctoral title, he understands the expediency of saving 
 appearances before the public. 
 
 Well, the children are passed in review with all the seriousness 
 due to a case of heart-complaint or brain-fever, while at a wink 
 from me, Barakat prepares in the kitchen a draught of cinnamon 
 water, which with sugar, named medicine for the occasion, 
 pleases the young heirs of royalty and keeps up the farce ; 
 'Abd-el-Mahsin, like the Chorus in Euripides, expatiating all 
 the time to the bystanders on the wonderful skill with which 
 I have at once discovered the ailments and their cure, and the 
 small boys thinking that if this be medicine, they will do their 
 best to be ill for it every day. 
 
 'Abd-el-Mahsin now commits them to the negro, who, however, 
 before taking them back to the palace, has his own story to tell 
 of some personal ache, for which I prescribe without stipulating 
 for payment, since he belongs to the palace, where it is import- 
 ant to have the greatest number of friends possible, even on the 
 back-stairs. But 'Abd-el-Mahsin remains, reading, chatting, 
 quoting poetry, and talking history, recent events, natural 
 philosophy, religion, or medicine, as the case may be. 
 
 But let us see some of the other patients. The gold-hilted 
 swordsman has naturally a special claim on our attention. 
 It is the son of Eosheyd, Telill's maternal uncle. His palace 
 stands on the other side of the way, exactly opposite to our 
 house; and I will say nothing more of him for the present, 
 intending to pay him afterwards a special visit, and thus become 
 more thoroughly acquainted with the whole family. 
 
 Next let us take notice of those two townsmen who are 
 conversing, or rather " chaffing," together. Though both in 
 plain apparel, and much alike in stature and features, there 
 is yet much about them to distinguish the two ; one has a 
 civilian look, the other a military. He of the wand is no less 
 a personage than Mohammed-el-Kadee, chief justice of Ha'yel,
 
 158 LIFE IN IlA'YEL [Chap. IV 
 
 and of course a very important individual in the town. How- 
 ever his exterior is tliat of an elderly unpretentious little man, 
 and one, in spite of the proverb which attributes gravity to 
 judges, very fond of a joke, besides being a tolerable repre- 
 sentative of what may here be called the moderate part}'^, neither 
 participating in the fanaticism of the Wahhabee, nor yet, like 
 the most of the indigenous chiefs, hostile to Mahometanism ; he 
 takes his cue from the court direction, and is popular with all 
 factions because belonging properly to none. 
 
 He requires some medical treatment for himself, and some 
 for his son, a big heavy lad with a swollen arm, who has accom- 
 panied him hither. Here too is a useful acquaintance, well 
 up to all the scandal and small-talk of the town, and willing 
 to communicate it. Our visits were frequent, and I found 
 his house well stored with books, partly manuscript, partly 
 printed in Egypt, and mainly on legal or religious subjects. 
 Among those of the latter description were, by way of example, 
 a collection of Khotbahs or sermons for all the Fridays in the 
 year, and the Lives of the Prophets from Seth downwards, 
 written with an historical accuracy and critical discernment 
 worthy of the stories of Baron Munchausen or Jack and the 
 Beanstalk. Mohammed was a great talker, and exercised on 
 all matters a freedom of remark common though not peculiar 
 to men of the legal profession ; he became in short our " daily 
 news " for court intrigue and city gossip, what had been said 
 in public, and what done in private, who ran away with whom, 
 and so forth. Yet on the whole the portrait he thus laid 
 before us of Ha'yel and its inhabitants, noble or commoners, was 
 a favourable one, more so perhaps than could be in justice given 
 of most capitals. This might be the result of the character of 
 those tribes who, as Arab annals have it, coalesced into the 
 present population, namely, Ta'i and Wa'il, with their kindred 
 clans, and who were, so fame assures us, the flower of Arab 
 enterprise and generosity, the most affable in peace, the most 
 daring in war, and the most honourable at all times amid the 
 inhabitants of Nejed and Upper Arabia. In later ages the civi- 
 lization of town-life has cast an agreeable varnish over their 
 rougher qualities, while that civilization itself is of too simple a 
 character to render them artificial or corrupt.
 
 CnAP. IV] NORTH CENTRAL ARABIA 1 59 
 
 Of the country folks in the villages around, like Mogah, 
 Delhemee'eh, and the rest, Mohammed-el-Kadee used to speak 
 with a sort of half-contemptuous pity, much like a Parisian 
 talking of Low Bretons ; in fact, the difference between these 
 rough and sturdy boors, and the more refined inhabitants of the 
 capital, is, all due proportion allowed, no less remarkable here 
 than in Europe itself. We will now let one of them come 
 forward in his own behalf, and my readers shall be judges. 
 
 It is accordingly a stout clown from Mogah, scantily dressed 
 in working wear, and who has been occupied for the last half- 
 hour in tracing sundry diagrams on the ground before him 
 with a thick peach-tree switch, thus to pass his time till his 
 betters shall have been served. He now edges forward, and 
 taking his seat in front of the door, calls my attention with an 
 " I say, doctor." Whereon I suggest to him that his bulky 
 corporation not being formed of glass or any other transparent 
 material, he has by his position entirely intercepted whatever 
 little light my recess might enjoy. He apologizes, and shuffles 
 an inch or two sideways. Next I enquire what ails him, not 
 without some curiosity to hear the answer, so little does the 
 herculean frame before me announce disease. Whereto 
 Do'eymis, or whatever may be his name, replies, " I say, I am 
 all made up of pain." This statement, like many others, 
 appears to me rather too general to be literally true. So I 
 proceed in my interrogatory : " Does your head pain you ? " 
 "No." (I might have guessed that; these fellows never feel what 
 our cross-Channel friends entitle " le lyial des beaux esprits.''') 
 " Does your back ache?" "No." "Your arms?" "No." 
 "Your legs?" "No." "Your body?" "No." "But," I 
 conclude, " if neither your head nor your body, back, arms, or 
 legs pain you, how can you possibly be such a composition of 
 suffering?" "I am all made up of pain, doctor," replies he, 
 manfully intrenching himself within his first position. The 
 fact is, that there is really something wrong with him, but he 
 does not know how to localize his sensations. So I push for- 
 ward my encjuiries, till it appears that our man of Mogah has 
 a chronic rheumatism ; and on ulterior investigation, conducted 
 with all the skill that Barakut and I can jointly muster, it 
 comes out that three or four months before he had an attack
 
 l6o LIFE IN IIAYEL \Cn\v. IV 
 
 of the disease in its acute form, accompanied by high fever, 
 since which he has never been himself again. 
 
 This might suffice for the diagnosis, but I wish to see how he 
 will find his way out of more intricate questions ; besides, the 
 townsmen sitting by, and equally alive to the joke with myself, 
 whisper " Try him again." In consequence, I proceed with 
 " What was the cause of your first illness?" "I say, doctor, 
 its cause was God," replies the patient. "No doubt of that," 
 say I ; " all things are caused by God : but what was the 
 particular and immediate occasion ? " " Doctor, its cause was 
 God, and, secondly, that I ate camel's flesh when I was cold," 
 rejoins my scientific friend. "But was there nothing else?" 
 I suggest, not quite satisfied with the lucid explanation just 
 given. " Then, too, I drank camel's milk ; but it was all, I 
 say, from God, doctor," answers he. 
 
 Well, I consider the case, and make up my mind regarding 
 the treatment. Next comes the grand question of payment, 
 which must be agreed on beforehand, and rendered conditional 
 on success, as my readers know. I enquire what he will give 
 me on recovery. " Doctor," answers the peasant, " I will give 
 you, do you hear ? I say, I will give you a camel." But I 
 reply that T do not want one. " I say, remember God," which 
 being interpreted here means, " do not be unreasonable ; I will 
 give you a fat camel, every one knows my camel ; if you 
 choose, I will bring witnesses, I say." And while I persist in 
 refusing the proffered camel, he talks of butter, meal, dates, 
 and suchlike equivalents. 
 
 There is a patient and a paymaster for you. However, all 
 ends by his behaving reasonably enough ; he follows my pre- 
 scriptions with the ordinary docility, gets well, and gives me 
 for my pains an eighteenpenny fee. 
 
 So pass two or three hours, during which the remaining 
 visitors already mentioned take each their turn, others come 
 and go, and the sun nears the zenith. For brevity's sake, I 
 pass on at once to the mechanic, who, after long waiting in the 
 shade with genuine Arab patience, now advances, and with a 
 good-natured grin on his broad features begs me to accompany 
 him to his house, where his brother is lying ill of a fever. 
 After a short conversation, I direct Barakat to stay at home till
 
 Chap. IV] NORTH CENTRAL ABABIA l6l 
 
 my return, and gratify my petitioner by consenting to hi^- 
 invitation. 
 
 Small of stature, dusky in complexion, strongly built, and 
 with a sly expression about his face which resembles almost 
 strikingly that of Murillo's Spanish beggar-boy, Doheym (literally 
 " blacky,") may stand for a not unfair specimen of a large class 
 among the central Nejdean population. Partly from a desire 
 of increasing gain, partly from dislike to Wahhabee puritanism, 
 his family has not long since emigrated northward from Kaseem 
 to Ha'yel, where they have fixed their residence, but still retain 
 many of the distinctive ways and habits of their native district. 
 Such immigrations have of late become very common, and have 
 greatly contributed to the numerical and military strength of 
 Djebel Shomer, while they add much to its industrial and 
 commercial prosperity. My readers will perhaps call to mind 
 Louis XIV and the repeal of the Nantes edict, and add one 
 parallel more between Arabia and Eiu'ope. For the civilization 
 of Kaseem is of ancient date, and its inhabitants possess tra- 
 ditional skill in all kinds of handicraft and trade, far superior 
 to anything found among the recently organized tribes of 
 the north, while the memories of former independence, pro- 
 tracted wars and victories, have given to their character a 
 steadiness and resolution in all their undertakings very unlike 
 the unsustained though dashing bravery of the north, formed in 
 brief forays and in Bedouin feuds. The good-natured and social 
 disposition common to Arabs in general has been also fostered 
 among them by centuries of city and town life till it occasionally 
 attains the level of sprightliness, while it bestows on them a 
 more decided turn of ease and urbanity in their conversation 
 than is general in Shomer and its dependencies. It is natural 
 enough that such men should for the most succeed well in 
 obtaining easy admittance and speedy success in a strange land, 
 though they readily after a short sojourn avail themselves of any 
 good opportunity for returning to their native country, a land 
 favoured both by nature and art much more than the stony 
 precincts of Ha'yel and the rough sierras of Sulma and 'Aja'. 
 
 Doheym takes up his thin black cloak, and wraps it round 
 him in folds that a sculptor might admire, and out we set 
 together. As we go on to the Sook, he nods and smiles to some 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 1 62 LIFE IN HA'YEL [Cn.vp. IV 
 
 fifty acquaintances, or stops a moment to interchange a few 
 words with those of his own hmd. The market-place is now 
 crowded from end to end ; townsmen, villagers, Bctlouins, some 
 seated at the doors of the warehouses and driving a bargain 
 with the owners inside, some gathered in idle groups, gossiping 
 over the news of the hour. For the tongue is here what printed 
 paper is in Europe, and I doubt whether an Arab loses more 
 time in hearing and retailing the occurrences of the day than 
 an Englishman every morning over his " Times," although the 
 latter has at least the advantage of looking the more studious. 
 I might here enter on a most interesting investigation touching 
 the comparative amount of individual and of united action in 
 the East and West, whereby it should appear by way of con- 
 clusion that the Occidental has much more the advantage over 
 the Oriental hemisphere in the combination of work than in 
 the quantity of the work itself gone through. Thus it might 
 be sho\NTi that an Arab and an Englishman, take them man 
 for man, perform each about the same portion of day's-work 
 in the twenty-four hours, with this difference, that the Arab 
 works for himself and by himself, while the Englishman works 
 for society, and with all the assistance and durability of result 
 that society affords, like one who builds with cement and mor- 
 tar, compared with him who merely piles up loose stones on 
 stones. This and more ; but I should tire my reader's patience, 
 while he stands by me in the dust and sun of a Ha'yel fore- 
 noon, with a Gladstone or a Bright oration on the use of com- 
 bined labour, even had I their mastery of words and command 
 of the subj ect. 
 
 Groups of lading and unlading camels block up the path ; I 
 look right and left ; there within the shops I see one merchant 
 laboriously summing up his accounts (I know not whether the 
 Arabs were ever good mathematicians, certainly at present a 
 simple reckoning of addition poses nine out of the ten) ; another, 
 for want of customers, is reading in some old dog-eared manu- 
 script of prayers, or of natural history, or of geography — sucli 
 geography, where almost all the world except Arabia is filled up 
 with " Anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow beneath 
 their shoulders." The Goran is little dealt in here, "thank 
 God for that ;" but the Shiya'ees of Meshid 'Alee may per-
 
 Chap. IV] NORTH CENTRAL ARABIA 1 63 
 
 chance have in their hands some small illuminated treatise on 
 the imaginary excellencies of 'Alee or one of his family, or very 
 likely a most unscriptural, or more truly antiscriptural narra- 
 tive of the amours of Joseph with Zuleykha, Potiphar's tra- 
 ditionary wife ; the history of David's frailties, wherein the 
 monarch's fault is made to consist not, as some innocently 
 suppose, in taking his neighbour's wife, but in the extra- 
 vagance of adding a hundredth to the ninety-nine he is supposed 
 to have already, but lawfully, possessed, and suchlike edifying 
 tales. For to idolize 'Alee and his race, and to wallow in the 
 swine-trough of sensuality, is the dernier mot and turning-point 
 of Shiya'ee doctrine and practice. 
 
 Mixed with the city crowd, swordsmen and gaily-dressed 
 negroes, for the negro is always a dandy when he can afford 
 it, belonging mostly to the palace, are now going about their 
 affairs, and claim a certain amount of deference from the vulgar 
 cits, though we see nothing here of the Agha and Basha style of 
 the overbearing and despotic Turk. Nor do these government 
 men ever dream of taking aught without purchase, or of com- 
 pelling those they can lay hold of to gratuitous labour, 
 Ottoman fashion ; such proceedings, also, being repugnant to that 
 independent high-mindedness which stamps the genuine Arab 
 caste. The well-dressed chieftain and noble jostles on amid the 
 plebeian crowd on terms of astounding familiarity, and elbows 
 or is elbowed by the artisan and the porter ; while the court 
 officers themselves meet with that degree of respect alone which 
 indicates deference rather than inferiority in those who pay it. 
 A gay and busy scene ; the morning air in the streets yet retains 
 just sufficient coolness to render tolerable the bright rays of the 
 sun, and everywhere is that atmosphere of peace, security, and 
 thriving known to the visitors of inner Arabia, and almost or 
 wholly unknown to the Syrian or Anatolian traveller. Should 
 you listen to the hum of discourse around, you will never hear 
 a curse, an imprecation, or a quarrel, but much business, re- 
 partee, and laughter. Dolieym and I slowly pick out our way 
 through the crowd amid many greetings on either hand, till we 
 reach the open space of the palace court where the Sook falls 
 into it; and thence we pass through the high gateway, and 
 enter the main artery of the town. 
 
 M 2
 
 164 LIFE IN HA'YEL [Chap. IV 
 
 It is a broad and level road, having on its left the walls of 
 the palace gardens, overtopped here and there by young date 
 trees, for this plantation is quite recent, and the work of the 
 present reign only; on its right a succession of houses, scattered 
 among gardens of older growth and denser vegetation ; the trees 
 overhang the walls, and we are glad to avail ourselves of their 
 deep dark shade. Doheym entertains me with descriptions of 
 Nejed and Kaseem, and extols in no measured terms the land 
 of his birth ; he has seen too the Wahhabee monarch in person, 
 though not in Eiad his capital. Thus we beguile a quarter of 
 an hour's leisurely walk (it were superfluous to say that no one 
 hurries his pace in these semi-tropical regions, especially in 
 the month of August), till we reach an open space behind the 
 palace garden, where a large and deep excavation announces the 
 Maslakhah, or slaughter-house (literally " skinning place ") of 
 the town butchers. In any other climate such an establishment 
 would be an intolerable nuisance to all neighbours if thus placed 
 within the city limits, and right in the centre of gardens and 
 habitations. But here the dryness of the atmosphere is such 
 that no ill consequence follows ; putrefaction being effectually 
 anticipated by the parching influence of the air, which renders 
 a carcass of three or four days' standing as inoffensive to the 
 nose as a leather drum ; and one may pass leisurely by a 
 recently deceased camel on the road-side, and almost take 
 it for a specimen prepared with arsenic and spirits for an 
 anatomical museum. 
 
 At this point the street leads off to the interior of the capital. 
 The part hitherto traversed on our walk is the new quarter, and 
 dates almost entirely from the accession of the actual dynasty ; 
 but now we are to enter on the original town of Hn'yel, where 
 everything announces considerable though not remote antiquity. 
 The two main quarters which form the old city are divided by 
 a long road, narrower and less regular than that we have yet 
 followed. Nor was this line of demarcation more to indicate a 
 division of the buildings than of the inhabitants, split up as 
 they formerly were by civil and internecine hostility. But to 
 this the strong hand of Ebn-Rasheed has at last put an end. 
 Eight and left crossways, branching out of the main path, lead 
 to side streets and lesser subdivisions. We take a very narrow
 
 Chap. IV] NORT II CENTRAL ARABIA 165 
 
 and wiudiug lane on the riglit, by which Doheym leads me 
 awhile through a labyrinth of gardens, wells, and old irregular 
 houses, till we reach a cluster of buildings, and a covered 
 gallery, conducting us through its darkness to the sun- glare of 
 a broad road, bordered by houses on either side, though a low 
 court wall and outer door, generally intervenes between them 
 and the street itself. The arch is here unknown, and the 
 portals are all of timber-work enclosed in brick, and equally 
 rough and solid in construction. My guide stops before one 
 such and knocks. " Samm' " (" come in ") is heard from within- 
 side, and immediately afterwards some one comes up and 
 draws back the inner bolt. We now stand in a courtyard, 
 where two or three small furnaces, old metal pots and pans of 
 various sizes, some enormously big — for the Arabs pique them- 
 selves now, like their ancestors of two thousand years since, in 
 having cauldrons large enough to boil an entire sheep — sheets of 
 copper, bars of iron, and similar objects, proclaim an Arab 
 smithy. Some brawny half-naked youths covered with soot 
 and grime come up to present a shake of their unwashed hands, 
 while they exchange Nejdean jokes with Doheym. His elder 
 brother So'eyd, whose gravity as head of the family has been a 
 little ruffled by the sportiveness of his younger relatives, re- 
 bukes the juveniles, hastens to purify his own face and hands, 
 and then introduces me to the interior of the house, where 
 in a darkened room lies another brother, the sick man 
 on whose behalf I have been summoned; he is in a high 
 fever and hardly able to speak, though there is fortunately 
 no immediate danger. I take my seat by the patient and 
 address a few preliminary questions to the bystanders, inter- 
 mixed with hopeful prognostics, while the sick man tries to look 
 cheerful, and shows that he exjDected my coming to see him, 
 and is pleased at it. To put out the tongue even unasked, and 
 to hold forth the hand that the doctor may feel the pulse, are 
 rustornary proceedings here ; but, if you do not wish to pass for 
 an ignoramus, you must successively try both wrists, either 
 radial being supposed entirely independent of its fellow, and 
 each with a separate story to tell ; whence my readers may 
 deduce that the real theory of the circulation of the blood is 
 equally unknown with the name of Harvey. When I have
 
 I 66 LIFE IN HA'YEL [CnAr. IV 
 
 played my part, the elder brother takes me aside and enquires 
 about the diagnosis and prognosis, or, in plain English, what is 
 the matter, and what may be the consequences. On my guarded 
 reply, he promises compliance with whatever I may prescribe, 
 and then invites me to sit down and take coffee before any 
 further doctorings. I show a desire of at once getting things 
 in order for the patient, but the patient himself in a low voice, 
 eked out with signs, indicates his wish that I should first and 
 foremost partake of their hospitality. Were he actually dying 
 I doubt whether matters could hold another course in these 
 countries. So dates are brought, pipes are lighted, Doheym 
 prepares coffee, and the room in which (mind you) the sick man 
 is lying, fills with visitors. Seclusion makes no part of Arab 
 treatment; on the contrary it is considered almost a sacred 
 duty to visit and enliven the sufferer by the most numerous 
 and the most varied society that can be got together. The 
 Arab invalid himself has no idea of being left alone; to be 
 kept in company is all his desire ; nay, the same system is 
 observed even when death occurs in a family, and the sur- 
 vivor's nearest of kin, son, wife, or husband, keep open house 
 for many days after in order to receive the greatest amount 
 of consolatory calls possible, so that the solitude of woe has few 
 advocates here. 
 
 My readers, conversant, I doubt not, with the scenes and the 
 injunctions of the Old and of the New Testament also, may here 
 recall to mind many an example and many an apophthegm to 
 this same purport, in the book of Job and elsewhere. 
 
 In Doheym's house the visitors are mainly natives of Kaseem, 
 or Upper Nejed. It was easy to perceive from their bearing 
 and from the tone of their conversation that the inhabitants of 
 the above-named provinces were no less superior to those of 
 Djebel Shomer in whatever is understood by civilization and 
 general culture, than the Shomerites to those of Djowf, or the 
 people of Djowf to the Bedouins. Indeed, if my readers will 
 draw a diagonal line across the map of Arabia from north-west 
 to south-east, following the direction of my actual journey 
 through that country, and then distinguish the several regions 
 of the peninsula by belts of colour brightening while they 
 represent the respective degrees of advancement in arts, com-
 
 Chap. IV] NORTH CENTRAL ARABIA i6y 
 
 merce, and their kindred acquirements, on the Dupiu system, 
 they will have for the darkest line that nearest to the north, 
 or Wadi Serhan, while the Djowf, Djebel Shomer, Nejed, Hasa, 
 and their dependencies, grow lighter in succession more and 
 more, till the belt corresponding to 'Oman should show the 
 cheerfullest tint of all. In fact, it is principally owing to the 
 circumstance that the northern and western parts of Arabia 
 have been hitherto those almost exclusively visited by travellers, 
 that the idea of Arab barbarism or Bedouinism has found such 
 general acceptance in Europe ; the centre and the east of what 
 lies between the Eed Sea and the Gulf of 'Oman would have 
 supplied a much more favourable criterion. But I anticipate : 
 let us return to our hosts and their friends. 
 
 Here we are now in Ha'yel, yet in the midst of Nejdean 
 politics and debate, where the bigotry and tyranny of the 
 Wahhabee meet with oft-recurring and cordial detestation. The 
 siege of 'Oneyzah, its latest news, conjectures, hopes and fears 
 relative to its duration and result, are the chief topic of con- 
 versation. Already, indeed, when hardly beyond the boun- 
 daries of the Djowf, had we heard of that great event of the 
 Arabian day. But here it was the all-engrossing subject of 
 anxious enquiry and speculation, and the real though disguised 
 cause of the frequent visits paid by the chiefs of Kaseem to TelTd, 
 and of their endless rendezvous in the apartments of 'Abd-el- 
 Mahsin. To render this matter intelligible, and to serve also 
 for a key to much which must needs be alluded to hereafter, 
 I will now briefly sketch what was at the very time passing in 
 Kaseem, with the necessary supplement of the previous circum- 
 stances that brought on the memorable events of 1862 and 1863 
 in central Arabia, events to be long remembered and deeply 
 deplored. 
 
 When Feysul, the reigning monarch of the Wahhabee or 
 Ebn-Sa'ood dynasty, returned for the third time in 1843 
 or 1844 (for I am not sure of the precise date) to his native 
 Nejed and hereditary throne, he found in the rich and 
 populous province of Kaseem his foremost auxiliaries for re- 
 establishing his sway and expelling the last remnants of 
 Egyptian occupation. The indwellers of this district took 
 the opportunity of incorporating themselves into the great
 
 1 68 LIFE IN IIA'YEL [Chap. IV 
 
 Wahhabee empire ; more, however, from hatred to the stranger 
 Bashas of Egypt than from any particuhir sympathy with the 
 natives of Nejed, against whom, indeed, they had often waged 
 war in former times. They now consented to fm'nish Fey>sul 
 with an annual contingent of tril)ute, and of troops also, should 
 such be required, but on condition of non-interference Avith 
 their own indigenous chiefs, municipal administration, and local 
 customs. Matters continued on this footing for seven or eight 
 years, till Feysul, after having not only thoroughly secured his 
 supremacy over the central provinces, namely, Sedeyr, Woshem, 
 'Aared, Yemamah, Hareek, Aflaj, and Dowasir, but also con- 
 quered Hasa and Kateef, besides considerable successes obtained 
 in the direction of Bahreyn and 'Omfin, felt at last the sceptre 
 strong enough in his hand to crush the surviving liberties of 
 Kaseem, and to reduce its chiefs and people to that degree of 
 servitude which in Wahhabee eyes is the only fitting condition 
 of all except the true "Muslemeen" or Mahometans, that is, of 
 course, of all men but themselves. 
 
 The first and principal step in this direction was to annihilate 
 the great families that had from time immemorial ruled in 
 Kaseem, or at least to deprive them of all authority and power. 
 Now the two most important towns in that province were 
 Bereydah and 'Oneyzah, whose respective chieftains exercised an 
 undisputed influence over the third emporium of commerce, 
 namely, the town of Eass, and over the fifty or sixty other 
 towns and villages scattered throughout the land. The nobles 
 of Bereydah, amongst whom was our friend 'Abd-el-Mahsin, 
 belonged to the family of 'Aleyy'an, those of 'Oneyzah to that of 
 'Atee'yah. But Berej^dah was somewhat lesser in importance, and 
 inferior in numerical strength and in wealth to her sister town ; 
 in antiquity I believe them equal. The inhabitants of 'Oneyzah 
 are reckoned at about thirty thousand souls, those of Bereydah 
 between twenty and twenty-five thousand. Against the latter 
 town Fey§ul directed his first efforts, trusting here to find an 
 easier prey. 
 
 He picked a quarrel with the 'Aleyy'an chieftains, and harassed 
 them for a while by continual forays under the command of 
 his eldest son, the talented but ferocious and unprincipled 
 'Abd -Allah. A considerable jDcriod thus passed in desultory
 
 Chap. IV] NORTH CENTRAL ARABIA 1 69 
 
 attack and delusive truce, till the nobles of Bereydah, finding 
 their commerce almost cut off, and their strength unequal to 
 the contest, began to desire peace at whatever price. In reply 
 to their embassies Feysul sent them word, not by 'Abd-Allah, 
 whose position as heir-apparent gives an official character to 
 whatever passes in his name, but by his third son Mohammed, 
 that he pardoned their rebellion, and invited them to Riad, 
 where suitable terms of pacification should be arranged between 
 both parties. But the message was verbal only, and without 
 a sufficient guarantee in the person of him who delivered it, 
 and the 'Aleyy'ans hung back awhile, suspecting, and Avith 
 good cause, some hidden snare. However, their hesitation 
 was at last overcome by repeated assurances of safe-conduct and 
 honourable treatment, backed by a written summons bearing 
 the signature of the heir-apparent, 'Abd-Allah himself, and in 
 which the name of God was solemnly invoked to attest that 
 neither guile nor treachery lurked under his own and his 
 father's invitation. Then in an evil hour 'Oley', the chief of 
 Bereydah, accompanied by two of his sons and several other 
 near kinsmen, set out for Riad, escorted by Mohammed. 
 
 Ten days at an easy travelling pace separate Bereydah from 
 the capital of Nejed. The 'Aleyy'an nobles were received with 
 the distinction due to their rank all the way, till they reached 
 Eiad ; where, to their great surprise, they found no one ready 
 to meet them according to Arab custom without the walls. 
 Mohammed apologized, and said that his brother 'Abd-Allah 
 was doubtless taken up in preparing a fit place for their recep- 
 tion, and that they would find him within waiting for them at 
 his palace-door. Whatever suspicions might arise in the minds 
 of the victims were now unavailing ; it was too late either to 
 attempt flight or to parley on conditions. Surrounded by a 
 crowd of the fanatical denizens of Eiad, the 'Aleyy'ans reached 
 the outer gate of 'Abd-AUah's best residence. Before it in the 
 street was 'Abd-Allah himself on horseback, surrounded by 
 armed retainers. Hardly had he seen 'Oley's approach, than 
 he hastily turned his horse and re-entered the portal, without 
 waiting to receive the salutation of his guests. They followed ; 
 but 'Abd-Allah had already concealed himself from view in an 
 inner apartment, and in his place they found the courtyard
 
 J 70 LIFE IN IIA'YEL [Chap. IV 
 
 filled with armed men and drawn swords. The doors were 
 immediately barred behind them, and the massacre began. 
 
 'Oley', his eldest son, and all his relatives and companions, 
 were cut to pieces on the spot, and their blood overflowed the 
 threshold of their perfidious host. The younger son of the ill- 
 starred chieftain was alone reserved alive, as hostage for those 
 of the family who yet remained in Kaseem. 
 
 Without a moment's delay 'Abd-Allah and his murderous 
 band set out for that province, where the arrival of the traitor 
 almost outstripped the news of his treacher3\ He fell at once 
 on the town of Bereydah, now in the confusion of recent terror, 
 and involved all whom he could seize of the 'Ale3'y'rin family in 
 the fate of their relatives at Eiad. A few, amongst wliom was 
 'Abd-el-Mahsin, escaped the sword : their heads were set at a 
 price. The townsmen, thus deprived of their chieftains, sub- 
 mitted after a brief struggle, and a native of Eiad, Mohanna by 
 name, was appointed governor of Bereydah in quality of vice- 
 gerent of Feysul, but with almost absolute power. When all 
 opposition seemed thus at an end, 'Abd-Allah gave orders for 
 putting to death the only surviving son of 'Oley', whom he had 
 hitherto retained in prison ; and then, profiting by the conster- 
 nation spread throughout Kaseem, attempted to strike a final 
 and decisive blow at 'One3^zah itself. 
 
 That large town had been for centuries the capital of the 
 province, or rather of a full third of Arabia, namely, of what 
 we may call its north-western centre. Its commerce with 
 Medinah and Mecca on the one hand, and with Nejed, nay, even 
 with Damascus and Bagdad, on the other, had gathered in its 
 warehouses stores of traffic unknown to any other locality of inner 
 Arabia, and its hardy merchants were met with alike on the 
 shores of the Eed Sea and of the Persian Gulf, and occasion- 
 ally on the more distant banks of the Euphrates, or by the 
 waters of Damascus. Meanwhile the martial and energetic 
 character of its population prevented a too exclusive predomi- 
 nance of the commercial over the military spirit, and the warriors 
 of 'Oneyzah had twice at a recent period been seen beneath the 
 walls of Bahholah in the very heart of 'Oman, though separated 
 from them by three months' distance of Arab march. 'Oneyzah 
 itself boasted a double enclosure of fortifications, unbaked
 
 Chap. IV] NORTH CENTRAL ARABIA 17I 
 
 brickwork it is true, but in their height and thickness no less 
 formidable to Arab besiegers in their present state of obsidionary 
 science, than the defences of Antwerp or of Badajoz to a Euro- 
 pean army. The outer circle of walls, with its trench and towers, 
 protected the gardens, while the inner range surrounded the 
 compact mass of the town itself. Here a young and courageous 
 chief Zamil, or, to give him the name by which he is often 
 familiarly styled, Zoweymil-el-'Ateeyah, was adored by his fellow 
 citizens and subjects for his gentleness and liberality in peace, 
 and his daring in war. His head officer or lieutenant, a mulatto 
 called El-Khey'yat, was hardly less renowned for his skill and 
 valour. And the fighting men of 'Oneyzah and its dependent 
 villages, reckoned at five thousand matchlocks, with an equal 
 or greater number of mercenary troops, collected chiefly from 
 among the Bedouins of the surrounding districts, and especially 
 from the powerful tribes of Harb and 'Oteybah, were all in 
 readiness at the bidding of Zamil and his council. 
 
 'Abd- Allah tried a sudden and violent assault, but was repulsed. 
 He sent word to his father Feysul, who in all speed collected 
 the whole force of UpjDer Nejed, and marched with them in 
 person to 'Oneyzah, hoping by this juncture of his own and 
 of his son's armies, to carry the place by storm before the 
 sympath}^ of Kaseem, alread}^ enlisted in the cause of the capital, 
 should bring about a general levy to its defence. But Zamil 
 had already sent word of these events to 'Abd-el-Mottalib the 
 Shereef of Mecca, and laid before him the danger impending- 
 over the sacred city itself from Wahhabee encroachments, should 
 'Oneyzah, the sole existing barrier between it and Nejed, be thus 
 swept away. The Shereef perceived the reality of the peril 
 announced, and with what few troops he could muster came 
 to the scene of action. There he met with Feysul and 'Abd- 
 Allah, and proposed to act as mediator between them and Zamil. 
 Feysul saw that to continue the war after the intervention 
 of the Shereef, and in his despite, might well draw down on 
 himself and on his empire consequences no less fatal than what 
 had once followed on the rupture between his grandfather 
 and the Ottoman power, which the Shereef represented. Ee- 
 luctantly he abandoned his prey, accepted the offered terms 
 of pacification " on the hand " (an Arabian expression) of the
 
 1 7 2 LIFE IX HA' YEL [Chap. IV 
 
 governor of Mecca, and retired with his army to the mountains 
 of Nejed, leaving Zfimil and his supporters to themselves ; 
 while 'Abd-el-Mottalib, after exacting- and obtaining from 
 the ^^'ahhabee the strongest assm-ance that no new attempt 
 should be made upon the liberty of 'Oneyzah, returned to the 
 Hejaz. 
 
 Six or seven years passed before the Wahhabee ventured on 
 an open violation of the treaty ratified by so high an authority. 
 But he never lost sight of his first design, and with true 
 Nejdean perseverance carried steadily on all this while a series 
 of measures calculated to render easier its after execution, so 
 soon as time and opportunity should come round to his turn. 
 One after another he attacked and crushed the tribes of 'Oteybah, 
 Harb, and whatever others were likely to furnish contingents to 
 the army of 'Oneyzah. Meanwhile the power of Mohanna in 
 the neighbouring town of Bereydah received further and further 
 accessions, till it extended over almost the whole of Kaseem, 
 while 'Oneyzah became in a manner isolated and cut off from its 
 main sources of strength alike in commerce and in Avar. At last 
 nothing remained between Feysul and his hopes but the risk of 
 provoking the hostility of the Sbereef of Mecca, and thereby of 
 Egypt or Constantinople. Events which occurred Avithout the 
 Arabian limits in 1861, left him at liberty to raise the mask 
 and commence direct hostilities. Certain news was brought 
 that the change of politics occasioned at Constantinople by the 
 death of the Sultan 'Abd-el-Mejeed, and the accession of his 
 brother 'Abd-el-'Azeez, had been highly unfavourable to the 
 Sbereef 'Abd-el-Mottalib, and that he would in all probability 
 be soon displaced to make room for another known as a friend 
 to the principles and progress of the Wahhabee. Besides the 
 growing illness of Sa'eed Basha, and his unprofitable voyage to 
 Europe, nullified all chance of Egyptian interference in behalf 
 of 'Oneyzah. Feysul's moment was now come, yet he hesitated. 
 Old and infirm, he may have felt himself unequal to the activity 
 and cares inseparable from such an undertaking, while twinges 
 of a conscience not wholly seared even by thirty years of reign 
 are said to have deterred him awhile from the breach of his 
 own most solemn engagements plighted to Zamil and his 
 townsmen. But the less scrupulous council of the Muddey'-
 
 Chap. IV] NORTH CENTRAL ARABIA ij^ 
 
 yeeyah, or " Zelators " (of whom more hereafter), urged him to 
 action, and at last he consented. 
 
 A quarrel was sought, and soon found on occasion of the 
 annual tribute due from 'Oneyzah to the central government at 
 Riad. Fe3^sul pretended that the money raised fell short of the 
 sum stipulated on in the treaty, and sent an armed force to 
 exact a larger supply. This too was furnished, but the Wahhabee 
 was not so to be satisfied. He brought in a claim of arrears, 
 said by him to have been fraudulently kept back, and inculpated 
 Zamil, whom he summoned to answer for himself at the capital 
 of Nejed. To this summons Zamil very naturally refused consent, 
 and Fey.sul proclaimed war. The people of 'Oneyzah sent envoy 
 on envoy to beg for peace, and offered to submit to any conditions 
 imposed, except the surrender of their chief. But Fey§ul was 
 inexorable, and the conflict went on. 
 
 At the period when I arrived at Ha'yel, the 'Oneyzah war 
 had lasted for four or five months without any decisive result, 
 or even any very considerable advantage on either side. Feysul 
 sought to weaken the partisans of Zamil by dragging on the 
 campaign till its duration should have thoroughly harassed and 
 wearied out his enemies, intending then only to gather all his force 
 and strike the final blow when morally sure of speedy and com- 
 plete success. This plan seemed excellently calculated to obviate 
 the dangers consequent on any reverse at the fii-st outset, and 
 to ensure final triumph. And so, in fact, it proved. 
 
 To this end he sent his younger son Mohammed with small 
 bands of Nejdean troops renewed from time to time, and 
 enjoined him to second the operations of Mohanna, who from 
 his central position at Bereydah was carrying on a sort of loose 
 blockade against 'Oneyzah, much resembling the siege of Troy 
 in character, and destined in all appearance to scarce a less 
 duration. Zamil and his men retaliated by frequent sallies 
 against the aggressors, and by inroads on the lands and gardens 
 belonging to Bereydah or other towns subject to Mohanna, and 
 the residt of these partial operations had hitherto been on the 
 whole in their favour. 
 
 The whole of Kaseem with the exception of a very small party 
 sympathized with the warriors of 'Oneyzah and desired their 
 success ; but the fear of Mohanna and the constant arrival of
 
 174 LIFE IX HAYEL [Chap. IV 
 
 fresh Nejdeans, those Romans of Arabia, kept most of the 
 natives of the land from open action. Zainil and El-Khey'yat 
 sent repeated messages to the governor of JNIecca and to Tehll 
 at Ha'yel, earnestly requesting their assistance or at least their 
 mediation. But neither of the parties thus appealed to could 
 afford any useful succour. Tela! for his part was unwilling to 
 provoke a downright w^ar between himself and the Wahhabee, 
 whose armies surpassed his own in the proportion of three to 
 one, and whatever proposals of truce or treaty he could make 
 were rejected or evaded at Riacl. Equally fruitless were the 
 pacific endeavours of Abd-el-Mottalib, now feeble, because un- 
 supported. Egypt, the last hope of Zfimil, proved, not for the 
 first time in history, a broken reed. Nor could any clear-sighted 
 eye fail to perceive that, whatever temporary success might 
 3'et attend the extraordinary efforts of the 'Atee'yah and their 
 retainers, it must ultimately become impossible for one isolated 
 town, though w^ell defended and garrisoned, to resist alone the 
 whole weight of Nejed, and the multiplied resources of the 
 Wahhabee. However the partisans of 'Oneyzah still continued 
 to hope against hope, and the wish being in this as in too many 
 other instances parent to the thought, flattered themselves with 
 the promise of a result no less unlikely in the natural course of 
 events than the emancipation of Poland, or the triumph of 
 Sertorius over the legions of Pornpey. 
 
 Such was the position of affairs in August 1862 ; the rest of 
 my stay in Arabia exactly coincided with the continuation and 
 catastrophe of this bloody drama, of which I was in part 
 rendered by circumstances a very unwilling eyewitness. And 
 accordingly I do not think this cursory sketch of the origin and 
 progress of these events superfluous or uninteresting, though at 
 the expense of a somewhat long digression. 
 
 We left Doheym and his friends or relatives in earnest dis- 
 cussion of these same topics. However, their conversational 
 powers were nowise confined to war and politics ; medicine and 
 surgery (for the Arabs hardly distinguish the one from the 
 other, whether in theory or practice ; indeed, their favourite 
 remedy or panacea, the actual cautery, belongs rather to the 
 latter than the former) were often brought on the carpet, and I 
 was pleased to find my Kaseem acquaintances speak on these
 
 Chap. IV] NORTH CENTRAL ARABIA ly r 
 
 matters with much good sense, all due allowances made, and 
 even with some slight tinge of experience. Many plants that 
 grow hereabouts possess some medicinal virtue, tonic, sedative, 
 or narcotic, and are occasionally employed by the more knowing 
 inhabitants. The use, too, of fomentations and other external 
 remedies or palliatives is not entirely beyond their skill, and 
 natural quickness may and does fill up to a certain measure the 
 deficiencies of theoretical ignorance. 
 
 Some authors, travelled or otherwise, have represented the 
 Arabs of the interior as a race absolutely incapable of any real 
 attainment or progress in practical and material science, and 
 have supposed that branch of knowledge to be the exclusive 
 portion of Japhet, to borrow for an instant the typical but con- 
 venient classification used by many, while Sh em and his descend- 
 ants, amongst whom the Arabs hold a distinguished place, are to 
 be allowed neither part nor lot in this matter. My own expe- 
 rience, if indeed it may bear the name of experience, would 
 lead me to a very different conclusion ; and 1 am rather inclined 
 to regard the Arabs, taken in themselves and individually, as 
 endowed with a remarkable ajDtitude for these very pursuits, and 
 hardly less adapted " to the railroad, to the steam-ship," or any 
 other nineteenth-century invention or natural research than the 
 natives of Sheffield or Birmingham themselves. But lack of com- 
 munication with other countries, and especially wdth those which 
 were in former times, and yet are, the fountain-heads of that 
 special activity ; and, in addition, the Mahometan drug which 
 paralyzes whatever it does not kill outright, have kept them 
 back in the intellectual race, to be outrun by others more 
 favoured by circumstance, though not perhaps by nature. When 
 the Coran and Mecca shall have disappeared from Arabia, then, 
 and then only, can we seriously expect to see the Arab assume 
 that place in the ranks of civilization from which Mahomet 
 and his book have, more than any other individual cause, long 
 held him back. 
 
 I do not exactly know how far these remarks may have their 
 analogical application among Turks or Persians. The former, 
 whether in their Pagan or in their Mahometan phase, have 
 hardly ever appeared on the world's scene except to destroy, 
 rarely to construct; neither literature nor arts owing aught
 
 176 LIFE IX IL'VYEL [Chap. IV 
 
 to the Turk but progressive debasement and decay. As to 
 tbe Persians, tbe}^ appear to me, at least in tbeir national cha- 
 racter, essentially and irretrievably rotten, whatever be their 
 religion, dynasty, or organization. Their influence on the 
 Eastern mind has been undeniably great ; but only productive 
 of extravagance in speculation, bad taste in literature, and 
 perversity in art. Again and again they have fermented the 
 masses around them, but with a fermentation which a Liebig 
 himself could hardly distinguish from putrefaction. Very 
 different is the aspect afforded by the better days of Arab pre- 
 ponderance ; and the decline and extinction of its early promise 
 can only be explained, partly by the foreign influences, national 
 or intellectual, of Ispahan and Tartary, and still more by the 
 Mahometan principle of decay, first developed in the Hejaz. 
 
 Here at Ha'yel, and in other parts of central Arabia where 
 Wahhabeeism is in the minority or, happily, unknown, one is 
 much less wearied with the eternal " There is no Grod but Grod," 
 the " If it please Grod," " There is no strength nor power save 
 in Grod," and the whole catalogue of phrases with which the 
 Mahometan encourages his growing apathy or bars the onward 
 road to enquiry and exertion. On the other hand, "There 
 is no denying the efficiency of secondary causes," " Everything 
 has its own cause," are current expressions here, and are often 
 made use of in reply to the fatalistic interjections of some 
 fervent Musselman. This is more especially the case among 
 those who, like the party now assembled in Dohe3an's house, are 
 in an actual state of irritation against the Wahhabee and his 
 ways. " Belaa'na Allah," literally " Grod has devoured us up," 
 have I repeatedly heard from these men, when alluding to the 
 " Allah, Allah," in season and out of season of the Wahhabee 
 fanatic or politician. And since Mahometanism in general is 
 only known to them through the Nejdean medium, the reaction 
 against the doctrines of Mohammed, the son of 'Abd-el-Wah- 
 hab, is not far from involving the system of the yet more famous 
 INIohammed, son of 'Abd-Allah, of Mecca. For further illustra- 
 tion of this and of the preceding remarks, I must refer my 
 reader to the onward progress of our journey. 
 
 In a narrative like this, where personal adventures and 
 the process of days and months are intermingled with general
 
 Chap. IV] NORTH CENTRAL ARABIA i^-j 
 
 reflections and national or religious speculation, many state- 
 ments must needs occur here and there which may at first sight 
 appear overcharged, or at least not enough propped up by 
 immediate argument and proof. Should my reader find it so, 
 I would beg him to suspend awhile his critical judgment, and 
 to wait till facts and scenes unavoidably reserved by the date of 
 their occurrence to a later period of my story may have filled 
 up the outlines thus broadly traced beforehand. My book is — 
 at least I mean it to be — a whole, and cannot be taken other- 
 wise, under penalty of misunderstanding; nor do I believe 
 that I have advanced anything in one page which is not fairly 
 borne out by the contents of another, though perhaps after an 
 interval of a few chapters. Where, however, I touch on lands 
 or races external to the Arabian Peninsula, brevity compels me 
 to dispense in some measure with minute corroboration, or com- 
 plete explanation and research. Were I now and here to enter 
 full sail on so vast a sea, the result would be an encyclopaedia 
 rather than a journey, and of this the limits ofa volume destined 
 simply to the recital of travels in Central and Eastern Arabia 
 will hardly permit. And with this apology given, and I hope 
 admitted, let us return to our patchwork tale. 
 
 An hour wears away in agreeable and lively talk. Some 
 other patients are offered to my care, and visits are arranged, 
 till, after suitable prescrij)tions for the invalid, I rise to take 
 my leave. Doheym's eldest brother offers to accompany me to 
 some of the neighbouring houses, where he expects that mutual 
 advantage may be derived for the sick and for the doctor. 
 
 This part of the town is composed of large groups or islands 
 of houses, arranged with some approach to regvdarity amid 
 gardens and wells : but it possesses neither market nor mosque, 
 an additional evidence of the prevailing want of organization 
 before the Ebn-Rasheed dynasty. The streets or lanes are 
 cleaner than I had expected to find them, much more so, 
 certainly, than those of any Turkish or Curdish village ; but 
 this is due in part to the remarkable dryness of the climate. 
 We stroll about here and there, sometimes drawing near to the 
 high craggy rock that overhangs the eastern town wall, some- 
 times winding through tlie groves that border the inner line 
 of the southern fortifications, till noon is past, and the heat 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 lyS LIFE IN IT A' YEL [Chap. IV 
 
 renders further walking unadvisable. So'eyd reconducts me to 
 the main road, and there quits me with a promise to send 
 Doheym in the evening to inform me of the state of my patient. 
 
 I now return homewards alone ; the streets and the market are 
 nearly solitar}^ ; the small black shadows lie close gathered up 
 at the stems of the palm-trees or imder the walls, everything 
 sleeps under the heavy glare of noon. Perhaps, instead of going 
 on directly to our domicile^ curiosity and the pleasure of being 
 alone leads me on some minutes farther up to the western gate, 
 thence to look out on the great plain between Hfi'yel and the 
 moimtain. That plain now appears transformed into one wido 
 lake, whose waters seem to bathe the rocky verge of Shomer, 
 while nearer to the town they fade into deceptive pools and 
 shallows ; it is the ever3'^-day illusion of the mirage. If we 
 return when the meridian heat is passing away, we may see the 
 faiiy lake shrunk up to a distant pond, and before evening ifc 
 will quite disappear, to return next day an hour or two before 
 noon. Meanwhile this semblance of water, " the eye of the 
 landscape," as the Arabs not inappropriately call that element, 
 renders the view, which would else be too arid and rough, very 
 lovely. Were it but real ! 
 
 After feasting my gaze on this beautiful though now familiar 
 phenomenon, I regain our dwelling. Barakat and myself make 
 our dinner, and talk over the visits and affairs of the morning. 
 We have then two hours or so of quiet before us, for it is 
 seldom that any one calls at this period of the day, hardly less 
 a siesta here than in Italy or Spain. At last the 'Asr ap- 
 proaches, a division of time well known in the East, but for 
 which European languages have no corresponding name; it 
 begins from the moment when the sun has readied half-way in 
 his declining course, and continues till about an hour and a half 
 or rather less before his setting. We now leave the house to- 
 gether, and direct our steps towards the palace by a cross-way 
 leading between the dwellings of some court retainers and an 
 angle of the great mosque. In this latter there will generally 
 be a decent number of worshippers for the Salat-el-'Asr, or 
 afternoon prayers, especially since this is the hour chosen by 
 Telrd and Zumil out of the five legal periods for performing 
 their devotions in public, though even then they are not un-
 
 Chap. IV] NORTH CENTRAL ARABIA 179 
 
 frequently absent. These prayers are invariably followed by the 
 reading aloud of a chapter or section selected from some tradi- 
 tionary work, and to this often succeeds a short extemporary 
 sermon or commentary on what has been read. We were known to 
 all for Christians, but nobody made any difficulty about admitting 
 our presence on these occasions, and we often took advantage of 
 this tolerance or indifference, be it which it may,— and indeed 
 the words are at times synonymous. 
 
 Concerning the ceremonies of the prayer itself — though slightly 
 different among the Hambelees and Mfdekees of Central Arabia, 
 from those in fashion with the Wahhabees, on the one hand, and 
 from what is generally observed among the Shafi'ees and Hanee- 
 fees more frequently met with in Syria or inTurke}^, on the other 
 — I will not here detain my reader, nor puzzle him with the ■ 
 complicated minutiis of sunneh and fard, rek'aas, and tekbeers. 
 These scarcely perceptible discrepancies have no real moment 
 or meaning at Ha'yel ; and for a correct idea of Mahometan 
 worship in its ordinary form, I would beg leave to refer such as 
 desire it to the third chapter of Lane's Egypt, where they will 
 find whatever instruction they may need on this and on analo- 
 gous subjects given in clear and interesting detail, and with 
 incomparable accuracy upon all points. 
 
 When indeed we reach the Upper Nejed, it must be my 
 task to indicate several variations in the form and manner of 
 worship, which help to draw the line between the Wahhabees 
 and all other orthodox or heterodox Muslims. For in that land 
 religion has a real import, being interwoven into every fibre of 
 the national, nay, almost of the individual frame, and hence 
 such details have there a peculiar value, not, perhaps, exactly 
 on their own account, but in the way of illustration and of 
 completing the principal view. On the contrary, in Ha'yel and 
 Djebel Shomer, the Mahometan prayers and usages are rather 
 polite ceremonies adopted out of courtesy to their neighbours 
 than an intimate expression of national belief and thought. 
 Hence their practice is almost exclusively confined to tlie great 
 official mosque of the capital, and a few similar localities. 
 It is more an expedient than a faith, and an act of prudence 
 rather than of conviction, and because such offers little worthy 
 of remark except its hoUowuess. The real state of mind 
 
 N 2
 
 l8o LIFE IN HA'YEL [Cjiap. IV 
 
 touching religions matters is throughout this region uncer- 
 tainty and fluctuation ; there is much of Paganism, something 
 of Islamism, a lingering shade of Christianity, and great 
 impatience of any definite code or dogma. 
 
 When the formulas of prayer are over, about half the con- 
 gregation rise and depart. Those who remain in the mosque 
 draw together near the centre of the large and simple edifice, 
 and seat themselves on its pebble-strewn floor, circle within 
 circle ; some lean their backs against the rough square pillars, 
 I might better call them piers, that support the roof, some 
 play with the staff or riding-switch in their hands. In the 
 midmost of the assembly a person selected as reader, but 
 neither Imam nor Khateeb, who is supposed to be better ac- 
 quainted with letters than are the average of his countrymen, 
 besides being gifted with a good and sonorous voice, holds on 
 his knees a large manuscript, which might be an object of 
 much curiosity at Berlin or Paris ; it contains the traditions of 
 the prophet, or the lives of his companions, or perhaps El- 
 Bokharee's commentaries, or something else of the kind. Out 
 of this he reads in a clear but somewhat monotonous tone, 
 accompanying each word by an inflexion and accentuation 
 worthy of Sibawee'yah or Kosey', and hardly to be attained by 
 the best professional grammarian of Syria or Cairo. And 
 reason clear ; here it is nature, there art. This kind of lecture 
 lasts ordinarily from ten minutes to a quarter of an hour, and 
 is listened to in decorous silence, while all who have any pre- 
 tensions to religious feeling, and these form of course a large 
 proportion of those present on such occasions, look down on 
 the ground, or fix their eyes on the reader and his volume. 
 Others, of a less serious turn of mind, and the younger 
 auditors, put themselves at their ease ; and others, again, 
 whisper sceptical criticism to their neighbours, or inter- 
 change glances of sarcasm at the recital of some portentous 
 exploit, or totally incredible vision. For although Arabs are 
 a credulous race, much that is readily gulped down at Mecca 
 and Bagdad, will not pass here. I regret to say that Telal 
 himself, when he honoured these meetings with his presence, 
 set invariably a very bad example of attention, giving the time 
 to studying the faces of the congregation, and showing by
 
 Chap. IV] NORTH CENTRAL ARABIA l8l 
 
 the expression of his quick-glanciug eye, that his thoughts were 
 much more occupied by questions of actual life and politics, 
 than by the wise sayings of the Prophet, or the glorious achieve- 
 ments of his companions. The man is in fact just enough of 
 a Mahometan for state business, and not a tittle more. 
 
 If the prince were in the mosque his custom was after about 
 ten minutes' patience to give the reader a sign that he had had 
 enough of it, on which the latter would close his book, and the 
 assembly break up witbout further ceremony. But if the prince 
 were absent, the reader's place would be taken by one of the 
 elder and more respectable individuals belonging to the semi- 
 literary semi-religious class, or by the Imam or the Khateeb 
 himself, who would then give a short verbal explanation of the 
 chapter just read, or at times an extemporary sermon, but 
 sitting, and in a familiar way. I have often heard much good 
 sense and practical morality enounced on these occasions both 
 here and in Kaseem. In the Wahhabee provinces matters often 
 took a different turn ; but of this hereafter. 
 
 When the reading, or the reading and sermon together, are 
 concluded, every one would remain seated in silence for a 
 minute or so, partly as though to reflect on what they had 
 heard, and partly to give the more important personages present 
 free time to retire before the press of the throng. Telrd would 
 naturally be the first to rise and leave the building, accom- 
 panied by Zamil and his brothers or 'Abd-el-Mahsin, and take 
 his place on a stone bench in the courtyard without, there to 
 hold a short afternoon audience. On this occasion minor causes, 
 and whatever had not been deemed of sufficient importance to 
 occupy the morning hours, would often be discussed ; and Telal 
 himself would occasionally relax into a condescending smile 
 when some Bedouin presented his uncouth complaint, or two 
 townsmen, guilty of having called each other hard names, were 
 brought into his presence. I was more than once an amused 
 spectator of these scenes; Telal's manner was concise and 
 sarcastic ; the decision very frequently to administer a few 
 stripes, nowise severe ones, to both parties; the royal judge 
 wisely observing that insult was almost always the offspring of 
 provocation, and that where the fault was equally divided, 
 the punishment should be so too. But it was a very mild
 
 1 82 LIFE IN HA'YEL [Cuap. IV 
 
 one; a Charterhouse boy in my time (1838-44) might have 
 tliought himself hieky had three marks in the Bhick Book 
 brought him no more from the dreaded head- master of that 
 day. 
 
 We now mix with the crowd ; sometimes 'Abd-el-lNIahsin 
 would single us out, and enter into deep discussion of Arab 
 literature and history ; or a friend from among the townsmen, 
 often one of the younger chiefs who had become in a certain 
 way our clients and companions, would invite us to peaches and 
 dates, with a cup of that coffee which Arabia alone can 
 afford, in his father's or uncle's house. Or we would return 
 straight home to meet the many visits and consultations 
 already awaiting us there, and while I prescribe or operate, 
 according to circumstances, Barakat prepares our supper of rice 
 and pumpkins, with occasionally a piece of meat by way of 
 luxury. For we made little use of our standing invitation to 
 the palace, and did not often accept a supper in a private house, 
 wishing to keep a little time to ourselves, and to avoid over- 
 publicity, where not necessary or evidently advantageous. 
 
 I may add that this degree of reservedness on our part helped 
 to raise us much in the esteem of the town, and to avert from 
 us the dangerous appearance of busybodies, or of inquisitive and 
 meddlesome men. I say dangerous, because we were already 
 close watched by Wahhabee spies, ready to lay us any snare and 
 proceed to any extremity, as the next chapter will bring to 
 light. Dangerous, too, though in another way, from its con- 
 sequences with Telrd himself, who, far too prudent to compro- 
 mise himself, or to allow others to compromise him, would not 
 have hesitated an instant, if dissatisfied with us, to send us 
 " back on our heels," in Arab phrase, and thus prostrate all our 
 intentions for the remainder of our journey. But an open and 
 familiar manner wherever business was concerned, mixed with 
 reserve on other occasions, won us a good place in popular 
 feeling, did away with the suspicions of some, and prevented 
 those of the rest from passing on to probability, much less 
 certainty. 
 
 However, when any more distinguished individual, some 
 member of the royal family, or wealthy and respectable citizen, 
 invited us — for example, the judge Mohammed or the courtly
 
 Chap. IV] NORTH CENTRAL ARABIA 1 83 
 
 'Abd-el-Mahsin, or the opulent Dobey', an elderly merchant in 
 whose house my medical assistance had been of service, we 
 would relax from our ordinary austerity, and accept the honour- 
 able invitation. Of these dinners or suppers, for either name 
 may suit the evening meal, I have already spoken at sufficient 
 length, and need not here go through the scene again. Ex, 
 uno disce omnes, at least in what regards the comestibles 
 through the whole of inner Arabia from the Djowf to the neigh- 
 bourhood of Eiad. Never had a nation less idea of cookery 
 than the Arabs; in this science, anyhow, Turks, Persians, and 
 Indians leave them immeasurably behind : they know no more 
 of it in truth than just enough to bring them within the 
 " cooking animal " definition of man. Eice and boiled mutton, 
 all piled in one large dish, a little indifferent bread, dates, per- 
 haps a hard-boiled egg or two, hashed gourds or something of 
 the kind for garnish ; the monarch of all Shomer cum Djowf and 
 Kheybar has no more at his table. Wash your hands, say 
 Bismillah (unless you desire to pass for an atheist j, fall to, eat as 
 fast as though you were afraid that the supper would run away, 
 then say, " El hamdu I'lllah," or " thanks to God," with an 
 added compliment to your host if you wish to be polite, wash 
 your hands again, with soap or with potash, for sometimes the 
 one will be brought you and sometimes the other, and all is 
 over so far as the meal is concerned. You have smoked a 
 pipe or two and drunk three or four cups of coffee before supper ; 
 you may now smoke and drink one only, for that is the etiquette 
 after eating, and then wish your friends good evening and go 
 away. 
 
 Eosheyd, Telal's maternal uncle, and our next-door neigh- 
 bour, as I have before mentioned, invited us not uufrequently 
 to his house. He was a rather shrewd, amusing, but very super- 
 ficial character, proud of his knowledge of foreign lands, having 
 travelled farther than almost any other man in Ha'yel. He 
 had even reached Kerkook, seven days' journey north of Bagdad, 
 and was besides no stranger to Egypt, both Upper and Lower. 
 Like too many travellers of more cultivated races, he had 
 managed to see the outside of everything and the inside of 
 nothing, and would spin long yarns of grotesque adventures and 
 exotic singularities, much reminding one of the way in which
 
 184 T^IFE IX JjA'YEL [Chap. IV 
 
 men are apt to talk of other countries than their own wlien they 
 have visited them without previous knowledge of language, 
 history, and manners. He believed himself, too, possessed of 
 unusual discernment, and imagined that he was drawing us out, 
 while in reality he was only imveiling liiniself and his family. 
 But his heart was better than his head, and if not a wise he was 
 at least a kind and steady friend. 
 
 Dohey's invitations were particularly -welcome, both from the 
 pleasantness of his dwelling-place, and from the varied and 
 interesting conversation that I was sure to meet with there. 
 This merchant, a tall and stately man of between fifty and sixty 
 years of age, and whose thin features were lighted up by a lustre 
 of more than ordinary intelligence, was a thorough Ha'yelite of 
 the old caste, hating Wahhabees from the bottom of his heart, 
 and with small sjaupathy for Mahometanism in general, eager for 
 information on cause and effect, on lands and governments, and 
 holding commerce and social life for the main props if not the 
 ends of civil and national organization. His uncle, now^near 
 eighty years old, to judge by conjecture in a land where regis- 
 ters are not much in use, had journeyed to India, and traded at 
 Bombay ; in token whereof he still wore an Indian skull-cap 
 and a Cachemire shawl. The rest of the family were in keep- 
 ing with the elder members, and seldom have I seen more 
 dutiful children or a better educated household. My readers 
 will naturally understand that by education I here imply its 
 moral not its intellectual phase. The eldest son, himself a 
 middle-aged man, Avould never venture into his father's pre- 
 sence without unbuckling his sword and leaving it in the 
 vestibule, nor on any account presume to sit on a level with 
 him or by his side in the divan. 
 
 The divan itself was one of the prettiest I met with in these 
 parts. It was a large square room, looking out on the large 
 house-garden, and cheerfully lighted up by trellised windows 
 on two sides, while the wall of the third had purposely been 
 discontinued at about half its height, and the open space thus 
 left between it and the roof propped by pillars, between which 
 '* a fruitful vine by the sides of the house " was intertwined so 
 as to fill up the interval with a gay network of green leaves and 
 tendrils, transparent like stained glass in the eastern sunbeams.
 
 Chap. IV] NORTH CENTR.LL ARABIA 1 85 
 
 Facing tliis cheerful light the floor of the apartment was raised 
 about two feet above the rest, and covered with gay Persian 
 carpets, silk cushions, and the best of Arab furniture. In the 
 lower half of the K'hawah, and at its farthest angle, was the 
 small stone coffee-stove, placed at a distance where its heat 
 might not annoy the master and his guests. Many of the 
 city nobility would here resort, and the talk generally timied 
 on serious subjects, and above all on the parties and politics of 
 Arabia ; while Dohey' would show himself a thorough Arab 
 patriot, and at the same time a courteous and indulgent judge 
 of foreigners, qualities seldom to be met with together in any 
 notable degree, and therefore more welcome. 
 
 Many a pleasant hour have I passed in this half greenhouse, 
 half K'hawah, mid cheerful faces and varied talk, while inly 
 commenting on the natural resources of this manly and vigorous 
 people, and straining the eye of forethought to discern through 
 the misty curtain of the future by what outlet their now un- 
 fruitful because solitary good may be brought into fertilizing 
 contact with that of other more advanced nations, to the mutual 
 benefit of each and all. " It is not good that the man shoidd 
 be alone " was said from the beginning by a very high Authority, 
 no, nor the nation either. Time, not perhaps distant, may help 
 to solve the problem. 
 
 Or else some garden was the scene of our afternoon leisure, 
 among fruit-trees and palms, by the side of a watercourse, whose 
 constant supply from the well hid from view among thick 
 foliage, seemed the work not of laborious art but of unassisted 
 nature. Here, stretched in the cool and welcome shade, woidd 
 we for hours canvass with 'Abd-el-Mahsin, and others of similar 
 pursuits, the respective merits of Arab poets and authors, of 
 Omar-ebn-el-Farid or Aboo'l 'Ola, in meetings that had some- 
 thing of the Attic, yet with just enough of the Arab to render 
 them more acceptable by their Semitic character of grave cheer- 
 fulness and mirthful composure. 
 
 Or when the stars came out, Barakat and myself would stroll 
 out of the heated air of the streets and market to the cool open 
 plain, and there pass an hour or two alone, or in conversation 
 with what chance passer-by might steal on us half unperceived 
 and unperceiving in the dusk, and amuse ourselves with his
 
 1 86 LIFE IX JIAYEL [Cu.vp. IV 
 
 simplicity if he were a Bedouin, or with his shrewdness if a 
 townsman. 
 
 Thus passed our ordinary life at H'ayel. Many minor inci- 
 dents occurred to diversify it, many of the little ups and downs 
 that human intercourse never fails to furnish ; sometimes the 
 number of patients and the urgency of their attendance allowed 
 of little leisure for aught except our professional duties ; 
 sometimes a day or two would pass with hardly any serious 
 occupation. But of such incidents, though invested at the 
 period of their occurrence with actual and local interest, and 
 even at this distance of time and place to me at least the 
 source of mucli pleasant remembrance, I will say nothing more 
 here; my readers have a sufficient sample in what has been 
 already set down. From the 27tli of July to the 8th of 
 September we remained doctoring in the capital or in its 
 immediate neighbourhood. But during this time was also 
 carried on what might almost have seemed an episode, but 
 which, was in reality the main plot of the drama, and it 
 became more and more inwoven with our other circumstances 
 and occupations, till the exoteric veil of medicine could barely 
 suffice to cover much of more genuine interest and importance. 
 My readers may easily guess that I alluded to our position rela- 
 tively to Telal, to his family and government, for with these and 
 with him we were now unavoidably in frequent and significant 
 contact. Here began a long series of events to be continued on 
 through the rest of our journe}^ sometimes in accordance with 
 our desires and sometimes against them — a very parti-coloured 
 skein, reaching from Ha'yel to the Persian Gulf, and even 
 farther. But this will be fittingly explained in a separate 
 chapter.
 
 1 87 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Court Incidents at Ha'yel 
 
 Yet tliough thou stand' st more siu'e — 
 
 Thou art not sure enough, since griefs are green, 
 
 And all thy friends, which thou must make thy friends, 
 
 Have but their stings and teetli newly ta'en out. — 
 
 Be it thy course to busy giddy minds 
 
 With foreign quarrels. — Shakuspcare 
 
 TELAL'S conduct TOWAEDS TJS — HIS BEOTHEK META'AB — PALACE OF 
 
 meta'ab, his k'hIavah akd contersation — 'abbas basha and his 
 intrigues with the bedorins and wahhabees : why both prtjit- 
 
 LESS — LASCARIS AND PATH 'aLLAH — WHERE LIES ARAB NATIONALITY — 
 CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN HAY'eL AND EGYPT — TELAL'S POLICY TO 
 OBTAIN THE PATRONAGE OF THE PERSIAN CARAVAN — DEPUTATIONS FROM 
 KASEEM — OUR OWN POSITION GROWS CRITICAL — ZAMIL, HIS CHA- 
 RACTER — OUR CONFIDENCE IN HIM — HIS CONDUCT^SECOND INTERVIEW 
 
 WITH TELAL ITS RESULT — NEJDEAN SPIES — 'OBEYD — HIS HISTORY 
 
 AND CHARACTER — WAHHABEE PARTY IN SHOMER — 'oBEYD'S CONDUCT 
 TOWARDS US — WARNINGS OF 'aBD-EL-MAHSIN — 'oBEYD'S OUTBREAK — 
 HE TAKES COMMAND OF AN EXPEDITION AGAINST THE IIARB TRIBE- 
 GATHERING OF THE TROOPS — 'oBEYD's LETTER ON OUR ACCOUNT TO 
 'aBD-ALLAH at RIAD — THIRD INTERVIEW WITH TELAL ; ITS CONSE- 
 aUENCES — A SHOMER PASSPORT — REASONS FOR LEAVING HA'yEL — OUR 
 GUIDES FOR KASEEM — FAREWELL VISITS OF 'abD-EL-MAHSIN, ZAMIL, 
 AND OTHERS — MUTUAL REGRETS — WE QUIT HA'YEL. 
 
 We have seen that Telal, although somewhat, so to speak, 
 put off the scent by our conduct at our first entrance in his 
 capital, and in some measure acquiescing in our medical dis- 
 guise, had yet by no means laid aside his general idea that 
 something more was meant by our visit to his dominions than 
 met the eye or ear of ordinary observation. Accordingly he 
 continued for a time to watch us closely by means of 'Abd-el- 
 INIahsin and others of the palace, and the frequent visits with 
 which we were honoured from that quarter were no less 
 prompted by the curiosity of the king to know all about us 
 than by an excess of courtesy or thirst after science on the 
 part of our friends themselves. Of this we could not but be 
 aware, and kept constant to our first plan, nor allowed word or
 
 1 88 COriiT IXCIDEXrS at JIA'YEL [CnAr. V 
 
 jest to escape us otherwise tlian in strict conformity with what 
 we had announced at the very outset. 
 
 Before many days had passed a second invitation of Tehll's 
 reached us, purporting; that we shoukl do well to exchange our 
 present abode for more spacious and convenient lodgings close 
 by the royal palace. Its master hoped to have us thus imme- 
 diately under his eye and hand. But a polite refusal on our 
 side, tempered with suitable excuses on plausible grounds, 
 baffled his desire. He felt the check, and henceforth returned 
 our salutations at the public audience or in chance meetings 
 with something less of cordiality than before. 
 
 Meanwhile his gay dashing brother Meta'ab, the second of 
 the famil}^, returned from the pasture-lands, where he had been 
 looking after the well-doing of the royal stud in the meadows 
 of Hafr JNla'ad, at some distance from Ha'yel. His long jetty 
 ringlets, his gorgeous dress and easy demeanour contrasted with 
 the more sober-coloured apparel and serious ways of his elder 
 brother and sovereign. He was a travelled man, had often 
 visited Meshid 'Alee and its confines, and had even more than 
 once entered Bagdad, and discoursed with Bashas and Consuls. 
 But, while the levity both of his outer and inner man rendered 
 him unsuited for the weightier business of the State, his agree- 
 able manners and quickness of perception made him remarkably 
 successful in those petty intrigues, which in the East and the 
 "West alike may often prepare the way for affairs of greater 
 moment; and in such preliminary manoeuvres Meta'ab was a 
 known and willing instrument. 
 
 A man of this character could not fail to be soon informed of 
 our arrival and of all concerning us ; and he had no need of 
 further instigation to desire our better acquaintance. The very 
 second day after his return from the country, that is, about the 
 tenth since our establishment in Ha'yel, he honoured us with a 
 morning visit ; wished to see the medicines, the books, every- 
 thing ; talked in a random way about Egypt and Syria, and 
 took a hasty leave. But the same evening a handsome negro of 
 his retinue came up to me while I was walking in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the palace, and informed me that the Emeer 
 Meta'ab requested me to take coffee with him at his dwelling. 
 His palace, about the size of three large Belgrave Square houses.
 
 Chap. V] FRIENDS AND ENEMIES I 8 9 
 
 is close by that of Telal, and joins on to it by a long covered 
 gallery, with windows at regular intervals, and resembling a 
 cloister were it vaulted instead of flat-roofed. Into this passage 
 I now entered, escorted by the black, till after traversing its 
 whole length we reached a vestibule, where a confusion of swords 
 and shoes left outside announced the presence of several visitors 
 within. There in a lofty K'hilwah sat Meta'ab, and before him 
 a Persian pipe or Nargheelah, from which he was busily in- 
 haling exotic vapours. Several of the courtsmen and townsmen 
 were seated near, and a thick cloud, but not of incense, went up 
 on every side. 
 
 A cordial welcome greeted my entrance, and Meta'ab rose to 
 present me his open hand in half-Arab, half-English fashion. 
 While coffee and the ceremonies which accompany it went round, 
 our host began a very free and easy chat about Bagdad, its 
 Basha, the English and French consuls, their horses and their 
 politics, what he had seen and what heard, to discover whether 
 all this would take with me. But having at that time not 
 yet visited Bagdad, it was easy for me to look blank, and to 
 show little interest in these matters ; Meta'ab then changed his 
 key-note, and tried Egypt. 
 
 Here the case was changed. I was really very desirous to 
 know what intercourse might exist between Djebel Shomer and 
 the valley of the Nile, and accordingly let him imderstand that 
 I was no stranger to Cairo and its neighbourhood. The Emeer, 
 delighted to find a better opening in this quarter, launched out 
 into much and curious, though desultory, discourse about Sa'eed 
 Basha and his journey to Europe, about 'Abbas Basha and his 
 intrigues with the Arab chiefs, and explained the actual position 
 of Ills brother towards the reigning viceroy. 
 
 In this and in the following interviews with Met'aab, who 
 became more intimate day by day, I obtained a tolerably 
 distinct idea of what I had heard about before, but only con- 
 fusedly — I mean the strange Arab intrigues of 'Abbas Basha. 
 That prince had devised a scheme for not only rendering him- 
 self independent of the Ottoman Porte, but even of becoming 
 in person sole sovereign of the Arabian Peninsula, by means of 
 a double alliance, linked with the Bedouins to the north, and 
 the Wahhabee to the south. In the view of ensurina- the
 
 190 COURT INCIDENTS AT JTA' TEL [CnAr. V 
 
 sympathy of the former, he consigned his eldest son, then a 
 mere chihl, to the well-known Feysul-elm-Shaa'lan, chief of the 
 gi-eat Eu'ala tribe, intending thus to have his lieir brought up 
 like one of the clan, and in all the perfection of wild ways 
 and customs. Besides this singular measure, he sent abimdant 
 largesses to the other contiguous tribes ; while any Bedouin 
 who approached his palace was sure of a favourable reception, 
 and was readily admitted to experience the effects of his lavish 
 liberality, if one may term liberality what was in fact mere 
 waste. Nay, the infatuated viceroy went to tlie extent of 
 affecting the Bedouin in his own person and manners, would 
 imitate the nomade style of dress, relish, or seem to relish, 
 their fare, and live with them on a footing of sham familiarity, 
 fancying the wdiile that he was gaining their affection to his 
 service. 
 
 It may be said in the way of apology for the extravagancies 
 of 'Abbas Basha, that others of more pretensions than ever w^ere 
 his to intellectual discernment, have now and then committed 
 a somewhat similar miscalculation regarding the supposed 
 importance of the Bedouin tribes, and the advantages to be 
 derived from their alliance. But what rendered the Egyptian 
 governor particularly inexcusable in his error, was the contrary 
 example of his owm uncle Ibraheem Basha, and the success 
 w^hich had attended him in an exactly opposite course of -policy. 
 The neglect of family lessons and hereditary experience is of all 
 others the hardest to pardon in a ruler. 
 
 " The man who relies on Bedouin assistance is like one who 
 should build his house on the face of the water," said Meta'ab 
 to me, while describing the conduct of 'Abbas, and he said true. 
 This assertion he proved by reasons not unworthy of record, since 
 assigned by one whom long experience had rendered every way 
 capable of forming a correct estimate of the subject. " The 
 Bedouins," thus continued the Emeer, the sense of wliose 
 words I give, though not the words themselves, " besides their 
 little weight in serious w^arfare, owing to their deficiency in 
 arms, accoutrements, and military discipline, besides their utter 
 incapacity of combined action, because split up into infinitesimal 
 factions by continual and childish feuds that never permit them 
 to unite for any real purpose a month together, are besides
 
 Chap. V] FRIENDS AND ENEMIES \ g i 
 
 the mere creatures of the moment, to whom the present hour 
 alone is something, yesterday and to-morrow alike nothing. 
 Without either national or religious aim or principle, without 
 social bonds or patriotic feeling, every one isolated in his own 
 petty and personal interests, all against all, and all equally 
 without purpose or meaning, they neither care for those out 
 of their clan, nor even for their own tribesmen, except just so 
 far as they may chance to receive from them some immediate 
 gain, or suffer some actual detriment — friends to-day, enemies 
 to-morrow, friends again the day after. Now if such is their 
 condition with those of their own ' skin ' (race), much more 
 so must it be with respect to strangers. Sultan, Viceroy, Turk, 
 Egyptian, English, French, all is one with them — they have 
 no sympathy with any one of all these, and are no more dis- 
 posed to attach themselves to the one rather than to the other. 
 Their only real partiality is for the highest bidder ; and while, 
 to use their own expression, 'his food is yet in their bellies,' 
 they may possibly do his -work, but even that so far only as it 
 is evidently profitable to themselves, and not over-dangerous 
 either. In such a case one may reckon that they will furnish 
 camels and bring water, or even take courage to attack and 
 plunder a neighbouring village or a weaker tribe ; but these 
 services are simply in the view of hire or booty, not in the 
 least from any liking to or esteem for their employer, much less 
 from aught approaching to patriotism and national feeling. 
 And in proof of this they will be perfectly ready to turn on 
 and plunder their former ally and friend, the very first hour 
 that they see him unable to afford them advantage or to offer 
 resistance." 
 
 Thus far Meta'ab. But I have often been amused b}^ 
 thinking how ill bestowed were the labours of Lascaris and bin 
 companion Fath-Allah during the seven years they passed 
 lavishing the money of their imperial master in getting up a 
 Bedouin alliance on national and philanthropic principles. And 
 I trust that I may be pardoned for smiling at what I have more 
 than once heard the very objects of their misplaced largesse?, 
 the Eu'ala, Sebaa', and Hasinah Bedouins ridicule themselves, 
 and that heartily. Not only within the limits of the Syrian 
 desert, but even farther inland up to Ha'yel, I met with some
 
 192 COURT IXCIDENTS AT HAYEL [Chap. V 
 
 remembrance of this wild scheme, and ^leta'ab liad learnt from 
 the Eu'ala, in their occasional visits to Djebel Shomer, all the 
 maiu facts and features of its progress. Not that the wonderful 
 events of wars and combats with which Lamartine in his version 
 of P'ath-Allah's journal has swollen the bulk of his second 
 volume about Syria, have any historical reality, at least to the 
 best of what I could discover, nor did any one pretend to the 
 faintest remembrance of seven days' battles on the banks of the 
 Orontes, or expeditions conducted into the heart of Persia and 
 Beloochistan. The same must be said of the pretended embassy 
 to the Wahhabee monarch at Derey'eeyah, and whatever other 
 episodes the author's vivid imagination has tacked on to his 
 story. But of presents offered and received, of largesses made 
 and tribes enriched with European gold, there was remem- 
 brance enough. To conclude, the whole business was a capital 
 " catch " for the Bedouins, and so was 'Abbas Basha and his 
 intrigues. 
 
 His bounty — for to him w^e now return — was of course gladly 
 pocketed or eaten, promises were signed and sealed, and a faith 
 which had never existed was solemnly pledged. Then all 
 disappeared like a ripple on the water. No sooner had the 
 news of the Basha's death reached Syria, than Feysul-ebn- 
 Shaa'lan got rid of his benefactor's son by a dose of poison, if 
 report say true, and thus ended the Egypto-Bedouin alliance, 
 with no more utility for those who made it than that of Lascaris 
 before. In one thing only 'Abbas Basha succeeded, namely, in 
 convincing all Arabia that he was a fool ; a compendious result, 
 and likely to be attained by any one who may choose to tread in 
 the steps of the Egyptian viceroy. 
 
 Nor was 'Abbas Basha more lucky in his Wahhabee alliance, 
 though here his mistake was much worthier of excuse; indeed, 
 it would have required a very thorough acquaintance with the 
 political condition of inner Arabia not to have anticipated a 
 more advantageous termination to this measure. The Wahhabees 
 certainly presented an organized government and a central 
 power, acting on and guided by well-defined principles of reli- 
 gion and nationality, all so many points whereon to fix the 
 Egyptian lever ; and besides, it would be a great injustice to the 
 sturdy and dogged denizens of Nejed to compare them with the
 
 Chap. V] FRIENDS AND ENEMIES 1 93 
 
 fickle and undependable Bedouins either in moral or in military 
 value. Yet here again 'Abbas had mistaken his men. The 
 Wahhabees were too consistent in their peculiar dogmas not 
 to regard the Egyptian as a polytheist and an infidel, one of 
 those whose friendship was enmity with God, and his professions 
 of orthodoxy met with as little credence among the Nejdeans 
 as the Islamism of Kleber or of Bonaparte (I mention not to 
 stigmatise but to illustrate), found among the Egyptians them- 
 selves. No one believed him, no one trusted ; and the true 
 believers of Eiad showed a steadfastness in holding back from the 
 flattering offers of Eygpt, greater than that which Jeremiah vainly 
 sought to obtain in his day from the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and 
 on somewhat analogous grounds. In addition, the Wahhabees 
 were yet smarting from the blows inflicted on them by Moham- 
 med 'Alee and Ibraheem Basha, and ill-disposed to unite with 
 the grandson of the one and tlie nephew of the other. However, 
 the desire of expected profit led them not wholly to reject the 
 tendered alliance, nor rudely interrupt the stream of envoys, 
 every one of whom filled their hands with the good things of 
 Egypt; and they continued to hold out hopes of compliance and 
 co-operation, like angling lines to catch the silly fish of the 
 Nile, till the presents of 'Abbas Basha had well replenished the 
 coffers of Fey^ul-ebn-Sa'ood, while the Nejdean monarch's 
 daughters, (as I myself witnessed, when his guest some months 
 later at Eiad), glistened in pearls and gold-net of Cairo workman- 
 ship. Thus the Wahhabee, like the Bedouins, though from 
 different motives, pocketed the gifts and laughed at the giver. 
 
 In all this there was yet a deeper and more pernicious error. 
 'Abbas Basha did not, indeed he could not know the immense 
 reaction existing throughout the Arabian Peninsula against the 
 overbearing tyranny of the Wahhabee dynasty, and greatly over- 
 rated the real strength and influence of the latter, while he 
 neglected the proper source of Arab vigour, and missed the 
 chord which, if skilfully touched, might have vibrated in his 
 favour, from the shores of the Ked Sea to the Indian Ocean. A 
 few words will explain this. Take the Wahhabees, that is, those 
 who are really such, and the Bedouins together, they will not 
 exceed one-fourth of the denizens of Arabia. The remaining 
 three-fourths consist of townsmen and peasants spread through- 
 
 VOL. I. o
 
 194 <^ '^ ^'Ji '^ INCIDENTS A T HA' YEL [( " ii.\ i'. V 
 
 out tlio land, enthusiastic partisans of their local chiefs and 
 rulers, and true lovers of Arab freedom — patriots, in short, but 
 alike hostile to Bedouin marauders and to Wahhabee coercion. 
 They cling- to a national glory and patriotic memories of a 
 date much older than the recent honours of Ebn-Sa'ood, and 
 rivalling or surpassing in antiquity those of Koreysh itself. 
 Love of order and commerce renders them also the enemies of 
 nomadic anarchy. Lastly, they far outweigh their antagonists 
 collectively in numbers no less than in national importance, 
 and to them alone, if to any, are reserved the destinies of 
 Arabia. 
 
 ]\Ialiomet, a master mind, saw this in his time, and it was ex- 
 actly by enlisting this part of the Arab commonwealth and these 
 feelings in his cause, that he secured his ascendency over the 
 whole peninsula. The Coran and cotemporary tradition give no 
 other clue to his able line of conduct, and to the prodigious success 
 that justified it. Had he stopped here he wovild have been the 
 first and greatest benefactor of his native country. But the 
 prophet marred what the statesman had begun, and the deadening 
 fatalism of his religious system, that narcotic of the human mind, 
 stopped for ever the very progress to which he had himself half 
 opened the way by his momentary fusion of Arabia into a 
 common nation with a common aim. Again, the Judaical 
 narrowness and ceremonial interferences of his law soon fretted 
 the impatient and expansive mind of his countrymen into that 
 almost universal revolt which accompanied rather than followed 
 the news of his death. The revolt was indeed repressed for a 
 moment, but soon reappeared, nor ceased till the final and 
 lasting disintegi'ation of the Arab empire in Arabia. 
 
 Now, if ordinary Islam proved too strait-laced for Arabia, 
 Wahhabeeism is of necessity even more so, and the men who had 
 broken asunder the yoke of Mahomet himself were very unlikely 
 long to bow their necks under that of Ebn-Sa'ood and 'Abd-el- 
 Wahhilb. Thus it was that 'Abbas Basha had chosen his start- 
 ing point ill, and his partiality for Eiad and its rulers tended 
 to estrange yet more from him the nation at large. 
 
 In Ha'yel 'Abd-Allah-ebn-Easheed and his family kept 
 wisely aloof from the manoeuvres of the Egyptian viceroy, and 
 awaited better times. These seemed at hand when the murder
 
 Chap. V] FRIENDS AND ENEMIES 1 95 
 
 of 'Abbas placed Sa'eed Basha on the throne. The known 
 inclination of this prince for European alliances was not an 
 unfavourable circumstance in the views of Teliil, who knew 
 that from this latter quarter he might have much to gain where 
 industry and commerce were concerned, while he could have 
 but little to fear in the way of aggression and war. Sur- 
 rounded on every side by a broad and almost trackless desert, 
 with no ports or coast line to defend against the " dogs of the 
 sea," as Europeans, and particularly the English, are often, 
 though most impolitely, denominated in the East, and nestled 
 amid a labyrinth of mountains and crags, the provinces of Ha'yel 
 were the last place in the world to dread a French invasion or 
 an English occupation, while on the other hand they might 
 derive considerable profit from an interchange at arm's-length, 
 so to speak, of material or mental goods. In this idea the 
 negotiations between Ha'yel and Cairo, interrupted awhile by the 
 ill-starred reign of 'Abbas Basha, were renewed after his death. 
 But the frivolity of Sa'eed was not long in displaying itself, 
 and Telal, while he continued to keep up a series of friendly 
 messages and greetings to and fro, soon ceased to flatter himself 
 with the hope of any effective support from that quarter against 
 Wahhabite encroachments or Turkish hostility. Still, in the 
 actual position of affairs, Egypt may be considered his best 
 friend and ally in case of extreme need — a fact noticed on a 
 former occasion. 
 
 I mentioned then, too, but in a general way, that Telal was 
 careful to maintain his correspondence with Persia. It is now 
 time to explain his special reasons for so doing, and what the 
 Arab prince could look for from the decrepit despotism of 
 Teheran. The solution of this problem lies in the geographical 
 conditions of the laud. I must here beg my readers to give a 
 look to the map. There they will see that Djebel Shomer 
 exactly crosses the line drawn from the central and upper pro- 
 vinces of Persia to the Hejaz, and thus is right in the track 
 which Persian pilgrims would naturally follow in their annual 
 visits to the Meccan Ca'abah, or the tombs of Medinah, whether 
 those of Mahomet and his companions, or the more equivocal 
 monuments of Shiya'ee devotion. Similar bodies of travellers 
 benefit the towns and countries through which they pass by 
 
 o 2
 
 196 COURT INCIDENTS AT IjA'YEL [Cuai. V 
 
 their wayfaring expenditure, no less than by the example of 
 their piety, perhaps even more. To draw this yearly current of 
 pilgrim wealth within the limits of his dominions, and to make 
 it flow through the very gates of Ha'yel, was Telal's great 
 desire ; the more so because such a measure would not only 
 ensure him the transient though oft-recurring advantages 
 already alluded to, but would also serve to encourage the 
 sectaries of JNIeshid 'Alee, Bagdad, and that whole region, in 
 their trade with Djebel Shomer, a trade created by Telal, and 
 highly beneficial to his entire kingdom, but especially to the 
 capital. jNIany circumstances combined to favour this pi'oject. 
 The road from Teheran and Bagdad by Djebel Shomer, tra- 
 versing the narrower neck of the Arabian continent, and leading 
 right to the sacred cities whither the pilgrims were bound, was in- 
 disputably more commodious and more secure, besides involving 
 far less expense, than the circuitous routes followed so often by 
 the Persian caravans through Syria, or southward down the 
 Persian Grulf and along the coasts of 'Oman, Hadramaut and 
 Yemen to Djiddah. There remained, indeed, the road across 
 the centre of Arabia through Nejed, a comparatively short and 
 easy track, but this was rendered almost impracticable for the 
 votaries of 'Alee by the bigoted intolerance of the Wahhabees, 
 who deemed their land polluted if trodden by such mis- 
 believing wretches. How far " a consideration " in old Trapbois' 
 phrase, might prevail in mitigating this abhorrence, we shall 
 afterwards see. But with Telal, Sonnite and Shiya'ee were all 
 one, and it was not his way to impose extra dues or exact any 
 special perquisites from a pilgrim because his religious opinions 
 chanced to be of this or of that colour. 
 
 Accordingly he employed all his diligence and skill to 
 negotiate the annual transit of the Perso-Meccan caravan by 
 Ha'yel in preference to the other routes just mentioned, and 
 kept up a continual correspondence on the subject at Bagdad 
 and Meshid 'Alee. There he found the Persian authorities 
 well disposed to come into his ideas, and the Shah himself, 
 when informed of the project, notified his entire approbation. 
 Yet its full and entire execution has not yet taken place, owing 
 to circumstances whose explanation can only be given when 
 we reach Nejed itself. However, in spite of all opposition
 
 CHvr. V] FRIENDS AND ENEMIES 1 97 
 
 a numerous band of conical caps and furred robes appear 
 every pilgrim-season in Ha'yel ; I was myself witness of one 
 caravan, and all the Persians in it expressed their gratitude 
 in very bad Arabic for the gracious treatment they had met 
 with from Telal and Meta'ab, and their entire satisfaction with 
 the Shomer government. 
 
 Such and similar were the subjects of conversation in the 
 K'hawah of Meta'ab and his friends. I have recorded them at 
 some length hoping thereby to afford some kind of insight into 
 that real and living Arabia so often left a blank in many narra- 
 tives, no less than its geographical surface in many maps. To 
 determine the positions of mountains, the course of rivers, the 
 gradations of climate, the geological character of rocks, and 
 whatever else relates to physical and inanimate nature, is cer- 
 tainly of high and serious importance, and here too I have tried 
 to do my best, although with what imperfect results, from want of 
 preparation and of opportunity for scientific observation, I am 
 regretfully conscious. But to sum up much in that most hack- 
 neyed of all hackneyed quotations, " The proper study of man- 
 kind is man ;" and it is perhaps an even higher service rendered 
 to science and to Europe if we attempt to di-aw aside at least a 
 little the veil so thickly cast over human-Arabia, its parties and 
 politics, its mind and movement. I return to my story. 
 
 About twenty days had passed at Ha'yel, when we began 
 seriously to consider whether and how far we should acquaint 
 Telrd with the real main object of our journey. We had by 
 this time sufficiently ascertained his position, his views, his 
 system, his projects. We had learnt his exact bearings with the 
 Wahhabee and the Turk, how far he might be considered their 
 ally, how far their enemy. We were no longer ignorant of the 
 general feeling and tendency of his government and people, 
 while the daily arrival of envoys from Kaseem and 'Oneyzah 
 revealed more and more the intimate nature of politics and 
 religion in Djebel Shomer. These very envoys had often sat 
 hours together in our courtyard, and discussed with us and 
 before us the means and ends of Telal, and the degrees of 
 alliance which linked him with the chiefs of Kaseem in one 
 way, and with their enemy the monarch of Nejed in another. 
 Inlbrmation thus obtained seemed to me in a certain measure
 
 1 98 COURT INCIDENTS AT HA'YEL [Chap. V 
 
 more dependable than wLat I received from tlie Lorn snbjects 
 and vassals of Telfil. 
 
 Nor did we hold it fair to keep longer in the dark one who 
 had so cordially welcomed us and treated us so well. Hitherto 
 we had in fVxct requited his openness by reserve, and met 
 his advances with somethino- like chilliness. To put him in 
 possession of a secret which he evidently desired to unravel, 
 and which there seemed hardly any danger that he would 
 abuse, might be reckoned no more than natural equity and 
 justice towards our royal host. 
 
 Besides, though Telrd seemed to think well of us on the 
 whole, yet he could not but look on us with some suspicion, 
 however slight; and such vague suspicion is apt to take a 
 sinister turn. Now it was utterly impossible for us to pursue 
 our journey into the Wahhabee territory except with Telrd's 
 cognizance, and by his good will. A passport bearing the 
 royal signature is indispensable for whoever desires to journey 
 on in that direction, much more to cross the frontier ; without 
 such a document in hand no one would venture to conduct us ; 
 and to attempt the road furtively and alone would have been 
 to run a madman's risk. But that Telfd would furnish us with 
 the requisite passport while he yet felt uneasy about us and our 
 intentions was highly improbable ; whereas to tell him frankly 
 the real object of our wanderings, and the course we meant to 
 hold, was the likeliest way to procure from him a consent which 
 doubt and mistrust otherwise might, nay, certainly would, deny. 
 
 Such was our position, and whatever step we might decide on 
 was attended by its unavoidable difficulties ; but after much 
 discussion it was at last resolved in the cabinet council of 
 myself and my companion that we should ask for a private 
 interview with Telal, and then and there let him know all. 
 However, to proceed in the most approved court-fashion, we 
 determined first to secure an intermediary agent in our favour, 
 and that we soon found in the person of the treasurer Zamil. 
 
 This individual, so highly placed in the good graces of Telfd, 
 had all along approved himself equally intelligent and well- 
 disposed. Medical duties and friendly invitations had already 
 given me free access to himself and to his family ; while he on 
 his part, in spite of the great press of business which hardly left
 
 Chap. V] FRIENDS AND ENEMIES I99 
 
 him a moment's leisure, had paid us frequent though cursory- 
 visits at our domicile. Participating fully in Telal's views, and 
 having a considerable share in most of his administrative 
 measures, he was decidedly of a brighter and more open 
 character than his master, much easier of access, and giving 
 in himself the rare example of a man raised from the lowest 
 ranks of society to the highest degree of wealth and influence 
 (at Ha'yel, I mean), without having thereby contracted any- 
 thing of the arrogant and ungainly manners common to the far- 
 venu. Lastly, he possessed a clear and capacious mind, Arab 
 prudence, great moderation and tact, and much good nature. 
 The only faults ascribed to him by that nice censor, popular 
 rumour, and in a degree confirmed by the costly elegance 
 of his dress and all about his handsome person, was a certain 
 ostentation, and a love of pleasure carried even beyond the 
 bounds of what one may call standard Arab morality ; a fault, 
 it may be added, from which his master Telal was not held 
 exempt. Eut this weak point of Zfimil's character did not 
 come in the way of the business we required him for; we 
 trusted to his better qualities and influential position, nor had 
 we after-reason to repent our trust. 
 
 Accordingly we took a suitable opportunity for informing 
 him that we desired a secret interview with Tekll on matters of 
 considerable import, and begged him to procure it for us. 
 Subsequently we went yet further, and explained to our ambas- 
 sador the entire case, and what it was that we desired to lay 
 before the monarch. 
 
 Zamil very properly took time to deliberate, and after de- 
 manding and receiving our consent, acquainted Tekll with the 
 reasons of our request. For two days he came regularly to 
 our apartments, with the precaution, however, of selecting the 
 hours which were least liable to observation, and conned over 
 with us every point of the projected colloquy in the minutest 
 detail. At last he informed us that on such and such a 
 morning (it was the 21st of August) Telal would receive our 
 communications. 
 
 I ought to say that in Arab no less than in European 
 courts, personal and private audiences of the sovereign are 
 looked upon as a high favour, not to be lightly demanded nor
 
 200 COURT INCIDENTS AT HA'YEL [Cuw. V 
 
 easily conferred. Etiquette has something to do with this, 
 policy more : something also is due to the fear of treachery, 
 and more than one instance is recorded in the chronicles of 
 the land of a supplicant admitted to privacy and there proving 
 an assassin. Of public and official audiences, where " sun-like 
 majesty " in its attendant pomp is alike secure from the felon's 
 dagger, and from the cheapness of vulgar company, Telfd is 
 liberal enough, more so indeed by far than the nionarchs of 
 Nejed and 'Oman. 
 
 On the appointed day, a little before sunrise, my companion 
 and myself sought out by circuitous side-lanes and by-ways 
 Zamil's house, and there seated ourselves in the empty K'hawah, 
 for the family were not yet stirring, and it was too early for 
 guests. Zamil himself had already gone to Telal, doubtless to 
 concert with liim how we were to be received. We had not 
 waited long when a negro belonging to the palace entered the 
 K'hawah, and made us a signal to follow him. We entered the 
 royal residence by a private door, generally kept shut, and 
 after traversing several small apartments ascended a flight of 
 stairs constructed in the central oval tower. At about n-iid- 
 height the greater part of its width was occui^ied by a lai'ge and 
 well-furnished room ; and here sat Telal with Zfimil only by 
 his side. Slaves and armed attendants were in waiting in an ad- 
 joining apartment, but too distant to overhear our conversation. 
 After the first salutations in their wonted simplicity, the king 
 said, " What do you wish to speak of?" and, seeing me hesitate 
 a moment in my answer, added with a glance towards Zamil, 
 " Never mind his presence, you may consider him as myself." 
 
 Thus encouraged, I began, and gave a brief but clear accoimt 
 of the circumstances and object of our journey, w^hence and 
 whither, what we desired, and what expected. A conversa- 
 tion of at least an hour ensued ; it consisted principally of 
 interrogations on Telfd's part, and of explanations and answers 
 on ours. His queries were always to the point ; his remarks 
 concise but uncommonly shrewd, and going to the bottom of 
 things. Much that I said was met half-way by assent, on other 
 points he suggested difficulties or proposed modifications. He 
 took particular care not to commit himself by assurances of 
 adhering to any definite line of conduct, and we of course
 
 Chap. V] FRIENDS AND ENEMIES 20 1 
 
 avoided with equal scrupulosity all appearance of a desire to 
 lead him farther or faster than he chose to follow. But 
 he insisted much on the necessity of entire secrecy, saying, 
 " Were what now passes between us to be known at large, it 
 might be as much as your lives are worth, and perhaps mine 
 also." 
 
 In the course of this interview I took the opportunity to 
 mention certain ambiguous and sinister reports which I had 
 been told circulated regarding us among some classes of the 
 people. " Does the town say so ?" exclaimed Telal in an half- 
 scornful voice ; and then placing his hand on his breast, added, 
 with a gesture and a tone that Louis XIV in council might 
 have envied, " I am the town ! " subjoining, " Never fear ; from 
 none of my subjects shall you ever again hear the like. But," 
 continued he, " there are others for whom I cannot answer 
 equally well." 
 
 At last, when all had been sufficiently canvassed, Telal ex- 
 pressed his wish that we should continue to sift these matters 
 with Zamil, promised a second audience, in which he was to 
 give us a more definite answer ; " though," said he, " that cannot 
 be in a hurry," and then called out to a slave who stood waiting 
 behind the door, sword in hand. The negro thus summoned 
 put his head into the room, and then vanished a moment, 
 to return with ready-made coffee. After all had drunk, two 
 other servants brought in a large round dish, laden with ex- 
 cellent peaches, of which Telal partook along with us, in sign of 
 entire confidence and good will. When all was concluded, 
 Zamil, with a highly satisfied air (for he was by this time an 
 enthusiastic participator in our views), rose, and conducted us 
 downstairs and so from the palace to his own house. Several 
 days passed, during which we met frequently ; but Telal con- 
 tinued to defer his ultimatum, nor were we inclined to urge 
 him out of season. 
 
 Meanwhile, the " others," at whom our royal friend had 
 hinted, were not idle ; indeed, we had been long before made 
 aware of their existence. More than once a Nejdean, in the 
 plain cotton dress of a Metow'waa' or disciplinarian of the 
 Wahhabee sect, had presented his pharisaical demeanour and 
 sour face in our courtyard. These men were spies in the service
 
 202 COURT INCIDENTS AT JL'VYEL [Chap. V 
 
 of the Riad government, sent express to see what was going on 
 in Ha yel ; they were often to be met ^vith in the streets and 
 market-place, observing all, shunned by all, yet treated by all 
 with cautious respect. Strangers and Christians like ourselves 
 could not expect to escape their notice, indeed we had a very 
 considerable share of it, and the antipathy which their words 
 did not express was yet no secret. " Hearts see each other," is 
 a common and very expressive Arab saying; and an enemy is 
 soon distinguished, however disguised in language, and even in 
 features. Nor are the Arabs remarkably skilful in concealing 
 their feelings, I should rather say the contrary ; their emotions 
 are for the most part too impetuous not to betray themselves in 
 gest and expression ; certainly, taking tliem altogether, they 
 are far outdone by Turks and Indians in the science of dissimu- 
 lation : nay, even by some branches of the great European 
 family. However, the Nejdeans, who are the calmest, have 
 also the reputation of being the deepest among their country- 
 men. 
 
 But a more important lesson was yet to learn. 'Obeyd-ed- 
 De'eb, or " 'Obeyd the wolf," to give him his popvilar surname, 
 the same of whom I have before spoken" as brother of the de- 
 ceased prince 'Abd-Allah, and uncle of Telfd, had been absent 
 from Ha'yel during the first three weeks of our stay, or nearly 
 so. He now retui-ned, and at once occupied himself with the 
 two foreigners who had found their way into his nephew's 
 capital. 
 
 That a Wahhabee party should exist in a government first 
 founded by Wahhabee influence, close watched by Wahhabee 
 jealousy, and nominally itself tributary to Nejed ; that this 
 party should reckon in its ranks men even of the highest birth 
 and influence, of the royal family and near the throne, cannot 
 be wondered at ; indeed, the wonder would be were it otherwise. 
 This party is, indeed, at the present epoch small in number, but 
 is formidable through its unity of purpose, and the power- 
 fid support given it from the southern or Wahhabee frontier. 
 The most and chiefest of its partisans are gathered together 
 in Ha'yel, but no small number of its members are scattered 
 throughout the province. Its head and pivot is 'Obeyd. 
 
 We have already seen his elder brother 'Abd-Allah a volun-
 
 CnAr. V] FRIENDS AND ENEMIES 203 
 
 teer of high trust and consideration in the armies of Turkee, 
 and bearing a conspicuous part in the eventful fortunes of the 
 Nejdean d}aiasty during its most critical period. But 'Abd- 
 Allah, though intimately connected, whether soldier or prince, 
 with the Wahhabee government, seems to have had personally 
 very little or perhaps no sympathy with the dogmas of the 
 sect; he was a political ally, nowise a disciple. Not so his 
 haughty and hot-headed brother 'Obeyd. His mind found in 
 the fanaticism of Nejed its congenial element, and he plunged 
 into it heart and brain, till it may be doubted whether Riad 
 itself contains a more thorough-going Wahhabee than 'Obeyd- 
 ebn-Rasheed of Ha'yel. 
 
 An excellent warrior, of undisputed skill and valour, versed 
 alike in all the resources of deceit and violence, of bloodshed 
 and perjury, he was eminently qualified to become the apostle 
 of his sect in Shomer and its provinces. With his own hand, 
 if report say true, he had slain no less than eight hundred " in- 
 fidels" (that is, enemies), not to count the thousands slaughtered 
 Ijy his followers, and many were the trees once consecrated by 
 popular veneration that he had cut down, many the sepulchres, 
 honoured for centuries by devout visits and sacrifices, he had 
 levelled with the surrounding dust, in compliance with the 
 expressive laconism of the Wahhabee formula, "Kheyr el 
 keboor ed-dowaris," " The best sepulchres are those which 
 have ceased to exist." My readers will probably remember 
 how the same sectaries treated the tomb of their own avowed 
 prophet Mahomet at Medinah, and may hence imagine what 
 little grace monuments of more equivocal orthodoxy would find 
 in the e}!es of 'Obeyd and his fellows. 
 
 During the reign of 'Abd-Allah the greater part of the exter- 
 nal administration, summed up pretty nearly in the successive 
 subjugation of villages, towns, and provinces, was left to the 
 " Wolf," who assuredly did his best to deserve his name ; thirty 
 years of peace have not sufficed to re-people several of the 
 tracts which he then ravaged. His princely brother profited 
 by the acquisitions of territory thus obtained, and contented 
 himself with the quieter but humaner work of organisation at 
 Ha'yel. But when 'Abd-Allah died, the ambition of 'Obeyd, no 
 longer satisfied with the blood-stained laurels of his campaign.
 
 204 COURT INCIDENTS AT IIA'YEL [Chap. V 
 
 aspired to a regal crown, and the boyish age of Telal, then 
 barely in his twenty-first year, seemed to leave him an open 
 field. But Telrd though young in days was old in counsel, 
 and had so effectually attached to his interests the town 
 nobility and the other local chiefs who had small relish for the 
 revival of the Coran, that 'Obeyd was speedily compelled to 
 desist from his pretensions. 
 
 Henceforth Telfd employed his uncle much in the way that 
 a surly mastiff is kept in the farmyard of some wealthy pro- 
 prietor, where his duty is to growl at or to bite, and at times 
 to range about the grounds and worry strangers. The young 
 monarch entrusted 'Obeyd with distant forays, where there 
 was more need of killing than of permanent conquest, and 
 above all those directed against Bedouin tribes or the rougher 
 mountain districts — not perhaps without a secret hope that his 
 dear uncle might on some such occasion eternize his earthly 
 honours by the unfading glories of martyrdom. But the pro- 
 verb, equally current in Arabia and in England, " 'tis long ere 
 the devil dies," has met with another exemplification in the 
 person of this bloody and deceitful but long-lived man. 
 
 Similarity of chai'acter and of religious opinions had led to an 
 intimacy of long standing between 'Obeyd and 'Abd-Allah, son 
 of Feysul, at Eiad. A close and loving correspondence Avas kept 
 up between these well-matched friends, altogether in the interests 
 of the Wahhabee party, and not over favourable to Telal, whom 
 'Obeyd denounced as a mere latitudiuarian, little better than a 
 disguised infidel, and one who basely preferred the visible and 
 material prosperity of his kingdom and subjects to the unity 
 of the true faith and the triumph of Wahhabee monotheism. 
 'Obeyd, on the contrary, was now the mainspring of the faction 
 in Shomer, and his palace the daily resort of Nejdean zealots 
 and disciplinarians. Here all whom the desire of plunder and 
 the love of despotism drew into the cause would meet together 
 and inveigh against the prevailing laxities and abominations ; 
 against commerce, tobacco, and polytheism. Never absent from 
 public prayers in the mosque, 'Obeyd would there take the pre- 
 cedence, which his nephew readily abandoned him, and often 
 go through the duties of Imam and preacher too, with a zeal 
 more worthy of imitation than successful in obtaining it.
 
 Chap. V] FRIENDS AND ENEMIES 205 
 
 Lastly, to prove himself deficient in no point of the most correct 
 orthodoxy, he built for himself a spacious harem in a rural 
 palace without the town, and there the number of his wives and 
 concubines befitted a genuine disciple of him " whose delight " 
 (to quote Mahomet's own words about himself) "God had 
 ordained to be in women." Indeed, at the age of seventy, 
 or more, and while we were ourselves at Ha'yel, he added a new 
 partner to the long list of ladies already in hand. 
 
 Such was 'Obeyd, who now returned to the capital from a 
 foray in which he had shown all the vigour and ferocity of youth, 
 and found the Christian doctors established within its precincts. 
 Had he been absolute lord and master here, our stay would 
 not have been much prolonged. But aware of the favour we 
 enjoyed at court and among the townsmen, he restrained him- 
 self; and where the wolf's skin was not long enough, eked it out 
 with the fox's, after the prudent counsel of the Macedonian 
 Philip. 
 
 On the second day of his arrival, towards noon, he came to 
 our door on horseback, accompanied by a dozen retainers. His 
 greeting was that of the greatest apparent cordiality ; he offered 
 his hand for a downright shake, and expressed his satisfaction at 
 finding us the guests of his nephew, and, consequently, his own. 
 
 We had not even yet been fully informed of his real cha- 
 racter. Arabs, even when most communicative in their talk, 
 never forget the laws of prudence when a third party has to be 
 mentioned, and do not like to discuss an absent individual, 
 especially if his presence may be shortly expected. So that 
 genei-al phrases and anecdotes of no particular bearing were all 
 that, up to this date, we had heard of 'Obeyd. His tall stature, 
 absolutely unbowed by years, his strongly-marked features, and 
 his easy, soldier-like manner, told much in his favour at a first 
 appearance. But I cannot easily forget the effect produced on 
 me by the cold look of his large grey eye ; it seemed to 
 belong to a different face, so strangely did it contrast with the 
 expression of the rest of his countenance. 
 
 Nothing could be more open and cheerful than the tone of 
 his conversation, and he showed a strong desire to be fully 
 acfjuainted with all about us, merely in order to help us 
 accordino- to his means. His visits to our lodgings were almost
 
 2o6 COriiT INCIDENTS AT HA' YEL [Chap. V 
 
 daily, and be begged us in return to be bis guests as frequently 
 as we could. His town palace was, my readers may rememl)er, 
 nearly opposite to tbat of Telfd ; and liere 'Obeyd possessed a 
 large garden, newly planted and uncommonly well arranged, for 
 be brougbt bis energetic activity to bear on wbatever be under- 
 took, and sbowed no less vigour in digging a well or conducting 
 a water cbannel tban in burning a village and cutting infidels to 
 pieces. Witbiu tbis garden it was bis wont to bave carpets spread 
 at evening under tbe trees near tbe palace wall, and bere be 
 would pass tbe first hours of tbe nigbt witb friends selected 
 to suit bis purposes or agree witb bis tastes. To tbese " soirees" 
 he often called us, and would then, in tbe freedom of tbe dusk, 
 hold discourse on religion or politics in tbe manner best adapted 
 to discover from our answers what were our personal opinions 
 and intentions. At last, between direct enquiry and close ob- 
 servation, he ended by forming an approximately correct idea 
 of wbo we were and what bad brougbt us to Hfi'yel. All tbis 
 took place near tbe date of our familiar interviews witb Zamil 
 and Telrd. 
 
 A display of friendship above what circumstances seemed 
 exactly to warrant had put us somewbat on our guard at tbe 
 outset, and a bint tbrown out now and then by those who 
 noticed 'Obeyd's growing familiarity tended still more to awake 
 our mistrust. But it was not long before we obtained a fuller 
 knowledge of our dangerous friend. 
 
 'Abd-el-]\rabsin bad not been put into tbe secret, at least we 
 had determined to make him no special communications on 
 tbat point. But perhaps he had heard from Telal something of 
 what was going on, or perhaps native sagacity and old expe- 
 rience led him to conjectures not far removed from the truth. 
 Whatever it were, he was much too polite to make us aware in 
 a direct manner that be saw throuob an incofjnito which we 
 had not thought fit to unveil for him. But v.'hen he became 
 aware of the attentions paid us by 'Obeyd, and our frequent 
 meetings, friendship or prudence prompted him to put us on 
 our guard. He therefore acquainted us with all the previous 
 history and actual position of this chief, and concluded by de- 
 scribing him as tbe very representative of tbe anti-government 
 or opposition party in Shomer. What 'Abd-el-Mahsin stated.
 
 Chap. V] FRIENDS AND ENEMIES 20J 
 
 'Obeyd himself confirmed shortly after in a curious manner, 
 when, like most men who act a part, he for an instant forgot his 
 mask and allowed us a glimpse of his true face — momentary, 
 but more than sufficient. 
 
 One morning he had sent for me to see an individual of his 
 household who stood iu need of medical treatment. I came, 
 accompanied by my acting servant, Barakat. While we were 
 yet within 'Obeyd's palace, we fell into conversation with him 
 touching the events then going on in the neighbouring pashalics 
 of Syria and Bagdad, on Christian influence and Mahometan 
 reaction. 'Obeyd kept up awhile the impartial style which he 
 usually affected before us, and seemed to take pleasure in the 
 prospects of advancement and amelioration opening in the East. 
 Suddenly an electric shock of his genuine feelings got the better 
 of his assumed demeanour ; his conciliatory tone and smooth 
 phrases changed into the language of hate and open defiance, 
 and he burst out into violent invectives against innovators, 
 Christians, temporizers, and all who did not hold fast by the old 
 purity and exclusiveness of Islam ; till, with a hideous expression 
 of concentrated rage, he said, " But you, whoever you may be, 
 know this, that should my nephew and his people and all 
 Arabia with them think fit to apostatize, and there be left in 
 the entire world only one Muslim, I will be that one." Then 
 all at once, feeling that he had gone too far, he broke off, and 
 returned without transition or gradation like the shifting of a 
 scene to his open smile and friendly chat, as though he liad 
 never known suspicion or anger. But we had seen enough, and 
 from that hour visits and intercourse were at an end. 
 
 Soon after Zamil brought us the news that 'Obeyd had sought 
 out TelrJ, who in general kept out of his way the utmost possible, 
 and had held a long and secret conversation with him, about 
 what was easy to guess. This explained why the monarch 
 hesitated to give us an answer, and put off our second audience 
 from day to day. He had in his path one almost his equal in 
 birth and power, a near relative and a yet nearer enemy, who 
 could and did report his every word and step to the Wahhabee 
 despot, and who might bring him into serious difficulties. In 
 truth the position was not a pleasant one, but Teliil was not to 
 be so baffled ; he took his time and his measures.
 
 2o8 COUar incidents at ILVYEL [Cn.vp. V 
 
 The pilgrim road in the neighbourhood of ]Medinah was in- 
 fested by marauding l)and,s of the Harb and Benoo-'Ateeyah 
 Bedouins whom Tehll had promised to punisli. He now per- 
 suaded 'Obeyd, always ready for military work, to take tlie lead 
 of an expedition against these robbers, meaning thus to procure 
 his absence for a few days from Ha'yel. Orders were given 
 to collect a suitable number of troops. Ha'yel itself furnished 
 about a hundred, an equal contingent was supplied by Kefar, 
 and the villages of the vicinity were laid under contribution, 
 till four hundred armed men were ready to take the field. 
 The common rendezvous was at the capital, without the north- 
 ern gate, for it is the custom to set out a few miles in the 
 opposite direction to that really intended, which was here the 
 south-west. In this way rumour is often baffled, and the enemy 
 led to suppose the attack destined for some other than himself. 
 For the same reason the ultimate object in view is commonly 
 kept a secret from the soldiers themselves, who only know in a 
 general way that they have to march somewhere and fight some- 
 body. When the day came for starting (it was the 4th of Sep- 
 tember), 'Obeyd caused his tent to be pitched in the plain 
 without the northern walls; and there reviewed his forces. 
 About one-third were on horseback, the rest were mounted on 
 light and speedy camels ; all had spears and matchlocks, to 
 Avhich the gentry added swords ; and while they rode hither 
 and thither in sham manoeuvres over the parade-ground, the 
 whole appearance was very picturesque and tolerably martial. 
 'Obeyd now imfurled his own peculiar standard, in which the 
 green colour distinctive of Islam had been added border-wise to 
 the white ground of the ancestral Nejdean banner, mentioned 
 fourteen centuries back by 'Omar-ebn-Kelthoom, the poet of 
 Taghleb, and many others. Barakat and mj^self mixed with the 
 crowd of spectators. 'Obeyd saw us, and it was now several 
 days since we had last met. Without hesitating, he cantered up 
 to us, and while he tendered his hand for a farewell shake, he 
 said : " I have heard that 3'ou intend going to Riad ; there you 
 will meet with 'Abd-AUah the eldest son of P^eysul ; he is my 
 particular friend ; I should much desire to see you high in 
 his good graces, and to that end I have written him a letter 
 in your behalf, of which you yourselves are to be the bearers ;
 
 Chap. V] FRIENDS AND ENEMIES 200 
 
 you will find it in my house, where I have left it for yon with 
 one of my servants." He then assured us that if he found us 
 still at Ha'yel on his return, he would continue to befriend us 
 in every way; but that if we journeyed forward to Nejed, we 
 should meet with a sincere friend in 'Abd-Allah, especially if 
 we gave him the letter in question. 
 
 He then took his leave with a semblance of affectionate cor- 
 diality that made tbe bystanders stare ; thus supporting to the 
 last the profound dissimulation which he had only once belied 
 for a moment. The letter was duly handed over to us the same 
 afternoon by his head-steward, whom he had left to look after the 
 house and garden in his absence. Doubtless my readers will be 
 curious to know what sort of recommendation 'Obeyd had provided 
 us with. It was written on a small scrap of thick paper, about 
 four inches each way, carefully folded up and secured by three 
 seals. However, " our fears forgetting manners," we thought 
 best with Hamlet to make perusal of this grand commission 
 before delivering it to its destination. So we undid the seals 
 with precautions admitting of reclosing them in proper form, 
 and read the royal knavery. I give it word for word ; it ran 
 thus : " In the Name of Grod, the Merciful, the Compassion- 
 ate, We 'Obeyd-ebn-Easheed salute you, 'Abd-Allah son of 
 Feysulebn-Sa'ood, and peace be on you, and the mercy of 
 Grod and His blessings." (This is the invariable commencement 
 of all Wahhabee epistles, to the entire omission of the com- 
 plimentary formulas used by other Orientals.) " After which," 
 so proceeded the document, " we inform you that the bearers 
 of this are one Seleem-el-'Eys, and his comrade Barakat-esh- 
 Shamee, who give themselves out for having some knowledge 
 in " — here followed a word of equivocal import, capable of 
 interpretation alike by " medicine " or " magic," but generally 
 used in Nejed for the latter, which is at Riad a capital crime. 
 " Now may God forbid that we should hear of any evil having 
 befallen you. We salute also your father Feysul, and your 
 brothers, and all your family ; and anxiously await jowy news 
 in answer. Peace be with you." Here followed the signet 
 impression. 
 
 A pretty recommendation, especially under the actual circum- 
 stances. However, not content with this, 'Obeyd found means 
 
 VOL. I. p
 
 2 1 CO rit T INCIDENTS A T HA' YEL [Cn.vr. V 
 
 to transmit further information regarding us, and all in the same 
 tenour, to Riad, as we afterwards discovered. For his letter, I 
 need hardly say that it never passed from our possession, where 
 it yet remains as an interesting autograph, to that of 'Abd-Allah; 
 with whom it would inevitably have proved the one only thing 
 wanting, as we shall subsequently see, to make us leave the 
 forfeit of our lives in the Nejdean man-trap. Meanwhile it 
 helped us thus far, by giving us a clue to the conduct we had 
 to observe in the Wahhabee court. 
 
 Without showing the epistle itself to Zamil, we let him know 
 in a casual manner that 'Obeyd had written for us an introduc- 
 tion to the son of Feysul. Zamil, fearing that we might be less 
 aware of 'Obeyd's intentions than we really were, begged us most 
 earnestly not to be the bearers of the letter, of whose contents 
 he had a shrewd guess. We promised him to be discreet, but did 
 not tell him more, satisfied with this additional proof of his 
 sincerity. 
 
 'Obeyd was now at a distance, and Telrd felt himself at liberty 
 to proceed with us ; and accordingly on the 6th of the month 
 we received his orders to meet him privately in Zumil's K'hawah 
 an hour or so after noon. To the K'hawah we went, and a slave 
 was stationed at the outer door to prevent interruption from 
 unseasonable visitors. We had not been ten minutes at the 
 rendezvous when Telal came, accompanied by two swordsmen, 
 whom he left outside. He was plainly dressed, his look was 
 serious even more than wont, and after seating himself he 
 remained some time in a silence which we did not interrupt. 
 At last he raised his eyes, and looking me hard in the face, said : 
 " You would not be imprudent enough to require, nor I to 
 give, a formal and official answer to communications like yours, 
 and in such a state of things. But this much I, Telal, will 
 say : be assured now and ever of my good will and coun- 
 tenance ; you must now continue your journey ; but return 
 in whatever fashion you may, and I hope it will be before 
 long, your word shall pass here as law, and whatever you may 
 wish to see done, shall be exactly complied with throughout 
 the limits of my government. Does this satisfy you ? " added 
 he. I replied that my utmost desires went no further ; and we 
 shook hands in mutual pledge.
 
 Chap. V] FRIENDS AND ENEMIES 2 1 1 
 
 He then declared that he had no objections to our visiting the 
 Wahhabee capital, but that he much recommended us to be 
 prudent and wary, and that, in a word, least said there would be 
 soonest mended ; nor were we likely to find in Eiad any one high 
 or low fitted for our confidence. He added that 'Obeyd might 
 return shortly, and that in consequence we had better lose no 
 time in setting out, that he had already given orders to a party 
 of Kaseem travellers who were bound for Bereydah to take us 
 with them, and that they were awaiting our leisure. 
 
 He was evidently in some anxiety about the result of our 
 expedition, both on his own account and ours, and seemed to 
 consider the remainder of our journey likely to turn out more 
 hazardous than we yet thought it. His fears were nohow 
 exaggerated, as we found when once within the Nejdean 
 territory. 
 
 I asked him, more out of trial than anything else, if he would 
 not give us an introductory letter in his name to the Wahhabee 
 monarch. " There would be little use in that," said he, " and 
 a recommendation of mine would hardly make him think the 
 better of you." In its place he then dictated to Zamil, for 
 Telal himself is no scribe, a passport or general letter of safe 
 conduct, enough to ensure us good treatment within the limits 
 of his rule, and even beypnd. I subjoin the translation for the 
 benefit of the Foreign Office and all therein employed. 
 
 " In the name of God the Merciful, we, Telal-ebn-Rasheed, 
 to all dependent on Shomer who may see this, peace be with 
 you and the mercy of Grod. Next, we inform you that the 
 bearers of this paper are Seleem-el-'Eys-Abou-Mahmood and 
 his associate Barakat, physicians, seeking their livelihood by 
 doctoring, with the help of God, and journeying under our 
 protection, so let no one interfere with or annoy them, and 
 peace be with you." Here followed the date. 
 
 When this was written, Telal affixed his seal, and rose to 
 leave us alone with Zamil, after a parting shake of the hand, 
 and wishing us a prosperous journey and speedy return. We, 
 too, had at that time some idea of repassing by Ha'yel on our 
 homeward way, but after circumstances conducted us by 
 a different and a more instructive, though a longer route. 
 Nothing now remained but to make our preparations for 
 
 P 2
 
 1 1 2 CO Uli T INCIDENTS A T TL'V YEL [C n.vp. V 
 
 departure; we had obtained sufficient knowledge of the Shomer 
 capital and its denizens, while far the greater part of our 
 journey lay yet before us, and the autumn was already drawing 
 on. Besides, any notable prolongation of our stay at Ha'yel 
 misrht be dano-erous both for ourselves and for Telrd ; we were 
 watched by the spies of 'Obeyd and Fey§ul, and so was the 
 monarch also. The Bagdad merchants, too, who formed a nume- 
 rous and not uniufluential body in the town, looked on us with 
 positive dislike, supposing us in reality Damascenes, for whom 
 the Shiy'aees bear an especial and hereditary hatred, that twelve 
 centuries have rather increased than diminished. Accordingly, 
 though in most respects so dissident from the Wahhabee 
 sectarians, they now sided with them in one thing, and that was 
 in giving us askance looks of no friendly import, and in saying 
 of us all the harm imaginable, whenever they could safely do 
 so, I mean among themselves and behind our backs. More- 
 over, my stock of remedies was limited, and I had cause to 
 fear lest too much expenditure of them in one place might 
 barely leave us enough to suffice for the practice awaiting us in 
 the rest of our long journey. Lastly, it need hardly be said 
 that Telul's recommendation to set out was, in our position, fully 
 equivalent to a command. Yet with all these motives for 
 going, I could not but feel reluctant to quit a pleasing town, 
 where we certainly possessed many sincere friends and well- 
 wishers, for countries in which we could by no means anticipate 
 equal favour or even eqiud safety. Indeed, so ominous was all 
 that we heard about Wahhabee Nejed, so black did the landscape 
 before us look, on nearer approach, that I almost repented 
 of my resolution, and was considerably inclined to say, " Thus 
 far enough, and no farther," 
 
 But "over shoes over boots," and the "tra Beatrice e te e 
 questo muro" of the Florentine, though in a somewhat altered 
 sense, ran in my memory, and gave me courage. And then we 
 had already got so far that to turn back from what was yet to 
 traverse, be it what it might, would have been an unpardonable 
 want of heart. Hardly had Tela! left the K'hawah, when we 
 requested Zamil to let us know where we were to find out our 
 destined companions for the road. He answered that they had 
 received orders to come in quest of us, and that they would
 
 Chap. V] FRIENDS AND ENE3IIES 213 
 
 unfailingly present themselves at our house the very same 
 day. 
 
 Before evening three men knocked at our door ; they were 
 our future guides. The eldest bore the name of Mubarek, and 
 was a native of the suburbs of Bereydah ; all three were of the 
 genuine Kaseem breed, darker and lower in stature than the 
 inhabitants of Ha'yel, but not ill-looking, and extremely affable 
 in their demeanour. Mubarek told us that their departure from 
 Ha'yel had been at first fixed for the morrow, or the 7th of the 
 month, but that owing to some delay on the part of their com- 
 panions, for the band was a large one, it had been subsequently 
 put off to the 8th or the day after. Such procrastinations are 
 of continual occurrence in the East, where the mode of travel- 
 ling renders them unavoidable, and one must be prepared for 
 them and take them as they come, under penalty of making 
 oneself ridiculous by unavailing impatience. We now struck a 
 barofain with Mubarek for the hire of two of his camels to bear 
 ourselves and our chattels ; the price was almost ridiculously 
 small, even after making allowance for the comparatively high 
 value of money in these inland regions ; and we were glad to 
 see that the polite and chatty manners of our new guides pro- 
 mised us an agreeable journey. 
 
 We had soon made all necessary arrangements for our depar- 
 ture, got in a few scattered debts, packed up our pharmacopoeia, 
 and nothing now remained but the pleasurable pain of farewells. 
 They were many and mutually sincere. Meta'ab had indeed 
 made his a few days before, when he, a second time, left Ha'yel 
 for the pastures ; Telal we had already taken leave of, but there 
 remained his younger brother Mohammed to give us a hearty 
 adieu of good augury. Most of my old acquaintance or patients, 
 Dohey' the merchant, Mohammed the judge, Doheym and his 
 family, not forgetting our earliest friend Seyf the chamberlain, 
 Sa'eed the cavalry officer, and others of the court, freemen and 
 slaves, white or black (for negroes readily follow the direction 
 indicated by their masters, and are not ungrateful if kindly 
 treated while kept in their due position), and many others of 
 Avhose names Homer would have made a catalogue and I will 
 not, heard of our near departure, and came to express their 
 regrets, with hopes of future meeting and return. For my own
 
 2 14 C<^ ^^^ T INCIDENTS A T Il/V YEL [CnAr. V 
 
 part, I then felt as if I should be well pleased were such hopes 
 one day to be realized ; yet how improbable ! 
 
 'Abd-el-Mahsin, too, accompanied by Bedi-, the eldest of 
 Telrd's sons, came a little before evening to see us a last time 
 and bid us God-speed. All along he had been our daily and 
 welcome companion, and his cultivated and well-stored mind, 
 set oflf by ready eloquence, had done much to charm our stay 
 and to take off the loneliness that even in the midst of a crowd 
 is apt to weigh on strangers in a foreign land. The boy, too, 
 Bedr, was much what his father must have been at that age ; 
 we had helped to cure him of some slight feverish attacks not 
 uncommon at that time of life, and our young patient showed 
 in return steady gratitude and simple attachment, more, perhaps, 
 than is customary among children, at least of high birth, while his 
 modest and polite manners would have done credit to a European 
 court education. 'Abd-el-Mahsin assured us, in Tehll's name 
 and his own, that we carried with us the good-will of all the 
 court, and we sat thus together till sunset, staving off the neces- 
 sity of separating by word and answer that had no meaning, 
 except that we could not make up our minds to part. 
 
 But at fall of night, our last night at Ha'yel, we had a more 
 important visit to receive. In the dusk Zamil came, and having 
 stationed his negro Soueylim at the street door, to preclude 
 chance intruders, remained with us in long and affectionate 
 talk, pledging his active support and entire cooperation for 
 whatever measures after times might bring, renewing his 
 recommendations of the greatest caution to be observed among 
 the Wahhabees, pointing out the dangers possibly before us, 
 and the means to avoid, or at least diminish them, and finally 
 entreating us to send him a few lines from Eiad, whereby 
 to inform his master and himself, under covert phrases worded 
 in seemingly medical import, of our own personal safety, and 
 the result of our proceedings at the capital. We, too, begged 
 him to assure Telal of our entire confidence in his good faith 
 and honour, and to put his mind at rest about our discretion 
 and wariness in word and deed. He embraced us, and departed 
 under the star-light. 
 
 Early next morning, before day, Mubarek and another of his 
 countrymen, named Dahesh, were at our door with the camels.
 
 Chap. V] FRIENDS AND ENEMIES 
 
 215 
 
 Some of our town friends had also come, even at this hour, to 
 accompany us as far as the city gates. We mounted our beasts, 
 and while the first sunbeams streamed level over the plain, 
 passed through the south-western portal beyond the market- 
 place, the 8th of September 1862, and left the city of Ha'yel.
 
 2l6 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 Journey from Ha'yel to Bereydaii 
 
 More bleak to view, the hills at length recede, 
 And, less luxuriant, smoother vales extend ; 
 
 Immense horizon-bounded plains succeed. 
 Par as the eye discerns, without an end. — Byron 
 
 A NEAV STAGE OP OUR J01JR>'^EY — COMPARATIVE T7NI5I PORTA XCE OF 
 BEDOUINS IN CENTRAL ARABIA — OUR TRAVELLING COMPANIONS — THEIR 
 CHARACTERS — HORSE TRADE FROM SHOMER TO KOWETT — LIMITS OF 
 DJEBEL 'aJA' — 'eTN THEJJAJAH — VALLEY BETWEEN 'aJA' AND SOLMA 
 
 — ATTACK OF HARB BEDOUINS — DJEBEL SOLMA — TOMB OP IJATIM-ET- 
 TA'i — HIS HISTORY — ANECDOTE — FEYD — ITS GOVERNOR AND COURT OF 
 JUSTICE — DESCRIPTION OF THE VILLAGE — SOLIBAH ENCAMPMENT — 
 UPPER K.A.SEEM — ITS TERRITORIAL FEATURES— ARAB POETRY — NEJED — 
 VEGETATION — SPRINGS — WATERSHED OF NORTHERN ARABIA, AVUERE- 
 ABOUTS — MEANS OF ASCERTAINING GROUND ELEVATION — ANIMAL LIFE 
 — KEFA, ITS APPEARANCE — KOSEYBAH — KOWARAH, ITS SITUATION — ITS 
 DOGS — WAHHABEE LIMIT — LOWER KASEEM — GENERAL VIEW OF ARABIA — 
 ITS DIVISIONS AND UNIONS BEFORE, UNDER, AND AFTER MAHOMET — 
 PERIOD OF THE CALIPHS — RIVALRY BETWEEN NEJED AND HEJAZ — 
 PARTIAL INDEPENDENCE OF SHOMER AND CENTRAL ARABIA — REMOVAL 
 OF THE CALIPHATE TO BAGDAD — ITS RESULTS — CARMATHIAN OUTBREAK, 
 AND FINAL SEPARATION OF ARABIA FROM THE CALIPHS — EBN-DARIM, 
 HIS RISE, CONQUESTS, AND POWER — HIS DYNASTY IN KASEEM — ITS 
 DECLINE — RESTORATION OF PAGANISM IN KASEEM — CHARACTER OF 
 ARAB PAGANISM — STONE CIRCLE OF 'eYOON — TOPOGRAPHICAL FEATURES 
 OF LOWER KASEEM — ITS CULTURE — PALM GROVES, COTTON, AND CURIOUS 
 NARCOTIC PLANT — CHARACTER OF THE INHABITANTS — THEIR INTER- 
 COURSE WITH HEJAZ — ITS EFFECTS — CABUL DARWEESHES — ON THE 
 DARWEESH DISGUISE ASSUMED BY SOME TRAVELLERS — ITS INCONVENIENCES 
 
 — TRAGIC INCIDENT — ARAB DISPOSITIONS TOWARDS CHRISTIANS IN 
 GENERAL AND EUROPEANS IN PARTICULAR — 'eYOON — FOLEYH'S SUPPER 
 — ROAD TO BEREYDAH — GHAT — FALSE ALARM — DISTANT VIEW OF BEREY- 
 DAH — SUBURB OF DOWEYR — MUBAREK'S COTTAGE — FAMILY LIFE. 
 
 Another stage of our way. From Gaza to Ma'an, from JMa'an 
 to the Djowf, from the Djowf to Ha'yel, three such had now 
 been gone over, not indeed without some fatigue or discomfort, 
 yet at comparatively little personal risk, except what nature 
 herself, not man, might occasion. For to cross the stony desert
 
 Chap. VI] LOWER NEJED 217 
 
 of the northern frontier, or the sandy Nefood in the very height 
 of summer, could not be said to be entirely free from danger, 
 where in these waterless wastes thirst, if nothing else, may alone, 
 and often does, suffice to cause the disappearance of the over- 
 adventurous traveller, nay, even of many a Bedouin, no less 
 effectually than a lance thrust or a musket ball. But if nature 
 had been so far unkind, of man at least we had hitherto not 
 much to complain ; the Bedouins on our route, however rough 
 and uncouth in their ways, had, with only one exception, meant 
 us fairly well, and the townsmen in general had proved friendly 
 and courteous beyond our exjDectation. Once within the es- 
 tablished government limits of Ebn-Easheed and among his 
 subjects, we had enjoyed our share in the common security 
 afforded to wayfarers and inhabitants for life and property, 
 and been thus relieved from that constant undercurrent of 
 anxiety which the Syrian traveller, even on the high road from 
 Damascus to Aleppo, cannot always get rid of; while good 
 success had hitherto, by God's blessing, accompanied our going 
 out and our coming in, whether under the assumed character 
 of M.D.'s, or in the more special objects and researches of our 
 journey. "Judge of the day by its dawn," say the Arabs; and 
 although this proverb, like all proverbs, does not always hold 
 exactly true, whether for sunshine or cloud, yet it has its value 
 at times. And thus, whatever unfavourable predictions or dark 
 forebodings our friends might hint regarding the inner Nejed 
 and its denizens, we trusted that so favourable a past augured 
 somewhat better things for the future. 
 
 From physical and material difficulties like those before met 
 with, there was henceforward much less to fear. The great 
 heats of summer were past, the cooler season had set in; besides, 
 our path now lay through the elevated table-land of Central 
 Arabia, whose northern rim we had already surmounted at our 
 entrance on Djebel Shomer. Nor did there remain any un- 
 cultivated or sandy track to cross comparable to the Nefood 
 of Djowf between Hfi yel and Riad ; on the contrary, we were 
 to expect pasture lands and culture, villages and habitations, 
 cool mountain air, and a sufficiency if not an abundance of 
 water. Nor were our fellow companions now mere Bedouins 
 and savages, but men from town or village life, members
 
 21 8 JOUIiXEY FROM IL'VYEL TO BEEEYDAII [CnAr. Yl 
 
 of organized society, and so far civilized beings. This anti- 
 cipatory programme, partly gathered from report, and partly 
 from reasonable conjecture of what must be, was not only 
 encouraging, but almost inviting to our mind. For any peculiar 
 difficulties from the Wahhabee government and bigoted narrow- 
 mindedness, we trusted in Him who had led us thus far safely, to 
 carry us through to the end. Meanwhile we knew that for five 
 or six days yet our road was to be within Telal's frontiers, and 
 thus far at any rate we might hold ourselves secure from danger. 
 " Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," we thought and 
 said too, and leaving the morrow to take thought for the things 
 of itself, set out in hope and cheerfulness. 
 
 When adieus, lockings back, wavings of the hand, and all the 
 customary signs of farewell and good omen were over between 
 our Ha'yel friends and ourselves, we pursued our road by the 
 plain which I have already described as having been the frequent 
 scene of our morning walks ; but instead of following the south- 
 westerly path towards Kefar, whose groves and roof-tops now 
 rose in a blended mass before us, we turned eastward, and 
 rounded, though at some distance, the outer wall of Hrryel for 
 nearly half an hour, till we struck off by a south-easterly track 
 across stony ground, diversified here and there by wells, each 
 with a cluster of gardens and a few houses in its neighbourhood. 
 At last we reached a narrow winding pass among the cliffs of 
 Djebel 'Aja', whose mid-loop encircles Ha'yel on all sides, and 
 here turned our heads to take a last far-off view of what had 
 been our home, or the agreeable semblance of a home, for several 
 weeks. 
 
 Our only companions as yet were Mubarek and Dahesh. We 
 had outstripped the rest, whose baggage and equipments had 
 required a more tedious arrangement than our own. However, 
 this could not long continue ; and accordingly after some hours 
 of turning and twisting in the mountain gorges, we stopped 
 near noon in a little shrubby plain, where our camels found 
 pasture and we shade, to await the arrival of our lingering 
 fellow travellers. 
 
 Before long they came up, a motley crew. Ten or there- 
 abouts of the Kaseem ; some from Bereydah itself, others from 
 neighbouring towns, 'Eyoon, Eass, and Shebeybeeyah ; two
 
 Chap. VI] LOWER NEJED 21 9 
 
 individuals who gave themselves out, but with more assever- 
 ation than truth, to be natives of Mecca itself; three Bedouins, 
 two of whom belonged to the Shomer clan, the third an 
 'Anezah of the north ; next a runaway negro, conducting four 
 horses, destined to pass the whole breadth of Arabia and 
 to be shipped off at Koweyt on the Persian Gulf for Indian 
 sale ; two merchants, one from Zulphah in the province of 
 Sedeyr, the other from Zobeyr near Ba§rah ; lastly, two women, 
 wives of I know not exactly whom in the caravan, with some 
 small children : all this making up, ourselves included, a band 
 of twenty-seven or twenty-eight persons, the most mounted on 
 camels, a few on horseback, and accompanied by a few beasts of 
 burden alongside — such was our Canterbury pilgrims' group. 
 
 " The more the merrier," says the proverb. And so it was 
 for the most of our party, though we had an exception in the 
 persons of the two self-indited Meccans, Mohammed and 
 Ibraheem, sour-tempered individuals, always complaining, 
 quarrelling, and backbiting. They stated themselves to have 
 been corn merchants, ruined in the great inundation, which 
 carried away or injured a third of the sacred town in the 
 autumn of 1861 ; and since that time had been travelling, so 
 they said, from place to place and from chief to chief, to seek 
 from the liberality of the faithful wherewithal to pay their 
 debts on returning to their native city. But their statement 
 abounded with intrinsic improbabilities, and when such were 
 pointed out, as occasionally was the case, they had ready 
 another entirely different story, equally false perhaps, of feud 
 and manslaughter. The sum total was that they were beggars 
 and impostors, and, so far as we could make out from circum- 
 stances hardly worth detailing, Mohammed was a cook from 
 Cairo, and Ibraheem a bankrupt shopkeeper, native of Gaza or 
 thereabouts. They were, however, sufficiently acquainted with 
 Mecca to have much to say about that place, and I learnt from 
 them many curious particulars regarding the pilgrimage and its 
 accompaniments. These two worthies gave us the equivocal 
 pleasure of their society not only the whole way to Bereydah, but 
 even to Eiad itself, where, if my readers will allow me to anti- 
 cipate for a moment the course of events, Ibraheem distinguished 
 himself by stealing one of our saddle-bags on his departure.
 
 2 20 JOmXEY FROM TIA'YEL rO BEREYBAH [Ciiai. VI 
 
 Meanwhile they claimed great respect from all on the score of 
 their supposed origin from the Mahometan capital ; hut not 
 meeting with what they expected throughout Nejed, where 
 Mecca and the Meccans are in little repute, gave vent to their 
 annoyance in bitter complaints, but to small purpose. 
 
 The "Anezah Bedouin, Ghashee, was a different and a more 
 amusing character. Though young, he had roved over all that 
 lies between Anatolia and Yemen, visited many cities, and made 
 acquaintance with innumerable chiefs and tribes, amongst whom 
 were some, thus I soon found to my great anxiety, with whom I 
 had been myself personally intimate while in Syria. Indeed it 
 was a remarkably good fortune that Ghashee and I had never 
 met under the tents of Ffiris-ebn-Hodeyb or Ha'il-ebn-Djandul 
 among the Sebaa' or the Soa'limah, or an awkward recognition, 
 Avorse even than that of our Damascene friend at Ha'yel, must 
 have resulted. 
 
 The Zobeyr merchant and his associate were polite and intel- 
 ligent men, fairly conversable, and who told us much worth 
 hearing ; views and facts to be interwoven, where occasion 
 serves, into the many-coloured web of this narrative. 
 
 Among the natives of Kaseem itself, one, by name Foleyh, an 
 inhabitant of the large village called 'Eyoon, richly dressed and 
 mounted on a handsome horse, was acknowledged by all for the 
 most important personage in the caravan. He belonged to one 
 of the old and noble families of his province, and was a land- 
 holder of more than ordinary wealth. When w^e reach 'Eyoon 
 Ave shall be his guests at supper. 
 
 The other members of the caravan presented nothing worthy 
 of especial notice, quiet business-like men, taken up with their 
 own small affairs of commerce and cultivation, or absorbed in the 
 passing events of the journey — every-day characters, soon known 
 and soon forgotten. I must, hoAvever, make an exception in 
 favour of the negTO Ghorra : a thorough African, half-cracked, 
 and a fugitive from his master at Medinah, he had sought and 
 obtained a kind of protection from Telfd at Ha'yel, and was now, 
 legally or not, in possession of his libert}^ A rich artisan of 
 8homer had entrusted him with four fine horses, and Ghorra, 
 delighted with his newly-acquired dignity of freeman and 
 jockey, danced, grinned, sang, and diverted himself further by
 
 Chap. ^^] LOWER NEJED 22 1 
 
 playing so many tricks and telling such extraordinary and un- 
 conceivable lies, that he often aroused the anger of the more 
 serious Arabs. At Bereydah we parted, but met again at Eiad, 
 whither he had preceded us by a few days only ; but those few 
 had been well employed, and he had already obtained himself 
 the reputation of being the greatest liar ever known in the 
 Nejdean capital, no slight distinction all things considered. 
 
 This incident may have given rise in some of my readers to a 
 desire of hearing something about the horse-trade carried on 
 between Arabia and India. I shall have a better occasion for 
 satisfying their wish rather farther on, namely, when we reach 
 the eastern sea-coast ; but I may already say, in a summary 
 manner, that more than half of the export of Arab horses to 
 Bombay passes by the seaport of Koweyt, especially since the 
 growing importance of that active little town in late years. The 
 animals themselves are generally from the north of Arabia, or 
 the Syrian desert, and of real Arab though not of Nejdean 
 breed. In what consists the difference between ordinary Arab 
 and Nejdean horses, how far the latter surpass the former, where 
 they are to be found, and what becomes of them, are points 
 which I must reserve till we reach the noble creatures in the 
 heart of Nejed. But the former, of Shomer or 'Anezah breed, 
 are high-blooded and often very perfect in all their points, and 
 such were those which Grhorra now led for Koweyt. 
 
 Thus assembled, on we went together, now amid granite rocks, 
 now crossing grassy valleys, till near sunset we stopped under a 
 high cliff at the extreme southerly verge of Djebel 'Aja', or, in 
 modern parlance, of Djebel Shomer. The mountain here ex- 
 tended far away to right and left ; but in front a wide plain of 
 full twenty miles across opened out before us, till bounded 
 southwards by the long bluish chain of Djebel Solma, whose 
 line runs parallel to the heights we were now to leave, and 
 belongs to the same formation and rocky mass denominated 
 in a comprehensive way the mountains of Ta'i or Shomer. 
 Solma is, however, in height and length unequal to 'Aja', for 
 while this latter range crosses nearly two-thirds of Arabia in a 
 continuous line, and attains at times an elevation of 1400 feet 
 or thereabouts above the plain, Solma does not seem to own a 
 crest of above seven or eight hundred feet at most ; and besides,
 
 222 JOURNEY FROM IIA'YEL TO BEREYDAII [Cnvp. VI 
 
 stops half-way in its course, so tliat our road-line, wliich may 
 be assumed as a toleraLly exact diameter or medial section of 
 the Shomer district, passed the Solma heights just where they 
 discontinue on the left, and so, skirting their extreme easterly 
 verge, led to the lands beyond, whereas we had traversed Djebel 
 'Aja' midway. 
 
 Here — that is, where we now halted to make our evening 
 meal, at the foot of Ajas — was a source of clear water, not 
 undeservedly named by the people of the land, 'Eyn-eth- 
 Thejjajah, sometimes called also Nebbajah, or " the abun- 
 dant-gushing fountain." The full moon rose on the east 
 over the great plain like the open sea; we lighted our 
 fires and prepared our supper. This was simple enough — 
 unleavened bread, and coffee to wash it down. Our only 
 additional dainties were dried dates, laid in at Ha'yel ; no 
 other kind of provision can bear the heat of day travelling in 
 this climate. It was indeed September, but September in 
 Arabia is not exactly September in England or Germany, 
 though in these uplands the temperature was colder than the 
 southerly degree of latitude taken alone might have led us to 
 expect. 
 
 Scarcely was supper over and a pipe smoked than we re- 
 mounted our camels, and rode slowly on under the glorious 
 moonlight till it almost blended with the dawn. Our line of 
 march crossed the plain at right angles to its length, and while 
 we advanced by the deceptive glitter of the moonbeams, we soon 
 lost all distinct view of the mountains before or behind us, and 
 seemed to be in the midst of a vast whitish lake, where patches 
 of dark green, formed by a kind of broom and similar shrubs, 
 lay around like islands in the water. The soil here is a light 
 earth mixed with sand, and so it continues throughout upper 
 Kaseem ; it is not unfertile, but is scantily supplied with water ; 
 offering tolerable pasture land for flocks and herds, but rarely 
 presenting irrigation enough to merit a village. At last, fairly 
 tired out and drunk with drowsiness, to translate the Arab 
 phrase, we staggered off our camels to the groimd, and there 
 slept through the short cool hours of late night and early 
 morning. 
 
 The whole of the next day, till about four in the afternoon,
 
 Chap. VI.] LOWER NEJED 223 
 
 was spent in traversing what remained of this great plain. There 
 we fell in with a danger entirely unexpected by myself and my 
 companion, but against which the more experienced men of Ka- 
 seem had been all along on the look-out ; indeed, it was precisely 
 the fear of some such occurrence that had urged them to their 
 forced night march and to the quickened pace of the following 
 day. 
 
 This valley, the separation of Solma from 'Aja', is of a length 
 much greater than its breadth, and attains westward the very 
 neighbourhood of Medinah, thus opening out into the passes of 
 Hejaz and the great pilgrim route a little above the town where 
 Mahomet lies buried. Now it so happens that the portion of 
 the Hajj road, corresponding to this opening, is, and always 
 has been more than any other, infested by marauding Bedouins, 
 principally of the Harb tribe, who have often here stopped the 
 entire pilgrim caravans in defiance of their Turkish guard, and 
 whom the Ottoman authority has never been able to put down ; 
 at the same time the retreat afforded by the defiles of Hejaz 
 renders these robbers in great measure secure against the 
 central Arab governments, from whom the Bedouins have 
 much more reason to fear than from all the bayonets of Con- 
 stantinople, Now these same Harb plunderers, not content with 
 the booty captured in Hejaz, often take a run up the very 
 valley which we were now crossing ; and it requires all the 
 vigilance and energy of Telal to prevent their inroads from 
 becoming habitual, and thus interrupting the regular com- 
 munication between his dominions and Nejed. 
 
 Our band, who had a wholesome fear of meeting with one of 
 these nomade foray-parties, here quickened their pace, and the 
 event justified their precautions. For, at about three in the 
 afternoon, we saw some way off to our west a troop of these 
 identical Bedouins coming up from the direction of Medinah. 
 While they were yet in the distance, and half-hidden from view 
 by the shrubs and stunted acacias of the plain, we could not 
 precisely distinguish their numbers ; but they were evidently 
 enough to make us desire, with Orlando, " that we might be 
 better strangers." On our side we mustered about fifteen 
 matchlocks, besides a few spears and swords. The Bedouins had 
 already perceived us, and continued to approach, though in the
 
 224 -TOURXEY FROM JTA'YEL TO BEREYDAH [Cn.vr. VI 
 
 desultory and circuitous way wliich they affect when doul)tful of 
 the strength of tlieir opponent ; still they gained on us more 
 than was pleasant. 
 
 Fourteen armed townsmen might stand for a reasonable 
 match against double the number of Bedouins, and in any case 
 we had certainly nothing better to do than to put a bold face on 
 the matter. The 'Eyoon chief, Foleyh, with two of his country- 
 men and Grhashee, carefully primed their guns, and then set off 
 at full gallop to meet the advancing enemy, brandishing their 
 weapons over their heads, and looking extremely fierce. Under 
 cover of this manoeuvre the rest of our band set about getting 
 their arms ready, and an amusing scene ensued. One had lost 
 his match, and was hunting for it in his housings, another in 
 his haste to ram the bullet home had it stuck midway in the 
 barrel, and could neither get it up nor down, the lock of a third 
 was rusty and would not do duty ; the women began to whine 
 piteously ; the two Meccans, who for economy's sake were both 
 riding one only camel, a circumstance which caused between 
 them many international squabbles, tried to make their beast 
 gallop off with them, and leave the others to their fate, wdnle 
 the more courageous animal, despising such cowardly measures, 
 insisted on remaining with his companions and sharing their 
 lot; — all was thoroughly Arab, much hubbub and little done. 
 Had the menacing feint of the four who protected our rear 
 proved insufficient, we might all have been in a very bad 
 predicament, and this feeling drew every face with reverted 
 gaze in a backward direction. But Providence willed our 
 safety, and the Harb banditti, intimidated by the bold coun- 
 tenance of Foleyh and his companions, wheeled about and com- 
 menced a skirmishing retreat, in which a few shots guiltless of 
 bloodshed were fired for form's sake on either side, till at last 
 our assailants fairly disappeared in the remote valley. 
 
 Our valiant champions now returned from pursuit, much 
 elated with their success, and we journeyed on together, skirting 
 the last rocky spur of Solma, close by the spot where Hatim Ta'i, 
 the well-known model, half mythic and half historical, of Arab 
 hospitality and exaggerated generosity, is said to be buried. 
 jNIy readers are perhaps acquainted with most of the anecdotes 
 relative to this celebrated chief, and I shall therefore omit
 
 Chap. ^^.] L TVER NEJED 225 
 
 them all but one, however curious, for fear of a tedious because 
 a twice-told tale. Hatim flourished about a hundred years or 
 rather less before the jNIahometan era, and the verses ascribed 
 to him, if genuine, show him to have added the graces of poetry 
 to his other numerous accomplishments. Whether he belonged 
 or not to the Christian branch of that great tribe whence he 
 derived his patronymic, is uncertain, though the records of his 
 friendly dealings with the Greek or Grrecized governors of 
 Syria might seem to imply a similarity of religion with them. 
 Mahometan chroniclers — and from them alone we learn the 
 history of Hatim, often envelope in one common appellation 
 of " Djohhal," or " ignorants," all the inhabitants of the Arab 
 Peninsula who lived before the preaching of Mahomet, what- 
 ever may have been their belief; sometimes, on the contrary, 
 they discriminate between Christians and Pagans, but this is 
 less frequent, unless there be some special cause. I should add 
 that the Christianity of Arabia in those times was probably 
 much less distinctive in its external and symbolical form than 
 that prevalent in Greece or Eome. The tendency of the Arabs 
 to make light of and even to dispense with whatever may be 
 included under the title of ceremony and rubric is no less 
 marked than the opposite inclination of the Western races to 
 multiply the minutise of forms, and even to give them an 
 almost excessive importance. Thus, no Mahometans are more 
 neglectful of the precise exactitude required in the acquittance 
 of religious duties than the Arab Wahhabees themselves, for all 
 their Islamitic fervour in other respects; and I have myself 
 observed much of a similar nature among the Christians of 
 genuine Arab origin, who inhabit the tracts lying eastward of 
 Damascus and the Jordan, though, indeed, these latter may 
 also be influenced by the disposition common to all other per- 
 secuted sects in the Levant — Ansariens, Yezeedees, Isma'eelees, 
 and their brethren — to render their outer life conformable to 
 the dominant Islam, enough to avoid attracting special notice 
 and dangerous observation, much as the whitening ermine eludes 
 the hunter amid the snow. Hence, a hasty or superficial glance 
 may often fail to discern them from the Mahometan popula- 
 tion around ; nor can their precautions be held discreditable 
 to them in the present state of the country. But it is enough 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 JOriiXEY FROM TL'VYEL TO BEREYDAJI [Chap. VI 
 
 for us to have touched on a subject of wide hearing, and 
 whose thorough investigation would require not a paragraph 
 nor a chapter, but a volume. Let us now return to our road 
 by Djebel Solma and the tomb of Hatim. 
 
 Here I should have liked to try the experiment made long 
 since by the Yemanite chief 'Akrimah. For this prince, if Arab 
 chronicles say true, which they sometimes do and sometimes do 
 not, visited these very lands by the same route as ourselves ; but 
 coming up in the opposite direction, namely, from Yemen north- 
 wards, only a few years after the death of the Ta'iyee. On 
 passing by the cairn that then marked his grave (for now 
 nothing remains), 'Akrimah said jestingly to his companions, 
 " Men report that Hatim, when alive, never sent a guest away 
 empty ; now, here we are at his tomb, our provisions have 
 run short, and there is no village near ; let us see whether, 
 after death, he will do anything for us." With this he halted, 
 and called out in a mocking tone, " Hatim, here we stand at 
 your door, I, 'Akrimah of Yemen, and my followers, all of us 
 hungry and weary, so see to it if you can." Then, turning 
 to his men, " Hatim," said he, " has, I fear, grown stingy in the 
 other world, and we must manage for ourselves." Whereon 
 the party dismounted close under the cairn, and bivouacked 
 without supper for that evening. But at an early hour of the 
 night 'Akrimah started up in terror, and aroused his nearest 
 attendant with, " Put on your sword and come with me, there 
 is something strange at work here. Thrice has Hatim appeared 
 to me in my dream, in his hand a drawn sword dripping blood, 
 and said, * 'Akrimah of Yemen, you and your men shall be 
 indeed my guests for this night. Now, therefore, make hiiste, 
 and look after youv camel, for I have given her a death-wound,' 
 and with this he disappeared. Come along with me, and let 
 us see what has happened." 
 
 They went accordingly in the dark to where the camels were 
 crouching at a little distance, and found the choicest of them, 
 precisely that on which 'Akrimah had been riding, struggling in 
 the pangs of death. 'Akrimah put her out of her pain by cutting 
 her throat, and then, being now provided, though not exactly in 
 the way they desired, with butcher's meat enough and to spare, 
 roused up the whole band. They then lighted fires, and passed
 
 Chap. VI] LOWER NEJED 227 
 
 the rest of the nig'ht in preparing and making a hearty meal of 
 camel's flesh, Arab fashion. 
 
 " A sorry business this ; we should have done better to let 
 Hatim alone. Did ever anything but evil come out of Nejed ? " 
 said 'Akrimah next morning, when, for want of a beast, he 
 was obliged to mount one belonging to a retainer, whom he 
 took behind him on the cruppers, and the travellers moved 
 slowly on to the north. When, behold, a small band coming 
 rapidly to meet them from across the valley, and amongst them 
 one who seemed by his dress their chief, mounted on a handsome 
 horse, and leading alongside by a rope a very beautiful she-camel, 
 better than that which 'Akrimah had been constrained to kill the 
 evening before. When the parties met, after due salutation, 
 " Know," said the young horseman, " that I am the son and heir 
 of Hatim et-Ta'i, at whose tomb you halted yesterday. Last 
 night, during my sleep, my father visited me in a dream, and 
 said, 'My son, 'Akrimah of Yemen and his companions have 
 arrived at my home, and claimed my hospitality, but I had 
 nothing by me of your world's food to set before them. So I 
 obliged 'Akrimah to kill his own camel and to make a supper 
 of her flesh, instead of what I would m3^self have set before 
 them, had I now the means, as I have yet the will. Do you, 
 therefore, without delay, take the best of your she-camels, and 
 mount your horse that once was mine, and go to meet the men 
 of Yemen ; give 'Akrimah the camel in place of that he slew, 
 lest his supper should have been at his cost, not mine, and add 
 to the gift the horse you ride, lest he should say that Hatim was 
 less liberal dead than alive.' " Having related this, the son of 
 Hatim performed his father's injunctions, and putting 'Akrimah 
 on horseback, walked before him, holding the bridle till they 
 reached Djebel Shomer, where he insisted on their all remaining 
 many days as guests in his father's house. 
 
 Perhaps we might have been less lucky than 'Akrimah, and 
 though all of our party knew the oft-repeated tale, no one thought 
 fit to try Hatim's post-mortem liberality. So, without stopping 
 we crossed the low hills that here form a sort of offshoot to the 
 Solma mountain, and limit the valley ; and the last rays of the 
 setting sun gilded to our view in a sandy bottom some way off 
 the palm-trees of Feyd. 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 JOURNEY FROM JIAYEL TO liEJiEYDAH [Chap. VI 
 
 This ancient village or townlet, mentioned by the famous 
 Hariree in the sixth century of Islam, corresponding to the twelfth 
 of our own era, is situated on one of the tracks that lead 
 dia^Toually from Coufa or Meshid 'Alee to Medinah, and now 
 belongs to the government of Telfd. Its local chief or president 
 is chosen from among the natives of the place, such being in 
 general Telal's system, for it is only in rare instances and for 
 very particular reasons that he appoints one of the capital or the 
 central district to be prefect in a distant locality. In this his 
 plan differs from that of the Wahhabee prince, of whose cen- 
 tralizing tendencies, manifested chiefly in the nomination of his 
 subordinates and representatives, we have already seen something 
 in the history of Kaseem, and shall yet learn more. But Telal 
 is disposed to encourage provincialism even at the expense of 
 centralization, wherever he can do so with safety; and this 
 method is perhaps the best for all parties, whether governing or 
 governed, though an opposite line of conduct is followed by. 
 many administrations in the East, and has found European 
 imitators at times. 
 
 However, all rules admit of exceptions, and immediate recourse 
 to the central authority becomes at times indispensable. Ac- 
 cordingly extraordinary commissioners are not imknown even in 
 Arabia, and we now precisely happened to fall in with one. 
 Quarrels had arisen between the inhabitants of Feyd, and the local 
 governor had proved incompetent to re-establish peace and order, 
 so that a king's officer from Ha'yel had just been sent to take cog- 
 nizance of the matter. Hence, at the very hour when we entered 
 the village, a little after sunset, a group of inhabitants clustered 
 in an open space near the walls marked the presence of Telal's 
 commissioner, who was there holding his court of justice. 
 
 In a country where every man is his own lawyer, and where 
 the jury too is of a simpler formation and much less numerous 
 than in English courts, criminal causes are comparatively soon 
 settled. The head man of the place, the village Kadee, a 
 personage never wanting even in the smallest Arab community, 
 and two or three of the principal inhabitants, usually fill the 
 place of jurors, though their verdict is after all rather of moral 
 than of strictly legal weight. The office of crown advocate 
 merges in the judge, and that of counsel in the accused party
 
 Chap. VI] LOWER NHJED 
 
 229 
 
 himself. Sometimes, however, the prosecution is conducted 
 by the plaintiff, when distinct from the supreme authority 
 itself, for instance, in cases of private murder and the like. I 
 should add, that in Arabia the title of Kadee is far from equi- 
 valent to that of our English "judge," and implies a consultative 
 rather than a judicial position, though the contrary is the rule 
 in other parts of the East. We had the advantage of being 
 present while sentence was passed on one of the Feyd culprits, 
 and of Avitnessing its execution immediately after ; it was 
 identically the same with that which many a schoolboy in our 
 own conservative island incurs from the justice of his offended 
 master ; and here also the sufferer screamed much more loudly 
 than the light infliction warranted. 
 
 It is only fair to say that in capital proceedings, and 
 indeed in all more serious affairs, Arab justice is by no means 
 equally rough and ready. Witnesses are summoned and sworn in, 
 the trial lasts many days, appeal from a lower to a higher 
 tribunal up to that of the monarch himself is granted if asked, 
 and after final sentence has been pronounced, execution is 
 deferred for a space of never less than twenty-four hours, 
 and sometimes prorogued for weeks and months, till matters 
 often end in a free pardon, or in a mitigation of the legal penalty. 
 Nor can the most absolute rulers of Arabia violate with impunity 
 the restrictions placed by a sense of responsibility and humanit\ 
 on the too rapid course of such trials, or venture to condemn a 
 subject to death in time of peace simply on their own authority, 
 or without the stated intervention of legal procedures. Here, 
 again, we may note a most important resemblance between the 
 Arab pure and the European. 
 
 We had halted close by the village gate. But Mubarek 
 judged, and probably with good reason, that among men whose 
 whole thoughts were taken up by feuds and trials, our supper 
 might stand a chance of being but a poor one if sought for in 
 the cottages of Feyd itself. It happened that some Solibah 
 Bedouins were encamped at a few minutes' distance from the 
 village, and to their tents we directed our camels, alighted, 
 and after a brief introduction we had the pleasure of seeing a 
 faint column of smoke arise behind the tent walls — in a land 
 like this, a sure sign of kitchen operations.
 
 230 JOURNEY FROM TL'VYEL TO BEREYDAH [Chap. YI 
 
 Feyd may be taken as a tolerable sample of the villages 7iiet 
 with throughout Northern or Upper Kaseem, for they all bear 
 a close likeness in their main features, though various in 
 size. Imagine a little sandy hillock of about sixty or sevent}'^ 
 feet high in the midst of a wide and dusty valley ; part of the 
 eminence itself and the adjoining bottom is covered by low 
 earth-built houses, intermixed with groups of the feathery Ithel. 
 The grounds in the neighbourhood are divided by brick walls 
 into green gardens, where gourds and melons, leguminous 
 plants and maize, grow alongside of an artificial irrigation from 
 the wells among them ; palms in plenty — they were now heavy 
 laden with red-brown fruits ; and a few peach or apricot trees 
 complete the general lineaments. The outer walls are low, 
 and serve more for the protection of the gardens than of the 
 dwellings ; here are neither towers nor trenches, nor even, at least 
 in many places, any central castle or distinguishable residence 
 for the chief; his habitation is of the same one-storied con- 
 struction as those of his neighbours, only a little larger. Some 
 of these towmlets are quite recent, and date from the Shomcr 
 annexation, which gave this part of the province a degree of 
 quiet and prosperity unknown under their former Wahliabee 
 rulers. 
 
 Our supper was not of superfine quality, for the Solibahs are 
 poor, but it was abundant in quantity, and thereby well fitted 
 for travellers like ourselves, after a long march of two days and 
 a night with hardly any rest or pause. Grladly would I have 
 taken the opportunity to try and find out something of the real 
 tenets and practices of our hosts, these uncircumcised wanderers, 
 the lasting record of Syrian or Arabian Christianity. But they 
 were too reserved to give any other than mere negative signs of 
 their mode of thought and customs, and we much too tired and 
 sleepy for long researches. 
 
 Next morning, the 10th of September, we were all up by 
 moonlight, two or three hours before dawn, and off on our road 
 to the south-east. The whole country that w^e had to traverse 
 for the next four days was of so uniform a character, that a fcAv 
 words of description may here serve for the landscape of this 
 entire stage of our journey. 
 
 Upper Kaseem is an elevated plateau or steppe, and forms
 
 Chap. VI] LOWER NEJED 23 1 
 
 part of a long upland belt, crossing diagonally the northern half 
 of the Peninsula ; one extremity reaches the neighbourhood of 
 Zobeyr and the Shatt-el-'Aarab, while the other extends down- 
 wards to the vicinity of Medinah. Its surface is in general 
 covered with grass in the spring and summer seasons, and with 
 shrubs and brushwood at all times, and thus affords excellent 
 pasture for sheep and camels. Across it blows the fresh eastern 
 gale, so celebrated in Arab poetry under the name of " Seba 
 Nejdin," or " Zephyr of Nejed " (only it comes from precisely 
 the opposite corner to the Greek and Roman Zephyr), and con- 
 tinually invoked by sentimental bards to bring them news of 
 imaginary loves or pleasing reminiscences. No wonder, for 
 most of these versifiers being themselves natives of the barren 
 Hejaz or the scorching Tehamah, perhaps inhabitants of Egypt 
 and Syria, and knowing little of Arabia, except what they have 
 seen on the dreary Meccan pilgrim road, they naturally look 
 back to with longing and frequently record whatever glimpses 
 chance may have allowed them of the cooler and more fertile 
 highlands of the centre, denominated by them Nejed in a 
 general way, with their transient experience of its fresh and 
 invigorating climate, of its courteous men and sprightly maidens. 
 But when, nor is this seldom, the sweet smell of Rend, 
 Khozamah, Themam, and other aromatic thyme-like plants 
 that here abound, mixes with the light morning breeze and 
 enhances its balmy influence, then indeed can one excuse the 
 raptures of an Arab Ovid or Theocritus, and appreciate — at least 
 I often did — their yearnings after Nejed, and all the praises they 
 lavish on its memory. 
 
 Tten said I to my companion, while the camels were hastening 
 
 To bear us down the pass between Meneefah and Demar* 
 " Enjoy while thou canst the sweets of the meadows of Nejed : 
 
 With no such meadows and sweets shalt thou meet after this evening. 
 Ah ! heaven's blessing on the scented gales of Nejed, 
 
 And its greensward and groves glittering from the spring shower. 
 And thy dear friends, when thy lot was cast awhile in Nejed — ■ 
 
 Little hadst thou to complain of what the days brought thee ; 
 Months flew past, they passed and we perceived not, 
 
 Nor when their moons were new, nor when they waned." 
 
 — Regrets for an unwilling departure. Another, now far away 
 
 * Two hills on the frontier of T.vaseem towards Medinah.
 
 232 JOURNEY FROM HA' YEL TO BEREYDAH [Chap. VI 
 
 from the laud of his real or imaginary loves, thus expresses his 
 longings : — 
 
 Ah ! brcezo of Nejcd, -when thou blowest fresh from Nojed, 
 
 Thy fanning adds love to my love and sorrow to my sorrow. 
 When the turtle-dove is cooing in the bright-glancing morn 
 
 From its leafy cage over tangled tufts of thyme, 
 I wept as a very child would weep, and could bear up no longer, 
 
 And my heart revealed to itself its long-hidden secret. 
 Yet they say that when the beloved one is close at hand 
 
 Love cloys, and that distance, too, brings forgetfulness. 
 Presence and distance have I tried, and neither aught availed me, 
 
 Save that better is for me when the loved one's abode is near, tlian 
 when it is distant ; 
 Save that nearness of the loved one's abode gives little solace 
 
 Unless the loved one herself requite love with love. 
 
 But enough, I hope, to awake in the sympathetic reader 
 something of the feelings with which myself, with two or three 
 companions of more delicate mental fibre than the rest, made 
 ourselves " as sad as night only for wantonness," by reciting 
 scraps of Arab poetry, while the breeze of Nejed blew over us 
 in the uplands of Nejed. And now let us return to the prosaic 
 and actual features of the country. 
 
 Sometimes the plain sinks for miles together into a sliallow 
 irregular basin, where streams pour down and water collects in 
 the rainy season, leaving pools not entirely dried up even in 
 autumn. Here the alluvial soil bears a more vigorous crop of 
 shrubs, diversified with occasional trees, generally Talh and 
 Nebaa', occasionally Sidr ; the former is a large tree of roundish 
 and scanty leafage, with a little dry berry for fruit, its branches 
 are wide- spreading and thorny here and there ; the second is 
 more shrub-like in its growth, though its clustered stems often 
 attain a considerable height ; its leaf is very small, ovate, and 
 of a bright green ; the last is a little but elegant acacia. These 
 same trees are, but more seldom, to be met with on the high 
 grounds also, especially the Talh. But the Ithel, a kind of 
 larch, abundant throughout Arabia, though growing nowhere 
 else, I believe, and the Ghada euphorbia, prefer the sand-slopes 
 and hollows. 
 
 All along this plateau, from distance to distance, and inter- 
 secting it at an acute angle, ran long and broad valleys of light 
 soil, half chalk, half sand. In these natural trenches water is
 
 Chap. VI] LOWER NEJED 2jj 
 
 always present, not indeed on the surface, but wherever wells 
 are sunk, which is generally in the neighbourhood of some 
 little conical hillock, that seems placed there merely to serve as 
 an indication where men may dig for the source of fertility. 
 
 This juxtaposition of small round mounds and springs occurs 
 much too frequently to be casual, yet I do not quite imderstand 
 the reason of it. The hillocks of which I speak are much too 
 diminutive every way to serve as reservoirs of moisture for the 
 sources close by, and far too low to play the part of mountains 
 in attracting clouds and mist. They are water-marks and 
 nothing more to all appearance, yet certainly they are not the 
 work of art; and though one may at times, though seldom, see 
 a well without a monticule of this kind and form by its side, I 
 never remember coming on any of these isolated tumuli without 
 its having a source at its foot. Nor is this freak of nature con- 
 fined to Central Arabia ; we meet, not unfrequently, with a 
 corresponding arrangement in the Coelo-Syrian plain between 
 Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, and much more in the desert or 
 deserted land that lies east and north of Damascus, where some 
 degree of resemblance can be already perceived betweeij the 
 topographical character of the country and that of Arabia 
 itself. Geologists may perhaps offer an explanation of the fact, 
 at least a theory. 
 
 Hard by the wells rise the villages of Upper Kaseem ; they 
 are, if I was rightly informed, about forty in number; their 
 respective number of inhabitants appears to vary from five 
 hundred to three thousand ; the entire population may be 
 reckoned at between twenty-five and thirty thousand souls, a 
 slender amount considering the extent of the province. We 
 passed eight villages on our way, and halted in four ; one of 
 these was Kefa, said to be the largest in the district. Every 
 hamlet is surrounded by a proportional extent of palm-groves, 
 gardens, and fields, reaching not unfrequently far down the 
 valley, like a long green streak on a yellow carpet, along a series 
 of wells, which mark the direction of some underground water- 
 course. I was told that a new well opened to the east will often 
 diminish the supply of a westerly source, a fact which may 
 imply the general slope downwards of the continent in the latter 
 direction.
 
 234 JOUIiXEY FROM JlyVYEL TO BEREYDAII [Cii.vp. VI 
 
 From my own observations I think that the waterslieJ or 
 highest line of the whole belt of land which lies between the 
 Djowf nortliward and the steppe whose breadth we now crossed 
 inclusively, should be sought for at about sixty miles due east 
 of Ha'yel, thus corresponding in longitude with the most elevated 
 part of Djebel Toweyk, the " twisted mountain," whose steppes 
 form the great central plateau of Nejed proper to the south. If 
 this be the case, and I have myself little doubt on the matter, 
 from reasons which I will give a few lines farther on, the back- 
 bone or main ridge of Arabia would bear from N.N.W. to S.S.E. 
 between 45° and 46° longitude Greenwich, and from 29° to 24° 
 latitude north ; its greatest altitude is behind Djelajil in the 
 province of Sedeyr, whence it gradually lowers till it is lost in 
 the sandy desert of the south. 
 
 On each side of this ridge, and to the south also, Arabia 
 slopes down coastwards to the Persian Gulf, Eed Sea, and 
 Indian Ocean, though with some local interruptions arising 
 from the lateral chains of 'Aja', Solma, Toweyk, and Dowasir, 
 besides the occasional anomalies presented by the sea-shore line, 
 and its craggy range, which rises to a great height in the 
 northern Hejaz, Djebel 'Aaseer, some points of Yemen and 
 Hadramaut, and yet more in 'Oman. 
 
 Tlie entire district of Djebel Toweyk, and good part of 
 Shomer, I visited in person, and whatever I there witnessed 
 confirms this view of the general conformation of the Aral) 
 Peninsula. \Vith two-thirds of the sea-coast I am also well 
 acquainted, and thus far can speak with a tolerable degree 
 of certainty. But having had no opportunity of travelling 
 over the north-east corner of Arabia, namely, the triangle that 
 lies eastward of the Djowf and Djebel Shomer and north of 
 Sedeyr towards the upper part of the Persian Gulf and the 
 Shatt, I must rely on the fidelity of information collected from 
 natives, merchants, or wayfarers, men whose practical know- 
 ledge of the ground they travel, aided b}^ facts like that just 
 mentioned of the water-currents, gives to their statements on 
 these points a certain degree of authority. The two merchants 
 of Zobeyr and Basrah, our present road-companions, supplied me 
 with some data about the north-east, all tending to the same 
 purport. Thus they stated that the tracks from Kaseem to
 
 Chap, yi] LOWER NEJED 235 
 
 Ba§rah lay upland for most of the way ; that the coimtry became 
 more and more barren till within three or four days of the 
 Shatt, when pasture, and lastly cultivation, reappeared ; that 
 after some distance north water became very scarce, an unfailing 
 indication of a raised land-level in these parts, and continued so 
 till about eig-hty miles from the Shatt ; that the air was cooler, 
 and the like. I myself, whether in the neighbourhood of 
 Ha'yel, or here, could, on looking eastwards, appreciate by the 
 eye a sensible rise and a ridgy verge to the horizon, while the 
 view to the west, wherever the crags of Shomer did not inter- 
 vene, lay evenly at a shorter and downward curve. Lastly, the 
 highest peaks of Djebel Shomer are situated, and this one may 
 easily see on approaching Ha'yel, a little to the east of that town, 
 and almost north of Toweyk at its farthest roots ; now it is well 
 known that the elevation of a mountain range is in general pro- 
 portioned to that of the adjoining plain, which we may therefore 
 conclude to be here at its maximum. 
 
 Earnestly do I hope that future and better-provided travellers 
 will work out and fill up the groiuid plan which I have thus 
 attempted to trace, though unable to complete. But may it be 
 permitted me to apologise for a sort of presumption in claiming 
 to be heard on this difficult subject, a subject too in some sort 
 out of my ordinary province of observation ; however, long 
 continued years of journeying, and such, have been my lot, do 
 at last empower the eye, and indeed all the senses, to mea- 
 sure height and distance, direction and level, with tolerable 
 accuracy, even in the want of the instruments that modern 
 science supplies to aid and rectify our rougher calculations. 
 These instruments are indeed absolutely requisite wherever 
 any pretension is made to minute precision and mathematical 
 detail. But to these I have no claim, and my readers already 
 know tlie circumstances which limited and simplified my 
 baggage to the exclusion of many a useful but incompatible 
 object. Yet I trust that my statements are correct so far as 
 they go, and may be safely relied on for a basis and first step 
 to the verification and reform of the Arabian map, especially 
 in what regards the interior of the Peninsula. 
 
 Every day we made about twelve or fi)urteen hours' march, 
 at a rate of about five miles per hour, or a little more, —
 
 236 JOURNEY FROM HA YEL TO BEREYDAII [CnAr. VI 
 
 the ordinary pace of a riding camel. We had nothing more 
 to fear from Bedouins, and the few whom we might henceforth 
 meet belonged to tribes of Telal's dominions, and were subject 
 to his steady rule. I may as well here add, that towards the 
 end of this same year 1862, Telfd himself headed a successful 
 campaign against the marauders of the Harb clan, the same 
 with whom we had met in the valley of Solma, and reduced 
 them to submission sufficient for ensuring his own territories 
 against further forays. 
 
 The moon was only a few nights after the full, and we had 
 the advantage of her light for early starting. We would thus 
 make our track, sometimes across the high grounds and pasture, 
 sometimes traversing a sandy river-like valley, till day broke, 
 and the sun rushed up, and shone on our left till noon, while we 
 rode on, scattered along either side of the irregular streaks that 
 marked the way, or in groups of twos and threes, or all together, 
 while the men of Kaseem chatted and laughed, the merchants 
 conversed, the Meccans quarrelled, the Bedouins, who sympathise 
 little with the inhabitants of towns, nor overmuch with each other, 
 rode in general each alone and at some distance ; the negro ran 
 after his horses, which kept getting loose, and went a-grazing or 
 scampered out of reach ; and the women, wrapped up from head 
 to foot in their large indigo blue dresses, looked extremely like 
 inanimate bundles to be taken to market somewhere ; nobody 
 talked to them, and they of course talked to nobody. 
 
 Every morning we halted for coffee-making ; firewood was in 
 plenty, and there was no particular hurry or fear of losing time. 
 But we were dispensed from any more serious cookery, since 
 henceforth our afternoon and night halts were always in the 
 villages, where we seldom failed of a hospitable welcome ; and 
 were that not forthcoming, we could at any rate purchase 
 wherewithal to make our evening meal. 
 
 The view was extensive, but rather monotonous. No high 
 mountains, no rivers, no lakes, no streams ; but a constant 
 reiteration of the landscape features above described. Only we 
 sometimes could distinguish far off to the east a few faint blue 
 peaks, the extreme offsets of Djebel Toweyk, whither we were 
 now slowly approaching. North, west, and south, all was open 
 plain. But the breeze blew fresh and the sun shone bright,
 
 Chap. \^] LOWER NEJED i^^l 
 
 birds twittered in the brushwood, and lizards and Djerboo'as ran 
 about lightly chirping- on all sides, or a covey of partridges (it 
 was September) whirred up at our approach, and a long file of 
 gazelles bounded away from before us, then stopped a minute 
 at gaze, and bounded off again. The camels were in good con- 
 dition, and most of the riders in excellent humour. 
 
 Our first evening halt after Feyd was at Kefa. It is a large 
 scattered village, situated in a sandy hollow, and not ill provided 
 with water. Like many other hamlets of this province, this is a 
 thriving and increasing place ; indeed, we found the inhabitants 
 busy at digging out and stone-binding a large new well ; they 
 had just reached the first indications of moisture at about twelve 
 feet deep. The stone here is calcareous, and so it is in general 
 towards the centre of the Peninsula ; Djebel Toweyk itself is 
 chiefly of the same formation, unlike the black rock and reddish 
 granite of Djebel Shomer. I do not remember seeing here any 
 of the organic remains often traced in chalk and limestone ; 
 perhaps my research was itself too hasty. 
 
 In Kefa we remained an entire day. A tolerably large 
 encampment of Shomer Bedouins, belonging to the 'Eyd 
 branch of the clan, and inferior iu nobility to their Dja'afar 
 brethren, was close by the village ; with the 'Eyd tents were 
 intermixed some of the Tamir tribe, whose ordinary resort is to 
 the south of Solma, while that of the Shomer nomades is more 
 to the north and east. We paid a visit to these dusky habita- 
 tions, black as the curtains of Solomon, and were politely and 
 hospitably received; the townsmen of Kefa, too, were very 
 courteous, though of course less refined in their manner and 
 less elegant in their dress than is wont at Hay'el. There is 
 here a native governor, and a Kadee also ; the number of 
 inhabitants cannot fall far short of three thousand. 
 
 Our next halting-place was Koseybah, a small hamlet, but 
 abounding in gardens and fruit. The little hill up whose 
 eastern side the houses are built, is in other parts so thickly 
 covered with Ithel and palm as to be almost picturesque. The 
 wells are many, and I doubt not that should Telal's rule con- 
 tinue long undisturbed in these parts, Koseybah may in due 
 time become considerable. 
 
 The tliird evening passed at Kowfirah. This large village.
 
 238 JOUBNEY FROM HA'YEL TO BEEEYDAH [Qnw. \l 
 
 ^Yllic]l might almost be called a town, lies in a wooded and well- 
 watered hollow, where its groves form a beautiful baelv-2:)iece to 
 the broken and thickety ground in front. Around, the plain is 
 excavated into cliffs from twenty to sixty feet high, and furrowed 
 by watercourses, or rank with thick brusliwood and long 
 herbage. Here is the last southerly station of Telal's territory; 
 here, too, as mostly elsewhere, the chief is of the natives of the 
 soil, and order and security are the only tokens of central 
 government. I mean order and security among and from 
 bipeds; for the innumerable overgrown dogs of the village were 
 certainly the most impudent and annoying that it was ever my 
 bad luck to encounter. They prowled about all night, and no 
 one could stir a step without having half a dozen of these 
 wolfish creatures gnarling and yelping at his legs, while the pro- 
 visions of the wayfarers suffered considerable detriment from 
 their assaults. Warned by ray experienced companions, I put 
 a large skin yet half full of excellent dates from Hfi'yel, and 
 our main solace in the fatigues of the road, under my head, 
 pillow-v/ise, hoping thus to save it from these voracious brutes. 
 Besides, who could have imagined that dogs had a particular 
 fancy for dates and old leather ? Vain precautions ! delusive 
 hopes ! About midnight I was awakened by a sharp snarl close 
 at my ear, and found my head reclining on the sand while the 
 bag with its contents had been dragged away, and was now 
 lying in the midst of a canine circle, who were proving that 
 their species can relish a vegetable diet no less than cattle or 
 horses. But though I felt little desire to recover what had 
 become the leavings of dogs, I could not omit an opportunity 
 for just revenge; so calling to mind theMarston Moor password 
 of " firing low," I hurled a large stick on the most correct Crom- 
 wellian principles of marksmanship against the four-legged 
 thieves, and had the satisfaction of seeing a huge black brute limp 
 off, yelping like mad and holding his damaged paw in the air. 
 The rest followed and left the coast clear ; then after awhile re- 
 turned, carried their booty farther off, and finished it at leisure. 
 This was the 14th of September, and we had left Kowarah 
 behind, journeying on till near midday, when, after passing a 
 few low hills, we came to a sudden dip in the land level, and 
 the extent of Southern Kaseem burst on our view.
 
 Chap. VI] LOWER NEJED 239 
 
 Now, foi- the first time, we could in some measure appreciate 
 the strength of the Wahhabee in his mastery over such a 
 land. Before us to the utmost horizon stretched an immense 
 plain, studded with towns and villages, towers and groves, all 
 steeped in the dazzling noon, and announcing everywhere life, 
 opulence, and activity. The average breadth of this populous 
 district is about sixty miles, its length twice as much, or 
 more ; it lies full two hundred feet below the level of the 
 uplands, which here break off like a wall and leave the lower 
 ground to stretch uninterrupted far away to the long transverse 
 chain of Toweyk, that bounds it to the south and separates it 
 from the high road leading from Nejed to Mecca ; for the 
 main opening of Kaseem itself is to the north of that moun- 
 tain, towards Medinah. Fifty or more good-sized villages and 
 four or five large towns form the commercial and agricultural 
 centres of the province, and its surface is moreover thick strewn 
 with smaller hamlets, isolated wells and gardens, and traversed 
 by a network of tracks in every direction. Here begin and 
 hence extend to Djebel Toweyk itself the series of high 
 watch-towers that afford the inliabitants a means, denied 
 otherwise by their level flats, of discerning from afar the 
 approach of foray or invasion, and thus preparing for resis- 
 tance. For while no part of Central Arabia has an older 
 or a better established title to civilization and wealth, no 
 part also has been the starting point and theatre of so many 
 wars, or witnessed the gathering of such numerous armies. 
 Here, and our companions pointed out the spot, were the too- 
 famous hunting grounds of Koleyb Wa'il, his New Forest, that 
 gave occasion to the fatal war of Basoos, which for forty years 
 decimated the clans of Taghleb and Bikr. Here, too, in later 
 times ruled the powerful and tyrannical Darim, exaggerated by 
 tradition into a giant and darkened into a magician, but in 
 reality a vigorous though haughty chief, who in the declining 
 years of the Bagdad caliphate shook off the last feeble bonds of 
 Islam and the Abbasides, and reasserted the primal independence 
 of Kaseem. 
 
 But isolated events can hardly be understood unless we have 
 a correct idea of the condition of Arabia in general during the 
 period that elapsed between the rise of Islam and the Wahhabee
 
 240 JOUItNEY FROM HAYEL TO BEREYDAJI [Cn.vr. VI 
 
 outbreak, a period comprising- eleven centuries, during which 
 tljis country underwent great changes and revohitions, thougli I 
 do not remember having met with a distinct account or exphi- 
 nation of them in tlie Oriental histories of any European writer. 
 We possess, indeed, many and complete chronicles of what took 
 place in the great branches of the so-called Arab empire, in 
 Egypt, Syria, Africa, Spain, Bagdad, and Sicily, but of Arabia 
 and its denizens, the fountain-head of that mighty stream whose 
 divided currents overflowed so large a portion of the globe, little 
 or nothing is recorded. My readers will not, I trust, grudge the 
 delay, if I here make a short pause in the present narrative, and 
 attempt to fill up this historical blank to the best of my means. 
 Whence my data are derived, and on whose warrant they rest, I 
 have explained at the commencement of this volume, and there 
 my readers will find a catalogue of the Arab authors whom I 
 have had leisure or opportunity to consult on this and analogous 
 subjects. 
 
 When Mahomet and his companions in Hejaz first plaimed the 
 conquest of the entire Peninsula, and its amalgamation imder 
 one law, religion, and dominion, it was divided between four 
 governments, widely differing in strength and tendencies. To 
 the north-west the Byzantine empire had extended its sway 
 by means of the Ghassanides and their allies over a large section 
 of the country, and imperial soldiery held their posts at no great 
 distance from Medinah. On the north-east the kings of Hira' 
 reigned from the shores of the lower Euphrates and the great 
 Shaft all down the Persian Gulf, and inland to the very limits 
 of Nejed proper. Southward the Yemanite dynasty, restored 
 by Seyf Yezen, but tributary, like that of Hira', to the Persian 
 despot, possessed a large and important territory, of which 
 ' Oman itself was a viceroyalty and appendage. In the centre 
 the restless clans of Nejed were grouped together around Mosey- 
 lemah the Liar (for thus was he named by his more successful 
 rival in falsehood, Mahomet), and of this powerful confederacy 
 Kaseem formed a part. Besides these four main groups, scattered 
 over the Peninsula, but especially to the west, existed several small 
 but energetic Jewish communities, in possession of independent 
 strongholds and fortresses, among which the castle of Kheybar 
 and the Ablak of T«yma, have obtained a lasting celebrity.
 
 Chap. VI] LOWER KEJED 24! 
 
 The Bedouin tribes, emancipated by the great revolt which a 
 hundred years before had rent Central and Northern Arabia from, 
 the Yemanite domination, had also everywhere attained con- 
 siderable importance, the result of anarchy around, and their 
 barbarous and predatory ways did much to aggravate the 
 prevailing confusion. 
 
 How the Grreeks were vanquished, and their influence for ever 
 banished from Arabia ; how the inhabitants of Yemen incorpo- 
 rated themselves into the Hejaz empire almost without striking 
 a blow ; how the kings of Hira' and their power melted like 
 snow before the burning fanaticism of the early Mahometans ; 
 how the Jews lost fort after fort, till their whole nationality was, 
 with few exceptions, blotted out or driven beyond the frontiers, 
 has been often related by historians and biographers, though 
 somewhat confusedly, and without satisfactory distinction of 
 causes and effects. But in Central Arabia the work of conquest 
 was slow and bloody, and the incorporation of the vanquished 
 temporary and imperfect. 
 
 Kaseem, the near neighbour of Hejaz, and united to it by 
 commercial interest, was the first province to separate itself 
 from the common cause of Nejed ; and its troops joined 
 with the army of Khalid, the Sword of the Faith and of 
 Mahomet, when that energetic warrior concentrated the 
 whole force of Islam on the decisive struggle with Mosey- 
 lemah. After the tremendous carnage, whose memorials still 
 abound in the valley of Haneefah, the death of the ill-fated 
 prophet, the dispersion of his sect, and the submission of all the 
 uplands and valleys of Toweyk, no further enemy appeared to 
 dispute with Islam the sovereignty of Arabia. From the shores 
 of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf to the long Ked Sea 
 coast, the whole Peninsula appeared united in one empire and 
 one faith. Yet a discerning eye could even then have foreseen 
 the brief duration and ultimate dissolution of this seeming 
 unity. 
 
 Between the Nejdeans and the natives of Hejaz had from 
 time immemorial rankled an antipathy, the common theme of 
 verse and prose on either side ; its first origin lay in the great, 
 I had almost said the utter, dissimilarity of character between 
 the rival races. The Nejdean, patient, cool, slow in preparing 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 JOUEXEY FROM JIAYEL TO BEREYDAII [Chap. VI 
 
 his means of action, more tenacious than any bulldog when he 
 has once laid hold, attached to his ancestral usages and native 
 land by a patriotism rare in the East, impatient in the highest 
 deo-ree of foreign rule, sober almost to austerity in his mode of 
 life, averse to the luxury and display of foreign nations, nay, 
 stranger still, to their very vices, sympathizes but ill ^^dth the 
 volatile and light-minded Hejazee, who begins vigorously, but 
 soon tires and turns away, a lover of ornament and magnificence, 
 willingly adopting the customs and the dissoluteness too of his 
 neighbours, ostentatious, talkative, and inconsiderate. Indeed, 
 the two characters are scarcely less opposed to each other than 
 are the German and French in the West. Arab poetry has often 
 described and Arab history confirms the antithesis existing 
 between Nejed and Hejaz ; but my own observation, unaided by 
 books, might have sufficed me to draw these portraits, summed 
 up in the well-known verses of a native poet : " Nejed is the 
 land of great souls, and the rest are dwarfs in comparison ; 
 but for the men of Hejaz, they are all at short tether." 
 
 Political events, at once the effect and the cause of national 
 character, had moreover contributed to deepen the line of 
 demarcation, and embittered dislike and antipathy into down- 
 right hatred. In the great war of A.D. 500 to 520, Nejed, under 
 Koleyb Wa'il, had seen herself mistress of Arabia, and the 
 supremacy then attained had remained hers for more than a 
 century. This had now been wrested from her by her old rival 
 the Hejaz, and wrested in a conflict that had made her valleys 
 flow with blood, and had covered her hills with corpses. A 
 large debt of revenge had thus been added to former grudges ; 
 and the Nej deans only awaited a moment of weakness in the 
 power that had quelled them to throw off its yoke from their 
 necks. 
 
 Meanwhile 'Oman and the provinces bordering on the Persian 
 Gulf were also little disposed to persevere in a union, whether 
 political or religious, with Mecca and its children. The Kahtanite 
 Arab has — how, we shall more fully examine afterwards — hardly 
 anything in common, language excepted, with the Ismaelitic 
 liranch of that great family; his character and institutions are 
 all apart ; and, moreover, Sabean worship, not without a strong 
 tincture of Persianism, had fixed too deep a root by far in these
 
 Chap. VI] LOWER NEJEB 24 J 
 
 easterly regions to be at once eradicated by a simple " la Ilah 
 ilia Allah," and a transient acquiescence, more from prudence 
 than conviction, in the questionable mission of the Meccan 
 prophet. Here then, also, though on motives somewhat different 
 from those which prevailed in Nejed, and on another line of 
 action, all was ready for disunion and ultimate hostility. 
 
 Thus was it with the centre and east; the rest of Arabia had, 
 with few and unimportant exceptions, already learnt to look on 
 Islam as a national religion, and on Mecca as a political and 
 ceremonial centre. In saying this, however, I do not mean to 
 include the Bedouins, of whom Mahomet himself, by his own 
 avowal in the Coran, could make almost nothing, and who con- 
 tinued throughout much the same, whether before, under, or 
 after the Mahometan conquest. Beings unstable as water, and 
 like that element incapable of permanent impression from their 
 very instability. 
 
 During the reigns of Aboo Bekr and 'Omar the first vigour of 
 a new empire kept down, and the glories of conquest concealed, 
 these germs of discontent and separation. But the feebleness 
 of 'Othman and the sanguinary conflicts that convulsed the 
 caliphate of 'Alee gave them an early opportunity of displaying 
 themselves. 
 
 No sooner, in fact, had the rulers of Islam turned their 
 swords against each other, than 'Oman, with its neighbouring 
 provinces, fell off from their dominion, never to return. Nejed 
 rose in arms, and siding to a man with the men of Coufa and 
 with 'Alee, avenged themselves on their old enemies of Hejaz, 
 now headed by Ma'owiyah and his partisans. But the period 
 of anarchy, though violent, was short, and was soon followed by 
 the triumph of Benoo 'Ommey'yah, and the establishment of 
 the Damascene caliphate. Its first years were characterized 
 by great vigour, and the close communication yet existing 
 between Syria and Arabia compelled Nejed, with the rest of the 
 centre, west, and north, to acknowledge once more the supre- 
 macy of the Rulers of the Faithful. Yet even then, scarce 
 twenty years after the death of Ma'owiyah, Djebel Shomer and 
 its allied clans broke out into open revolt, and the dreaded 
 Hejjaj, victorious everywhere else, dared not lead his armies to 
 the assault of those thickly-peopled mountains, where the 
 
 B 2
 
 244 JOURNEY FROM IIA'YEL TO BEREYDAII [Chap. VI 
 
 troops of Lis lieutenant Omey'yah, great-grandson of 'Othman, 
 had recently strewed the gorges with their dead. However, the 
 inhabitants of Shomer, content with their first victory, and 
 unwilling to provoke a wai* Avhich might end in extermination, 
 offered a voluntary though a merely nominal submission to 
 'Abd-el-lNIelek, then Caliph of Damascus, and Arabia was once 
 more pacified and imited, or at least seemed so, for two-thirds 
 of its extent. But 'Oman and the south-east had been com- 
 pletely detached, and took no part in the new consolidation. 
 
 Matters thus continued with little change for about fifty years 
 more, till the downfall of the Damascene dynasty, and the transfer 
 of the caliphate, first to the shores of the Euphrates, A.d. 750, 
 and ultimately to those of the Tigris at Bagdad in 770, pre- 
 pared the way for the total and lasting separation of Arabia from 
 the great centres of Mahometan government. 
 
 Topographical distance in a land where carriage-roads and 
 railroads are equally unknown cannot but have a dissevering 
 effect. But to this other and no less important moral causes 
 were soon added. True, for the first century of Abbaside rule 
 the Arab extraction of the Caliphs, their conformity to Arab 
 usages and modes of life, their large-minded and popular system 
 of government, their liberality and easiness of access, continued 
 to attach the mass of their fellow-countrymen to their sceptre. 
 The government of 'Abd-Allah-es-Sefifah, of Dja'afar, of Mahdee, 
 and the rest, down to the reign of Haroon-er-Rasheed and his 
 successors, was eminently Arab, and accordingly history and 
 tradition record no rebellious outbreak of any importance 
 during their sway among the numerous vicegerencies of 
 Arabia. 
 
 But with Haroon-er-Rasheed began a change which progres- 
 sively modified and deteriorated the whole character of the 
 Bagdad caliphate, and for ever estranged from it its Arab 
 subjects. Persian customs and manners were rapidly in- 
 filtrating into the great Court, and infecting every branch 
 of the administration with their unhealthy influence. The 
 liberality and affability of the early Calij^hs was exchanged 
 for the ceremonious seclusion, the haughty inaccessibility, and 
 the negligent indolence of an Achaemenian palace, and the Arab 
 on coming to Bagdad now found himself no less a foreigner
 
 Chap. VI] LOWER KEJED 24^ 
 
 there, insolently despised and trampled on, than he had ever 
 been of old times at Shiraz or Ispahan, The strange fluc- 
 tuations of religion and doctrine that carried Bagdad and 
 its Caliphs into opposite and extravagant directions, tended 
 also to snap the last links of hereditary respect that yet bound 
 the Arab nation to the family of Hashem and the creed of 
 Islam. The great separation commenced, and was henceforth 
 irretrievable. 
 
 The first outbreak and the signal for all the rest was con- 
 ducted by the Carmathian chief, Aboo Tahir, whose fortress 
 and gorgeous palace I have myself visited at Kateef on the 
 Persian Grulf. Others have written the history of the Carma- 
 thian sect and its tenets, its rise and progress, and I myself 
 have something to add on that score when we reach the land 
 of their birthplace. For the moment, I will only say that 
 long before Tahir had been acknowledged for their leader, these 
 dangerous factionaries had disseminated themselves from the 
 eastern shore of Arabia far into the interior, and even reached 
 the valleys of Yemen, while Haija, 'Oman, and whatever adjoins 
 them were entirely in their hands. In Tahir they found a 
 captain alike daring and successful. From the coast of Hajja 
 to the Red Sea his armies overran the whole Peninsula, up- 
 rooting, slaying, disorganizing, annihilating everywhere. And 
 when after thirty years of bloodshed the first fury of the Car- 
 mathians had subsided, and the wild flood-tide ebbed back to 
 its original limits, it scarce left behind it a ruin to mark where 
 the empire of the Caliphs had been throughout Northern and 
 Central Arabia. 
 
 The provinces of the Persian Gulf, the entire Nejed, and 
 all its appendages of Shomer, Kaseem, Teyma, Djowf, and 
 the lands around had been rent away, and never returned to 
 the enfeebled rulers of the north. Left in headless anarchy, 
 each district now grouped itself around its own chiefs and 
 nobles, to pass henceforward centuries of feud and rivalry, in 
 all the liberty of misrule, not unmixed with intervals of vigour 
 and of brilliant though transient prosperity. How it fared 
 more particularly with Djowf and Shomer, we have already 
 related, and the subsequent pages will throw some light on 
 the obscure history of Nejed and Kaseem. The landward
 
 246 JOURNEY FROM ^ A' YEL TO B ERE YD AH [Chap. ^^ 
 
 provinces of Yemen, Nejran and Khowlan, together with 
 'Aaseer, had sympathized with the Carmathians, and taken 
 part with their success. They now became places of refuge 
 for thousands of these sectaries, and strongholds that for cen- 
 turies eluded or defied all foreign assaults. The sea-coast of 
 Yemen, too, with Sanaa', returned to its national independence, 
 but the comparatively pacific character of its inhabitants led 
 them awhile to keep up a nominal allegiance, now to the 
 Caliph of Egypt and now to him of Bagdad, the more so 
 because, being sincerely and thoroughly Mahometans, they 
 regarded division from the great politico-religious centres of 
 Islam as an evil and a sin. On the contrary, 'Oman, with a 
 large part of Hadramaut to the south, and Katar and Bahreyn 
 on the north, gladly took occasion of the Carmathian alliance 
 to secure themselves against the ravages of war, and as a new 
 guarantee of permanent independence. 
 
 Nothing but the yearly pilgrimage preserved for the Caliphs 
 a shadow of disputed authority over Hejaz and the territory of 
 Mecca ; and an occasional interference with the chiefs of Yemen 
 or Kheybar, whenever these latter thought fit to submit their 
 rival pretensions to foreign arbitration. 
 
 Years and centuries rolled away ; the horses of Honlagoo 
 trampled under hoof the last Caliph of Bagdad ; Turks and 
 Turcomans, Curdes and Mem looks founded ephemeral king- 
 doms, with dynasties of pompous title, all blood-sprung, blood- 
 nourished, and soon extinguished in blood ; Crusaders from the 
 West and Tartars from the East slaughtered and were slaughtered 
 on the coast of Syria or by the banks of the Nile and the 
 Euphrates ; but in nothing of all this had Arabia any share, 
 not a ripple of all these counter-currents crossed the bar now 
 heaped up and impassable at her desert entrance. Last, the 
 Ottoman armies reached her very limits, and Syria and Egypt 
 became pashalics of Constantinople. Yet on the Arabian soil, 
 the pilgrim road from Ma'an to Mecca, and a few unimportant 
 outposts or ports, were all that the Turk ever inherited or 
 mastered for his own from the days of Seleem at the com- 
 mencement of the sixteenth century down to 'Abd-el-'Azeez in 
 our own. 
 
 The neighbourhood of Egypt, separated by a narrow sea-
 
 Chap. VIJ LOWER NEJED i^-j 
 
 strip only from the Arabian coast, has indeed more than once 
 given rise to foreign influence or invasion, but very superficial 
 for the most and of short duration. Thus the Memlooks have 
 now and then by their " decision more embroiled the fray " of 
 the western Arab chiefs, and at a later date we have seen Egypt 
 for a brief period mistress of Nejed itself, and placing governors 
 in the towns on the shores of the Persian Gulf. But this too 
 speedily ebbed away, and the rock still stands where it did 
 before the high tide, nor shows a trace of the water-mark. 
 
 But Arabia, thus abandoned to herself and disintegrating 
 into a confused mass of little principalities and local interests, 
 continued throughout to maintain in her bosom the same great 
 demarcations that she had presented before the rise of Islam, 
 and even with no material change. Founded in diversity 
 of race, and fostered by dissimilarity of social development, 
 such demarcations are not only of their own nature indelible, 
 but are also likely to become then most apparent when left to 
 their proper and undisturbed action by the removal of external 
 pressure. The boundary lines of the kingdom of 'Oman, of 
 Nejed, of Yemen, of Shomer and of Hejaz, indicated on the 
 map at the commencement of this volume, are scarcely more 
 political than ethnographical, and being such must always 
 subsist, at least in tendency and often in fact, with slender modi- 
 fication. Certain anomalies may, it is true, occur. Thus, Ha§a 
 and Kaseem, nearer allied by race, the one with 'Oman, the 
 other with Shomer, than either with Nejed, have yet for some 
 years past become incorporated with the latter, owing to 
 superior strength and the events of war. The entire separation 
 between Yemen and 'Oman, as they now stand, in spite of the 
 kindred descent of their inhabitants, is another. But to these 
 three exceptions, readily explained by circumstances, I doubt 
 whether a fourth could be added throughout the Arabian Penin- 
 sula of modern times. 
 
 Meanwhile, life and movement, the sure accompaniment, if 
 not the essence, of life, went on, and Arab energy, though 
 bounded in its range, was not the less vigorous wherever it found 
 an outlet. International trade, and all that follows trade — art, 
 elegance, and wealth — attained considerable perfection in many 
 parts of the country, especially in the centre and east, while at
 
 248 JOURNEY FROM JIAYEL TO BEREYDAII [Cnkv.W 
 
 their destined intervals arose those remarkable men who im- 
 pose opinion or enforce rule over neighbouring and rival states, 
 till the district that witnessed their origin swells into a province, 
 and the province into an empire. Of one such, namely, Telal- 
 ebn-Rasheed, we have already traced the history ; of Mohammed- 
 ebn-'Abd-el-Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabee sect, and his 
 martial cooperator Sa'ood-ebn-Sa'ood, we shall afterwards give 
 detailed information ; others, too, remain for particular notice, 
 each in his place. But he who now concerns us nearest at this 
 period of our journey is Darim, the hero of mediaeval Kaseem. 
 
 He seems — for the inaccuracy of unassisted Arab chronology 
 will not permit expressions of greater certainty — to have flou- 
 rished between the fourth and fifth centuries of Islam, that is, 
 near the eleventh of our era. Born at the Rass, of an ancient and 
 noble family, now wholly extinct, he became, while yet young, 
 absolute master of his own town, and was not long in adding 
 the rest of Kaseem to the more limited heritage of his ancestors. 
 His government was arbitrary, of course, yet popular ; and the 
 fortifications of 'Oneyzah, attributed to him, prove that a desire 
 of strengthening his own native town did not hinder him from 
 bestowing his attention on the safety and well-being of the 
 province in general, which is said in his days to have reached 
 the high pitch of commercial prosperity that it long retained. 
 But Kaseem was too narrow for the ambition of Darim ; he 
 attacked Nejed, and reduced the greater part of it to submis- 
 sion, then turned his arms against Yemen, defeated her chiefs 
 in the valley of Nejran, and ultimately fixed the southerly limits 
 of his empire at Wadi Seleyyel and Kela'at Bisha'. This empire, 
 for such it was, he left to his children, and by them it was main- 
 tained for several generations, through a period equivalent, so 
 far as I can approach to a computation of dates, to about 
 three hundred years. Certainly during that time the sovereignty 
 of Central Arabia lay in Kaseem, nor could I discover that it 
 had been exercised by any others than the Ebn-Darims, from 
 father to son, like the Ebn-Rasheeds and Ebn-Sa'oods of later 
 date. At last the growing power of the chiefs of 'Aared and 
 Yemamah excluded the lords of Kaseem from the limits of 
 Djebel Toweyk, and their domain dwindled by degrees to a pro- 
 vincial, and lastly to a merely local, pre-eminence, till the 
 Wahhabee torrent swept them finally and for ever away.
 
 Chap. VI] LOWER NEJED 249 
 
 Correlative!}' with the rule of Darim and his race, the old forms 
 of Arab superstition, and especially of planetary worship, re- 
 appeared in Kaseem, nor was Mahometanism again established 
 there till the Wahhabee epoch. I say the old forms of Arab 
 superstition, for idolatry, properly speaking, was never exten- 
 sively practised in Arabia, and even where it did exist was far 
 from assuming those grosser forms too common among the 
 Greeks and Komans, and even now to be witnessed among the 
 nations of Hindoostan. Arab idol-worship of a subordinate 
 character, and simple enough in its emblems, was almost exclu- 
 sively confined to the Western Provinces ; in the interior and 
 beyond the limits of Hejaz and Yemen it was nearly unknown ; 
 while the religious practices of the interior, however misdirected, 
 were remarkable for the absence of representative symbolism 
 and sculptural imagery. 
 
 Negative facts are best established by negative proofs, and of 
 these we have on this point a very strong one within the Coran 
 itself. This book, where every species of popular superstition or 
 misbelief known to the author is not only distinctly recorded, 
 but even exaggerated with all the acrimony of polemical elo- 
 quence, makes absolutely no mention soever of idols or idolaters 
 in the true sense of the term, except in narratives relating 
 to bygone ages and mythical races. For his cotemporaries, 
 Mahomet does indeed accuse them of " associating " subordinate 
 powers with the Supreme Euler ; but that very " association " 
 had in the mind of the writer a meaning far too comprehensive 
 to be restricted to paganism or idolatry in our sense of the 
 term ; even Lat, 'Ozzah, and Minah, the demigods of Koreysh, 
 and the stones that bore their names, were very different, both 
 in themselves and in the honours paid them, from the Pallas 
 of the Parthenon, or the Meenakshee of Madura. Much less 
 were the " Ansab " and " Azlam," so energetically reprobated 
 by the Prophet, idols, — being mere symbols and instruments of 
 a superstitious principle, like the lituus of the augur or the 
 tripod of Delphi. Eeal image-worship, had it existed, could 
 hardly have passed unnoticed in the vehement declamations of 
 the Arabian Knox, so fierce in his condemnation of much less 
 glaring offences. 
 
 A general belief in one Supreme Being, Author of all and 
 Ruler of all, has from time immemorial prevailed throughout
 
 250 JOURNEY FROM :pA'YEL TO BEREYDAIl [Cn.vr. VI 
 
 Arabia. Authors of some note have supposed that the Arabs 
 derived this dogma from foreign sources, Jewish or other ; but 
 this is, in my opinion, an error, and the arguments adduced in 
 its support have too limited an application to bear out a similar 
 theory for at least three-fourths of the Peninsula. Eecords of 
 undoubted authenticity in the main, at any rate the only re- 
 cords that we possess, represent JNIonotheism as having been the 
 religion of the Arabs from the very first ages, and it survived 
 all collateral and debasing influences. But the great dogma 
 had been somewhat obscured, and even occasionally thrown into 
 the background, by two different tendencies ; one, the credit 
 given to astral and planetary powers, a very old superstition 
 and widely diffused in the East ; the other, a grosser fetichism, 
 prevalent for the most part among the lower and less cultivated 
 classes. The early date of the former in Arabia is evidenced 
 by the name of 'Abd-esh-Shems, "servant of the sun," the 
 fourth in succession of the Yemanite kings ; by the honours 
 paid to Zahra', the morning star, and by the testimony of the 
 Coran itself. The frequency of the latter is established by its 
 hereditary practices still observed throughout the Peninsula, 
 covertly in the Wahhabee territory, openly elsewhere, not to 
 mention written records on the subject, and local tradition of 
 immemorial antiquity. 
 
 Both these adulterations of the older and purer faith existed 
 in Kaseem, but to Darim is ascribed the official restoration of 
 planetary or Sabean worship. Nor is the fact unlikely, considering 
 that his reign determined and coincided with the total emanci- 
 pation of this region from Islamitic rule. We had now at this 
 point of our journey the good fortune to witness a singular 
 and ancient memorial of this very form of religious feeling or 
 aberration. 
 
 We had halted for a moment on the verge of the uplands to 
 enjoy the magnificent prospect before us. Below lay the wide 
 plain ; at a few miles' distance we saw the thick palm-groves of 
 'Eyoon, and what little of its towers and citadel the dense foliage 
 permitted to the eye. Far off on our right, that is, to the west, a 
 large dark patch marked the tillage and plantations which 
 girdle the town of Pass; other villages and hamlets too were 
 thickly scattered over the landscape. All along the ridge where
 
 Chap. VI] LOWER NEJED 25 1 
 
 we stood, and visible at various distances down the level, rose 
 the tall circular watch-towers of Kaseem. But immediately 
 before us stood a more remarkable monument, one that fixed 
 the attention and wonder even of our Arab companions them- 
 selves. 
 
 For hardly had we descended the narrow path where it winds 
 from ledge to ledge down to the bottom, when we saw before us 
 several huge stones, like enormous boulders, placed endwa3^s 
 perpendicularly on the soil, while some of them yet upheld 
 similar masses laid transversely over their summit. They were 
 arranged in a curve, once forming part, it would appear, of a 
 large circle, and many other like fragments lay rolled on the 
 ground at a moderate distance ; the number of those still 
 upright was, to speak by memory, eight or nine. Two, at about 
 ten or twelve feet apart one from the other, and resembling 
 huge gate-posts, yet bore their horizontal lintel, a long block 
 laid across them ; a few were deprived of their upper traverse, 
 the rest supported each its head-piece in defiance of time and 
 of the more destructive efforts of man. So nicely balanced did 
 one of these cross-bars appear, that in hope it might prove a 
 rocking-stone, I guided my camel right under it, and then 
 stretching up my riding-stick at arm's-length could just manage 
 to touch and push it, but it did not stir. Meanwhile the respec- 
 tive heights of camel, rider, and stick taken together would 
 place the stone in question full fifteen feet from the ground. 
 
 These blocks seem, by their quality, to have been hewed 
 from the neighbouring limestone cliff, and roughly shaped, but 
 present no further trace of art, no groove or cavity of sacrificial 
 import, much less anything intended for figure or ornament. 
 The people of the country attribute their erection to Darim, 
 and by his own hands, too, seeing that he was a giant : perhaps, 
 also, for some magical ceremony, since he was a magician. 
 Pointing towards Eass, our companions affirmed that a second 
 and similar stone circle, also of gigantic dimensions, existed 
 there ; and, lastly, they mentioned a third towards the south- 
 west, that is, in the direction of Henakeeyah on the confines of 
 Hejaz. 
 
 That the object of these strange constructions was in some 
 measure religious, seems to me hardly doubtful ; and if the
 
 252 JOURNEY FROM pA'YEL TO BEREYDAII [Chap. "VT 
 
 learned conjectures that would discover a planetary symbolism in 
 Stonehenge and Carnac have any real foundation, this Arabian 
 monument, erected in a land where the heavenly bodies are 
 known to have been once venerated by the inhabitants, may 
 make a like claim ; in fact, there is little difference between 
 the stone-wonder of Kaseem and that of Somersetshire, except 
 that the one is in Arabia, the other, though the more perfect, 
 in England. 
 
 It was now the hour of highest noon. Our band halted in 
 the shade of these huge pillars to rest after the fatigue of a long 
 march, and tell mythic fables of Diirim and his achievements, 
 while Foleyh graciously invited the whole party, great and 
 small, to supper at his dwelling in the neighbouring town of 
 'Eyoon. Needs not say that the invitation was gladly accepted ; 
 and our future host, with his two companions, set off at once 
 for the town, yet nearly two hours distant, to precede and 
 prepare for the rest of the company, whilst we moved a little 
 farther on, and took up temporary quarters and repose in 
 the shade of a fruit-laden palm-grove near at hand by the 
 side of a well, there to drink fresh water, and wait till 
 the heat of the day should pass and the time come for pur- 
 suing our route to 'Eyoon. While we thus pause, and, by the 
 gardener's permission, pick up ripe dates where they lie strewn 
 by the water-channel's edge, a few words on the natural history 
 and general character of the country around may not be 
 ill-timed : they will serve for an introduction to a land no less 
 new to my readers, perhaps, than it was to ourselves. 
 
 The Arabic word " Kaseem " denotes a sandy but fruitful 
 ground. Such is, in fact, the leading idea of this province. 
 The soil, red or yellow, appears indeed at first sight of little 
 promise. Yet, unlike most things, it is better than it seems, 
 and wherever irrigation reaches it bears a copious and varied 
 vegetation. Fortunately water is here to be met with every- 
 where, and at very little depth below the surface; six feet or 
 thereabouts was the farthest measure that I witnessed in any 
 well of Kaseem from the curb-stone to the water-line, often 
 it was much less. Mine was an autumn experience, when 
 moisture is at its minimum in this climate, but in winter I was 
 told that the wells fill to overflowing, and give rise to small
 
 Chap, at:] LOWER NEJED 2^3 
 
 lakes, some of which, though of course much shrunken in 
 dimensions, outlast the summer, and even find their place in 
 maps, though undeserving of the honour. The prevailing aspect 
 of the land is level, but capricious-seeming. Sand-hills and 
 slopes of fifty or sixty feet in height are not uncommon. These 
 slopes are for the most part clothed with little climbing copses 
 of Ithel and Ghada, while the broad-leaved Khurta, a plant much 
 employed here in tanning, the thorny Katad, much loved by 
 camels, a species of Tey'oon, as they call it, a tall herb with 
 many stems and a lanceolate leaf, somewhat like verbena in 
 shape and smell, abound in the lower regions. 
 
 Here, as in most parts of Arabia, the staple article of culti- 
 vation is the date-palm. Of this tree there are, however, many 
 widely-differing species, and Kaseem can boast of containing the 
 best known anywhere, the Khala§ of Hasa, of which more here- 
 after, alone excepted. The ripening season coincides with the 
 latter half of August and the first of September, and we had thus 
 an ample opportunity for testing the produce. Those who, like 
 most Europeans at home, only know the date from the dried 
 specimens of that fruit shown beneath a label in shop-windows, 
 can hardly imagine how delicious it is when eaten fresh and in 
 Central Arabia. Nor is it when newly-gathered heating, a defect 
 inherent to the preserved fruit everywhere ; nor does its richness, 
 however great, bring satiety : in short, it is an article of food 
 alike pleasant and healthy. Its cheapness in its native land 
 might astonish a Londoner. Enough of the very best dates 
 from the Bereydah gardens to fill a large Arab handkerchief, 
 about fifteen inches each way, almost to bursting, cost Barakat 
 and myself the moderate sum of three farthings. We hung it 
 up from the roof-beam of our apartment to preserve the luscious 
 fruit from the ants, and it continued to drip molten sweetness 
 into a sugary pool on the floor below for three days together, 
 before we had demolished the contents, though it figured at 
 every dinner and supper during that period. 
 
 Date-trees are in consequence the main source of landed 
 Arab wealth, and a small cluster of palms is often the entire 
 maintenance of a poor townsman or villager. The fruit partly 
 serves him and his household for aliment, in which it holds 
 about the same proportion that bread does in France or
 
 254 JOUHNEY FROM JIA'YEL TO BEREYDAII [Cuap. VI 
 
 Germany ; the rest, often in large quantities, is exported to 
 Yemen and Hejaz, in this respect less favoured by nature. To 
 cut down the date-trees of an enemy is a great achievement 
 in time of war, to plant with them a new piece of ground 
 the first sign of increasing prosperity. Mahometans seldom 
 fail to assert and to believe, that this tree can only be found 
 in the lands where Islam is professed, a blessing, in short, 
 never wanting to the " faithful," but reserved to them alone. 
 Were such indeed the case, many a fine plantation in Hasa and 
 'Omiin, not to mention some districts of Shomer, -would be con- 
 demned to wither. But He who makes His sun to rise alike on 
 the just and unjust, does not seem to have reserved the date- 
 tree for a special exception to that general beneficence ; nor, on 
 the other hand, have palm-groves sprung up in any great 
 abundance under the walls of Constantinople since Islam was 
 first established there in the days of Mahomet II. 
 
 All this is childish enough, yet worth mentioning for the 
 analogy it bears to the surmises elsewhere at times indulged in 
 on occasion of a good or bad year, an earthquake, a fire, the 
 practice of vaccination, and so forth. 
 
 Fruit trees of various kinds, generally resembling those of 
 Shomer, but more productive, are here also met with. Corn- 
 fields, maize, millet, vetches, and the like, surround the villages, 
 and afford a copious harvest, besides melons and pot-herbs. 
 But the extent of cultivation and tillage is limited by the 
 necessity of artificial irrigation. 
 
 Another produce of Kaseem, and it was like an old friend to 
 me after so many years of absence from India, is the cotton- 
 shrub, identical in species wdth that cidtivated in Guzerat and 
 Cutch. The inhabitants are well acquainted with its use, but 
 the quantity grown is too slender to serve for foreign exportation. 
 Under more propitious circumstances it might add much to the 
 "wealth of the country, for the climate and soil concur to give the 
 plant sufficient vigour, and its crop is not less copious here 
 than in India, nor did the quality seem to me anyhow inferior. 
 
 Here also, for the first time, I met with a narcotic plant very 
 common farther south, and gifted with curious qualities. Its 
 seeds, in which the deleterious principle seems chiefly to reside, 
 when pounded and administered iu a small dose, produce effects
 
 CnAP. VI] LOWER NEJEB 2fr 
 
 much like those ascribed to Sir Humphry Davy's laughino- 
 gas ; the patient dances, sings, and performs a thousand ex- 
 travagances, till after an hour of great excitement to himself 
 and amusement to the bystanders, he falls asleep, and on 
 awaking has lost all memory of what he did or said while under 
 the influence of the drug. To put a pinch of this powder into 
 the coffee of some unsuspecting individual is a not uncommon 
 joke, nor did I hear that it was ever followed by serious 
 consequences, though an over-quantity might perhaps be 
 dangerous. I myself tried it on two individuals, but in propor- 
 tions, if not absolutely homoeopathic, still sufficiently minute to 
 keep on the safe side of risk, and witnessed its operation, 
 laughable enough, but very harmless. The plant that bears 
 these berries hardly attains in Kaseem the height of .six inches 
 above the ground, but in 'Oman I have seen bushes of it three 
 or four feet in growth, and wide-spreading. The stems are 
 woody, and of a yellow tinge when barked ; the leaf of a dark- 
 green colour and pinnated, with about twenty leaflets on either 
 side ; the stalks smooth and shining ; the flowers are yellow, and 
 grow in tufts, the anthers numerous ; the fruit is a capsule, 
 stuffed with a greenish padding, in which lie embedded two or 
 three black seeds, in size and shape much like French beans ; 
 their taste sweetish, but with a peculiar opiate flavour ; the 
 smell heavy and almost sickly. While at Sohar in 'Oman, 
 where this plant abounds, I collected some specimens intended 
 for botanical recognition at home, but they with much else were 
 lost in my subsequent shipwreck, nor did I again meet with 
 this curiosity for the rest of my journey, then, indeed, near 
 its end. 
 
 Stramonium Datura, or thorn-apple, is not uncommon, and its 
 properties are well known, not for medicine, but for poison and 
 quackery. But I vainly looked for the Indian hemp or hasheesh 
 plant, nor did any one appear acquainted with it or its use, 
 whereat I much wondered. Coffee does not grow here ; it is im- 
 ported from Yemen, sometimes by the direct road of Wadi Nejran, 
 more commonly through Mecca. Articles of Egyptian and of 
 European manufacture are also brought hither from Mecca and 
 Djiddah; and the phosphorized amadou boxes of Pollak, from 
 Vienna, after passing through the sacred cities of Arabia, are to
 
 256 JOURNEY FROM JflAYEL TO BEREYDAIl [Chap. \T 
 
 be met with in the shops of Bereydah and 'Oneyzah. An im- 
 portant branch of commerce was once carried on with Damascus, 
 but of late years and under Wahhabee rule it has ceased to exist. 
 The route northward from Kaseem to Syria does not pass by 
 Djebel Shomer, but follows a straighter and easier line through 
 Kheybar, and thence up the ordinary pilgrim-way. 
 
 Much regarding the character of the inhabitants may be col- 
 lected from what I have already said ; in physical endowments 
 and stature they are somewdiat inferior to the men of Shomer, 
 and in certain respects to the inhabitants of Upper Nejed, 
 but they surpass either in commercial and industrial talents ; 
 they present, also, much of the gay and cheerful spirit of the 
 former, with not a little of the pertinacity and clannishness of 
 the latter. But to these qualities the inhabitants of Kaseem 
 add a dash of the cunning and restlessness of their Hejaz neigh- 
 bours, with whom they have a slight degree of outward con- 
 formity, besides a share, though barely perceptible at first sight, 
 of that selfish egotism which stamps the caste of Mecca and 
 Medinah, even more than that of Tennyson's "Vere de Vere." 
 But in spite of these unfavourable points, the Shomer type pre- 
 dominates decidedly in Kaseem, and the population in general 
 offers good elements capable of being worked out into better 
 things than can be hoped for under the present administration. 
 
 In religion, their long-continued intercourse with Mecca has 
 given them a tinge of modern Islamism, vainly sought for in 
 any other of the central provinces. The assimilating process had 
 commenced before the Wahhabee era, and probably dates from 
 the decline of the house of Darim, and the separation of Kaseem 
 from Nejed, about two centuries ago. At that epoch Mecca 
 and her territory seem to have regained some of their old pre- 
 dominance, and accumulated the wealth which a hundred years 
 later served for booty to lade the camels of Ebn-Sa'ood. Ac- 
 cordingly in Kaseem, and in Kaseem alone, we see mosques of 
 a date anterior to the end of the last century or the beginning 
 of this, adorned, too, with minarets, contrary to Wahhabee 
 usage, while an hereditary store of Coranic or traditional lore, 
 giving a very peculiar and unmistakable tone to the conversa- 
 tion and manners, not to mention public teaching and exhorta- 
 tion, may be noticed among the more learned and serious
 
 Chap. Y I] L O WER NEJED 2 0,-] 
 
 classes. This might be expected from the intimate territorial 
 and commercial connexions of Kaseem with the great centres 
 of Mahometan religious action. To the same proximity, local 
 or influential, we may safely ascribe the very low standard of 
 morality existing throughout the province, lower by much than in 
 the rest of Central Arabia, since gross vice is more frequent here 
 than in Shomer, and less covert than in Sedeyr and 'Aared. 
 The appalling profligacy of the Meccan citizens, high and low, 
 (I speak from certain knowledge,) is in fact sufficient to corrupt 
 steadier principled neighbours than the men of Kaseem, and 
 many a visitor of the Ca'abah may too justly apply to himself 
 the words of the Arabian Ovid, 'Omar-ebn-Abee-Rabee'ah, on 
 his return from Mecca, — 
 
 I set out in liopps of liglitening tlie burden of my sins, 
 
 And returned bringing with me a fresh load of transgressions. 
 
 But this is a subject which merits to be examined at leisure, 
 and I accordingly reserve its fuller discussion for our month's 
 halt at the Wahhabee capital. 
 
 The sun was already declining when we quitted our palm- 
 grove for the path leading to the town of 'Eyoon, where in the 
 meantime Foleyh had been killing his lambs and cooking his 
 rice for our entertainment; and considering that he had nearly 
 thirty famished guests to provide for, we could not in com- 
 mon fairness but allow him a reasonable interval for prepa- 
 ration. Moreover the number of our party was now augmented 
 by four beings of an entirel}^ new order. These were travelling 
 Darweeshes, two natives of Cabul, a third from Bokhara, and the 
 fourth a Beloochee, who had taken the route through Central 
 Arabia on their return from Mecca to their own respective 
 countries in the East, and here their path fell in with and 
 awhile coincided with our own. One of them, the Beloochee, 
 was an elderly man, of fifty or sixty, to judge by his white 
 beard and wrinkled features, thin, tall, and hardly knowing a 
 word of Arabic; his three companions were younger and 
 stouter ; all however bore evident marks of the long hardships 
 and great fatigue of their protracted journey made entirely 
 on foot, in such a climate and over such roads. Those from 
 Cabul and Bokhara declared that before they could hope to 
 regain their native hearths their pilgrimage would have lasted 
 
 VOL. I. s
 
 258 JOURXEY FROM TL'VYEL TO BEBEYDAII [Cu.vi-. VI 
 
 nearly two years, nor could it well take less after their manner 
 of travelling. They all wore the peculiar costume of their 
 profession and country — the high wool cap, the large upper rohe, 
 loose trowsers, and a wrapper cast across the shoulders. 
 
 They professed themselves, and I really believe them to 
 have been, Sonnee Mahometans, though this point did not 
 admit of absolute certainty, since many Shiya'ees from the same 
 regions assume Sonnee appearance and badges, in order thus 
 to ensure for themselves a better reception in their journey 
 through the coimtries in which the latter form of Maho- 
 metanism prevails, and especially at Mecca. Their sect, real 
 or assumed, was that of Ebn-Haneefah, whose teaching is 
 popularly adopted in Cabul, Balkh, Bokhara, and Beloochistan. 
 These Darweeshes lived on alms begged by the way, and had a 
 very poor and a not undevout appearance. 
 
 However, few of our band welcomed their arrival, or were at 
 all anxious to admit them into their company. The Darweesh 
 in inner Arabia is, in every respect, a fish out of water. The 
 Wahhabees in general detest them, and they are scarcely better 
 looked upon by the rest of the Arab population, in that they 
 are in their way of life the embodiment of a religious system 
 commonly regarded with indifference, often with aversion. The 
 new comers were accordingly greeted by our companions with 
 many sarcastic remarks and unfavourable comments ; till at last 
 Arab good-nature got the better, and the Darweeshes were ad- 
 mitted to the participation of such advantages and assistance as 
 travellers on the road can mutually afford or receive. 
 
 Passing oneself off for a wandering Darweesh, as some 
 European explorers have attempted to do in the East, is for 
 more reasons than one a very bad plan. It is unnecessary to 
 dilate on that moral aspect of the proceeding w^hich will always 
 first strike unsophisticated minds. To feign a religion which 
 the adventurer himself does not believe, to perform with 
 scrupulous exactitude, as of the highest and holiest import, 
 practices which he inwardly ridicules, and which he intends 
 on his return to hold up to the ridicule of others, to turn 
 for weeks and months together the most sacred and awful 
 bearings of man toward Piis Creator into a deliberate and 
 truthless mummery, not to mention other and yet darker
 
 CnAr. VI] LOWER NEJEI) 
 
 259 
 
 touches, — all this seems hardly compatible with the character 
 of a European gentleman, let alone that of a Christian. In 
 saying this, I must distinctly deprecate any thought of allusion 
 to particular cases, with the special circumstances of which, 
 palliative or justificative, I am unacquainted ; what I take here 
 is a merely abstract view, without reference to the dangers which 
 may seem to necessitate, or the motives which may be held to 
 warrant, such conduct. But to leave this theoretical ground 
 for fact, a second capital objection to the Darweesh disguise 
 is, that far from facilitating the acquisition of the objects in 
 view of which it may have been adopted, it is even a positive 
 hindrance. " Cest pis qu'un crime, c'est line hetlse.'''' This 
 demands a brief explanation. 
 
 The Darweeshes of the East are nowise isolated individuals ; 
 they belong to wide -spread and closely -linked associations, 
 classed each and all under the head of some larger and 
 authentic school of doctrine and usage, — the Kefaa'yee, the 
 Kaderee, the Bekree, the Shadelee, and so forth, known in 
 general by the names of their respective founders. What are 
 the tenets, what the discrepancies of these several schools I 
 cannot here stop to examine, — a long subject, and already 
 in part treated by Oriental scholars and historians, though 
 much might yet be added. Let it suffice that every school, 
 every brotherhood, has its own distinctive teaching and tech- 
 nicalities, its peculiar practices and observances, its several 
 saints and doctors, great men and founders. A Fran- 
 ciscan or a Carthusian, a Dominican or a Benedictine, are 
 not members of more thoroughly organized bodies, nor more 
 minutely discriminated from each other, than are the disciples 
 of each saint or founder in this Oriental reproduction of 
 Christian asceticism. Now let us imagine to ourselves a 
 Protestant traveller from Edinburgh or Stockholm desirous, 
 from whatever motive, to traverse Italy or Spain unrecognized, 
 and assuming the guise of a Benedictine or a Franciscan, in 
 order better to ensure his incognito in Catholic countries. It 
 is evident that the result would simply be to entangle himself 
 in superfluous difficulties, and double or treble the chances 
 of his own detection. And even should the ordinary crowd, 
 deceived by his garb and tonsure, take him now and then for 
 
 s 2
 
 26o JOURXEY FROy[ rjA-YEL TO BEREYDAII [CnAr. VI 
 
 wliat he acted, what wouhl be bis condition on faUino- in witli 
 any of his pretended order ? Above all, shoidd any shrewd 
 monk or friar, suspecting, as he certainly would, the stranger 
 brother's authenticit}^, pi}' him with a few of those family 
 questions and allusive phrases wliich constitute, so to speak, 
 the freemasonr}' of every close corporation ! Much better 
 would our imaginary north countryman have gone on his way 
 imfrocked and ungirdled, mixed with the every-day multitude, 
 and on a safer because a simpler line of personation. 
 
 In fjict, I do not believe that any who are rumoured to 
 have followed this plan in Mahometan countries really passed 
 undiscovered. Some instances of detection, and of detection 
 followed by fatal consequences, are recorded. Others, more 
 lucky, have returned to boast of the impunity with which they 
 had made a jest of Oriental religion, and to publish their 
 imaginary success. But I have strong reason to believe that 
 in no case has the result been exactly what was imagined. Of 
 one or two alleged Darwcesh-personifiers, I have heard much 
 from the natives of the very land that was the scene of their 
 fancied incognito, and was assured that they were everywhere 
 recognized, often tricked, and only saved from worse by the 
 prudent politeness and dissembling courtesy of those amongst 
 whom their good luck had cast them. Yet these were described 
 as men of no ordinary address, and long acquainted with the 
 East. And I can hence hardly imagine that others gifted with 
 less aptitude and of more suj^erficial ac(juirements can have 
 obtained better fortune in their disguise. 
 
 My readers may, not ludikely, think it strange that such 
 detection could take place without being immediately followed 
 by absolute exposure, and more too. Yet this is often the case, 
 and it is due to a curious feature in tlie Eastern character and 
 in the Islamitic mind. The Asiatic Mahometan, even where 
 he has the best reasons for doubt, is designedl}^ unsuspicious 
 with regard to any one who outwardly professes the same faith, 
 and he is so in accordance with a duty enjoined him in the 
 strongest terms b}'- the Goran. " Do not say to one who meets 
 you and salutes you, ' You are not a true believer,' " and 
 " ye true believers, avoid suspicion, for suspicion is often a 
 crime," are texts known to all, and generally obe3'ed. The
 
 CnAP. VI] LOWER XEJED 26 1 
 
 saying attributed by tradition to the Prophet, " He who casts on 
 a believer the slur of infidelity is himself an infidel," has the 
 same tendency. Hence it is admitted as a fixed principle 
 among all Mahometans, or almost all, that any one who is cir- 
 cumcised, and says " There is no God but God," is a legal 
 and authentic Muslim, and has full right to be considered such, 
 and to be treated accordingly with indulgence and respect. 
 Meanwhile his inward belief or unbelief does not change the 
 question ; of his thoughts no one has right to take cognizance. 
 " El batin I'lllah," " the interior belongs to God alone," is a 
 maxim admitted by all. And in consequence baptized Maho- 
 metans and fancy Darweeshes, even if but flimsy and traus- 
 parent performers, may enjoy the common benefit of outward 
 conformity, and be taken only for hypocrites or impostors, not 
 treated as criminals in law. 
 
 These latter remarks apply more especially to Mecca, the 
 pilgrim road, or other localities of the sea-coast and its 
 neighbourhood. But in the interior of Arabia matters may 
 easily take a less favourable turn. For the indulgence accorded 
 to impostors does not extend to spies, and in the last- men- 
 tioned country our supposed actor would be almost inevitably 
 regarded as such, and treated accordingly. Of this a melancholy 
 example has but lately been given, and the bones of an ill-fated 
 European traveller, whitening under seven years of sun and rain 
 in the neighbourhood of Derey'eeyab, yet bear witness to the 
 fact. 
 
 This unfortunate man, of whose fate I was, it seems, the first 
 to bring the unwelcome tidings to his friends in Europe, having 
 resolved to penetrate into Nejed, had determined on the route 
 leading from the eastern sea-coast to the interior, thus hoping 
 to reach and traverse the Wahhabee provinces. So far all was 
 well, and we shall see by the latter part of this work, where the 
 same line of journey is followed in an inverse sense, that it 
 was really the easiest and the nearest. But in an evil hoiu* 
 he bethought himself of assuming the garb of a Darweesh. 
 Thus accoutred he sailed, so was it reported to me, from the 
 isles of Bahreyn to the adjoining coast of Hasa, and proceeded 
 to Hofhoof, where Mohammed-es-Sedeyree then governed in 
 the name and authority of the Waldiabee monarch Fey.sul.
 
 262 JOURXFA' FROM JIA'YEL TO BEREYDAn [CnAr. YI 
 
 While our traveller was at Iloflioof, his conduct, which betrayed 
 the foreigner, and especially a prodigality of expenditure incon- 
 sistent with his mendicant character, drew on him first notice 
 and then suspicion. Before many days had elapsed, a courier 
 was despatched by the Sedeyree to Kiad, informing Feysul of the 
 arrival of a wolf in sheep's, or, more truly, poor fellow ! of a 
 sheep in wolf's clothing, within the fences of the Wahhabee 
 fold. With true Arab circumspection Feysul sent orders not 
 to annoy or thwart the soi-dlsant Darweesh, and carefully to 
 avoid whatever might lead him to suspect his own detection, 
 but above all to encourage him in his onward journey to the 
 capital. 
 
 After three or four weeks the traveller, little suspecting what 
 eyes were on him, left Hofhoof, passed Wadi Farook and the 
 Dahna to the verge of Djebel Toweyk, entered Wadi Soley', and 
 at last arrived in delusive security at Riad, where he presented 
 himself, half guest, half mendicant, at the palace gate of Feysul. 
 
 The chamberlain, 'Abd-el-'Azeez, received him according to 
 custom, and enquired the name and business of tlie new 
 comer. This latter stated that he was a wandering Darweesh, 
 bound on the Meccan pilgrimage. He was politely invited to 
 coffee and the other tokens of Eastern hospitality, while 'Abd- 
 el-'Azeez went and informed the old spider within that the fly 
 was now safely lodged in the very centre of the cobweb. 
 
 The unhappy traveller was enjoying his afternoon repose, in 
 full expectation of passing several days unmolested and even 
 honoured in the Nejdean capital, when word was brought him 
 from the king that "We Wahhabees stand in no need of 
 Darweeshes in our territory ; so let the stranger put himself 
 early to-morrow morning on his way for Mecca, where he will 
 assuredly be more at home than we can make him here." 
 This message was accompanied by a small sum of money, equi- 
 valent to about nine shillings, the ordinary alms distributed on 
 similar occasions at the royal gate, a camel for riding, and a 
 promise of guides to the next halt. 
 
 Eesistance was out of the question, and delay equally so. At 
 the appointed hour two of the palace attendants with " their 
 murdered man " set forth westward. Orders had been given to 
 conduct him by the road leading through the ruins of Derey'-
 
 Chap. VI] LOWER KEJED 263 
 
 eeyah, where tlie fiercest fanatics of the Wahhabee sect yet 
 reside. When the traveller and his Eiad guides were in the 
 neighbourhood of the place, the latter gave warning to the 
 villagers, and informed them that under the fictitious appearance 
 of a Darweesh was concealed a European spy. A few minutes 
 later the traveller was lying dead under the palm-trees of 
 Derey'eeyah, with several musket shots through the body. 
 These details I learnt in the localities themselves ; and seven 
 years, as I was told on my return to Europe, of silence, un- 
 broken by news or letter from the luckless explorer, make me 
 fear that, in the main, at least, it is " an o'er true tale." 
 
 Of another line of conduct, fortunately not uncommon, 
 towards those who may chance to be marked out for suspicion 
 in the Wahhabee provinces, I shall have occasion to speak 
 hereafter, — " Et quorum pars magna fui." But the above tale 
 reveals a third and a very serious inconvenience attached in these 
 lands to the Darweesh " dodge," even should it pass undetected. 
 It is true that in ordinary Mahometan countries a genuine 
 Darweesh, or one believed to be so, will almost always meet 
 with a certain degree of respect, sometimes of veneration, even 
 should the peculiarities of his attire or ways occasionally draw 
 upon him some slight ridicule ; his position is in a manner analo- 
 gous to that of a begging friar in a Catholic country, honoured 
 in spite of a passing smile or a good-humoured though critical 
 jest. But among Wahhabees his condition is totally different : 
 here a Darweesh, Sonnee be he or Shiya'ee, is an object of 
 positive aversion, and passes not only for a heretic, but the ver}'' 
 quintessence of heresy and abomination. It is the begging friar 
 with frock and rosary amid a crowd of zealous No-Popery 
 townsmen. " The fool went to the tank to wash his feet and 
 soiled them with mud," says a Tamul proverb, which could 
 hardly have a fitter application. 
 
 In a memoir on the Euins of Nakeb-el-Hejfir, communicated 
 by Captain Welsted nearly thirty years since to the liondon 
 Geographical Society, the sailor-like good sense and honesty of 
 that intrepid officer led him to suggest a better and a safer, if 
 not more honourable method. The profession of a merchant or 
 of a physician is, he justly remarks, the most likely to shelter 
 a traveller from suspicion, and at the same time afford him a
 
 264 JOURNEY FROM HA YEL TO liEREYDAH [Chap. VI 
 
 plausible and respectable pretext for scientific researches, thus 
 enabling him to attain a creditable end without means which 
 I must venture to hold questionable. When I set out on my 
 journey I had not seen the gallant captain's publication. But 
 many months after my return home it fell into my hands, 
 and I was glad to find the very plan which experience no less 
 than education had already induced me to adopt, approved and 
 confirmed by so high an authority. 
 
 But before returning to the course of my oft-interrupted 
 narrative, I must complete these hiuts, not, I trust wholly un- 
 profitable to Eastern travellers, by noticing a fact curious indeed, 
 yet certain. It is often supposed that the Arabs have an ex- 
 treme aversion to Christians, as such, and that from this feeling 
 arise the principal dangers or difficulties of the traveller's way 
 in their countr}'. This appears to me a mistake. To be known 
 for a Christian in Arabia (Mecca and its appurtenances excepted 
 in a certain degree and under certain coincidences), occasions 
 no danger, hardly even inconvenience. Where, then, lies the 
 source of peril ? for peril there undoubtedly is in an Arabian 
 tour. It consists mainly in the chance of being recognized for 
 a European, or agent of Europeans ; and this might probably 
 enough be fatal ; and at the best would assuredly cut short the 
 traveller's explorations by a premature and compulsory return 
 to the frontiers, closely watched too on his way. Now, though 
 the qualities of Christian and of European may be in fact united 
 in the wayfarer's person, they are by no means necessarily con- 
 joined in Arab minds, and the risk alluded to is attached to the 
 latter title, not to the former. Hence if the wayfarer can 
 manage to pass muster as an Asiatic, his Christianity will not 
 of itself bring him into any particular jeopardy. Of course he 
 would do well, particularly while in fanatical districts, in some 
 parts of the Wahhabee empire for instance, not to make a 
 parade of his religion before men to whom it is unavoidably 
 distasteful, nor obtrude on the public practices and opinions, 
 laudable indeed, but here out of season. Let him keep his re- 
 ligion to himself, without simulating that of others, and quietly 
 go on his way, sure that no individual of any consequence will 
 be so impolite as to ask him questions about his faith and sect. 
 " Ed-deen I'lllah," " Religion concerns God alone," is the
 
 Chap. VI] L O WER NEJED 26^ 
 
 saying and the rule among all Arabs of any pretence to self- 
 respect and polite education. But to any ill-bred fellow who 
 may have the impertinence to enquire into the matter, let him 
 coldly answer, •'' Kullon lahu medheb," " Every man has his 
 own way of thinking," and he will find, as we did more than 
 once, that the bystanders will unanimously applaud his discretion, 
 and impose silence on his interlocutor. 
 
 No one is bound to " wear his heart upon his sleeve for daws 
 to peck at ;" no, nor his creed neither. There are indeed occa- 
 sions when open and positive profession of belief becomes a duty, 
 and in time of war a soldier should not lay aside his uniform. 
 But these cases have nothing in common with ordinary every-day 
 life, and seldom occur to a merchant or a doctor journeying amid 
 individuals perfectly indifferent to his belief, so his wares be 
 good and his drugs efficacious. Again, no one is bound to 
 insult gratuitously those around him by words and deeds which 
 he knows to be offensive to them, the more so when no good 
 can reasonably be anticipated from so doing. True, to bow 
 down in the house of Rimmon was an exceptional permission, 
 given under very delicate circumstances, and not perhaps in- 
 tended for general imitation. But yet more seldom can there 
 be either propriety or advantage in cursing and abusing Rimmon 
 in his own house, with the evident risk of throwing his wor- 
 shippers into a very unprofitable and perilous hubbub. And 
 though a Wahhabee does not think himself bound to beat or 
 kill a stranger merely because he is a Christian, yet he will 
 be very likely, if not sure, to do botTi one and the other if 
 he fancies a stranger to be a proselytizer, and this cannot fail 
 to be his first idea should the new-comer set himself in open 
 antagonism to the belief of the land, or make an ostentatious 
 display of his own. To sum up, a Christian and an Englishman 
 may well traverse Arabia, and even Nejed, without being ever 
 obliged to compromise either his religion or his honour ; but 
 for this, perfect acquaintance with Eastern customs and with at 
 least one Eastern language, together with much circumspection 
 and guardedness in word and deed, are undeniably required. A 
 serious purpose, a stout heart, a good conscience, and the pro- 
 tection of Him in whose hands are the ends of the earth, will 
 do the rest.
 
 266 JOURNEY FROM JLV YEL TO REREYDAII [CnAP. \\ 
 
 I do not say tliiit nfti-r all no dangers or obstacles may 
 possibly intervene ; tbe clearest sky may be suddenly overcast, 
 and one Ijad hour rarely fails from among the twenty-four that 
 bring up night and da}^ Yet taking everything into account, I 
 do not hesitate to affirm that the plan just indicated, the same 
 which we ourselves followed, is assuredly the best plan, perhaps 
 the only, and offers at least a much fairer chance of success 
 than any other. 
 
 A concluding remark on this subject, and I have done. 
 I stated that the religion of a given stranger in these countries, 
 though an avowed Christian, will not in itself and of itself com- 
 promise either his personal safety or the scope of his journey. 
 Now few in Central Arabia have a clear idea of what Christians 
 are : some suppose them to be simply a peculiar sect of Maho- 
 metans, others hold them for infidels ; some call them brothers, 
 others stigmatize them as misbelievers. But the common 
 feeling towards them is not unfavourable, except among the 
 strictly Wahhabee population, and even there they are better 
 looked on than Jews, who have a most unfortunate reputation 
 throughout Arabia. Nor is it rare to find among the Wah- 
 habees men of learning and knowledge, as learning and know- 
 ledge here go, who, in blisi-.ful ignorance of the world elsewhere, 
 seriously believe that the whole universe, with all it contains 
 of men and genii, has long since embraced the jNIahometan 
 faith, and consequently regard Christianity with a merely his- 
 torical aversion, like what a theological professor might feel for 
 the Assyrian or Greek mythology, nor dream that Christians 
 yet exist to be objects of a more present hatred. 
 
 Amid this confused twilight of ethnological and religious 
 statistics, my readers will not be surprised to learn that we 
 ourselves were not unfrequently taken for INIahometans, though 
 our neglect of prayer and ablutions proclaimed our laxity ; 
 and we were often classed by public opinion with Turks, 
 Curdes, and Albanians, whose negligence in these matters has 
 acquired them an undesirable celebrity even in the very heart 
 of Arabia. My Nejdean friends went a step farther, and made 
 of my blue eyes and chestnut hair an argument for setting 
 me down for a runaway officer of the Ottoman army, who, 
 having committed some great breach of discipline, had sought
 
 CnAr. VI] LOWER NEJED n(y^ 
 
 within the Arab territory a shelter from military chastisement. 
 Others, having heard of the medical schools in Egypt, and 
 knowing of no other, assigned me an Egyptian origin ; while 
 some made me retrograde farther west to Morocco, and since 
 all the inhabitants of that land are undoubted magicians, I 
 thus became a magician in spite of myself. Now under each 
 and all of these hypotheses I was a Mahometan. Then came the 
 only 'questions that Arab courtesy permits of addressing to a 
 stranger, namely, whence I came? whither I was going? and 
 what was my business or occupation ? And we woidd naturally 
 reply that we came from Syria, and were bound eastward. 
 Some, I have already said, suppose Syria, in common with 
 the rest of the world, to be tenanted by Mahometans alone, 
 and in consequence gave us credit for being so too. Others, 
 going to the opposite extreme, were under the idea that all the 
 Mahometans of Syria had been lately exterminated by the 
 Christians, a cart-before-the-horse version of the massacres of 
 1860, but very current in Nejed, and then we became Chris- 
 tians again. Besides, Arab tradition holds that the "medical 
 art is the exclusive heritage of Christian nations, themselves 
 the legatees of Greece, an opinion to which I have before 
 alluded. On this score, too, we were classed among the followers 
 of the Son of Mary. Lastly, a much greater number, even in 
 the Wahhabee provinces, neither conjectured nor cared about 
 it, and contented themselves with ascertaining our position in 
 the visible world, holding our destined place in the invisible to 
 be no concern of theirs. Once, and once only, did our title of 
 Christians become a cause of accusation and a source of real 
 danger. How that was brought about, and by what means 
 Providence averted the peril, succeeding pages will show. 
 Much, too, that accompanied our further travels in Nejed, 
 Hasja, and 'Oman, will help to render clearer this obscure and 
 intricate topic. Nor must we longer defer the supper and the 
 hospitable invitations of Foleyh, who stands there at the town 
 gate awaiting his ravenous guests, now more numerous by the 
 addition of the four Darweeshes, the innocent cause of this 
 interminable digression. 
 
 We were now under the outer walls of 'Eyoon, a good-sized 
 town containing: at least ten thousand inhabitants accordinu' to
 
 268 JOUJiNEY FliOM HA'YEL TO BEIiEYBAIl [Chap. VI 
 
 my rough computation. Its central site, at the very junc- 
 ture of the great northern and western lines of communi- 
 cation, renders it important, and for this reason it is carefully 
 fortified, that is, for the country, and furnished with watch- 
 towers, much resembling manufacturing chimneys in size and 
 shape, besides a massive and capacious citadel. JNIy readers 
 may anticipate analogous, though proportionate, features in 
 most other towns and villages of this province. We halted 
 close by the northern portal, and here deposited our baggage, 
 over which two of the band remained to keep guard in our 
 absence, while we accompanied Foleyh to his dwelling. 
 
 We passed a large tank, more tbnn half full of standing 
 water, near the centre of the town, and skirted for some minutes 
 the wall of the citadel, which appears to be of ancient date. 
 At last we reached a side-door in the street, and hence were 
 ushered into a large and well-planted garden, full of the 
 loftiest palm-trees that I have ever seen. Here a square 
 arbour, capable of containing forty men, had been erected 
 under the shade of the palms; it was on this occasion well 
 spread with mats and carpets, upon which the guests arranged 
 themselves according to rank and condition. Meanwhile Foleyh, 
 who had already exchanged the dust-soiled clothes of the 
 journey for clean shirts (it is the fashion here to multiply this 
 important article of raiment by putting on a second over the 
 first and a third over the second), and a magnificent upper 
 robe of scarlet cloth, looking a very " pretty " man, stood at 
 the entrance to introduce the guests and to superintend tlie 
 solemn distribution of coffee by the youngsters of the famil3% 
 In due time the supper itself arrived, two monstrous piles of rice 
 and mutton, with some hashed vegetables, spices, and the rest, 
 and dates for a side dish. Never were platters more speedily 
 lightened of their contents, and loud praises were by all 
 present bestowed on the cook and on his master. The sun had 
 set, and as we were to start on our way during the night, it 
 was impossible for us to remain longer within the town, whose 
 gates were strictly closed during the hours of darkness. So we 
 overwhelmed Foleyh with thanks and good wishes, and then 
 returned to our baggage, while those who had been on guard 
 in our absence now scampered off to the scene of hospitality,
 
 CnAP. YI] LOWER NEJEB 269 
 
 to get what share of the meal the jaws of their predecessors 
 might not have devoured. It must have been a very scanty- 
 portion. 
 
 Between the town walls and the sand-hills close by was a 
 sheltered spot, where we took about four hours of sleep, till 
 the waning moon rose. Then all were once more in movement, 
 camels gnarling, men loading, and the doctor and his apprentice 
 mounting their beasts, all for Bereydah. But that town was 
 distant, and when day broke at last there was yet a long road 
 to traverse. This now lay amid mounds and valleys, thick 
 with the vegetation already described ; and somewhat after sun- 
 rise we took a full hour to pass the gardens and fields of Ghat, 
 a straggling village, where a dozen wells supplied the valley 
 with copious irrigation. On the adjoining hillocks — I may not 
 call them heights — was continued the series of watch-towers, 
 corresponding with others farther off that belonged to villages 
 seen by glimpses in the landscape ; I heard, but soon forgot, 
 their names. Inability to note down at once similar details was 
 a great annoyance to me ; but the sight of a pencil and pocket- 
 book would have been just then particularly out of place, aad 
 I was obliged to trust to memory, which on this, as on too many 
 other occasioDS, played me false. My notes, too, taken when 
 circumstances permitted, were lost in part in the shipwreck 
 off Barka ; others, jotted down on loose scraps of paper, dis- 
 appeared, I know not how, while I was in the dreary delirium 
 of typhoid fever at Aboo-Shahr and Basrah. Surely my reader 
 must be very hard to satisfy, if this catalogue of mishaps does 
 not suffice him by way of apology for the defectiveness of my 
 broken narrative. 
 
 We were now drawing on towards the scene of the great 
 conflict which was ultimately to decide the destinies of 'Oneyzah 
 and Kaseem, and some apprehension of falling in with foraging 
 parties prevailed throughout our band. From Bedouins, indeed, 
 here and henceforth, travellers have nothing to apprehend ; they 
 are few in number and feeble in force. But a detachment from 
 either of the hostile armies might make exercise of military 
 licence to the detriment of our baggage or persons. We had just 
 left behind us the last plantations of Ghat, and all thoughts and 
 tongues were busy with fear and hope, when the negro horse-
 
 270 JOURNEY FROM HA' YEL TO BEREYDAII [Chap. VI 
 
 dealer, Ghorra, thought the opportunity for a practical joke 
 too good to be neglected. Accordingly, after absenting himself 
 for a few minutes, he rode suddenly up to the travellers with a 
 terrified look, and informed tbem that he had just seen a 
 large squadron of lancers and musketeers making right for 
 our road. For several minutes the black liar enjoyed the 
 confusion, alarm, preparations, and bustle produced by his 
 news. The Meccans nearly fainted, and the women cried 
 lamentably. But at last some bolder spirits, who had ventured 
 a reconnoitre in the direction of the supposed enemy, returned 
 with the consoling intelligence that it was all an invention. 
 Auger then took the place of cowardice, and Grhorra hardly 
 escaped rough usage for his gratuitous alarm. 
 
 A march of ten to twelve hours had tired us, and the weather 
 was oppressively close, no uncommon phenomenon in Kaseem, 
 where, what between low sandy ground and a southerly latitude, 
 the climate is much more sultry than in Djebel Shomer or the 
 mountains of Toweyk. So that we were very glad when the 
 ascent of a slight eminence discovered to our gaze the long- 
 desired town of Bereydah, whose oval fortifications rose to 
 view amid an open and cultivated plain. It was a view for 
 Turner. An enormous watch-tower, near a hundred feet in 
 height, a minaret of scarce inferior proportions, a mass of 
 bastioned walls, such as we had not yet witnessed in Arabia, 
 green groves around and thickets of Ithel, all under the dreamy 
 glare of noon, offered a striking spectacle, far surpassing what- 
 ever I had anticipated, and announced populousness and wealth. 
 We longed to enter those gates and walk those streets. But 
 we had yet a delay to wear out. At about a league from the 
 town our guide Mubarek led us off the main road to the 
 riglit, up and down several little but steep sand-hills and hot 
 declivities, till about two in the afternoon, half roasted with the 
 sun, we reached, never so weary, his garden gate. 
 
 Here, in a snug country-house, much resembling in size and 
 construction many a peasant's dwelling in Southern Italy, 
 lived Mubarek, with his family, brothers, and other relatives. 
 Around was a pretty garden, with a central tank full of cool 
 clear water from the adjoining well, and bordered by cotton 
 plants, maize, and flowering shrubs, with date-trees at intervals ;
 
 CnAP. VI] LOWER NEJED 27 I 
 
 close by the tank stood an arbour of open trellis-work, but 
 vine-roofed from the sun, just the place for dusty heat-wearied 
 travellers to repose in and enjoy the freshness of the neigh- 
 bouring pool. Here our host, without imitating the bad habit 
 of the Druses in Lebanon (who begin by asking their guest 
 what he would like, instead of anticipating his modesty), at 
 once brought mats and cushions of country fashion, and when 
 we had a moment taken breath, half reclining under the 
 chequered shade, set before us a dainty dish of fresh dates, the 
 produce of his orchard. Before long the members of the family 
 who chanced to be at home, old and young, appeared one after 
 another to pay their welcome, the women excepted, in whom 
 such forwardness would be a breach of etiquette. For although 
 the absolute seclusion which, it is well known, imprisons, 
 physically and morally, the fair sex in orthodox Mahometan 
 lands, is seldom if ever observed in Arabia, where women bear 
 a great part in active life and domestic cares, keep shops, buy, 
 sell, and sometimes even go to war ; yet there is not the easy and 
 straightforward mixture of society that distinguishes Europe; 
 and the female portion of the household, thqugh not absolutely 
 in the dark, is yet under a kind of shade. Thus women, young 
 or old (I mean, of course, elderly), never sit at table with the 
 men of the family, rarely join in their pleasure meetings, and 
 above all may not in seemliness thrust themselves forward to 
 welcome guests or strangers and converse with them. However, 
 if one remains long enough to become in a manner part of the 
 family, the ladies too end by growing more sociable, will now 
 and then join in chat, and take interest in what is going on. 
 Of course, in the dwellings of the poor women and men all 
 live together, and little separation is or can be kept up ; 
 a narrow home going far to bring its tenants on a level. But 
 in richer families and chieftains' houses the women are bound 
 to occupy a separate quarter, whence, however, curiosity or 
 business often draws them forth into the apartments of the 
 other sex. Nor is the covering veil, though generally worn, 
 nearly so strict an obligation as in Syria or Egypt. It is matter 
 of custom and of creed, and readily dispensed with when occa- 
 sion requires. Indeed, in some parts of Arabia, 'Oman for 
 instance, and its provinces, it is barely in use. Nor are Bedouin
 
 272 JOURXEY FROM IIAYEL TO BEIiEYDAII [Chap. YI 
 
 ■women apt to impose on their grimed and wizened faces a 
 concealment that might on the whole be for their advantage. 
 Among the rigid Wahhabees alone the veil and the harem acquire 
 something like exactness, and there Arab liberty consents to 
 inflict on itself something of the servitude of Islam. 
 
 Our afternoon and evening passed very pleasantly with the 
 INlubareks, great and small, and a night's repose in the arbour — 
 for the climate at this time of the year did not require the closer 
 slielter of the house roof — put us in condition to continue our way 
 to Bereydah. The suburb of " Doweyrah," " the small knot of 
 houses," where we now were, is situated about a league or rather 
 less from the town, but of the latter we could from hence see 
 nothing, so thick grew the Ithel on the intervening sand-ridges. 
 Our present intention was to make a very short stay at Bereydah, 
 and thence hasten on without delay to the interior and reach 
 the capital of Nejed, where a longer sojourn would evidently be 
 desirable. But man proposes and God disposes, and we had 
 to learn by experience that, after all imaginable precautions and 
 devices, the entrance of the Wahhabee stronghold was not so 
 easy a matter, nor to be had for the first asking.
 
 273 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 Bereydah 
 
 I cauiiot like, dread sire, your royal cave; 
 
 Because I see, by all the tracks about, 
 
 Full many a beast goes in, but none come out. — Pope 
 
 A STKANGE SIGHT ON THE WAY TO BEREYDAH — INDO-PERSIAN PILGRIM 
 ENCAMPMENT — FEYSUL's CONDUCT TOWARDS THE PILGRIMS — ABOO- 
 BOTEYN, HIS EXTORTIONS AND FLIGHT — THE CARAVAN AT BEREYDAH 
 — MOHANNA — HIS CHARACTER, POLICY — HIS TREACHERY TO A PERSIAN 
 CARAVAN — HIS EXTORTIONS — OUR NEW LODGINGS — DIFFICULTY OF PRO- 
 CEEDING FURTHER — VISIT TO MOHANNA — HIS CASTLE — ITS ARCHITEC- 
 TURE — MOHANNA'S K'HAWAH — NEJED AND WAHHABEES — OUR EMBAR- 
 RASSMENT — MEETING WITH ABOO-'eYSA — HIS FAMILY, PAST HISTORY, 
 AND ADVENTURES — HIS POSITION UNDER THE RIAD GOVERNMENT — HIS 
 CHARACTER — HE OFFERS TO CONDUCT US TO RIAD — A DAY AT BEREY- 
 DAH — VISIT TO THE PERSIAN ENCAMPMENT — PERSIANS AND TURKS 
 
 MARKET-PLACE — CENTRAL SQUARE — MOSQUE— WANT OF INSCRIPTIONS 
 — SALT — CHARACTER OF THE TOWN AND POPULATION — THE HOUSES — 
 CONVERSATION AT BEREYDAH — WALK IN THE GARDENS — ARAB HY- 
 DRAULIC MACHINES — MILITARY OPERATIONS — THE NEJDEAN CAMP — A 
 SKIRMISH WITH THE MEN OF 'ONEYZAH — PART BORNE BY THE BEREY- 
 DAH TOWNSMEN — EVENING — ARAB AND PERSIAN VOICES — ARAB READ- 
 ING — LANGUAGE SPOKEN IN KASEEM — ORIGIN OF ARAB GRAMMAR — 
 NIGHT AND MORNING — VILLAGES OF THE NEIGHBOURHOOD — INFLUENCE 
 OF THE WAHHABEE GOVERNMENT ON COMMERCE, AGRICULTURE, AND 
 CATTLE BREEDING — GENERAL REACTION — CHANGE EFFECTED BY THE 
 SA'oOD dynasty in central ARABIA — COMPARISON BETWEEN WAHHA- 
 BEES AND OSMANLIS — VISIT TO THE SUBURBS OF 'oNEYZAH — MOHAM- 
 MED-'aLEE-ESH-SHIRAZEE — HIS CORRESPONDENCE WITH FEYSUL — HIS 
 MOTIVES FOR A JOURNEY TO RIAD — HE AGREES WITH ABOO-'eYSA — HIS 
 HISTORY AND CHARACTER — HABBASH AND THE COFFEE-MORTAR — WE 
 LEAVE BEREYDAH. 
 
 The morning was bright, yet cool, when we got free of the 
 maze of Ithel and sand-slopes, and entered the lanes that 
 traverse the garden circle round the town, in all quiet and 
 security. But our approach to Bereydah was destined to 
 furnish us an unexpected and undesired surprise, though 
 indeed less startling than that which discomposed our first 
 arrival at Hfi'yel. We had just passed a well near the angle of 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 BERF.YDAH [Chai'. VII 
 
 a garden wall, when we saw a man whose garb and appearance 
 at once bespoke him for a muleteer of the north, watering a 
 couple of mules at the pool hard by. Barakat and I stared 
 with astonishment, and could hardly believe our eyes. For 
 since the day we left the 'Ashja'yeeyah of Gaza for the south- 
 eastern desert, we had never met with a like dress nor with 
 these animals ; and how then came they here ? But there was 
 no mistaking either the man or the beasts, and as the muleteer 
 raised his head to look at the passers-by, he also started at our 
 sight, and evidently recognized in us something that took him 
 unawares. But the riddle was soon solved. A few paces 
 farther on, our way opened out on the great plain that lies 
 immediately under the town walls to the north. This space 
 was now covered with tents and throng-ed with men of foreign 
 dress and bearing, mixed with Arabs of town and desert, women 
 and children, talking and quarrelling, buying and selling, going 
 and coming ; everywhere baskets full of dates and vegetables, 
 platters bearing eggs and butter, milk and whey, meat himg 
 on poles, bundles of firewood, &c. &c., stood ranged in rows, 
 horsemen and camel-men were riding about between groups 
 seated round fires or reclining against their baggage ; in the 
 midst of all this medley a gilt ball surmounted a large white 
 pavilion of a make that T had not seen since last I left India 
 some eleven years before, and numerous smaller tents of striped 
 cloth and certainly not of Ai'ab fashion clustered around ; a 
 lively scene, especially of a clear morning, but requiring some 
 explanation from its exotic and non-Arab character. 
 
 These tents belonged to the great caravan of Persian pilgrims, 
 on their return from Medinah to Meshid 'Alee by the road of 
 Kaseem, and hence all this imusual concourse and bustle. Tiij- 
 Djehan, the relict of 'Asaph Dowlah, a name familar to Anglo- 
 Bengalee readers, was the principal personage in the band, and 
 hers was the gilt-topped tent. Several Indians of Lucknow and 
 Delhi, relatives or attendants, were in her train, and to her 
 litter appertained the mules and muleteer whose apparition had 
 so amazed us. The rest of the caravan was composed partly of 
 Persians proper, natives of Shiraz, Ispahan, and other Iranian 
 towns, and partly of a still larger number belonging to the 
 hybrid race that forms the Shiya'ee population of Meshid 'Alee,
 
 Chap. VII] ARABS AND PUBSIANS 275 
 
 Kerbelab, and Bagdad. All of course were of the sect just 
 mentioned, though very diverse in national origin. Along with 
 them, and belonging to the first or genuine Persian category, 
 was a personage scarcely less important than the Begum her- 
 self, namely, Mohammed-' Alee-esh-Shirazee, native of Shiraz, 
 as his denomination implies, and representative of the Persian 
 government at Meshid 'Alee, actually commissioned by orders 
 from Teheran with the unenviable office of director or head- 
 man in this laborious and not over-safe pilgrimage. With him 
 and with his retinue we shall soon become very intimately 
 acquainted. The total of the caravan amounted to two hundred, 
 or rather more. 
 
 They had assembled at Eiad in Nejed, where they had 
 arrived, some from the northerly rendezvous of Meshid 'Alee, 
 and others from that of Aboo-Shahr (often corrupted on maps 
 into Bushire), whence they had crossed the Persian Grulf to the 
 port of 'Ojeyr, and thus passed on to Hof hoof and Riad. Here 
 Feysul, after exacting the exorbitant sum which Wahhabee 
 orthodoxy claims from Shiya'ee heretics as the price of permission 
 to visit the sacred city and the tomb of the Prophet, had assigned 
 them for guide and leader one 'Abd-el-'Azeez-Aboo-Boteyn, a 
 Nejdean of the Nejdeans, who was to conduct and plunder them 
 in the name of God and the true faith all the rest of the way 
 to Mecca, and back again. 
 
 I mentioned in a former chapter the negotiations carried on 
 by Telal with the Persian government to obtain the passage of 
 this annual caravan through his own dominions, and I related 
 his partial success and liberal conduct towards the few whose 
 good luck led them by the northern route through Ha'yel. But 
 the way by Central Nejed is more direct, and for that reason 
 preferable for the Persians, on condition of having tolerable 
 immunity from danger and pillage. Thus, in order to spare the 
 expenses and fatigues of a comparatively roundabout track, 
 though after all the difference between the two roads does not 
 exceed six or eight days, they had consented to compound for 
 the paj^ment of a fixed sum to the Wahhabee autocrat, and to 
 rely on his honour for a safe passage and needful assistance. 
 
 Fey?ul, overjoyed to draw this additional silver stream to his 
 mill, waived the motives of bigotry and national hatred which 
 
 T 2
 
 276 BEREYDAIl [Chap. VII 
 
 had more than once led his predecessors to refuse the most 
 advantageous offers when made by heretics. Indeed, " for a 
 consideration " . he would probably have furnished the Devil 
 himself with passport, camel, and guide. Still he felt himself 
 bound in conscience to make the unbelievers pay roundly for 
 the negative good treatment which he thus consented to afford, 
 and took his measures accordingly. 
 
 Forty gold tomans were fixed as the claim of the Wahhabee 
 treasury on every Persian pilgrim for his passage through Riad, 
 and forty more for a safe-conduct through the rest of the 
 empire ; eighty in all. On his side Fey?ul was to furnish from 
 among his own men a guide invested with absolute power in 
 whatever regarded the special arrangement of the march, and 
 we may without any breach of charity suppose that the king's 
 servant could not do less than imitate the good example of his 
 master in fleecing the heretics to the best of his ability. Every 
 local governor on the way would naturally enough take the hint, 
 and strive not to let the "enemies of God " (for this is the sole 
 title given by Wahhabees to all except themselves) go by with- 
 out spoiling them more or less. So that, all counted up, the 
 legal and necessary dues levied on every Persian Shiya'ee 
 while traversing Central Arabia and under Wahhabee guidance 
 and protection, amovmted, I found, to about one hundred and 
 fifty gold tomans, equalling nearly sixty pounds sterling English, 
 no light expenditure for a Persian, and no despicable gain to an 
 Arab. 
 
 But besides this, seeming casualties might occur, helping to 
 shear the wool still closer, nay, sometimes taking off the skin 
 altogether. Such was the case with the hapless Persians at the 
 very time of our meeting. Their conductor, Aboo-Boteyn, had 
 taken from them whatever custom entitled him to by way of 
 advanced payment, and charged the disconsolate Taj-Djehan 
 more especially at the rate of her supposed wealth rather than 
 of any fixed precedent. But he had done more, and by dint of 
 threats and bullying of all descriptions, including blows admin- 
 istered by his orders to the Persian commissioner, Mohammed 
 'Alee himself, and in his own tent, had managed to get coimtless 
 extras out of those entrusted to his guidance, till he had filled 
 his saddle-bags with tomans, and loaded his camels with plunder.
 
 Chap. VII] AliABS AND PERSIAKS 277 
 
 But on his return along with his injured 'proteges from Medinah, 
 whither he had led them to complete their devotion and his 
 profit, he began to fear lest they should lodge a complaint 
 against him at Bereydah, which lay on their road, the more 
 so that Mohammed, Feysul's third son, was now there in 
 person, and that he should ultimately be forced to refund his 
 ill-gotten wealth, not, indeed, to its Shiya'ee owners, for of that 
 there was little danger under Wahhabee arbitration, but to the 
 Eiad treasury ; while he himself might come in for an awkward 
 impeachment for embezzling what in Fey^ul's eyes should be 
 for the common benefit of the " faithful." Probably his fears 
 were not wholly groundless ; but at the worst a few presents 
 conveyed in time to Mohanna, the governor of Bereydah, to 
 Mohammed, and to his royal father, would assuredly have 
 " made all well again." But to this sacrifice Aboo-Boteyn's 
 grasping avarice could not consent, and in compliance with its 
 dictates he resolved on the very worst course possible for bim, 
 namely, that of anticipating investigation by flight. So when 
 the pilgrims arrived at 'Eyoon, the same village where we 
 supped with Foleyb two nights since, 'Aboo-Boteyn absconded, 
 money and all, and took refuge in the rebel town of 'Oneyzah, 
 leaving Taj-Djehan, Mohammed Alee, and the rest, to find their 
 way out of Arabia by themselves as best they might. 
 
 " For a consideration," the good folks of 'Eyoon guided the 
 distracted pilgrims to Bereydah. But misfortunes " come not 
 single spies ;" and the Persians had now to exemplify a cer- 
 tain ill-omened proverb touching the frying-pan and the fire. 
 At Bereydah they had fallen into the clutches of a genuine 
 Wahhabee, and lay at the tender mercies of the most wicked 
 and heartless of all Nejdean governors, Mohanna-el-'Anezee. 
 
 This was that same Mohanna whom 'Abd-Allah, the son of 
 Fey^ul, had some years before nominated vice-ruler of Bere3^dah 
 and Kaseem, after the massacre of the 'Aley'yan family. Mo- 
 hanna had in every respect come up to his master's desires, and 
 followed in his footsteps. Every imaginable means was em- 
 ployed by this shrewd and bad man to break the spirit of 
 Kaseem, to exhaust its resources, and to extinguish the last 
 sparks of liberty. All the Wahhabee regulations against silk, 
 tobacco, ornaments, and so forth, were rigorously enforced, to
 
 27 8 BEREYDAH [Chap. VII 
 
 the ruin of commerce, while the richest merchants and busiest 
 traders were, by a system of which Hasa will soon furnish us 
 with a yet more striking example, taken away at a moment's 
 notice from their counters and warehouses, to hang a matchlock 
 on their unwilling shoulders, gird on a sword whose use they 
 had well-nigh forgotten, and mount on ever-recurring Wahhabee 
 expeditions against the enemies of God and tlie faith, that is, 
 most often against their own yet independent countrymen, till 
 all of them had lost their trade, and many their lives. Meanwhile 
 ^Nlohanna gi'atified his own personal rapacity, even more than 
 the spiteful feelings of his employer, by fines, exactions, and 
 most involuntary contributions, on every pretext and on every 
 occasion ; and confident that some little private peculation might 
 well be excused in so valuable a servant of government, he accu- 
 mulated to his own uses more wealth than Kaseem had ever seen 
 in the hands of one single individual, however absolute. But 
 justly careful not to put the good cause in danger of losing his 
 personal services, he never went himself on the expeditions 
 in which he jeopardized the unimportant lives of the Kaseem 
 " polytheists " — for so their conquerors still designate them — 
 and remained at home to brood over his money-bags while 
 others gathered the money for him on the scene of danger. 
 
 At the discretion of this individual the Shiya'ee pilgrims now 
 found themselves. What favour they could expect at the hands 
 of so true a believer might easily be imagined, and in case they 
 should have any uncertainty on that point, an incident of only 
 six years' date was there to show them the treatment that 
 Mohanna had in store for Persians. 
 
 The fact seems almost too bad for belief, yet it is certainly 
 true. In 1856 a large Persian caravan, provided with much 
 wealth, even after the close-shearing of Kiad, came hither on 
 its way to Mecca, and halted at Bereydah, under the protection 
 of Mohanna. The cupidity of the governor was excited at 
 the view of their abundant baggage, and the conjecture of a 
 corresponding sum of ready money in their purses. Accordingly, 
 after inviting the pilgrims to repose a few days from the 
 fatigues of the road in quality of guests, he began to alarm them 
 with an appalling picture of dangers from wayside robbers 
 and Bedouins, to whom their wealth would be open should
 
 Chap. VII] ARABS AND PERSIANS 279 
 
 they persist in bearing it along with them to the Hejaz. The 
 better to obviate these risks he offered to take their valuables 
 of whatever description under his guard, promising to keep 
 everything untouched till their return, while his own son should 
 accompany them as guide to Mecca, in pledge of his father's 
 good faith and honourable intentions. 
 
 The deluded Persians consented. Whatever of their baggage 
 was not absolutely necessary to the journey before them was 
 lodged in the storehouses of Mohanna, and their extra money 
 found a place in his strong box. The pilgrims then set out, 
 under the guidance of Mohanna's eldest son, whose name I have 
 often heard, but forgotten. The youth was a worthy scion of 
 the paternal stock. Instead of conducting his dupes by the 
 secure and ordinary track, he led them by the sandy desert 
 and waterless wastes of the Nefood, that lies to the north of 
 the route, close under the western offshoot of Djebel Toweyk. 
 Forced marches, burning suns, and scarcity of water and of 
 all other necessaries of life, soon exhausted their strength, and 
 while they encamped weary and dispirited in the midst of the 
 sandy labyrinth, the son of Mohanna, with all the Arabs in his 
 service, rode off during the night by tracks known to him and 
 his only, and left the pilgrims without leader, without provisions, 
 and without water, to die. 
 
 Almost all perished. A few only, after infinite suffering and 
 toil, found their way out of the mazy desert, and returned to 
 tell their melancholy tale at Bereydah. But there Mohanna 
 refused to recognize them, denied whatever property he held of 
 theirs, or of their deceased companions, and left them imaided 
 to beg their way back to Meshid 'Alee. For two years after 
 no Persian ventured to set foot in Central Arabia. At last the 
 apologies and promises of Feysul persuaded the easily-gulled 
 authorities of Teheran and Coufa to send their pilgi'ims once 
 more on the Nejdean road. But no enquiry was made by the 
 Wahhabee monarch into the crime committed by his subordi- 
 nate, and Mohanna enjoyed undisturbed the profits of his 
 wholesale treachery. 
 
 At this man's orders were now Taj-Djehan and her fellow- 
 pilgrims. He had already before our arrival detained them a 
 good fortnight under the walls of Bereydah, while he put every
 
 '28o BEREYDAH [Chap. VII 
 
 engine of extortion into play against them, and awaited from 
 rey§ul some further hint as to the conduct he was to hold with 
 these " enemies of God." 
 
 ]\Iuch of this we learnt afterwards, but we felt from the first 
 desirous of becoming acquainted with the pilgrims, while we 
 were on the other hand rather fearful of meeting among them 
 some chance face of recognition, or some over-inquisitive and 
 knowing north-countryman. Our experience of the immense 
 ignorance of the indigenous Arab population regarding what- 
 ever outwent their own territorial limits, had long since freed 
 us from all apprehension of their observing powers, however 
 keen within their own native circle. But an inhabitant of 
 Bagdad or Damascus, a Turk or an Arnaout, might come closer 
 in his guesses. However, the time for realizing our wishes or 
 fears was not yet, and we left the crowded encampment on one 
 side and turned to enter the city gates. 
 
 Here, and this is generally the case in the larger Arab towns 
 of old date, the fortifications surround houses alone, and the 
 gardens all lie without, sometimes defended — at 'Oneyzah, for 
 example- — by a second outer girdle of walls and towers, but 
 sometimes, as at Bereydah, devoid of any mural protection. 
 The town itself is composed exclusively of streets, houses, 
 and market-places, and bears in consequence a more regular 
 appearance than the recent and village-like arrangements of the 
 Djowf and even of Ha'yel. We passed a few streets, tolerably 
 large but crooked, and then made the camels kneel down in a 
 little square or public place, where I remained seated by them on 
 the baggage, switch in hand, like an ordinary Arab traveller, 
 and Barakat with Mubarek went in search of lodgings. 
 
 Very long did the half-hour seem to me during which I had 
 thus to mount guard till my companions returned from their 
 quest; the streets were full of people, and a disagreeable crowd 
 of the lower sort was every moment collecting round myself 
 and my camels, with all the inquisitiveness of the idle and 
 vulgar in every land. Nor was it always easy for me, thus " beset 
 and sprited " with more fools than ever Imogen was, to keep up 
 the equanimity of temper and sedate reserve proper to well-bred 
 Arabs on such occasions. At last my companions came back 
 to say that they had found what they wanted; a kick or two
 
 Chap. VII] ARABS AND PERSIANS 28 1 
 
 brought the camels on their legs again, and we moved off to 
 our new quarters. 
 
 The house in question was hardly more than five minutes' 
 walk from the north gate, and at about an equal distance only 
 from the great market-place on the other side. Its position 
 was therefore good. It possessed two large rooms on the ground 
 storey, and three smaller, besides a spacious courtyard sur- 
 rounded by high walls. A winding stair of irregular steps 
 and badly lighted, like all in the ^Nejed, led up to an extent 
 of flat roof, girt round by a parapet six feet high, and divided 
 into two compartments by a cross-wall, thus affording a very 
 tolerable place for occupation morning and evening, at the 
 hours when the side-walls might yet project enough shade 
 to shelter those seated alongside of them, besides an excel- 
 lent sleeping-place for night. The entire building was old, of 
 perhaps two hundred yeoxs or more, solid, and with some pre- 
 tensions to symmetry in its parts ; the doors were of massive 
 and carved Ithel-wood, and a fireplace in one of the rooms 
 below evidently marked it out for a kitchen. Another tolerably 
 spacious apartment of oblong shape was a K'hawah or parlour ; 
 the little rooms had been tenanted by the ladies of the mansion, 
 who now, with the rest of the family, moved off to take up 
 their abode next door. 
 
 The owner now arrived to greet us, keys in hand. Ahmed 
 was his name, a good-humoured man, but sly, and inclined to 
 drive a hard bargain with the strangers. However, my asso- 
 ciates, both quite as shrewd as he, soon reduced his terms 
 within reasonable limits, and I think that a Londoner will 
 hardly consider eighteen-pence per month a very exorbitant 
 house rent, especially for the comfortable accommodations just 
 described. All extras of repair and arrangement, if necessary, 
 were to fall on the proprietor, who had also to find us in water, 
 though subsequently out of our own free generosity we rewarded 
 the sun-burnt nymph who brought it daily from the well for 
 her laborious services. 
 
 In this domicile then we arranged ourselves and chattels, 
 and after partaking in common a morning meal of friendship 
 with the owner of the house and Mubarek, the latter took his 
 leave and returned home to Doweyrah.
 
 282 BEREYDAH [Chap. VII 
 
 I have already said that we were desirous of making very short 
 stay at Bereydah. In consequence we agreed not to embarrass 
 ourselves with patients and practice, but to keep our medicines 
 packed up, and to put off any individuals who might address 
 themselves to us for doctoring with the answer that we did not 
 mean to stop in the town long enough to imdertake business. 
 This was however a mistake on our part, for in the tedious delay 
 of nearly twenty days that awaited us here, a little employment 
 would have agreeably diversified our monotonous leisure hours, 
 and afforded us wider means of acquaintance and information. 
 
 Mubarek had parted from us with a promise of supplying 
 us with beasts, and taking us on to liven}. But he had no 
 real intention of doing so, it was merely a discreet evasion 
 to avoid the discourtesy of a positive " I will not," or of its 
 equivalent " I cannot." Such unwillingness to appear un- 
 willing is among Arabs a frequent source of innocent decep- 
 tions, if deceptions indeed they can be termed, like the " not 
 at home," or " slightly indisposed " of our own land ; whoever 
 has to do with Easterns should be prepared for them, and 
 take them good-naturedly. We were now no novices in the 
 country, and had already conjectured that Mubfirek was no 
 more likely to keep his word than we to take it. Accordingly 
 we tried other individuals, and hardly had we been installed in 
 our rooms than we began to seek right and left the means 
 of leaving them. But no one offered himself or his camels, 
 while we, for our part, could not distinctly see whence this 
 reluctance arose. At last we resolved to apply to Mohanna 
 himself, with whose character we were as yet but imperfectly 
 acquainted, for our cautious neighbours and companions had not 
 entrusted to our untried ears all the details with which my 
 readers are already conversant; we only learned them in 
 process of time and through various channels. 
 
 With this intention we enquired what was the best time for 
 visiting the governor, and were informed that, unlike Coriolanus, 
 his reception hours were before breakfast, namely, about sunrise 
 or not much later. So, on the third morning after our arrival, 
 we betook ourselves to his palace, with the intention of engaging 
 him to the friendly ofiice of finding us guides and companions 
 for our journey to the 'Aared. Mohanna lived in the old castle.
 
 Chap. VII] ARABS AND PERSIANS 283 
 
 situated in the north-east quarter of the town, and a little 
 within the walls ; it covers a large extent of space, to which its 
 height does not sufficiently correspond, and it looks in fact more 
 like a huge collection of outhouses than a palace, with little 
 symmetry or order to show. Some portions of it are ancient, 
 that is, of four or five hundred years' date, at a rough estimate ; 
 for Arab architecture, unlike our own Norman or Grothic, does 
 not chronicle the progress of centuries in line and curve. Massive, 
 ungainly, and imposing from size alone, the main elements of 
 beauty and development, the arch, the capital, the moulding, the 
 frieze, the gable, are either totally absent, or exist only in their 
 most primitive and embryotic form, from which no successive 
 stages have shaped them into grace and perfection. The mate- 
 rials of the construction are almost the only witnesses to its 
 relative antiquity. Stone at an early period, shaped or rough ; 
 stone mixed with earth, as here, later; earth alone in the 
 Wahhabee cycle ; these are the main tokens to indicate the 
 century that reared the pile. To the first of these three 
 periods belong the castle of Djowf and the Marid tower ; to the 
 second many buildings of Kaseem, at Bereydah and 'Eyoon, for 
 example ; to the third, Derey'eeyah and Riad. From the highest 
 antiquity down to the Hejirah the first may be assigned ; from 
 the Hejirah to within two hundred years back the second. But 
 east and south of Nejed, new architectural elements, new styles, 
 new progress will appear, and claim special explanation in their 
 place. In the castle of Mohanna, now before us, part belongs 
 to more recent and variable date, but the whole has been put 
 together by chance rather than by design ; some walls of stone, 
 others of earth, part is plastered, part naked. The central 
 edifice is strong, and capable of standing an Arab siege, but not 
 above thirty-five feet in height, nor possessed of a tower ; the 
 great watch-chimney, to give it its most descriptive name, is 
 detached from the castle, and stands at some distance close by 
 the town wall. A high outer gate leads within the first en- 
 closure, a square court full of warehouses and lodgings for 
 camel-drivers and palace servants ; a small and strongly-built 
 doorway gives entrance to that section where the governor 
 dwells in person. 
 
 At the moment of our arrival Mohanna was out : he had jione
 
 284 BEREYDAH [Cn.vr. VII 
 
 at daybreak to a meeting in the Persian camp, where liis pre- 
 sent business was to extort a sum equal to nearly six hundred 
 pounds of English money from Taj-Djehan, over and above a 
 thousand pounds already wrung out of her and her pilgrim 
 companions. This negotiation absorbed all his thoughts and 
 almost all his time ; for the war, he left it mainly to Feysul's 
 younger son, Mohammed, whose camp we have yet to visit. 
 However, after some waiting at the door mth several other ex- 
 pectant visitors, we saw the worthy Nejdean arrive, in deep 
 conversation with his satellites. Slightly acknowledging the 
 salutations of the bystanders he entered the K'hawah, and we 
 followed with the crowd. 
 
 After a brief question and answer, no further notice was ours 
 from Mohanna. He had other things to think of, and the sim- 
 plicity of our dress did not bespeak us persons of wealth and 
 consideration enough to serve for friends or booty. Coffee was 
 served all round as usual, and immediately after the governor 
 rose to go and look after the " main chance," leaving us seated 
 with the other guests to discuss the nature of his occupations, 
 and the news of the day. At the moment we were rather 
 inclined to feel annoyed at receiving so little notice from one 
 to whom we looked for help, but it was in fact a providential 
 event in our favour. For had JNIohanna brought his cunning 
 and rapacity to bear on us, which he certainly would have done 
 under ordinary circumstances, there would have been little 
 likelihood of our reaching Eiad. Meanwhile we had nothing 
 for it but to return home, whither some respectable townsmen 
 now accompanied us, and from the tone of their conversation 
 we soon learned to think that Mohanna had done us his best 
 favour by neglect. 
 
 However, the main difficulty remained unsolved, and all our 
 enquiries about companions for the Nejdean road proved utterly 
 fiuitless. For three days more we questioned and crossques- 
 tioned, sought high and low, loitered in the streets and by the 
 gates, addressed ourselves to townsmen and Bedouins, but in 
 vain. At last we began to understand the true condition of 
 affairs, and what were the obstacles that choked our way. 
 
 The central provinces of. Nejed, the genuine Wahhabee 
 country, is to the rest of Arabia a sort of lion's den, on which
 
 Chap. VII] ARABS AND PERSIANS 285 
 
 few venture and yet fewer return. "Hada Nejed; men da- 
 khelaha f 'ma kharaj," " this is Nejed, he who enters it does 
 not come out again," said an elderly inhabitant of whom we had 
 demanded information ; and such is really very often the case. 
 Its mountains, once the fastnesses of robbers and assassins, are 
 at the present day equally or even more formidable as the strong- 
 hold of fanatics who consider every one save themselves an in- 
 fidel or a heretic, and who regard the slaughter of an infidel or a 
 heretic as a duty, at least a merit. In addition to this general 
 cause of anticipating a worse than cold reception in Nejed, wars 
 and bloodshed, aggression and tyranny, have heightened the 
 original antipathy of the surrounding population into special 
 and definite resentment for wrongs received, perhaps inflicted, 
 till Nejed has become for all but her born sons doubly danger- 
 ous, and doubly hateful. Hence, not to speak of mere foreigners, 
 Arabs themselves, of whatever race or persuasion, Mahometans 
 or otherwise, inhabitants of Shomer or townsmen of Mecca, 
 from Djowf to Yemen, are very little disposed to venture on the 
 plateaus of Toweyk or to thread Wadi Haneefah, without some, 
 strong reason, and under particularly favourable or really urgent 
 circumstances. 
 
 But at this time some other superadded difficulties complicated 
 the question, and rendered our researches more and more sterile. 
 The war now raging, the siege and its accompanying ravages, 
 though nominally directed against 'Oneyzah alone, were in reality 
 against the province at large, which had throughout either openly 
 or at least in feeling espoused the cause of the injured town. 
 Bereydah itself, in spite of the presence of Mohanna and his 
 numerous satellites, in spite of the Wahhabee force encamped 
 under its very walls, could hardly be kept from revolt. Every 
 heart and every tongue was enlisted against Fey^jul and in favour 
 of Zamil, rejoicing in his successes, sympathizing in his reverses. 
 All this was of course no secret to the Nejdean governor and 
 his associates, nor could they be ignorant of the deputations 
 in search of assistance sent now to Mecca and now to Djebel 
 Shomer, and that not only by Zilmil and the garrison of 'Oney- 
 zah, but even by the inhabitants of Rass, of Henakeeyah, and 
 of Bereydah itself. Hence the natives of Kaseem, who were 
 never in odour of sanctity among the Nejdean Wahhabees, now
 
 286 BEREYDAH [Chap. VII 
 
 positive])^, to borrow a scriptural plirase, " did stink among the 
 inhabitants of the land," as the worst of infidels and abettors 
 of infidels, and they for their part were less desirous than ever 
 of crossing the eastern frontier of their province. 
 
 There was more yet. By the best construction that could 
 be put on us ourselves and on our doings, we were certainly 
 strangers, come from a land stigmatized by the Wahhabees as 
 a hotbed of idolatry and polytlieism, subjects too of a hostile 
 and infidel government. To be held for spies of the Ottoman 
 was but a degree better here than to be considered spies of 
 Christian or European governments ; and though we might fairly 
 hope to steer clear of the latter imputation, -we might readily 
 fall foul of the former. In a word, to introduce such unsavoury 
 individuals into the lands of the Saints was hardly less danger- 
 ous to our guidesmen than to ourselves ; like the peacock who 
 in Mahometan tradition opened the wicket of Paradise to let 
 the Devil in, and received no inconsiderable share in the Devil's 
 own punishment. 
 
 To sum up, we were now in a thorough " fix," and saw no 
 means of getting free. Barred in on every side by causes 
 whose nature and strength we had been taught to appre- 
 ciate, we knew not whither to turn. Five days of bootless 
 search in town and camp had convinced us that in looking for 
 a guide eastwards we were, to use an Arab proverb, " hunting 
 for the egg of the 'Anka," or Eastern Phoenix. But we w^ere no 
 less determined not to be beaten, and it was a great relief to 
 notice that after all our running about no one seemed to enter- 
 tain the least suspicion or ill-will regarding us, nor even paid 
 us that exclusive and minute attention which we had hitherto 
 attracted, much more tlian was comfortable, wherever we had 
 taken up our abode. The war preoccupied every mind, nor had 
 we drawn many eyes upon us by our wonted display of medical 
 art. Indeed the ring of Gyges would have been much more to 
 our purpose in Bereydah than all the phials of Hippocrates, and 
 I often wished for it. 
 
 At last Providence opened us a door, and, which is not 
 seldom the case, exactly where we least expected it, and in so 
 doing furnished us with the means of visiting not Nejed only, 
 but even the more distant regions farther east. This was, in fact,
 
 Chap. VII] ARABS AND PERSIANS 287 
 
 the turning-point of our whole journey, and a seemingly casual 
 meeting facilitated while it modified and extended the remainder 
 of our course from Bereydah to Nejed, from Nejed to 'Oman, 
 from 'Oman back to Bagdad. 
 
 It was the sixth day after our arrival, and the 22nd of 
 September, when about noon I was sitting alone and rather 
 melancholy in our K'hawah, and trying to beguile the time 
 with reading the incomparable Divan of Ebn-el-Farid, the fa- 
 vourite companion of my travels. Barakat had at my request 
 betaken himself out of doors, less in hopes of success than to 
 " go to and fro in the earth and walk up and down in it ; " nor 
 did I now dare to expect that he would return any wiser than 
 he had set forth. When lo ! after a long two hours' absence, 
 he came in with cheerful face, index of good tidings. 
 
 Grood, indeed, they were, none better. Their bearer said, that 
 after roaming awhile to no purport through the streets and 
 market-place, he had bethought him of a visit to the Persian 
 camp. There, while straying among the tents, " like a washer- 
 naan's dog," a Hindoo would say, he noticed somewhat aloof 
 from the crowd a small group of pilgrims seated near their 
 baggage on the sand, while curls of smoke going up from amid 
 the circle indicated the presence of a fire, which at that time of 
 day could be for nothing else than coffee. Civilized though 
 Barakat undoubtedly was, he was yet by blood and heart an 
 Arab, and for an Arab to see coffee making, and not to put 
 himself in the way of getting a share, would be an act of self- 
 restraint totally unheard of; so he approached the group, and 
 was of course invited to sit down and drink. 
 
 This free and easy system of introduction and acquaintance 
 may not be exactly adapted to the exigencies of European society ; 
 nor might it be prudent in a London gentleman to invite every 
 looker-in at his parlour window to take a place alongside of 
 him at the breakfast or dinner table. But extremes are faulty, 
 and the '•' have him taken up by a policeman," or " trespassers 
 prosecuted according to law," and so forth, with a sort of 
 "whose dog are you?" look for any stranger who chances to 
 seem inclined to aught beyond mere give and take, indicate 
 perhaps a condition of feeling even less wise, and certainly less 
 humane and genial, than the readiness of the Arab to welcome
 
 288 BEREYDAII [Chap. VII 
 
 and invite whoever approaches, and to enter into conversation 
 with the first man he looks in the face. But we are now in 
 Arabia. The party wherein Barakat took place consisted of two 
 wealthy Persians, accompanied by three or four of that class 
 of men, half servants, half companions, who often hook on to 
 travellers at Bagdad or its neighbourhood, besides a mulatto of 
 Arabo-negrine origin, and his master, this last being the leader 
 of the band, and the giver of the aromatic entertainment. 
 
 Barakat's whole attention was at once engrossed by this per- 
 sonage. A remarkably handsome face, of a type evidently not 
 belonging to the Arab Peninsula, long hair curling down to the 
 shoulders, an over-dress of fine-spun silk, somewhat soiled by 
 travel, a coloured handkerchief of Syrian manufacture on the 
 head, a manner and look indicating an education much superior 
 to that ordinary in his class and occupation, a camel-driver's, 
 were peculiarities sufficient of themselves to attract notice, 
 and give rise to conjecture. But when these went along with 
 a welcome and a salute in the forms and tone of Damascus 
 or Aleppo, and a ready flow of that superabundant and over- 
 charged politeness for which the Syrian subjects of the Turkish 
 empire are renowned, Barakat could no longer doubt that he 
 had a fellow-countryman, and one, too, of some note, before 
 him. 
 
 Such was in fact the case. Aboo-'Eysa, to give him the 
 name by which he was commonly known in these parts, though 
 in his own country he bears another denomination, was a native 
 of Aleppo, and son of a not unimportant individual in that fair 
 city. His education, and the circumstances of his early youth, 
 had rendered him equally conversant with townsmen and herds- 
 men, with citizens and Bedouins, with Arabs and Europeans. 
 By lineal descent he was a Bedouin, since his grandfather 
 belonged to the Mejadimah, who are themselves an offshoot of 
 the Benoo-Khalid. This last tribe, natives of Hasa and the 
 western coast of the Persian Gulf, where we shall visit them in 
 the course of our journeys, sent a large emigratory detachment 
 towards Syria at a very early period, apparently about the 
 fourth or fifth century of our era. In Syria some families of 
 these nomades retained the name of their mother clan, and are 
 well known as Beuoo-Khfdid to all conversant with the desert
 
 Cn.vr. VII] ARABS AND PERSIANS 289 
 
 north of Homs and Hamah ; others, like the Mejadimah, 
 changed their appellation. But Aboo-'Eysa, though of Bedouin 
 descent, was in habits, thoughts, and manners a very son of 
 Aleppo, where he had passed the greater part of his boyhood 
 and 3^outh. When about twenty-five years of age, he became 
 involved, culpably or not, in the great conspiracy against the 
 Turkish government which broke out in the Aleppine insiu'- 
 rection of 1852. Like many others he was compelled to anti- 
 cipate consequences by a prompt flight and a long sojourn far 
 from the white walls of his native city. After a year or more 
 of rambling and adventure, Aboo-'Eysa ventured to reappear 
 among his fellow-townsmen, but his goods and those of his 
 family had been plundered or confiscated, and he was now 
 a ruined man. His father too had died shortly after the 
 insurrection. 
 
 Commerce offered him a means of repairing his losses, and 
 the liberality of a wealthy Israelite friend came in to his aid. 
 He commenced his mercantile career as a travellinsr commis- 
 sioner between Aleppo and Bagdad, besides some business on 
 liis own score, and sometimes he extended his journeys and his 
 affairs to Basrah. Master at last of a considerable sum, he 
 resolved to try his fortune in the Indian horse-trade of the 
 Persian Gulf. This idea was not merely the result of the hope 
 of gain ; it had its origin partly in a desire, not unnatural in a 
 Mejadimah, to visit the cradle of his race in Hasa, and partly 
 in a special passion for the horse, a " penchant " which often 
 remains through life when early years have been familiar with 
 the saddle. In pursuance of his scheme Aboo-'E^^sa now 
 shipped himself and his stock in hand at Basrah, and sailed to 
 Koweyt, whence on by land through the province of Hasa. 
 Here he collected a suitable number of horses for the Indian 
 mart, and with them embarked at Bahreyn, on a ship Bombay- 
 wards bound. 
 
 But his hopes of wealth and increase were blighted in the bud 
 by casualties rarely absent from this kind of speculation. I once 
 heard that a prudent Norfolk man, invited to take part in a 
 similar line of business, replied with better sense than grammar, 
 " Horses eats, and horses dies, and I will have nothing to do 
 with things as eats and things as dies." Die Aboo-'Eysa's 
 
 VOL. I. U
 
 290 BEREYDAII [Cuap. MI 
 
 horses certainly did of some epidemic disease that assailed the 
 animal cargo of the ship, and before he set foot on Apollo 
 (properly, Pulwar) Jiunder, more than half his stud had gone to 
 feed the sharks of the Indian Sea. The survivors were lauded 
 in sorry case, and stabled in the Fort. But they had come at a 
 wrong season, " gram " wa.s dear, and prices low, and the sale 
 concluded in a dead loss. Aboo-'Eysa returned to Bahreyn 
 without horses and almost without money, and feeling ashamed 
 or afraid to revisit Bagdad and Aleppo in such a plight, thought 
 it more advisable to remain in Hasa, on the principle of con- 
 tinental residence practised occasionally by gentlemen whose 
 bills are longer than their purses. 
 
 In Hasa he met with a cordial welcome and helpful friends. 
 Nor was this strange, considering hi^ personal good qualities, 
 delicate tact, pleasant conversation, a good head except where 
 money was concerned, and a warm heart — I have seldom known 
 a warmer. Before many months passed at Hofhoof he had by 
 him wherewithal to make a considerable purchase in the fine 
 and highly-valued cloth mantles or 'Abee, which constitute the 
 staple manufacture of that town, and with this capital he tried 
 his Qpmmercial luck once more. But here again disappointment 
 awaited him. A cousin of his had tracked him to Hasa, and to 
 this relative Aboo-'Eysa entrusted his wares for sale at Basrah. 
 But when the faithless agent found himself in possession of a 
 large sum, the price of Aboo-'Eysa's goods, he conceived the 
 design of setting up on his own account, and sailed away witli 
 the money, to spend his ill-gotten wealth in Kurrachee and 
 Bombay, whence he never returned. 
 
 Our unfortunate hero was a third time reduced to utter 
 want, and remained some time in great difficulties. At last he 
 managed to collect a small sum, and invested it in a sword 
 and a few Persian carpets, with which he set off for Eiad. 
 Arrived there, he bestowed his purchases in form of presents on 
 Mahboob, the prime minister of Feysul, and on Fey.sul himself. 
 After this preliminary step, he begged of the king a patent, 
 enabling him to occupy a subordinate post of guide in the 
 annual transport of Persian pilgrims across the Nejed. His 
 request was granted, and he now entered on a new and a more 
 cong-cnial kind of life.
 
 Chap. VII J ARABS AND PERSIANS 29 1 
 
 When we met hira, he had followed this career for three 
 years. His politeness, easy manners, and strict probity soon 
 gained him a favourable reputation among the pilgrims, ac- 
 customed to the greedy rapacity and uncourteous bearing of 
 Wahhabee guides. But Aboo-'Eysa possessed besides a quality 
 particularly valuable to Shiya'ee companions. All religioris 
 and sects, parties and opinions, were to him of equal esteem 
 and honour, while he himself appeared to be attached to no 
 special school of doctrine, and entirely unfettered by any 
 fixed or distinctive practices. When a lad at Aleppo he had 
 been even more familiar with Jews and Christians than with 
 the Mahometans of the town, and his own turn of mind led 
 him to give either of the former a decided preference over the 
 disciples of Islam. Among Mahometans again, he cared abso- 
 lutely nothing about Sonnee or Shiya'ee ; " all were right, and 
 all were wrong." This disposition, however, is not uncommon 
 among Arabs. Aboo-'Eysa carried out his toleration to a second 
 consequence more rarely met with, and made no more account 
 of national than of religious differences. Persian and Arab, 
 Oriental and European, were all alike welcome with him ; he 
 admitted the good qualities of each and all, without preju- 
 dice or preference. Hence, while his Shiya'ee companion was 
 secure from untimely dispute touching the succession of the 
 Caliphate and the respective merits of 'Othman and 'Alee, the 
 Persian also could vaunt before him uncontradicted the ex- 
 cellencies of Ispahan or Teheran, and the glories of their 
 rulers. Thus qualified for his office, Aboo-'Eysa had before 
 long a large band of pilgrims at his back, and attained a degree 
 of wealth above whatever he had possessed on his first arrival 
 at Hofhoof. Meanwhile his frequent journeys backwards and 
 forwards through the very heart of Arabia enabled him to 
 increase his already numerous acquaintance by that of the 
 central chiefs, townsmen, or Bedouins, to whom his lavish 
 generosity rendered him peculiarly acceptable. His coffee was 
 always on the fire, his tobacco-pouch invariably open, his supper 
 at the mercy of every neighbour. He seemed, in fact — and of 
 this I can speak after personal experience — in a hurry to throw 
 away on his friends whatever he had acquired, nor was that 
 little. 
 
 U 2
 
 2C)2 BEJREYDAII [Ciivr. VII 
 
 His ordinary residence, when not engaged on a journey or 
 conducting pilgrims, was at Hofhoof, the capital of Hasa ; an 
 abode which placed him at a convenient distance from his 
 Wahhabee employers, whose straitlaced exclusiveness he dis- 
 liked and ridiculed, while they on their part were liable to take 
 scandal at his tobacco-smoking, silk-wearing latitudinarianism, 
 if brought too often under their immediate notice. Indeed the 
 more zealous leaders of the high orthodox party at Ria(l had 
 more than once suggestod to Feysul how improper it was to 
 acknowledge for a government servant, and to cover with the 
 royal protection, one little better, if at all, than an infidel. 
 Aboo-'Eysa knew this, and avoided needless irritation by 
 showing himself very rarely in the Nejdean metropolis, and 
 when he did, it was with some judicious present in hand, to 
 smoothe away difficulties and conciliate toleration. By this 
 conduct he had managed in spite of numerous counter-intrigues 
 to maintain for three years his lucrative position, and though 
 sailing very close, had never run directly on the rocks. 
 
 However, in the journey from which he was now returning, 
 liis ordinary and unsuspicious easiness of temper had brought 
 him into serious difficulties of another nature. The caravan 
 had been, as I before stated, headed by Aboo-Boteyn, a genuine 
 Wahhabee, and no particular friend to our hero. Aboo-'Eysa 
 contrived to get on fairly well with his band, whom he had 
 escorted from the Persian Gulf up to JNIecca, and made a very 
 brilliant appearance at the Ca'abah amid his pilgrim-companions, 
 with servants and slaves attending. But after leaving the sacred 
 city with the Persians on their way to ]Medinah, he was attacked 
 by a dangerous illness, and laid on a sick bed, incapable of 
 movement, and almost given over by the physicians of the 
 town. Aboo-Boteyn found this a favourable opportunity for 
 doing a spite to his rival ; and the treachery of one of Aboo- 
 'Eysa's attendants afforded him means for plvmdering the apart- 
 ments of the half-unconscious invalid ; so that long before the 
 latter was able to leave his couch, Aboo-Boteyn had departed 
 with most of the pilgrims, and with Aboo-'Eysa's goods and 
 chattels into the bargain. 
 
 The convalescent remained behind with six camels and a 
 small sum of money. Two Persians had been, like himself,
 
 Chap. VII] ARABS AXB PERSIANS 293 
 
 detained by illness, an event exceedingiy common among the 
 visitors of the unhealthy Hejaz lowlands in the summer season. 
 Aboo-'Eysa nov^' sold two of his camels, reserving four, one 
 for himself, one for his servant, and two for the pilgrims, and 
 thus came on to Bereydah, where the whole caravan was now 
 assembled. Henceforth their paths had to separate, for while 
 the Persians were bound for the neighbourhood of Meshid 'Alee 
 by the north-eastern road, Aboo-'Eysa's goal lay at Hofhoof, 
 where his wife, an Abyssinian woman, and his son, awaited him 
 at home. Hence he had to follow the south-eastern path right 
 across Nejed, and exactly where we ourselves desired to pene- 
 trate it ; a circumstance which facilitated his becoming our 
 guide, in case we proposed it. 
 
 Other circumstances also coincided in predisposing him to 
 take us in his company. Hardly had he set his eyes on 
 Barakat than the recognition, so far as country went, was 
 iiiutual, and Aboo-'Eysa, long accustomed to all cla-^ses and 
 descriptions of Syrians between Graza and Aleppo, readily per- 
 ceived that his new acquaintance was something more and 
 better than what he gave himself out for. Accordingly he 
 received him with marked politeness, and carefully informed 
 himself of our whence and whither. Barakat, overjoyed to find 
 at last a kind of opening after difficulties that had appeared 
 to obstruct all further progress, made no delay in enquiiing 
 whether he would undertake our guidance to Kiad. Aboo- 
 'Eysa replied that he was just on the point of separating from 
 his friends the Persians, whose departure would leave camels 
 enough and to spare at his disposition, and that so far there 
 was no hindrance to the proposal. As for the Wahhabees and 
 their unwillingness to admit strangers within their limits, he 
 stated himself to be well known to them, and that in liis 
 company we should have nothing to fear from their suspicious 
 criticism. Barakat next requested to know the hire of his 
 beasts, and Aboo-'Eysa in return named so low a price, barely 
 half in fact that we had paid from Ha'yel to Kaseem, though 
 the distance before us was greater by a third, that no doubt 
 remained of his being no less desirous of our society than we 
 of his. He added that in two or three days at most he would 
 be ready to start.
 
 2 94 BEREYDAII [CnAr, VII 
 
 Better news could uot Le imagined, and Barakat hastened to 
 impart it to me ; but before quitting his new acquaintance, of 
 his own authority he invited Aboo-'Eysa to supper with us the 
 same' evening, hoping thus to render the engagement surer, and 
 to give room for increase of knowledge on both sides. 
 
 We now made our preparations for the repast, and bought, a 
 rare occurrence with us, a good piece of meat, which Barakat 
 cooked in Syrian rather than in Arab fashion. Dates and butter 
 in a lordly dish were not wanting, and since the women of 
 Bereydah have learnt from the Persians the art of making 
 leavened bread, that luxur}^, too, adorned our board. Altoge- 
 ther one might call it a very excellent meal for Kaseem. Of 
 course the two Persians, Aboo-'Eysa's companions, had also 
 been asked, for to invite one of a band and leave out the rest 
 would be here considered the height of shabbiness; our host 
 Ahmed obligingly furnished cooking utensils and dishes, and 
 was in recompense bidden to the part}^ Lastly, two respectable 
 townsmen who had often honoured us with their visits, were 
 summoned to complete the convivial circle. Our K'hawah was 
 large enough for all, and we were in a generous humour. 
 
 Towards evening Aboo-'Eysa arrived. He entered with the 
 easy and quiet air of a gentleman, and at once joined in conver- 
 sation without the smallest embarrassment. I was. much at a loss 
 to read his riddle ; his manner was not that either of a towns- 
 man or of a Bedouin, of a Christian or of a Mahometan; it 
 partook of all, yet belonged to none ; a manly face, but marked 
 with that half-feminine delicacy of expression which, for exam- 
 ple's sake, may be noticed in the portraits of Nelson, Kodney, 
 and some other distinguished men of the eighteenth century ; 
 intelligent speech, yet betraying considerable ignorance on 
 many points of school education ; a. negligent display of dress 
 and bearing ; a dialect which at one moment reminded me of 
 Syria, at another of Nejed, and sometimes of the desert; above 
 all, a total absence of all the stereotyped phrases which fill 
 up the blanks of conversation among even the least religious 
 Mahometans — all contributed to puzzle me regarding the real 
 origin and character of our intended guide. jNIy readers, pre- 
 viously informed of what we only learnt afterwards and by 
 degrees, can more easily understand in the chequered history
 
 Chap. VII] ARABS AND PERSIANS 295 
 
 of Aboo-'Eysa the causes and explanation of these complicated 
 features. Much, too, in the man was individual, and the result 
 of natural disposition no less than of circumstances, indeed in 
 spite of them. Certainly a roving life is no good school for 
 probity in dealings, nor for delicate morality in private conduct. 
 Yet Aboo-'Eysa possessed both these qualities in a degree that 
 drew on him the admiration of many, the derision of some, and 
 the notice of all. No one had ever heard from his lips any of 
 those coarse jests and double entendres so common even among 
 the better sort of Arabs in their freer hours, and his life was 
 of a no less exemplary correctness than his language. Not a 
 suspicion of libertinism had ever attached itself to him, at home 
 or on his journeys he was and always had been a faithful and 
 (though wealthy) a monogamous husband. Equally known for 
 unblemished honour in money transactions, he had never con- 
 tested or delayed the payment of a debt, and hig partners 
 in business bore unanimous witness to his scrupulous fidelity. 
 This very truthfulness of disposition led him indeed not seldom 
 to place a too implicit confidence in the agents to whom he 
 entrusted his affairs or his money, nor did experience of the past 
 seem in general much to open his eyes in this respect for the 
 future till it was too late, nor the treachery of an old friend 
 lead him to distrust a new, though equally undeserving. An 
 intimate acquaintance prolonged through many and eventful 
 months, gave us ample opportunity for observing these pecu- 
 liarities in Aboo-'Eysa's conduct and character. Meanwhile I 
 trust that my readers will excuse this minute description of tlie 
 outer and inner man of one whose share in our journey was 
 henceforth so important. 
 
 Barakat and myself came at first to the conclusion that this 
 singular man must be a native of Homs or Hamah, and by 
 education at least a Christian, though we could not well make out 
 what events could have thrown him into these countries. So we 
 internally fixed on the rising of Aleppo as the most probable 
 occasion and date of his expatriation, and in this we were not 
 wrong, though in other respects our conjectures went somewhat 
 wide of the mark. 
 
 Aboo-'Eysa too made his observations and guesses. His early 
 manner of life at Aleppo had rendered him pretty conversant
 
 296 BERFA'DAn [Chap. VII 
 
 with European ways aud doings, and this knowledge, fortunately 
 for us rare in Arabia, disclosed to him a glimpse of the truth 
 veiled from others ; in a word, he at once set me down for a 
 European sight-seer in disguise, though of what particular 
 nation he could not determine. In pursuance of this idea he 
 began to try the ground, and after talking in a very oflf-hand 
 way of Syria and Egypt, threw out certain rather hints than 
 questions about Paris and London, about northern politics 
 and western influence. But on these topics we were designedly 
 brief in our answers, and unconcerned in our tone. Hereon 
 he fell back to medicine, books, and drugs, in all which he 
 found us what to him appeared exceedingly learned. With 
 Telal this same manoeuvre of ours had but partially succeeded. 
 But Aboo-'Eysa was far more simple-hearted than the Sliomerite 
 prince, and without distrust or hesitation relinquished his first 
 and truer idea, to believe us from the very bottom of his soul 
 not Christophero Slys but learned doctors indeed, and disciples, 
 or even rivals, of Hippocrates. 
 
 Under this impression he formed a plan which he soon began 
 to put in practice, while we had also no motive for traversing 
 it prematurel}''. It was to prevail on us to establish ourselves 
 alongside of him in the town of Hofhoof, where we were, 
 such was his idea, to set up an extensive and lucrative business, 
 while he should give up his office of pilgrim leader, and join 
 stock and profession with us in the medical line. In this view 
 he became more eager than ever to have us for companions on 
 the way, and to obtain our intimate friendship and entire con- 
 fidence. With characteristic openness he acquainted us with 
 his intentions, and we expressed ourselves highly gratified. All 
 previous arrangements made between him and Barakat were 
 reconfirmed and our conjoint departure was settled for the 
 nearest day possible. 
 
 So down we sat to a very joyous supper, aud the conversation 
 never flagged. Before dark Aboo-'Eysa and the Persians took 
 leave, to return to their camels and baggage, while the towns- 
 men of Bere^^dah congratulated us on having secured so good 
 a guide and companion ; all knew him, and bore unexcep- 
 tionable witness to his integrity and abilit)^, though all equally 
 professed themselves in the dark respecting his real origin.
 
 CuAP. VII] ARABS AND PEllSIANS ign 
 
 or what had been his life and pursuits before his appearance ia 
 Arabia. 
 
 Thus at rest on the main question of our journey, Barakat 
 and I had leisure to examine the town, and to take notice of 
 what lay within and without its walls. Perhaps my readers 
 will not think it loss of time to accompany us on a morn- 
 ing visit to the camp and market, to the village gardens and 
 wells ; such visits we often paid, not without interest and plea- 
 sure. 
 
 Warm though Kaseem is, its mornings, at least at this time 
 of year (the latter part of September), were delightful. In 
 a pure and mistless sky the sun rises over the measureless 
 plain, while the early breeze is yet cool and invigorating, a 
 privilege enjoyed almost invariably by Arabia, but wanting 
 too often in Egypt on the west, and India on the east. At this 
 hour we would often thread the streets by which we had first 
 entered the town, and go out betimes to the Persian camp, 
 where all was already alive and stirring. Here are ranged on 
 the sand baskets full of eggs and dates, flanked by piles of 
 bread and little round cakes of white butter, bundles of fire- 
 wood are heaped up close by, and pails of goat's or camel's milk 
 abound, and amid all these sit rows of countrywomen, haggling 
 with tall Persians or with the dusky servants of Taj-Djehan, 
 who in broken Arabic try to beat down the prices, and gene- 
 rally end by paying only double of what they ought The 
 swaggering broad-faced Bagdad camel-drivers, and the ill-looking 
 sallow youths of Meshid-'Alee, every mother's son a Hoseyn or 
 an 'Alee, so narrow is Shiya'ee nomenclature, stand idle every- 
 where, talking downright ribaldry, insulting those whom they 
 dare, and cringing to their betters like slaves. Persian gentlemen, 
 too, with grand hooked noses, high caps, and quaintly-cut dresses 
 of gay patterns, saunter about discussing their grievances, or quar- 
 relling with each other, to pass the time. For, unlike an Arab, a 
 Persian shows at once whatever ill-humour he may feel, and has 
 no shame in giving it utterance before whomever may be present, 
 nor does he with the Arab consider patience to be an essential 
 point of politeness and dignity. Not a few Bereydah townsmen 
 are here, chatting or bartering, and Bedouins switch in hand. 
 If you ask any chance individual among these latter what has
 
 298 BEREYDAH [Chap. VII 
 
 brought him hither, you may be sure beforehand that the word 
 " camel," in one or other of its forms of detail, will fiud place 
 in the answer. For the Bedouins have at least twenty-five 
 (litferent words all in current use for a camel, according- to 
 its age, gender, and other circumstances, without mentioning 
 the innumerable but less used and quadriliteral denomina- 
 tions, of which who wills may reap a copious harvest from the 
 pages of Freytag or Golius. But there remain quite enough 
 triliterals in every-day employ, and the camel and Bedouin 
 are not less closely interwoven than man and horse in any 
 Centaur of the Elgin marbles, so that the most transient in- 
 tercourse with the one is sure to bring in something of the 
 other. Criers are going up and down the camp with articles 
 of Persian apparel, cooking-pots, and ornaments of various 
 description in their hands, or carrying them off for higher 
 bidding to the town. For what between the extortions of 
 JMohanna, and the daily growing expenses of so long a sojourn 
 at Bereydah, the Persians were rapidly coming to the end of 
 their long purses and short wits, and had begun selling off 
 whatever absolute necessity could dispense with as superfluous, 
 to obtain wherewithal to buy a dish of milk or a bundle of 
 firewood. Hence their appearance was a ludicrous mixture of 
 the gay and ragged, of the insolence of wealth and the anxious 
 cringe of want ; they were, in short, gentlemen in very reduced 
 circumstances, and looked what they were. 
 
 Amusing though this scene may be, Barakat and I do 
 not remain long in the midst of it, owing to a reasonable 
 fear of indiscreet questions and ill-timed acquaintances. The 
 men of Bagdad and Coufa, nay the Shiya'ees in general, are 
 much more inquisitive and light-blooded, to use the native 
 phrase, than the Arabs, and have none of the courtly reserve 
 customary among the latter when questioning strangers. More 
 than once here we fell in with very impertinent fellows, who 
 wished to know everything, and pretended to know much more 
 than they really did, nor were they always easily to be got rid of, 
 even by the broadest hint. Our best policy was therefore to 
 keep out of their way. A cunning Turk, too, was in the caravan, 
 and was wont to look very hard at us, and to ask, though with 
 great courtesy of manner, questions much more easily put than
 
 Chap. VII] ARABS AND PERSIANS i^g 
 
 answered. ludeed I am sure that the scoundrel saw at least 
 two-thirds through us, and had he been elsewhere or in a dif- 
 ferent predicament, might have been a very difficult customer 
 to deal with. The Osmanlee in general is the shrewdest of 
 men in his conjectures, and can see round a corner as far or 
 farther than most; but in Arabia he is, and feels himself, par- 
 ticularly small, and our Turk had enough to do in disentangling 
 his own skeins to have leisure left for tangling ours. 
 
 I have often wondered at the strange union the Turks pre- 
 sent of keen intelligence and defective action. To talk with 
 them, no men seem better to understand everything around 
 them or more fit to rule ; to witness their real practice, no 
 men so inapt for authority ; all is debased and debasing, ruin- 
 ous and disloyal. A Turk in action (at least such has been 
 my experience) has rarely either head or heart save for his 
 own individual rapacity and sensuality ; the same Turk in 
 theory is a Metternich in statesmanship and a Wilberforce 
 in benevolence. Video meliora proboque; Deteriora sequor, 
 should be the device of their banner : it is the sum-total of 
 their history. Meantime this curious but constantly-recurring 
 association of a good head and a bad heart, of a clear under- 
 standing and depraved morals, may partly explain why the 
 Osmanlee succeeds so regularly in imposing on those who only 
 approach him through the medium of a diplomatic atmosphere, 
 amid the conversational intercourse of well-dressed society, in 
 the bureaus and saloons of Constantinople, or, better still, acting 
 to perfection the smooth and civilized gentleman at Paris or 
 London. Those who have chatted with the elegant Turkish 
 agent over a bottle of claret at the hotel, or held agreeable 
 discourse with him in a carpeted kiosk on the shores of the 
 Bosphorus, may find it hard to bring themselves to imagine how 
 the burning houses and violated women of Damascus, the deso- 
 lated villages and butchered peasants of Sinjar and the An?eyree- 
 yah, can be anyhow the work of a government headed by men 
 so intelligent, so amicable, and above all so polite. Even so 
 a girl refuses to believe that the nice young man who handed 
 her down to dinner, or turned the leaves of her music-book at 
 the piano, can be the same who plays the leg at a horse-race or 
 shoots a " nigger "" through the head. Yet such may sometimes
 
 300 nEREYDAII [CiiAr. VII 
 
 he the case, and sucli it is very certainly witli the Osnianhx'. 
 13ut while the diplomatic Turks are full}^ aware of their own 
 extraordinary talent for imposture, they have a yet shrewder 
 insight into the weakness of those with whom they deal, and 
 know where and when to employ flattery or interest, to lavish 
 promises and fair speeches, to bait the English hook with com- 
 merce, the Austrian with policy, and the French with bombast, 
 all swallowed as readily down the hundredth time as the first, so 
 appropriately is it administered, so well is the recipient disposed. 
 The opiates of the sick man are for his doctors no less than for 
 himself. But we are now in Arabia, and across the sands of 
 the desert-ring the echoes of Turkish fine words and misrule 
 are heard fixiut and far between. Let us back to Bere3'dah ; 
 here too is misgovernment enough, though of another kind. 
 
 Barakat and myself have made our morning household pur- 
 chases at the fair, and the sun being now an hour or more 
 above the horizon, we think it time to visit the market-place of 
 the town, w^hich would hardly be ojien sooner. We re-enter the 
 city gate, and pass on our way by our house door, where we 
 leave our bundle of eatables, and regain the high street of 
 Bereydah. Before long we reach a high arch across the road ; 
 this gate divides the market from the rest of the quarter. We 
 enter : first of all we see a long range of butchers' shops on 
 either side, thick hung with flesh of sheej) and camel, and very 
 dirtily kept. Were not the air pure and the climate healthy, 
 the plague would assuredly be endemic here ; but in Arabia 
 no special harm seems to follow. We hasten on, and next pass 
 a series of cloth and linen warehouses, stocked partly with home 
 manufacture, but more imported ; Bagdad cloaks and head-gear 
 for instance, Syrian shawls and Egyptian slippers. Here mar- 
 kets follow the law general throughout the East, that all shops 
 or stores of the same description shoidd be clustered together, 
 a system whose advantages on the whole outweigh its incon- 
 veniences, at least for small towns like these. In the large 
 cities and capitals of Europe, greater extent of locality requires 
 evidently a different method of arrangement ; it might be 
 awkward for the inhabitants of Hyde Park were no hatters 
 to be found nearer than the Tower. But what is Bereydah 
 or even Damascus compared, I do not say with London
 
 Chap. VII] ARABS AND PEJRSIAKS ^OI 
 
 or Berlin, but with Marseilles or jMaucliester ? However, in a 
 crowd, it yields to neither : the streets at this time of the day 
 are thronged to chokiag, and to make matters worse a huge 
 splay-footed camel comes every now and then heaving from 
 side to side like a lubber-rowed boat, with a long beam on his 
 back menacing the heads of those in the way, or with two 
 enormous loads of firewood each as large as himself, sweep- 
 ing the road before him clear of men, women, and children, 
 while the driver, high-perched on the hump, regards such trifles 
 with the most supreme indifference, so long as he brushes his 
 path open. Sometimes there is a whole string of these beasts, 
 the head rope of each tied to the crupper of his precursor, very 
 uncomfortable passengers when met with at a narrow turning. 
 
 Through such obstacles we have found or made our way, and 
 are now amid leather and shoemakers' shops, then among 
 opper and iron smiths, whose united clang might waken the 
 dead or kill the living, till at last we emerge on the central 
 town-square, not a bad one either, nor very irregular, consider- 
 ing that it is in Kaseem. About half one side is taken up by the 
 great mosque, an edifice near two centuries old, judging by its 
 style and appearance, but it bears on no part of it either date 
 or inscription. This is, according to my experience, a universal 
 rule among the constructions of Central and Eastern Arabia ; 
 neither Cufic, nor Himyarite, nor Arabic writings appear on 
 lintel "or column, a want which much disappointed me, nor 
 could I well understand whence this dearth of memorials, 
 especially when contrasted with the abundance of inscriptions 
 in Hauran and Safa, Palmyra and Babylon. Coloured writings 
 daubed on walls and over gates are indeed common, but such 
 inscriptions can, it is evident, be only of few years' standing. 
 Nor does the dearth of stone-graving come from want of skill, 
 since architectural carving is frequent, though rude, in Nejed, 
 wliile throughout 'Oman this and other ornamental arts are 
 cidtivated with no despicable success. 
 
 The minaret of this mosque is very lofty — a proof, among 
 many others, that its date reaches farther back than the first 
 Wahhabee domination, for the Nej dean sect does not approve 
 of high minarets, from the all-sufficient reason that they did 
 not exist in the time of Mahomet (true conservatives !), and
 
 302 BEREYDAH [Chap. VII 
 
 they accordingly content tliemselves witli a little corner turret, 
 barely exceeding in height the rest of the roof. A crack 
 running up one side of the tower bears witness to an earthquake 
 said to have occurred here about thirty years since, probably 
 the same of which we shall find traces in Hasa; I leave the full 
 discussion of this and of other symptoms of a subterraneous 
 volcanic agency till we arrive at the last-named district, where 
 they are much more frequent. The arch, and consequently the 
 vault, are here unknown ; hence the pillars that upbear the 
 mosque roof are close to each other and very nvimerous. They 
 are of stone. 
 
 Another side of the square is formed by an open gallery, 
 reminding me of those at Bologna. In its shade groups of 
 citizens are seated discussing news or business. The central 
 space is occupied by camels and by bales of various goods, 
 among which the coffee of Yemen, henna, and saffron, bear a 
 large part. However, at the period of our arrival commerce 
 was unusually languid, owing to the war, whose occupations 
 absorbed a considerable portion of the population itself, while 
 they also rendered the roads unsafe for traders and travellers. 
 All this furnished the townsmen with an additional and not 
 groundless reason for cursing the Wahhabee, and lamenting 
 their own folly in having first opened the door to his access 
 among them. 
 
 From this square several diverging streets run out, each 
 containing a market-place for this or that ware, and all ending 
 in portals dividing them from the ordinary habitations. The 
 vegetable and fruit market is very extensive, and kept almost 
 exclusively by women ; so are also the shops for grocery and 
 spices. Nor do the fair sex of Bereydah seem a whit inferior 
 to their rougher partners in knowledge of business and thrifty 
 diligence. " Close-handedness beseems a woman no less than 
 generosity a man," says an Arab poet, unconsciously coinciding 
 Avith Lance of Verona in his comments on the catalogue of his 
 future spouse's "conditions." 
 
 Rocksalt of remarkable purity and whiteness from western 
 Kaseem is a common article of sale, and enormous flakes of it, 
 often beautifully crystallized, lay piled up at the shop doors. 
 Sometimes a Persian stood by, trying his skill at purchase
 
 Chap. VII] ARABS AND PERSIANS 303 
 
 or exchange, but these pilgrims were in general shy of enter- 
 ing the town, where, truly, they were not in the best repute. 
 Bedouins are far less frequent here than in the streets of 
 Ha'yel ; indeed, henceforth they are only to be met with occa- 
 sionally, and, as it were, by exception. But in compensation, 
 well-dressed, grave-looking townsmen abound ; their yellow 
 wands of Sidr or lotus-wood in their hands, and their ker- 
 chiefs loosely thrown over their heads, without the band of 
 white or black camel's hair so characteristic in the north. 
 This Akkal or head-band becomes rarer as we approach the 
 centre of the Peninsula, and in the east disappears alto- 
 gether. 
 
 The whole town has an aspect of old but declining prosperity. 
 There are few new houses, but many falling into ruin. The 
 faces, too, of most we meet are serious, and their voices in an 
 undertone. Silk dresses are prohibited by the dominant faction, 
 and tobacco can only be smoked within doors, and by stealth. 
 Every now and then zealous Wahhabee missionaries from Eiad 
 pay a visit of reform and preaching to unwilling auditors, and 
 disobedience to the customs of the Nejdean sect is noticed and 
 punished, often severely. 
 
 If, invited by its owner, we enter one of the houses, we 
 find the interior arrangement somewhat differing from that 
 usual in Djebel Shomer. The towns of Kaseem are close 
 built, and space within the walls becomes in proportion more 
 valuable; hence the courtyards are smaller and the rooms 
 narrow ; a second storey, too, is common here, whereas at Ha'yel 
 it is a rare exception. The abundance of wood in this province 
 renders charcoal superfluous, and the small furnaces of Djowf 
 and Shomer have disappeared, to make room for fireplaces 
 sunk in the floor, with a raised stone rim and dog-irons, exactly 
 like those in use at home before coals and coal-smoke had 
 necessitated chimney-pieces and all the modern nicety of 
 hearths and stoves. Ghada and Markh wood is piled on the 
 irons, and the coffee, here super-excellent, for the very best of 
 Yemen comes to Kaseem, is prepared on the blaze. 
 
 Conversation will, of course, run mostly on the war and 
 its vicissitudes. Now it was that we Ijecame really acquainted 
 with the government system of the Wahhabees in the subject
 
 304 BEREYDAH [Chap. VII 
 
 provinces of their empire, and with the strong reaction existing 
 everywhere. Of these points something has been already said, 
 and we shall soon have to retouch and complete the picture. 
 
 Enough of the town ; the streets are narrow, hot, and dust}' ; 
 the day, too, advances ; but the gardens are yet cool. So we 
 dash at a venture through a labyrinth of byways and crossways 
 till we find ourselves in the wide street that, like a boulevard in 
 France, runs immediately along but inside the walls. 
 
 Here is a side-gate, but half ruined, with great folding doors 
 and no one to open them. The wall of one of the flanking 
 towers has, however, been broken in, and from hence we hope 
 to find an outlet on the gardens outside. We clamber in, 
 and, after mounting a heap of rubbish, once the foot of a 
 winding staircase, have before us a window looking right on 
 the gardens ; fortunately we are not the first to try this short 
 cut, and the truant boys of the town have sufficiently enlarged 
 the aperture and piled up stones on the ground outside to 
 render the passage tolerable easy ; we follow the indication, and 
 in another minute stand in the open air without the walls. The 
 breeze is fresh, and will continue so till noon. Before us are 
 high palm-trees and dark shadows ; the ground is velvet gTcen 
 with the autumn crop of maize and vetches, and intersected by 
 a labyrinth of watercourses, some dry, others flowing ; for the 
 wells are at work. 
 
 These wells are much the same throughout Arabia, their only 
 diversity is in size and depth, but their hydraulic machinery is 
 everywhere alike. Over the well's mouth is fixed a cross-beam, 
 supported high in air on pillars of wood or stone on either side, 
 and in this beam are from three to six small wheels, over which 
 pass the ropes of as many large leathern buckets, each con- 
 taining nearly twice the ordinary English measure. These 
 are let down into the depth, and then drawn up again b}'- 
 camels or asses, who pace slowly backwards and forwards on an 
 inclined plane leading from the edge of the well itself to a pit 
 prolonged for some distance. When the buckets rise to the 
 verge they tilt over, and pour out their contents by a broad 
 channel into a reservoir hard b}^ from which part the water- 
 courses that irrigate the garden. The supply thus obtained is 
 necessarily discontinuous, and much inferior to what a little
 
 Chap. VII] ARABS AND PERSIANS 305 
 
 more skill in mechanism affords in Egypt and Syria ; while the 
 awkward shaping and not unfrequently the ragged condition of 
 the buckets themselves, causes half the liquid to fall back into 
 the well before it reaches the brim. The creaking, singing noise 
 of the wheels, the rush of water as the buckets attain their 
 turning-point, the unceasing splash of their overflow dripping- 
 back into the source, all are a message of life and moisture 
 very welcome in this dry and stilly region, and may be heard far 
 ofif amid the sand-hills, a first intimation to the sun-scorched 
 traveller of his approach to a cooler resting place. 
 
 We stroll about in the shade, hide ourselves amid the high 
 maize to smoke a quiet pipe unobserved by prying Nejdean eyes, 
 and then walk on till at some distance we come under a high 
 ridge of sand clothed with Ithel, which borders the irrigation 
 and the gardens in this direction. Curiosity leads us to climb it, 
 though steep and sliding. From its summit we look south-west 
 in the direction of 'Oneyzah, the whole country between is jotted 
 over with islets of cultivation amid the sands, and far off long 
 lines of denser shade indicate whereabouts 'Oneyzah itself is 
 situated. Peasants with asses or camels, horsemen their long 
 spears over their shoulders, travellers in small slowly-moving 
 bands, appear everywhere ; and if any chance to pass by us 
 they are sure to halt for a few moments of conversation, perhaps 
 for a pipe. 
 
 But noon draws on, and the heat increases; it were ill to 
 remain longer in the blaze of mid-day. So we retrace our steps 
 to the walls, and follow at a venture the town ditch till a gate 
 appears, by which we enter and find our way home again. 
 
 Mohammed and Ibraheem, our two soi-disant Meccans, were 
 lodged in the same street with ourselves, and at no great distance. 
 They often called, and we had to put up with much wearisome 
 and hollow adulation on their part, whereby they sought to 
 render our society profitable to their mendicant ends. Mean- 
 while behind our backs they talked of us as of infidels, and men 
 of a very dangerous and suspected character, but with slight bad 
 result. For if the good folks of Kaseem really thought us any- 
 how hostile to the existing order of things, such an idea went 
 rather in our favour than the contrary. 
 
 Our travelling arrangements with Aboo-'Eysa, which were 
 
 VOL. I. X
 
 3o6 BEREYDAH [Chap. VII 
 
 soon known to all, brought us also frequent visits from the 
 Persian carap. It was highly entertaining to hear these foreigners 
 satirize the land of the Arabs, and extol their own, whereof they 
 invariably tried to give a most prismatic idea. Some of these 
 gentlemen, for gentlemen they were in the scale of Eastern 
 society, knew Arabic fairly well, thanks to frequent residence 
 in Bagdad and its neighbourhood, and took pleasure in literary 
 and historical research. 
 
 The military operations, if I may honour them by that 
 name, against 'Oneyzah, afforded an ex-Indian officer another 
 subject of observation and study. In order to become better 
 acquainted with these proceedings, in which the town at large 
 hardly took part, I paid frequent visits to the Nejdean war 
 camp, then pitched to the south of the walls on the road of 
 'Oneyzah. Here stood an irregular collection of little black 
 tents, often mere rags and tags, stretched out for shade on 
 two or three poles, gipsy fashion ; but the space within and 
 around bristled with spears and swarmed with swarthy Nej- 
 deans ; their firelocks stood arranged in pyramids, much like 
 our own manner of piling arms, before and between the lines. 
 Each clan, each province, was encamped apart, and our own 
 observation soon instructed us to distinguish between the 
 quarters of the men of Aflaj, those of Sedeyr, and those of 
 Woshem ; amid the latter muskets predominated, amid the 
 first swords and daggers, while the warriors of Sedeyr were 
 more often armed with spears than either class of their 
 comrades. In this camp was already gathered a certain por- 
 tion of the strength of Central Nejed, but more remained 
 behind, and the whole force of the south and east had not 
 yet come up, besides the chosen troops of 'Aared, and the 
 artillery, for Feysjul still deferred a decisive blow, and at the 
 moment merely sought to weary his enemies by a protracted 
 partisan war. No inhabitant of Bereydah would venture among 
 or near these tents after dusk, and even in the daytime the 
 natives of Kaseem kept aloof from the national and religious 
 antipathy of the Nejdean, who waged war against tobacco no less 
 than against 'Oneyzah, and was as bitter an enemy of all silk- 
 wearers as of Zamil himself, or his lieutenant Khey'yat. When 
 we passed by the lines, the salutations of the soldiers Avere
 
 Chap. VII] ARABS AND PERSIANS 307 
 
 short and sulky, and unaccompanied by any friendly invitation ; 
 we were not Nejdeans, ergo, we were infidels. Besides, the 
 ill-humour of these poor fellows was augmented, and partly ex- 
 cused, by a very biting cause, — hunger ; for they had brought 
 with them but a poor stock of provisions, and still less money 
 for purchase, while on the other hand they were not living 
 here at free quarters, and the denizens of Bereydah were by 
 no means inclined to do the handsome towards them. The 
 Nejdeans had reckoned on fattening straightway upon the dates 
 and plunder of 'Oneyzah, but they had reckoned without their 
 host, and hitherto caught nothing but a Tartar ; for the troops of 
 Zamil kept the superiority in the open field, and the relative 
 position of besiegers and besieged was at this moment almost 
 reversed. 
 
 One day in the afternoon we heard the alarm-cry raised from 
 the lofty watch-tower of the city, and echoed far away in the 
 plain from other outposts ; it was a band of horsemen from 
 'Oneyzah, who had ventured up to the very neighbourhood of 
 the town, and were pillaging the suburbs. Mohanna came out 
 from his counting-house to bid the rest go fighting where 
 glory called ; when lo ! in a moment streets and market-place 
 were deserted, and every townsman scampered off, not to the 
 field of fame, but to hide himself in his house and lock the 
 outer door, all preferring an " alibi " to the disagreeable dilemma 
 of open disobedience if they refused to arm, or of complying 
 with the appeal, and so having to fight precisely those on whose 
 success their own dearest hopes were staked. However, Mo- 
 hanna sent his satellites round in time to get together about 
 forty of these reluctant warriors, who, once caught, put the best 
 face on the matter, took their spears and matchlocks, and set 
 out with a heroic determination not to fight the enemy. They 
 were joined by a much larger band of the Nejdean soldiers, who, 
 headed by their several chiefs, poured out from their tents with 
 very different intentions ; many of them bore, besides the 
 weapons already mentioned, the short dagger of Yemamah at 
 their belts, and swords, if not always sharp, heavy, and in 
 resolute hands. Barakat and I climbed a hillock without the 
 fortifications, whence we had a good view of the plain and 
 skirmish. 
 
 X2
 
 3o8 BEREYDAH [Chai>. VII 
 
 The partisans of 'Oaeyzah, about half the number of their 
 enemy, were all on horseback, and had scattered themselves 
 here and there among the houses and gardens in the suburbs, 
 doing no harm soever to the persons of the villagers, but busy in 
 collecting what light booty they could lay hold of. On the 
 approach of their assailants they gathered in front of the 
 plantations, and sent out some twenty of theirs to the pre- 
 liminaries of the fray. The Nejdeans on their side halted and 
 drew up their line. The tactics of an Arab battle are simple, 
 but not wholly devoid of skill. The cavalry come to the front, 
 and provoke the engagement; while the camels and their riders, 
 who form the main body, remain behind in reserve. When the 
 action has once become serious, which is the case so soon as 
 blood has been shed on either side, the camels are made to kneel 
 down, each becoming a kind of fieldwork for two musketeers 
 under his cover, the cavalry open out, and firing begins in good 
 earnest, till flank attacks, or an excess of confidence on one 
 or other side, bring on a general assault ; some fight on foot, 
 some mounted, and the melee continues till either party gives 
 way. The Nejdeans distinguish themselves from the rest of 
 their Arab countrymen by preferring slaughter to booty ; they 
 neither take nor ask for quarter, and so long as there are men 
 to kill, pay no attention to plunder. Hence, where Nejdeans 
 lead the battle hot work may be expected, and though six 
 or seven hundred killed on the field may seem a trifle to 
 Europeans accustomed to the thousands of Balaclava, or the 
 tens of thousands of Solferino, such a number for Arabs 
 is much, and, indeed, is supplied by Nejdean warfare alone. 
 Elsewhere two killed and three wounded is generally the out- 
 side, much like the battles of Italian municipalities in the 
 middle ages, nor totally dissimilar from some of the king and 
 commonwealth frays during the first years of our own great 
 civil broil in the seventeenth century. The comprehensive 
 progress of our age has now extended itself, inter alia, to the 
 art of killing, and we justly despise the retail proceedings of 
 our ancestors. But the Arabs in their backward simplicity 
 continue to set human blood at a higher price than it seems to 
 fetch in modern Europe. I return to the skirmish before tis. 
 
 The horsemen of Bereydah answer the challenge of the enemy
 
 Chap. ^II] ARABS AND PERSIANS 3O9 
 
 by galloping forward some one way, some another, but never 
 straight to their opponents ; while the Nejdeans, having for the 
 most only camels under them, are obliged to await the result. 
 Three or four of them are, however, on horseback, and these 
 naturally take the lead. A very pretty display of equestrian 
 skill follows, with a dropping fire of matchlocks ; but the men 
 of Kaseem, whether from 'Oneyzah or Bereydah, understand 
 each other, and have made up their mind beforehand that 
 neither bullet nor spear-point of theirs shall hurt their country- 
 men. So they wheel round and round like swallows over a 
 lake, till the Nejdeans lose patience, and advance their whole 
 line. Then the warriors of 'Oneyzah, seeing the business take 
 a serious turn, and that they are likely to be immediately out- 
 numbered, disappear one by one among the palm-groves in 
 their rear, keeping a good show to the last, but putting the 
 trees between themselves and their foe long before the old- 
 fashioned guns can send a ball within reach of them. Hereon 
 the fray ends, for want of an enemy, and the heroes of Bereydah 
 amuse themselves with a sham fight and much careering and 
 halloaing on their way back to the town, which they enter after 
 about four hours' absence, with " happily no lives lost," as the 
 next morning paper would have it, did morning papers here 
 exist. On their return the hidden townsmen suddenly re- 
 appear, and the streets are filled as usual. 
 
 Our evenings passed usually in very pleasant guise ; after 
 supper, invariably here and elsewhere throughout Arabia at 
 sunset, we would betake ourselves to the flat house-roof, 
 along with Aboo-'Eysa and other acquaintances from camp 
 or town, and there smoke and talk for hours, or listen to the 
 call to night-prayers from the Persian tents, sounding melodious 
 and full among the harsh voices of the Arabs. I know not 
 whether any of my readers labour under the agreeable delusion 
 that Arabia is a land of song ; perhaps no country in the world 
 has less harmony to boast, unless, indeed, it be China; but I 
 have never had the good fortune of hearing a Chinese per- 
 former, only they do not look musical. However, I have heard 
 Turks, Persians, Indians of all sorts, and negroes sing, not to 
 mention Syrians, Armenians, Greeks, and the like ; and can 
 bear witness to them that one and all they far surpass the sons
 
 3IO BEREYDAH [Chap. MI 
 
 of Kahtan or Ismael in this accomplishment, both for voice and 
 ear, for instrumental and for vocal music. Not that my friends 
 the Arabs are of the same opinion ; on the contrary, they 
 imagine themselves genuine successors of Orpheus, and often 
 deafen the too-courteous listener with screeches meant for airs, 
 and torture him Avith nasalities supposed to be harmonious. The 
 worst of all are the Bedouins ; and the enthusiasm of even a 
 French philo-Oriental traveller would be hard tried by a nomade 
 howling out at his ear " Aboo-Zeyd," the favourite Bedouin 
 chaunt, on a hot day. For the townsmen they are little l)etter, 
 and in all cases the greatest favour to be begged of an Arab 
 vocalist is his silence. 
 
 On the other hand, the Persians have commonly good voices, 
 and a true feeling of harmony. Their music, if not equal to 
 the European standard, is at least pleasing, though, like most 
 Asiatic melodies, sopiewhat melancholy. Their neighbours of 
 Bagdad, indeed the inhabitants of the entire valley of the Tigris 
 from Basrah to Diar-Bekr, partake more or less of their ear and 
 voice, and a Bagdad singer will often make a large fortune in 
 distant towns. A dash of music is to be found in Syria also, 
 especially among the Damascenes, and next after them among 
 the denizens of the sea-coast at Seyda, 'Akka, and the rest. The 
 Turks are tolerably good songsters, but their airs are in general 
 livelier, and approach nearer to the European. 
 
 In requital, if the Arab voice be not adapted, and it most 
 certainly is not, to singing, it is admirably well qualified for all 
 the tones of public speaking, reading aloud, and the entire range 
 of conversation and eloquence. Clear and sonorous, it is a 
 powerful though not a sweet-toned instrument, and those who 
 possess it know well how to put it to its best. Besides, it has 
 here a remarkable advantage, elsewhere denied it, namely, that 
 of being united with the fullest and completest pronunciation 
 of a language which is one of the most copious, if not the most 
 copious, in the universe. Whether in the Hejaz or in Yemen, 
 much more in Egypt and Syria, most at Bagdad and Mo.sool, the 
 current speech is very incorrect, defective, clipped, and cor- 
 rupted, in desinence and in accent, in elocution and in phrase- 
 ology. It is not a dialect, but a mere degeneration, phonic 
 and grammatical. Even those whom study and education have
 
 Chap. VII] ARABS AND PERSIANS 3 1 1 
 
 enabled to avoid low provincialisms and downright inaccuracies, 
 exhibit in their public speech and private conversation much 
 of that meagreness and constraint which attends whatever is 
 artificial, and there is little pleasure in listening to them. But 
 in Djebel Shomer and the whole of Upper and Central Nejed 
 the contrary finds place, and here the smallest and raggedest 
 child that toddles about the street lisps in the correctest book- 
 Arabic (to use an inexact denomination) that ever De Sacy 
 studied or Sibawee'yah professed. The question is sometimes 
 asked, " Is the Arabic of the Coran and of the golden age of 
 Arabian literature in general yet a spoken language, or was 
 it ever really so ? " The answer is affirmative : it certainly was 
 a spoken language, for it is yet so in the districts above men- 
 tioned ; nor only spoken, but popular, vulgar even, at least 
 in the etymological sense of that word. But the choicest 
 display of Arab elocution is in the public recital of the Coran, 
 and in this the Wahhabees bear away the palm. Eeligious 
 enthusiasm and a scrupulosity worthy of a Jewish rabbi at a 
 Saturday reading of the Pentateuch, gives force to every con- 
 sonant, depth to every vowel, and precision to every accent and 
 inflexion, till the hearer, even though an "infidel" at heart, 
 ceases to wonder at the influence exercised by these singular 
 rehearsals over the Arab believer. For whatever merit the 
 Coran can claim lies wholly and merely in its remarkable 
 eloquence and extreme purity of diction; good sense there is 
 little, and reasoning is not to be expected. Hence a transla- 
 tion, however skilful, is simply intolerable ; and few, I should 
 think, have found their way through Sale's Coran from begin- 
 ning to end. But the very repetitions, monotonous formulae, 
 and abrupt transitions, which drive an English or a French 
 reader to despair, add in the original Arabic to the force and 
 rhythmical emphasis of the text, and are felt accordingly by its 
 Eastern auditors. 
 
 To come to details : the lands where Arabic is at the present 
 day spoken precisely as it was in the age of Mahomet, or even 
 earlier, with whatever grammar and enunciation can supply to 
 give freshness and perfection to its exactitude, are Djebel 
 Shomer, Kaseem, Sedeyr, Woshem, and the northern half of 
 'Aared. Southward of these limits another and a different form
 
 312 BEREYDAH [CiTAr. VII 
 
 l^egins to prevail, I mean the Kahtanic variety of tongue, which 
 by regidar gradations gains on the more classic or Isinaelitic 
 dialect of the centre, till it wholly supplants it in 'Oman, where 
 we find a modification of the Arabic language represented by 
 the ante-Islamitic poems of the south, and which now is, and 
 probably always was, the speech of the Yemautic Arab branch, 
 thought at present banished the Yemen, or at least its coast. In 
 certain districts of Yemen, Wadi Nejrrm for instance, and perhaps 
 in Hadramaut, traces of it seem yet to exist, but mixed with the 
 idiom of Hejaz and the sea-shore. How all this was brought 
 about I will endeavour subsequently to explain. 
 
 Yet I cannot return to my narrative Avithout a brief remark 
 on the strange mistake of some learned Orientalists, who 
 have imagined that the delicate niceties of Arab grammar are 
 the inventions of comparatively recent philologists, and conse- 
 quently with little or no foundation in the language itself. And 
 first in a general way I would suggest that rules do not create 
 facts, but explain and methodize them ; and that S3^stems are 
 not causes, but the commentaries on things in existence. How- 
 ever, in addition to this general argument, two special reasons 
 leave no room for doubt that the " Tenween " was in use 
 long before Ebn-Khalid, and the " Na§b " before Zamaskharee. 
 The first is, that the whole metre and rhyme of innumeralde 
 poems, the original literature of Arabia, and remounting to the 
 earliest historical and even mythical date, entirely depend on 
 the correct application of these rules, not then indeed ndes, but 
 usages. He who would try to read aloud the productions of 
 Shanfara' or 'Amroo'1-Keys without observing " refaa' " and 
 " djezm," " wasl," and " hamza," would be equally at a loss to 
 discover in their odes either measure or rhythm, as he who should 
 translate Pope or Horace into German, and then look for the 
 alcaics of the one or the pentametral scansion and coupled 
 rhymes of the other. Now we know from multiplied testi- 
 mony that the early Arabs spoke as they versified, and that 
 among them the poetical and the current language were one 
 and the same; in short, that the difference between rhyming and 
 talking lay only in the arrangement of the words, not in the 
 words themselves. These rules, or rather the facts they indi- 
 cate, are therefore of an antiquity at least equal to the staves in
 
 Ch\p. VII] ARABS AND PERSIANS j I j 
 
 which they are embodied — that is, long prior to the grammarians 
 of Coufa and Basrah. A second and equally conclusive proof of 
 the anteriority of the spoken to the written grammar is its 
 actual and living existence among high and low, educated and 
 ignorant, throughout wide-spead populations and remote dis- 
 tricts where the very names of the philological purists of the 
 north were never heard, and where peasants and camel-drivers 
 can only so speak because their fathers so spoke before them, 
 while their fathers learnt in turn from their fathers, and thus 
 up to the very origin of the nation and of its language. The 
 isolation of these localities has preserved them from foreign 
 corruptions of phrase and word ; but it alike precludes all sup- 
 position of after-teaching and imported book-lore. On the 
 contrary, when the same language, overspreading lands to north, 
 east, and west, where Coptic or Syrian, Persian or Curdish, 
 Turkish or Berber, had hitherto prevailed, lost in uncongenial 
 mouths its original precision and perfection, and was now 
 alloyed with the Iranic vocabulary, now distorted by Aramaean 
 analogies, then, but not till then, came the necessity of study 
 and rules, of schools and professors, to fix the standard and save 
 the original t3^pe from total obliteration. Thus what had at first 
 been nature became art, and fluent speech crystallized into books 
 and grammars. 
 
 Here at Bereydah and elsewhere we often discussed similar 
 topics with the companions of our travelling days, nor were the 
 like subjects above the understanding of our town friends, nor 
 without interest for them. Should this book present new ideas, 
 or views having a greater semblance of harmony and verisimi- 
 litude than may have been before presented upon Arabia, it is 
 but justice in me to say that most of these lucky hits, if indeed 
 they be so, are the offspring of Shomer and Nejed, of Hasa and 
 'Oman, where I found and heard them ; very often only " telling 
 the tale as 'twas told to me." 
 
 But our Bereydah evenings were not exclusively grammatical, 
 and many other points of wider interest were canvassed in our 
 quiet circle while seated under the " heaven over heaven " 
 of an Arab night, and hearkening to the shrill voices of the 
 town, or the distant and more harmonious call of the Persian 
 Mu'eddin. Government and religion, medicine and commerce.
 
 314 BEREYDAH [Chap. VII 
 
 passed in review, plans and schemes, some already realized, some 
 destined to lasting abortiveness, till the late hour sent our 
 friends back to their houses to sleep, and we remained to pass 
 our night on the cooler terrace. 
 
 The zodiacal light, always discernible in these transparent skies, 
 but now at its full equinoctial display, wonld linger cone-like in 
 the west for full three hours after sunset, perfectly distinct in 
 colour, shape, and direction fi'om the last horizontal glimmer of 
 dayhght ; while its re-appearance in the east long before morn- 
 ing could only be confounded by inexperience with the early 
 da^vn. Shooting stars glided over the vault, yet not more nume- 
 rous I think than in Europe, did the clouds and mists of our 
 northern climate permit them to be equally visible there. All 
 night long, the watchmen on the towers cried and answered at 
 intervals, now " Allahu Akbar," now the password of their pro- 
 vince, and the city slept dark below with its silent groves and 
 sands around. Eemembrances of India and Syria, of Europe 
 and home, now seemed as if belonging to another planet, or the 
 indistinct unreality of a dream ; while Arabia and the Kaseem 
 stood out in the circumscribed solidity of actual existence. Now 
 the semblances are reversed ; yet at that time, when thinking 
 on the waste of intervening deserts and seas yet to traverse, I 
 hardly expected that it would again be so. In memorimn! 
 
 Early in the morning the ringing of mortars and pestles in 
 the neighbouring dwellings, where each householder was en- 
 gaged in preparing his morning coffee, would awaken us to 
 find Aboo-'Eysa already risen and busily pounding away in the 
 courtyard below, where the flickering gleam of the wood-fire 
 mingled with the grey twilight of dawn. No Arab, however 
 good his condition, thinks himself above coffee making ; indeed 
 it is more fashionable for a gentleman to prepare in person this 
 beverage than to leave the operation to an inferior or slave. 
 
 During our prolonged delay at Bereydah we occasionally left 
 the town for a day's visit to the neighbouring villages of 'Askha, 
 Mudneb, and others, the better to study rural life in Kaseem. 
 I have already sufficiently described a country dwelling in what 
 I related of our day's repose in the suburb of Doweyr under the 
 arbour and roof-tree of jNlubarek, and thus I need not again 
 enter into details touching the houses of the peasantry, for they
 
 Chap. VII] ARABS AND PERSIANS jif 
 
 are all very uniform and on the same pattern, differing only in 
 size. The villages themselves are clean and pleasant, not unlike 
 those of Jafnapatam and Ceylon ; and what between shade and 
 water, cool enough considering the southerly latitude. Their in- 
 habitants appear in general to be much in the condition which 
 the wise man of old desired for himself when he said, " Griveme 
 neither poverty nor riches : " few have superfluity, yet none are 
 in absolute want. Here the soil belongs in full right to its 
 cultivators, not to the government, as in Turkey ; nor is it often 
 in the hands of large proprietors like the Zemindars of India 
 and the wealthier farmers of England. On the other hand, the 
 excessive Wahhabee taxes, if they do not wholly check, at least 
 discourage, the extension of agriculture. The tenth of the pro- 
 duce of the land in dates, corn, maize, and the like, is taken by 
 the government in way of a regular duty, while extraordinary 
 levies also, amounting sometimes to one-third of the harvest 
 value, are repeatedly imposed, above all on the occasion of a 
 " Djihad " or " sacred war," that is, of any war, for the Wahha- 
 bees are a sacred nation, being the genuine " little flock every- 
 where spoke against " of Islam, and the real orthodox believers, 
 and no mistake ; hence all their wars are sacred too, so that 
 none but heretics or infidels, or those who would wish to be held 
 for such and treated accordingly, can refuse contribution to 
 their pious campaigns. 
 
 Cattle, that is, camels and sheep, are often bred and pastured 
 here, but on a smaller scale than in Shomer, owing to the 
 greater predominance of cultivated over uncultivated land. 
 Yet they form considerable part of the country wealth, and 
 suffice not for home use only, but for export also ; though the 
 sheep are less esteemed by foreign purchasers than the moun- 
 tain breed of Toweyk. Horses too are reared and exported 
 east and north ; they resemble in every respect those of Djebel 
 Shomer, and do not pass for real " Nejdees." Cows and oxen, 
 none or next to none ; buffaloes, still less. The herdsmen and 
 shepherds are sometimes villagers and sometimes Bedouins ; but 
 the former class has here outgrown in number and importance 
 the latter. 
 
 The duty levied on pasture cattle by the government is 
 about a twentieth of their value ; and so far the shepherd in
 
 jl6 BEREYDAH [riiAr. VII 
 
 Kaseem is better off than tlie ploughman or gardener. But a 
 special town duty on meat makes the tax on beasts almost as 
 heavy in the long run as that exacted on the vegetable kingdom. 
 Money also is taxed, one in forty ; and since it might be difficult 
 for the duty-collector to get a sight of the purse itself, an 
 estimate is made on the average income of each merchant and 
 trader, and they have to pay accordingly. ^Moreover, members 
 of the commercial class, whether subjects or foreigners, must 
 furnish an import duty on their wares when brought within the 
 frontiers ; the rate is about four shillings a load, a heavy sum 
 because levied on goods of much more bulk in general than 
 costliness. Hence trading fares no better than agriculture or 
 cattle breeding. To all this government absorption, we must add 
 the occasional items of presents, bribes, local extortions, and not 
 unfrequently downright oppression ; after which I leave my 
 readers to judge whether the advantages of the highest dogmatic 
 purity are worth the price paid for them in the more tangible 
 goods of this lower world. The non-Wahhabee Arabs would, 
 I fear, answer in the negative. Lastly, the frequency of war, 
 and the obligation of not only contributing to its sinews, but 
 of personally bearing art and part in it, hastens the decay of 
 the province. 
 
 Yet experience shows that these evils or most of them might 
 be borne with were they inflicted by native chiefs and an 
 indigenous government. It is the title of foreigners, and of 
 foreigners who pursue a settled and persevering s^'stem of 
 engrossing all posts, all authority, all influence, and idtimately 
 all wealth, that renders the Wahhabee so particularly odious in 
 this and in the other subject regions. ISIany a man will suffer 
 his own right hand to cut off his left, who will not bear the 
 prick of a needle from the hand of another. Lastly, the 
 enforcement of a despotic creed and servile observance of a 
 ceremonial bondage, respecting which the Arabs might well say 
 with St. James at Jerusalem, that " neither we nor our fathers 
 were able to bear it," aggravate fiscal and political oppression 
 by its continual and purposeless interference. The ecclesi- 
 astical teasings of Laud scarcely did less to bring on the Great 
 Eebellion than the ship-money of Strafford ; and the surplice 
 and collect were perhaps even more hateful to the Scotch than
 
 Chap, yil] ARABS AND PERSIANS ^11 
 
 the extension of the royal prerogative, or the violation of 
 parliamentary privileges. Here the race of Metow'waa's and 
 Meddey'yeeyahs, of preachers and zelators, thrives on the in- 
 voluntary contributions of a people that detests them, and 
 taxes odious in themselves are rendered yet more so when 
 exacted in the name of religion and of Grod. " To burden 
 all who don't eat meat with a costly meat establishment," is 
 a very unpopular, and for that alone, not to mention other 
 reasons, a very unwise measure, even though enforced by the 
 high authority of Feyi^ul-ebn-Sa'ood or of the bishop of Ferns, 
 whether in Nejed or nearer home. 
 
 With all this my readers must not suppose the Wahhabee 
 government to be an immixed wrong, or that it offers no good 
 soever to counterbalance or to palliate its manifold disadvantages. 
 Bad though it certainly is, it was preceded, at least in many 
 places, by worse — by utter anarchy, by the feuds of local chief- 
 tains, by civil wars among townsmen, and the unrestrained 
 insolence of the Bedouins. Eobber and spoiler too the Nejdean 
 ruler is, yet with this redeeming feature, that he reserves 
 all the robbing and spoiling to himself, and suffers no one 
 else, nomade or citizen, to open a private account on his own 
 score. The 'Ajman, 'Oteybah, Meteyr, Benoo-Khalid, and other 
 Bedouin clans, were down to the last century no less dreaded 
 and destructive here than their brethren the 'Anezah are yet 
 in Syria and the northern desert, and they rendered travelling 
 through Nejed no safer a business than it is at the present day 
 between Homs and Tadmor or Sakhneh. But under Wahhabee 
 rule the wayfarer who traverses Kaseem, Sedeyr, Woshem, and 
 all the other eight provinces of the central empire, will meet 
 but few Bedouins, nor need ever fear those few ; merchant 
 and villager, townsman and stranger, are alike freed from pre- 
 datory inroad and road-side assault ; and so far as these rovers 
 are concerned, commerce and cultivation may proceed un- 
 interrupted and unimpaired. No local chief, unless perchance 
 he be one of the Nejdean proconsuls, can trample on the rights 
 of the subject, no village can plunder the gardens or cut down 
 the fruit-trees of its neighbouring hamlet. The whole patent 
 of oppression, general and individual, is reserved to the govern- 
 ment, and to the government alone ; it is a sacred monopoly, a
 
 3 1 8 BEREYDAH [Ohap. VII 
 
 New Forest on which no one may poach with impunity. Hence 
 when the inhabitants of Kiad in my presence felicitated the 
 Persian Na'ib, Mohammed-' Alee, on his safe arrival among them 
 at the capital, and contrasted the bygone perils of Nejdean 
 travelling with the secm-ity of the present day, the old Shirazee 
 fox turned to me with a knowing wink, and said, but in Hindoo- 
 stanee, and in an undertone, " Formerly there were fifty robbers 
 here, now there is only one ; but that one is an equivalent for 
 the fifty ;" a remark which recalled to my mind the " ubi soli- 
 tudinem faciuut, pacem appellant " of the Koman annalist. 
 
 Meanwhile the comparison between the Wahhabee and the 
 Turkish administrations (and I believe the Persian too, what- 
 ever Mohammed-' Alee-esh-Shirazee could boast) is decidedly 
 in favour of the former ; inasmuch as a government which 
 though ultimately ruinous to its subjects yet suffers no one 
 else to ruin them, is better than one which, while itself 
 wasting and desolating the people, gives free leave also to every- 
 body else who has a mind to join in the work, nay, invites and 
 incites them. Sincerity, too, claims respect ; and if fanaticism 
 be bad as a ruler, it is worse perhaps when a tool : now with 
 the Wahhabee it is the former, with the Turk the latter. In 
 juxtaposition Avith the Ottoman, the Nejdean has no need of 
 whitewashing, he becomes positively fair by the contrast. 
 Many inferences might hence be drawn ; but I leave them 
 to the intelligence of my readers. 
 
 While on one of our suburban excursions we took the direc- 
 tion of 'Oneyzah, but found it utterly impossible to arrive 
 within its walls ; so we contented ourselves witli an outside and 
 distant view of this large and populous town ; the number of its 
 houses, and their size, judging b}^ the overtopping summits that 
 marked out the dwelling of Zamil and his family, far surpassed 
 anything in Bereydah. The outer fortifications are enormously 
 thick, and the girdle of palm-trees between them and the town 
 affords a considerable additional defence to the latter. For 
 all I could see, there is little stonework in the constructions, 
 they appear almost exclusively of unbaked bricks ; yet even so 
 they are formidable defences for Arabia. The whole country 
 around and whatever lay north-east towards Bereydah was more 
 or less ravaged by the war ; and we were blamed by our friends
 
 Chap. \T:I] ARABS AND PERSIANS 3 1 9 
 
 as very rash in having ventured thus far ; in fact, it was a 
 mere chance that we did not fall in with skirmishers or plun- 
 derers; and in such a case the military discipline of Kaseem 
 would hardly have ensured the safety of a third and un- 
 armed party. 
 
 Two whole weeks had thus passed, a third began, and Aboo- 
 'Eysa was not yet ready to start, nor were the reasons which 
 he at iirst assigned for this delay wholly satisfactory. At last 
 the true cause of his dilatoriness came to light, and it was 
 of a character to be accepted without blame or necessity for 
 excuse. 
 
 Mohammed-'Alee-esh-Shirazee, the Persian representative at 
 Meshid 'Alee, and now entrusted with the headmanship of the 
 national pilgrimage, had Avritten " in Arabic and Persian," to 
 Kiad, announcing the flight of Aboo-Boteyn, and the conduct 
 of Mohanna, and thereon proposing to pay in his own person a 
 visit to the capital, where he would state by word of mouth 
 grievances too many and too serious to be entrusted to pen and 
 ink. Fey^ul would most gladly have dispensed with the offered 
 interview, but he feared lest the Persian should take occasion of 
 a refusal to come to a total rupture, the result of which must 
 be to deprive Nejed of its annual perquisites from the passage 
 of the pilgrims. Accordingly he sent word to Mohanna to pro- 
 vide Mohammed-' Alee with an escort for his journey to Eiad, 
 and to make his arrangements with the other Persians after a 
 manner to ensure their safe return home. 
 
 During the interval of these letters to and fro, the governor 
 of Bereydah had wrung out of his Shiya'ee guests a sum 
 amounting on the most moderate calculation to 1,600Z. sterling, 
 and could hardly now expect further subsidies. He had thus 
 no great interest in detaining them any longer ; whereas to 
 furnish them with a guide was precisely a handle left in his 
 power for obtaining an additional gain, by a charge laid on the 
 profits attached to such a service. But he was not over-disposed 
 to gratify the Nil'ib (for such was the official title of 
 Mohammed-' Alee, and by it we will henceforth designate him 
 for brevity's sake) both with guides and beasts of burden, 
 since these he could hardly have supplied otherwise than gratis. 
 So he observed on that point of his instructions a prudent
 
 3 20 BEREYDAH [Cuai>. VII 
 
 silence, and resolved to oblige the Persian grandee to shift for 
 himself. 
 
 The Nu'ib was now in somewhat the same predicament as 
 ours had been, seeking for companions and finding none ; for 
 even the guarantee of a royal invitation was insufficient to 
 remove all doubts touching what reception he might meet in 
 Riad ; nor were the men of Kaseem ambitious of a visit to the 
 Wahhabee capital. At last he had recourse for counsel and 
 help to Aboo-'Eysa, with whom he had been on very good 
 terms throughout their previous journey. This latter was 
 willing enough to undertake the office of bear-leader, but he 
 had not then by him enough beasts of burden to suffice for the 
 occasion. The Na'ib indeed possessed his own dromedary, but 
 he was accompanied by two servants, 'Alee and Hasan, both 
 natives of Meshid, besides the Hajj Hoseyn, a sort of head- 
 muleteer from the neighbourhood of Bagdad. All these were 
 dismounted, and required camels or dromedaries ; Aboo-'Eysa 
 had but four, two of which he had already engaged in our ser- 
 vice, nor was he a man to retract a previous promise. How- 
 ever he was loth to lose the opportunity of an addition to his 
 band, and accordingly he set about devising means to procure 
 supplementary quadrupeds ; but his funds were at a low ebb, 
 hence he had to borrow, and the transaction lasted many days. 
 
 Meanwhile the Na'ib, as was natural, introduced himself to us. 
 He was a thorough Persian, and full sixty years old or even more, 
 ])ut in full vigour of body, and, had he not been an habitual 
 opium-chewer, of mind too ; his beard and whiskers were so 
 carefully dyed with henna and black, that at a little distance he 
 might almost have passed for a man of forty. He spoke Arabic 
 badly, Turkish somewhat better, and Hindoostanee remarkably 
 well, for he had been many years agent of the Persian govern- 
 ment at Hyderabad in the Deccan; very witty and enjoying a 
 joke, verbal or practical, shrewd from long conversance with 
 affairs, though, like most Persians of my acquaintance, not 
 difficult to dupe; talkative and gay, but occasionally yielding to 
 violent and most indecorous fits of passion ; a devout Shiya'ee 
 and adorer of 'Alee and the Mahdee, at the mention of whose 
 name I have seen him prostrate himself full length on the 
 ground ; in a word, he was a " character," and the circumstances
 
 Chap. VII] ARABS AND PERSIANS 32 1 
 
 of the journey brought him out in every light and every point 
 of view. His attendants had nothing to distinguish them except 
 their coarseness, their noisy Shiya'ee fanaticism, and their un- 
 measured declamations against Arabs and Wahhabees, the whole 
 in the corrupt slang dialect of Bagdad and Meshid, presenting 
 a curious contrast with the absolute purity and minute correct- 
 ness of the language spoken around them. We now became fully 
 acquainted with these men, our destined fellow-travellers to Riad, 
 and our next-door neighbours there ; their visits helped us to 
 pass a time otherwise tedious from hope deferred, 
 
 September closed, and then finally Mohanna selected a guide 
 to lead the Taj-Djehan and the associates of her pilgrimage to 
 the banks of Euphrates. The Persians duly paid the price of 
 their deliverance, and departed on the north-western track, 
 having about twenty-five days' march before them, and slender 
 provisions. However, during my stay at Bagdad in the following 
 spring, I was happy to learn that they had all at last arrived in 
 safety. 
 
 Aboo-'Eysa too, after many delays inseparable from borrowing, 
 found the desired camels, and we now prepared ourselves for 
 the road. But before starting, an unlucky incident took place, 
 sufficient in itself to reveal the weak point of our over-confiding 
 guide. One evening that Aboo-'Eysa with his Persian friends 
 were at supper in our house, Habbash, an ill-conditioned 
 mulatto servant whom he had taken in tow more from com- 
 passion than anything else when leaving Medinah, profited by 
 his master's absence from camp to elope, carrying off with him 
 in his flight Aboo-'Eysa's best cloak, some money, and last, not 
 least, the large brass mortar for pounding coffee. Now the 
 mortar was a remarkably fine one, of excellent metal, and used 
 to give out a very melodious bell-like ring when at work, and 
 hence its owner was particularly fond of it, and seldom left it 
 idle. Nor was it easy, or even possible, to find such another 
 one at Bereydah ; and to make matters worse, the loss occurred 
 just when we had a ten days' journey before us, and stood more 
 in need of aromatic solace than ever ; nor had the Na'ib any 
 similar utensil among his baggage, being, like most of his 
 nation, not a coffee but a tea drinker. The loss of the aforesaid 
 mortar was accordingly " the most unkindest cut of all," and 
 
 VOL. I. Y
 
 322 BEREYBAH [Chap. Vll 
 
 Aboo-'Eysa swore that he would have it back at any price. So 
 he sent ofif two or three friends to Imnt after the fugitive 
 Hahbash and his booty, and then went on the cliase himself. 
 But after two days lost in vain research news came that the 
 thief had been seen on the Medinah road towards Henakeeyah, 
 and so far advanced that no hope remained of catching- either 
 him or the mortar. Fortunately I carried about with me a 
 small brazen implement wherein to pound " poisoned poisons " 
 for my patients ; this we now washed out carefully, and applied 
 it to more social uses during our way to the capital, where at 
 last Aboo-'Eysa found a supplement if not an equivalent for 
 his loss. 
 
 When all was ready for the long-expected departure, it was 
 definitely fixed for the 3rd of October, a Friday, I think, at 
 nightfall. Since our first interview Barakat and nij^self had not 
 again presented ourselves before Mohanna, except in chance 
 meetings, accompanied by distant salutations in the street or 
 market-place ; and we did not see any need for paying him a 
 special farewell call. Indeed, after learning who and what he 
 was, we did our best not to draw his grey eye oh us, and 
 thereby escaped some additional trouble and surplus duties to 
 pay, nor did any one mention us to him. At star-rise we bade 
 our host and householder Ahmed a final adieu, and left the 
 town with Aboo-'Eysa for our guide.
 
 3^3 
 
 CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 From Bereydah to Riad 
 
 The portion of this world which I at present 
 
 Have taken up to fill the present sermon, 
 Is one of which there's no description recent ; 
 
 The reason why is easy to determine — Byron 
 
 TWO ROUTES FROM BEREYDAH TO RIAD — WE TAKE THE LONGER — CAMELS 
 AND DROMEDARIES — NIGHT TRAVELLING — ROWEYDAH — COUNTRY HOSPI- 
 TALITY — UPLANDS — ROUTE ACROSS THE NEFOOD — WASIT — ITS INHABI- 
 TANTS — VALLEY OF ZULPHAH — NIGHT AT ZULPHAH GAZELLES — A 
 
 SOLIBAH GIRL AND THE NA'iB — D.TEBEL TOWEYK, ITS EXTENT, CHARACTER, 
 DIRECTION OF ITS STREAMS, CLIMATE — VILLAGE OF GHAT — ARAB ETY- 
 MOLOGY — SEDEYR HOSPITALITY, CONVERSATION, TONE OF SOCIETY — THE 
 AKABAH — PLATEAU OF TOWEYK — A STORM — MEJMAA' — HISTORY OF THE 
 SEDEYREE FAMILY — 'aBD-EL-MAHSIN AND HIS CASTLE — TOBACCO— ROUTE 
 ON THE PLATEAU — A RUNNING STREAM — DJELAJIL AND ROAVDAH — METEYR 
 AND KAHTAN BEDOUINS^TOWEYM — THE TOWN, ITS CHARACTER AND INHA- 
 BITANTS—INSECTS AND REPTILES IN CENTRAL ARABIA — HAFR — THOMEYR 
 — AN ADVENTURE IN THE VILLAGE— SOLIBAH LAD — A GARDEN — ROUTE 
 BY THENEEYAT-'ATALAH — SADIK — WOODED COUNTRY — HARES— HOOLAH — 
 LOCAL ADVANTAGES OF THE WAHHABEE RULE — HOREYMELAH — ITS CASTLE — 
 IBRAHEEM BASHA — HISTORY OF MOHAMMED-EBN-'aBD-EL-WAHHAB — HIS 
 SYSTEM — HOW FAR ACCORDANT WITH MAHOMET AND THE CORAN — HIS 
 LIFE AT DAMASCUS AND 'eYANAH — HIS FIRST PREACHING — EBN-MUFLIK 
 INTERFERES — FLIGHT TO DEREY'eEYAH — EBN-SA'oOD AND THE WAH- 
 HABEE — FIRST WARS, AND SUCCESS — DOWNFALL OF 'eYANAH AND THE 
 MA'AMMERS — CONQUEST OF YEMAMAH— DEFEAT OF 'aRAR — PERSONAL 
 HISTORY OF THE WAHHABEE — HIS FAMILY — FROM HOREYMELAH TO 
 SEDOOS — FRONTIER OF 'aARED — UPLANDS — WADI HANEEFAH — RUINS OF 
 'eYANAH — ROWDAH — HISTORY OF MOSEYLEMAH AND SHEJAH — BATTLE 
 OF ROUDAH — DEATH OF MOSEYLEMAH — CAPITULATION OF RIAD — CONDUCT 
 OF SHEJAH — WADI HANEEFAH CONTINUED — MALKA — RUINS OF DEREY'- 
 EEYAH — GARDEN OF 'aBD-ER-RAHMAN — ROAD TO RIAD. 
 
 Our party assembled close under the walls by the eastern gate, 
 a little to the north of the watch-tower, and not far from the 
 tents of Mohammed, son of Feyf^ul. The Na'ib now came up 
 with his three companions; Barakut, Aboo-'Eysa, and myself 
 made three more; Hoseyn-el-Ba?ree, a gay young merchant 
 from the town whose name he bore, and the two Meccans,
 
 324 FROM BEREYDAH [Chap. VIII 
 
 who, weary of ill hick at Bereydah, had determined to try the 
 doubtful generosity of Fey^ul, completed the number of tra- 
 vellers, ten in all. Besides, as the first stages of our march 
 might possibly expose us to a chance meeting with the pre- 
 datory bands of 'Oneyzah, Mohanna had, after much demur, 
 furnished the Na'ib with a body-guard of three or four match- 
 lock men, who were to accompany us up to the frontiers of 
 Kaseem. 
 
 Two roads lay before us. The shorter, and for that reason 
 the more frequented of the two, led south-east-by-east through 
 Woshem" and its capital Shakra, and thence up Wadi Haneefah 
 to Riad. But this track passed through a district often visited 
 at the present moment by the troops of 'Oneyzah and their 
 allies, and hence our companions, not over-courageous for the 
 most, were afraid to follow it. Another road, much more cir- 
 cuitous, but farther removed from the scene of military opera- 
 tions, led north-east to Zulphab, and thence entered the 
 province of Sedeyr, which it traversed in a south-easterly or 
 southern direction, and thus reached the 'Aared. Our council 
 of war resolved on the latter itinerary, nor did we ourselves 
 regret a roundabout which promised to procure us the sight of 
 much that we might scarely have otherwise an ojDjDortunity of 
 visiting. Barakat and I were mounted on two excellent drome- 
 daries of Aboo-'Eysa's stud ; the Na'ib was on a lovely grey 
 she-camel, with a handsome saddle, crimson and gold. The 
 Meccans shared between them a long-backed black beast ; the 
 rest were also mounted on camels or dromedaries, since the road 
 before us was impracticable for horses, at any rate at this time 
 of year. 
 
 It may be well to make my readers aware once for all of 
 the fact that the popular home idea of a dromedary having two 
 humps, and a camel one, or vice versa (for I have forgotten which 
 of the animals is supplied with a duplicate boss in coloured 
 picture-books), is a simple mistake. The camel and the dro- 
 medary in Arabia are the same identical genus and creature, 
 excepting that the dromedary is a high-bred camel, and the 
 camel a low-bred dromedary, exactly the same distinction which 
 exists between a race-horse and a hack ; both are horses, but the 
 one of l)lood, the other not. The dromedary is the race-horse of
 
 Chap. VIII] TO ItlAT) 325 
 
 his species, thin, elegant (or comparatively so), fine-haired, light 
 of step, easy of pace, and much more enduring of thirst than the 
 woolly, thick-built, heavy-footed, ungainly, and jolting camel. 
 But both and each of them have only one hump, placed imme- 
 diately behind their shoulders, where it serves as a fixing-point 
 for the saddle or burden. Owing to this similarity, they are 
 often confounded in the common appellations of " Baa'reer " 
 or '•' Nok," male or female camels, though yet more often 
 the dromedary enjoys his special title of " hejeen " or " dolool." 
 For the two-humped beast, ic exists indeed, but it is neither an 
 Arab dromedary nor camel ; it belongs to the Persian breed, 
 called b}' the Arabs "Bakhtee" or Bactrian. Perhaps there 
 may be a specimen of it at the Zoological Grardens, and thither 
 who chooses may go and have a look at it, only let him not 
 profane the name of " dromedary " by applying it to the clumsy, 
 coarse-haired, upland Persian beast before him. To see real 
 live dromedaries, my readers must, I fear, come to Arabia, for 
 these animals are not often to be met with elsewhere, not even 
 in Syria ; and whoever wishes to contemplate the species in all 
 its beauty must prolong his journey to 'Oman, the most distant 
 corner of the Peninsula, and which is for dromedaries what 
 Nejed is for horses, Cachemire for sheep, and Thibet, I believe, 
 for bulldogs. 
 
 Night had fairly set in, but the moon, now in her second 
 quarter, shone bright, and promised us yet seven or eight hours 
 of her lamp. Canopus glittered in all his splendour to the 
 south, and Orion was to rise before long. Off we started at 
 a round pace, and trotted over the sand-hills that girdle in 
 Bereydah, now up, now down, and then on by moonshine 
 among bushes and grass, over hillock and plain, with at times 
 a mass of dark foliage in sight, to indicate where stood some 
 village, but we halted at none. The night air soon cooled into 
 a chill ; our party was not at first a very cheerful one. The 
 Na'ib had parted from Mohanna in a fit of ill-humour, such as 
 an opium-eating Persian alone can display; his attendants were 
 sulky to keep in tune with their master; the two Meccans 
 could not decide between them which should ride their single 
 camel and which should walk, and by their frequent changes of 
 method reminded me of the farmer and his son going with their
 
 326 FROM BEBEYDAII [Cii.vr. YIII 
 
 ass to market, only with less equability of temper ; and Aboo- 
 'Eysa was making ineffectual attempts to enliven the party, 
 though he, too, had not wholly recovered from the annoyance 
 consequent on the disappearance of his servant and coffee- 
 mortar. The Nejdeans kept aloof, looking on us conjointly 
 as a pack of reprobates, whom tliey would more gladly plunder 
 than escort. Lastly, Barakat and myself were not without 
 anxiety touching what might lie before us at Riad, so dismal 
 had been the tales recounted to us in Kaseem about the Wah- 
 habee capital, its rulers and people. Nor were we over-pleased 
 to have the backbiting JNIeccans in our company. 
 
 But, sad or merry, we were now embarked, and on we went 
 in speed and silence. At last the moon lowered, reddened, and 
 then obliquely sank, while we began to hope for the rest and 
 sleep that all stood much in need of. However, Aboo-'Eysa, 
 who preferred encamping in the neighbourhood of habitations 
 to a desert bivouac, despised our expostulations, and made us 
 push on in spite of weariness, till about an hour before day- 
 break, and just at the period of night when the darkness 
 is darkest, we suddenly found ourselves on the edge of deep 
 water-channels and standing maize, while high walls loomed 
 through the obscurity beyond. It was Roweydah, a small 
 village, but well provided with irrigation, and the gardens 
 before us were the private property of Mohanna, who had 
 planted and arranged them during his presidency in the pro- 
 vince. Here we were to halt, and try what hospitality the 
 inhabitants would show. 
 
 Some one way, some another, for between darkness and 
 drowsiness we went at it like drunken men, after much shouting 
 and splashing we floundered through and out of the watery 
 labyrinth, and reached the high village gate. There we en- 
 tered, and discovered what looked like a castle on the one 
 side, with an open space on the other. In this latter we flung 
 ourselves down on the ground without further questions, to 
 sleep, and I hope that Aboo-'Eysa looked after the baggage, for 
 we certainly did not. 
 
 Two hours of morning nap after a long night journey are 
 equal to six hours at any other time. The risen sun awoke us, 
 and we began to rub our eyes and reconnoitre our position. 
 We had been sleeping by the side of a small tank ; hard by
 
 Chap. YIII] " TO SI AT) ^27 
 
 were low-built houses and court-walls ; on tlie other hand our 
 castle, which now turned out to be the chiefs, or rather the 
 head farmer's abode, but spacious and lofty enough for a baron 
 of the feudal times. We washed hands, faces, and feet (for our 
 dress list, it is needless to say, did not number those European- 
 ized articles stockings among its items), and made straight for 
 the K'hawah of this princely dwelling, sure to find morning 
 coffee in function. The Na'ib seated himself in due state near 
 the master of the house, while we, entirely eclipsed by the 
 grandeurs of a Persian ambassador on his way to Fey§ul, 
 modestly took our places lower down. Many villagers came in 
 to stare at the strangers, and to partake of coffee on their 
 account. The meeting terminated by an invitation of all to 
 breakfast in the garden belonging to Mohanna, for the head 
 man here was also country bailiff to the Bereydah governor. 
 
 A very pretty garden it was — fig-trees and orange-trees, pome- 
 granates and peaches, with stone-rimmed watercourses and 
 tanks, and walks among the shrubbery arranged with more 
 taste and symmetry than Arabs usually display in their horti- 
 cultural efforts. Carpets were spread under an overshadowing 
 group of palms, and while the more solid repast was preparing, 
 melons of all shapes and sizes were piled up before us for a 
 whet. The Na'ib produced a tea-urn with its complete appurte- 
 nances, not other than might have beseemed an English drawing- 
 room, besides a beautiful Persian pipe or Nargheelah, silver- 
 mounted and elegantly adorned. Its owner had now recovered 
 his good-humour, and his satelhtes with him. Not that they 
 always took the cue from their master, for they were by their 
 nature downright bears, and often sulky and ill-conditioned 
 merely on their own score, yet more often boisterous and ribald. 
 Hence fearful squabbles broke out at times between them and 
 the Na'ib himself, and scenes which afforded the lookers-on no 
 slight diversion, and enlivened the monotony of the journey. 
 But just now the prospect of a good breakfast had an admirable 
 effect on their minds, and they were agreeable to the best of 
 their abilities. Aboo-'Eysa was far too accustomed to such 
 characters, and to the varying incidents of travelling, to be easily 
 elated or depressed, and kept an even good-nature in his face 
 and air, though he sometimes in private permitted liimself very 
 sarcastic remarks on the bad breeding of the Persians,
 
 328 FROM BEREYDAH [Chap. AlII 
 
 But he had a side intrigue to carry on, which occasioned 
 many and long conversations between him and the Na'ib, and 
 efifectually ob\^ated any serious chance of their falling out. 
 We have already seen that Aboo-Boteyn, Feysul's ci-devant 
 pilgrim-agent, had been on indifferent terms witli Aboo-'Eysa, 
 and had even done him positive injury. His elopement to 
 'Oneyzah now left his office vacant ; it was a lucrative one, and 
 exactly suited to our friend's ways, and to his long-standing 
 familiarity witli the Shiya'ees. They too had experienced his 
 toleration and honest conduct, and held him in high esteem. 
 The Na'ib for his part hoped to obtain at Eiad full satisfaction 
 for the past, and a guarantee of better things for the future. 
 But he was an utter stranger at the Wahhabee court. A pact 
 was therefore made between him and Aboo-'Eysa ; the latter 
 was to give him the entrees, to facilitate his access to Fey.sul (no 
 easy matter), and to dispose the ministers and everyone else in his 
 favour ; while the Na'ib was to exact of the Wahhabee autocrat, 
 as a sine qua non condition of good understanding hereafter, 
 that Aboo-'Eysa should henceforth be sole conductor and ple- 
 nipotentiary guide of the Persian pilgrims through Nejed. 
 Such was the plan, long discussed, and at last fully agreed on, 
 and all necessary steps in furtherance of its execution were 
 accurately calculated and determined. We shall see the result 
 before leaving Eiad. 
 
 The forenoon was far advanced before the sheep, the victim 
 of our banquet, had been killed, skinned, boiled, and served up 
 with rice, eggs, and otlier delicacies of the season. A hearty 
 meal followed, and after a short interval of repose we got our 
 baggage ready, thanked our host, and set out towards the north- 
 east. 
 
 Our road yet lay in Kaseem, whose highlands we rejoined 
 once more, and traversed till sunset. The view was very beauti- 
 ful from its extent and variety of ups and downs, in broad 
 grassy hills ; little groups of trees stood in scattered detachments 
 around ; and had a river, that desideratum of Arabia, been in 
 sight, one might almost have fancied oneself in the country 
 bordering the Lower Khine for some part of its course ; 
 readers may suppose, too, that there was less verdure here than 
 in the European parallel ; my comparison bears only on the
 
 Chap. VIII] TO RIAT) 329 
 
 general turn of the view. No river exists nearer Kaseem than 
 Shatt, some hundred leagues off; and our eyes had been too 
 long accustomed to the deceptive pools of the mirage, to associ- 
 ate with them even a passing idea of aught save drought and 
 heat. 
 
 We journeyed on till dark, and then reached certain hillocks 
 of a different character from the hard ground lately under our 
 feet. Here began the Nefood, whose course from south-west to 
 north-east, and then north, parts between Kaseem, Woshem, 
 and Sedeyr. I have already said something of these sandy 
 inlets when describing that which we crossed three months ago 
 between Djowf and Shomer. The Nefood actually before us 
 was fortunately narrower than our old acquaintance, but in other 
 respects like it or worse. However, October is not July, even 
 in Arabia, and we had this time a better guide in our company 
 than the Bedouin Djedey'. 
 
 The first origin of this particular sand-stream is from the great 
 westerly arm of the South Desert or Dahna, which pushes up 
 behind the Yemen and Wadi Nejran, crosses the extremity of the 
 longf Wadi Dowasir above Kela'at Bisha', and thence runs north- 
 ward, having Djebel 'Aaseer, the Meccan territory, and the Hejaz 
 on its left, and Nejed on its right. It gives off, almost at right 
 angles, several lateral branches, of which the present is the 
 longest, though not the widest. Passing alongside of the south- 
 western chain of Djebel Toweyk in its full length, and leaving 
 the Nejdean pilgrim road between it and the mountain, it skirts 
 the south of Kaseem, till reaching the extremity of that province, 
 it enters Woshem, crosses a corner of it, and then turns north- 
 ward, separating the rest of Woshem from Sedeyr ; things more 
 readily explained by a glance on the map. Its last undulations 
 die away in the great stony plain that forms the north-eastern 
 corner of the Peninsula, and connects it with the lands of Zobeyr, 
 Ba§rah, and the Shatt. 
 
 On the verge of this desert strip we now halted a little, to 
 eat a hasty supper, and to drink, the Arabs coffee and the 
 Persians tea. But journeying in these sands, under the heat of 
 the day, is alike killing to man and beast, and therefore Aboo- 
 'Eysa had resolved that we should cross the greater portion 
 under favour of the cooler hours of night. In pursuance of his
 
 330 FliOM BEREYDAH [Chap. A'III 
 
 idea, we were again mounted aijd on our way before the slanting 
 pyramid of zodiacal liglit had faded in the west. 
 
 All night, a Aveary night, we waded up and down through 
 waves of sand, in which the camels often sank up to their knees, 
 and their riders were obliged to alight and help them on. 
 There was no symptom of a track, no landmark to direct our 
 way ; the stars alone were now our compass and guide ; but 
 Aboo-'Eysa had passed this Nefood more than once, and knew 
 the line of march by heart. When the first pale streak of dawn 
 appeared on our right shoulder, we were near the summit of a 
 sandy mountain, and the air blew keener than I had yet felt it 
 in Arabia, We lialted, and gathered togetlier heaps of Ghada 
 and otlier desert shrubs to light blazing fires, by which some sat, 
 some lay and slept, myself for one, till the rising sunbeams 
 tipped the yellow crests around, and we resumed our way. 
 
 Now by full daylight appeared the true character of the 
 region which we were traversing; its aspect resembled the 
 Nefood north of Djebel Shomer, but the undulations were here 
 higher and deeper, and the sand itself lighter and less stable. 
 In most spots neither shrub nor blade of grass could fix its 
 root, in others a scanty vegetation struggled through, but no 
 trace of man anywliere. The camels ploughed slowly on ; the 
 Persians, unaccustomed to such scenes, were downcast and 
 silent ; all were tired, and no wonder. At last, a little before 
 noon, and just as the sun's heat was becoming intolerable, we 
 reached the verge of an immense crater-like hollow, certainly 
 three or four miles in circumference, where the sand-billows 
 receded on every side, and left in the midst a pit seven or eiglit 
 hundred feet in depth, at whose base we could discern a white 
 gleam of limestone rock, and a small group of houses, trees, 
 and gardens, thus capriciously isolated in the very heart of the 
 desert. 
 
 This was the little village and oasis of Wasit, or " the inter- 
 mediary," so called because a central point between the three 
 provinces of Kaseem, Sedeyr, and Woshem, yet belonging to 
 none of them. Nor is it often visited by wayfarers, as we 
 learnt from the inhabitants, men simple and half savage, from 
 their little intercourse with the outer world, and unacquainted 
 even with the common forms of Islamitic prayer, though
 
 Chap. VIII] TO RIAT) jjj 
 
 dwelling in tlie midst of the Wahliabee dominions. They 
 enquired from us about the current news of 'Oneyzah and other 
 events of the day, much in the fashion that a Lincolnshire 
 peasant might ask for the news of the Mexican war or the 
 Cochin-China expedition — things far distant, and only known 
 by indistinct report. Aboo-'Eysa said that in his wanderings 
 he had met with other like islets of vegetation and human life, 
 but even more cut off from social intercourse, world-forgetting, 
 and world-forgotten. Lastly, there exist also oases totally un- 
 tenanted save by birds and gazelles, especially in the southern 
 waste. 
 
 A long winding descent brought us to the bottom of the 
 valley, where on our arrival men and boys came out to stare 
 at the Persians, and by exacting double prices for fruit and 
 camel's milk, proved themselves not altogether such fools as 
 they looked. For us, regarded as Arabs, we enjoyed their hospi- 
 tality — it was necessarily a limited one — gratis ; whereupon the 
 Na'ib grew jealous, and declaimed against the Arabs as "infi- 
 dels," for not treating with suitable generosity pilgrims like them- 
 selves returning from the " house of Grod." Indeed this was 
 a favourite theme with him all the way, and he seemed to think 
 that his title of Hajj or " pilgrim " alone, setting other con- 
 siderations aside, should have ensured him everywhere attentions 
 " on the head and eye," in Eastern phrase ; milk, eggs, and the 
 rest for nothing, and honours witlial. So, he assured us, 
 pilgrims were treated in Persia ; nor is this impossible, for the 
 reverence paid to sacred localities and those who visit them, 
 generally increases in direct proportion with the distance. 
 Many in consequence were the remarks made by our Shiraz 
 nobleman respecting the Indian and Persian Mahometans on 
 the one hand, and the Arabs, above all the Nej deans, on the 
 other, equally advantageous to the former and soid-embittering 
 to the latter, had they understood them ; but they were in 
 Hindoostanee. 
 
 After a while the head man of Wasit favoured us witli an 
 invitation into his garden, and there we reposed a couple of 
 hours under the shade of dense fig-trees, till the noontide heat 
 had somewhat abated. I should add that the fruits cultivated 
 here — melons, dates, &.c. — were, it will be readily be supposed.
 
 332 FROM BEREYDAH [Chap. VIII 
 
 much inferior botli in size and quality to what we had been 
 familiar with in Kaseem. 
 
 To get out of this pit was no easy matter ;/«c<7/s descensus, 
 &.C., thought I ; no ascending path showed itself in the required 
 direction, and everyone tried to push up his floundering beast 
 where the sand appeared at a manageable slope, and firm to 
 the footinsf. Camels and men fell and rolled back do^v^l the 
 declivity, till some of the party shed tears of vexation, and 
 others, more successful, laughed at the annoyance of their 
 companions. Aboo-'Eysa ran about from one to the other, 
 attempting to direct and keep them together, till finally, as 
 Heaven willed, we reached the upper rim to the north. 
 
 Before us lay what seemed a storm-driven sea of fire in the 
 red light of afternoon, and through it we wound our way, 
 till about an hour before sunset we fell in with a sort of 
 track or furrow. Next opened out on our road a long long 
 descent, at whose extreme base we discerned the important 
 and commercial town of Zulphah. Beyond it rose the wall- 
 like steeps of Djebel Toweyk, so often heard of, and now seen 
 close at hand. Needless to say how joyfully we welcomed the 
 first view of that strange ridge, the heart and central knot of 
 Arabia, beyond which whatever lay might almost be reckoned 
 as a return journey. 
 
 We had now, in fact, crossed the Nefood, and had at our feet 
 the great valley which constitutes the main line of communi- 
 cation between Nejed and the north, reaching even to the 
 Tigris and Bagdad. The sun was setting when we reached the 
 lowest ebb of the sand ocean, and left its enormous waves piled 
 up ridge above ridge behind us; Barakat and myself, thanks to 
 the excellent fibre of our dromedaries, were far in front of our 
 associates, and we willingly allowed the beasts to turn aside 
 from the track and feed on the copious pasturage of Themam, 
 a ragged sweet-smelling grass common throughout Nejed, and 
 often mentioned by its poets, while we gazed now on the red 
 range in our rear, now on the long valley stretching upon our 
 right and left, to north and south, with the broken outlines of 
 the walls of Zulphah a mile or more in front, and now on the 
 precipitous though low fortress-ledge of Toweyk which bor- 
 dered the horizon.
 
 Chap. VIII] TO EIAI) ^33 
 
 Night was fast coming on when we entered the scattered 
 plantations of Zulphah. We traversed them awliile, amid en- 
 quiries from peasants returning home after their day's labour, 
 and barking dogs who objected to our intrusion on their pre- 
 cincts at so late an hour. In the town itself we were at once 
 surprised by meeting a much larger proportion of women 
 than of men. This was occasioned by the absence of a great 
 part of the male population in the war of 'Oneyzah. Zul- 
 phah indeed does not strictly belong to any of the three ad- 
 joining provinces : it stands alone on the government register, 
 and furnishes about six hundred fighting men to the state 
 wars or " Grhazowat." But its sympathies are Wahhabee, and 
 its indwellers much nearer allied by blood no less than by 
 feeling to the Nejdean mountaineers of Sedeyr than to the 
 plainsmen of Kaseem or the corn-merchants of Woshem. It 
 had sent its contingent to the campaign only two days before; 
 but the Zulphah warriors had taken a circuitous road down 
 the valley, to spare themselves and their horses the shorter but 
 laborious cut across the Nefood by which we had come ; hence 
 we had not met them on their march — perliaps all the better 
 for ourselves. 
 
 We picked out our way to the palace of tlie governor, a 
 Nejdean by birth, and said to have collected large riches while 
 here in office. For the town is not only warlike but wealthy; 
 it is the meeting-point and depot of the north-bound com- 
 merce from Sedeyr, 'Aared, Woshem, and whatever adjoins them; 
 and its inhabitants are themselves no inconsiderable mer- 
 chants and very bold travellers, often to be seen at Zobeyr, 
 Koweyt, and Basrah. Their town is moreover the key of Nejed 
 on this side and an important military position, barring the 
 entrance of the valley where it stands, and which communicates 
 directly with Wadi Haneefah, by which it leads to the capital 
 itself. On this very road 'Abd-Allah-ebn-Sa'ood, the fiercest 
 and best known to history among the Wahhabee monarchs, 
 led his troops sixty years ago to the siege of Meshid 'Alee, and 
 the plunder of Kerbela. 
 
 Arrived at the palace gate, we were duly announced to the 
 governor, but his highness was not in the hospitable vein that 
 evening, and would not even allow us the shelter of the court-
 
 334 FROM BEREYBAII [Cii.vi'. VIII 
 
 yard, so we encamped in the open air at the foot of his outer 
 wall near the gateway. A band of Solibahs had pitched their 
 tents a little lower down; they had just come from a hunting 
 expedition somewhere to the north to sell their game in 
 Zulphah. 
 
 Meanwhile the town governor half repented him of his dis- 
 courtesy, and generously resolved to give us board, though not 
 lodging. In pursuance of tliis better thought he sent some 
 of his attendants to the Solibahs, and purchased from them a 
 fine deer; this was handed over to the Na'ib's servants, who 
 set about dressing it for supper. The Solibahs affirmed that 
 it belonged to a peculiar species that never drinks water, 
 and whose flesh is supposed to have a super-excellent flavour. 
 Certainly the specimen before us was excellent eating, besides 
 being served up with an extraordinary allowance of that best 
 of sauces, hunger; but whether it had really in its lifetime 
 belonged to the " Total Abstinence from all Kinds of Drink 
 Society," I do not know ; though the Arabs declare such to be 
 the case with whole herds of the gazelle tribe hereabouts. Yet 
 the desert-herbs seem hardly juicy enough to sujDply the want 
 of the pure liquid, nor could cutaneous absorption extract much 
 humidity from the torrid air ; in short, I rather question tlie 
 correctness of the statement. Ostriches too are reported to be 
 equally abstemious; and thus far is certain, that they are 
 rarely met with except in such utterly arid spots as seem to 
 preclude all possibility of water. 
 
 Next morning the Na'ib was too tired to set out early, and 
 we all waited where we were for an hour or more after sunrise. 
 Barakat and myself strolled about among the Soli bah tents, 
 where the full forms and comparatively fair complexions of 
 their tenants, their large eyes very vmlike the narrow peepers 
 of most Bedouins, and a peculiar cast of features, helped to 
 confirm me in the belief of what report asserts touching the 
 northerly origin of these wanderers, probably Syrian. They 
 bantered and laughed readily enough, both with us and at us, 
 but we could get no available information from them, so 
 habitual is their reserve on all serious topics, nor is it wholly 
 out of place among Mahometans and Wahliabees. The women 
 wei'e unveiled, and quite as forward as the men, or foj'warder.
 
 Chap. VIII] TO RIuiT) 335 
 
 A very pretty girl of the tribe played off this morning a trick 
 too characteristic for omission. Its victim was the old Na'ib, 
 who was now up and taking his draught of early tea. The 
 young lady, accompanied by two of her relatives, contrived to 
 come and go backwards and forwards before the Persian group, 
 till her glances had fairly wounded Mohammed-' Alee's heart. 
 He engaged her in a long and endearing conversation, and 
 ended by a proposal of marriage. The family with well- 
 affected joy gave a seeming assent, and accordingly when at 
 last we climbed our dromedaries to pursue our journey, behold 
 the dark-eyed gipsy-featured nymph with an elderly Solibah 
 relation, perhaps her father, both mounted on scraggy camels, 
 alongside of the Na'ib, who with looks of unutterable tender- 
 ness was making the handsomest offers to his future bride. 
 These she received with becoming bashfulness, and for half an 
 hour of the way bantered her enamoured Strephon to her 
 heart's content ; till on our making a brief halt for breakfast 
 at the verge of the town-gardens, she pretended to recollect I 
 know not what valuable left behind at the Solibah camp, and 
 went back with her kinsman to fetch it, after giving a woman's 
 promise of a speedy return. The deluded swain tarried in 
 hope, and made us all tarry in impatience for nearly two hours ; 
 but neither bride nor bridesman reappeared, and the Na'ib had 
 to console himself with the thought of the half-dozen spouses 
 (I had it from himself) who awaited him on his return home 
 to Meshid 'Alee, as he slowly and sadly remounted his drome- 
 dary, and added anotlier chapter to the long collection of 
 anecdotes which, like most bad men, he loved to recount about 
 the deceitfulness of the fair sex. 
 
 We had now passed the whole length of the town, several 
 streets of which had been lately swept away by the winter 
 torrents that pour at times their short-lived fury down this 
 valley. Before us to the south-east stretched the long hollow ; 
 on our right was the Nefood, on our left Djebel Toweyk and 
 the province of Sedeyr. The mountain air blew cool, and 
 this day's journey was a far pleasanter one than its prede- 
 cessor. We continued our march down the valley till the after- 
 noon, when we saw in front a remarkable promontory or 
 " Khosheym," literally, " a little nose," the generic name here
 
 236 FROM BEREYDAH [Chap. VIII 
 
 for all jutting crags, starting out abruptly from the mountain 
 level into the gully beneath, which here divides and goes 
 part south-east -by-east to Shakra the capital of Woshem, and 
 part south-west into the Nefood, and soon to Kaseem. By this 
 latter path the Zidphah detachment had travelled three days 
 before. For us, we followed neither branch, but turned aside 
 into a narrow gorge running up at a sharp angle to the north- 
 east, and thus entered between the heights of Djebel Toweyk 
 itself. 
 
 This mountain essentially constitutes Nejed. It is a wide 
 and flat chain, or rather plateau, whose general form is that of 
 a huge crescent ; its central and broadest segment belongs to 
 the province of 'Aared ; its north-eastern horn to that of 
 Sedeyr ; and in the first part of its southerly limb lies Woshem, 
 after which the mountain runs on between the south and west 
 behind the pilgrim road of Nejed, and thus severs it from 
 Wadi Dowasir. Kaseem with its lowlands is in front of, and in 
 a manner embraced by, this part of the crescent ; while Hasja 
 to the east, Yemamah and Afliij to the south, and the intermin- 
 able valley of Dowasir to the south-west, form its background 
 and appendages. If I may be permitted here to give my rough 
 guess regarding the elevation of the main plateau, a guess 
 grounded partly on the vegetation, climate, and similar local 
 features, partly on an approximative estimate of the ascent itself, 
 and of the subsequent descent on the other or sea side, I should 
 say that it varies from a height of one to two thousand feet 
 above the surrounding level of the Peninsula, and may thus 
 be about three thousand feet at most above the sea. Its 
 loftiest ledges occur in the Sedeyr district, where we shall pass 
 them before long; the centre and the south-westerly arm is 
 certainly lower. Djebel Toweyk is the middle knot of Arabia, 
 its Caucasus, so to say ; and is still, as it has often been in 
 former times, the turning point of the whole, or almost the 
 whole, Peninsula in a political and national bearing. To it 
 alone is the term "Nejed," strictly and topographically ap- 
 plied ; although the same denomination is sometimes, nay, often, 
 given by the Arabs themselves to all the inland provinces now 
 under Wahhabee rule; and hence Yemamah, Hareek, Aflaj, 
 Dowasir, and Kaseem have ac<[uired the name of "Nejed," but
 
 Chap. VIII] TO RIAD 337 
 
 more in a governmental than in a geographical sense. Foreign- 
 ers, not Europeans, but the natives of Syria, Bagdad, and 
 Egypt, often extend the aforesaid title in a general way to 
 whatever lies within or even on the desert girdle that inter- 
 venes between the main lands of Arabia Proper and its frontiers ; 
 and in this way Djebel Shomer, and even Djowf, Koweyt, and 
 Ha§a, are by them classed among the " Nejed " or " up-country," 
 an error which is entirely disavowed within the limits of the 
 Peninsula, and should as such be effaced from our maps. 
 
 Let me remark here, that Europeans who visit or describe 
 the East should be on their guard against taking in a strict and 
 literal sense the vague phrases employed by most Arabs, but 
 above all by Egyptians and Syrians, when speaking of stranger 
 countries and people ; the frequent use of synonyms and homo- 
 nyms is also a common source of mistake to foreign investiga- 
 tors. It is only by questioning many individuals, and that at 
 separate times and places, and then leisurely comparing one's 
 notes of the information thus obtained, that anything like accu- 
 racy can be reached even on the most leading topics, and then 
 too it is best to bring one's own eyes and ears to bear on 
 the spot or object in question, if possible. Arab vagueness of 
 ideas is often, as I have just hinted, merely the result or ex- 
 pression of a corresponding vagueness in the language, not of 
 any set desire to deceive ; but sometimes the latter motive finds 
 place also. No Nejdean, great or small, would be over anxious 
 to give a European too exact a notion of his native country, 
 any more than he would let him enter it, if he could help it, 
 and the same may be said of Arabs at large. 
 
 The name "Toweyk," is a diminutive form of the word "Towk," 
 or "garland," "twist," and thus signifies "the little garland," 
 or " little twist." My philological readers cannot have failed 
 to remark ere this the frequent occurrence of the well-known 
 diminutive of Arab nouns, represented in English equivalents by 
 an " o " in the place of the first vowel, and the diphthong " ey " 
 for tlie second. Thus " Kelb," " a dog," becomes " Koleyb," 
 " a little dog ; " " Eajel," " a man," " Rojeyl," " a little man ; " 
 " Dow'," " light " or " fire," " Do'wey' " " a little light " or 
 " little fire," and so forth. Nej deans employ this form of 
 speech on all occasions, reasonable or unreasonable ; and few 
 
 VOL. I. z
 
 338 ■ FROM BEREYDAH [Chap. VI 11 
 
 substantives with tlicni escape tlie process. Familiarity, affec- 
 tion, contempt, esteem, smallness, nay, greatness itself, are 
 all reasons with them for transforming their nouns, and thej 
 often do it " only for wantonness," without any reason soever. 
 Toweyk in particular owes its diminutive misnomen (for it is 
 a hu<'-e mountain) to national endearment, so said my friends. 
 The radical idea of a " twist " is more happily adapted to it, 
 since a stranger and more complicated labyrinth of valleys, 
 bends, ins and outs, gullies, torrent-courses, and perpendicular 
 precipices, cannot be imagined, besides the notable inflection of 
 the entire chain, and its half-moon form, already described. 
 
 The great mass of upland, thus named " Toweyk," or " Nejed," 
 is for the most of calcareous formation, though toward east 
 and south peaks of granite are sometimes intermixed with the 
 limestone rock, or clustered apart. Basalt, to the best of my 
 knowledge, appears nowhere, and in this respect Toweyk offers 
 a remarkable contrast to the Shomer range. There the pre- 
 vailing formation is reddish granite and basalt, rising in fan- 
 tastic peaks and sierras; here a white table-land, and long- 
 parallel lines like stairs. The extreme verge is almost always 
 abrupt, and takes a bold rise of about five or six hundred feet 
 sheer in chalky cliffs from the adjoining plain. Then succeeds 
 a table-land, various in extent, and nearly level throughout ; 
 then another step of three or four hundred feet, followed by 
 a second and higher table-land ; and occasionally a third and 
 yet loftier plateau crowns the second ; but the siunmit is 
 invariably flat, excepting the few granite crests on the fm-ther 
 side of Sedeyr and towards Yemamah. These high grounds 
 are for the most clothed on their upper surface with fine and 
 sufficient pasture, whch lasts throughout the year; but the 
 greater the elevation the less is the fertility and the drier the 
 soil. Trees, solitary or in little groups, are here common ; not 
 indeed the well-known Ithel of the plain, but the Sidr (or, ac- 
 cording to theNejdean dialect, Sedeyr, whence the name of one 
 great province), or the Markh, with its wide-spreading oak-like 
 branches, and the tangled thorny Talh. Little water is to be 
 foimd, at any rate in autumn, though I saw some spots that 
 appeared to have pools in spring ; we met with one, and one 
 only, perennial source, which I Avill describe when we reach it.
 
 Chap. VIII] TO EI AT) ^Sg 
 
 The entire plateau is intersected by a maze of valleys, some 
 broad, some narrow, some long- and winding, some of little 
 length, but almost all bordered with steep and at times pre- 
 cipitous banks, and looking as though they had been artificially 
 cut out in the limestone mountain. In these countless hollows 
 is concentrated the fertility and the population of Nejed; 
 gardens and houses, cultivation and villages, hidden from view 
 among the depths while one journeys over the dry flats (I had 
 well-nigh called them " denes," for they often reminded me of 
 those near Yarmouth) above, till one comes suddenly on the 
 mass of emerald green beneath. One would think that two 
 different lands and climates had been somehow interwoven into 
 one, yet remained unblended. The soil of these valleys is light, 
 and mixed with marl, sand, and little pebbles washed down 
 from the heights, for everywhere their abrupt edges are furrowed 
 by torrent tracks, that collecting above rush over in winter, and 
 often turn the greater part of the gully below into a violent 
 watercourse for two or three days, till the momentary sup- 
 ply is spent, and then pools and plashes remain through the 
 months of spring, while the most of the water sinks under- 
 ground, where it forms an unfailing supply for the wells in 
 summer, or breaks out once more in living springs amid the 
 low lands of Hasaand Kateef, towards the sea-coast, and beyond 
 the outskirts of Djebel Toweyk itself. However, none of these 
 winter torrents finds its way unbroken to the sea ; some are at 
 once reabsorbed, while yet within the limits of the mountain 
 labyrinth, whose watershed, 1 should add, lies on the eastern, 
 not on the western side ; while a few, so the natives of the country 
 told me, make their way right through Toweyk to the Nefood 
 on the west, or to the Dahna on the east and south, and are 
 there speedily lost in the deep sands, where a Ehine or a 
 Euphrates could hardly avoid a similar fate. Hence, I say it 
 in parenthesis, the geographers who kindly supply Arabia, 
 especially on its eastern side, with rivers going from 
 Derey'eeyah or elsewhere to the sea, have been more liberal 
 to the land than Nature herself, without even one exception. 
 For Wadi Aftan, often marked out in maps for a stream, we 
 shall have the pleasure of tracking it in its whole length before 
 long, and shall tlien better see what it really is. 
 
 z 2
 
 340 FEOM BEREYDAH [Chap. VITI 
 
 However, tlioiigh above-ground waters are rare and temporar}', 
 the underground provision is constant and copious, and hence 
 the great fertility of these valleys Nor is the water hard to 
 get at, for the depth of the wells throughout Nejed seldom ex- 
 ceeds twelve or fifteen feet from the upper rim to the water, and 
 often less, especially towards the southern half of 'Aared and 
 Yemamah. I had forgotten to say, in my topographical de- 
 scription of Kaseem, that the water of that province has very 
 generally a saltish taste, just enough to be perceptible, but not 
 disacrreeable, at least to those accustomed to drink from our 
 own Norfolk " swipes." But here in Nejed water is hardly 
 ever brackish, but presents instead sensible traces of iron. 
 These phenomena find a ready explanation in the conditions of 
 the respective soils themselves. Eocksalt of the purest quality 
 is common in Kaseem, we have seen it a cheap and abundant 
 article of sale at Bereydah, and throTighout the province the 
 earth has a saline flavour when placed on the tongue. On the 
 other hand, in Nejed, and particularly towards the eastern 
 shelves of the plateau, iron ore occurs in quantities sufficient 
 to attract even Arab notice, and near Soley' I saw a whole range 
 of decidedly ferrugineous hills, and was told of more. Hence, 
 the chalybeate acquirements of the water when it filters through 
 its underground passages. This is the case with most wells 
 about Horeymelah, Kiad, and down Wadi Haneefah and Soley' 
 up to the wells of Oweysit. 
 
 The climate of the northern part of Djebel Toweyk, whether 
 plateau or valley, coincident with the province of Sedeyr, is 
 perhaps one of the healthiest in the world ; an exception might 
 be made in favour of Djebel Shomer alone. The above-named 
 districts resemble each other closely in dryness of atmosphere, 
 and the inhabitants of Sedeyr, like those of Shomer, are 
 remarkable for their ruddy complexion and well developed 
 stature. But when we approach the centre of the mountain 
 crescent, where its whole level lowers, while the more southerly 
 latitude brings it nearer to the prevailing influences of the 
 tropical zone, the air becomes damper and more relaxing, and 
 a less salubrious climate pictures itself in the sallower faces and 
 slenderer make of its denizens. Of Yemamah and the other 
 meridional regions, between Toweyk itself and the great Dahua,
 
 CflAr. VIII] TO JRIAD 34 1 
 
 I shall speak when we come to visit them. Nor are further 
 generalities on this subject now necessary, since we are on the 
 point of traversing- the chain from side to side, and seeing it 
 in detail. 
 
 I had said that just before the bifurcation of the valley, part 
 to Shakra and Wadi Haneefah, and part to the westerly 
 Woshem, our conductor led us aside by a sharp turn to the 
 north-east, where we entered a gorge of Djebel Toweyk, and 
 found ourselves thus within the limits of the province of Sedeyr. 
 We had not long followed the narrow pass, when trees and 
 verdure clustering up against its left side indicated our ap- 
 proach to human habitation. Here nestled the village of Ghat, 
 a name common to many localities in Central Arabia, and 
 sometimes varied into G-howeyt, Grhoutah, Ghoweytah, and so 
 forth ; all words implying " a hollow," with an idea of fertility 
 annexed ; just the same topographical peculiarity which obtains 
 sometimes in our own midland counties the familiar denomina- 
 tion of " punch -bowl." I should, however, warn all familiar 
 with the Sanscrit and Indian tongues, that the Arab etymology 
 of this word has notliing in common with the Indian " Ghat " or 
 *' Ghawt," for so Englishmen love to mispronounce it, though 
 the syllables may bear a casual assonance. Such coincidences 
 of vocal combination may occur, the mere result of chance or of 
 phonic imitation, between the Indian and the Arabic languages ; 
 and I am well aware of the stress, undue I must think, laid on 
 them by some highly learned and respectable authorities ; but 
 the approximations alluded to are seemingly too loose, and 
 in this case also too narrow a base for the wide and weighty 
 superstructure of theory built upon them. Real and tangible 
 community of origin and root between the Semitic and the 
 Aryan dialects is, so it appears to me at least, beyond prac- 
 tical identification ; the streams are not more distinct than the 
 fountains, and the tongues than the parentage, at all events 
 from Babel downwards. 
 
 The proofs of a negative, to be sufficient, must needs be 
 bulky, and above all of a negative like this ; a brace of volumes 
 might hardly contain all to be said on the subject ; and my 
 present task is geographical rather than linguistic. Ac- 
 cordingly, I leave to my learned readers the accurate investi-
 
 342 FEOM BEREYDAH [Chap. VIII 
 
 gation of a matter on wliicli, time and leisure permitting, I 
 Avould gladly bestow my own efforts in a separate work ; only 
 adding here, in order to anticipate possible controversy, that 
 by ** Indian " languages I mean only Sanscrit and i1^ modern- 
 izations or corruptions, namely Bengalee, Mahrattee, Giizer- 
 attee, Concanee, and the like. But I do not strictly and 
 absolutely include Tamool, and the other dialects of the southern 
 Hindoo peninsula and Ceylon ; for a certain community of 
 "radicals," is occasionally though rarely observable between 
 these last and the so-called Semitic tongues. I remember 
 once, when it was my sad lot to be unavoidably present at a 
 dull public discourse, staving off sleep by making a list in my 
 memory of radicals or primary words shared alike by Hebrew 
 and Tamool ; and in about half an hour reminiscence had 
 supplied me with nearly thirty. But to return to Sedeyr and 
 the Arab Ghat. 
 
 It was now that latter part of the afternoon which Arabs call 
 'Af?r, when we entered the welcome shade, and made straight for 
 the chiefs house. Like the rest of the village it was situated 
 on the margin of the valley, close under the white cliff, and so 
 placed the better to escape the injuries of torrents pouring 
 down the mid hollow in the rainy season. The traces of water 
 were indeed too evident throughout the valley, and some 
 houses built too low down had been already ruined. The 
 wells were so copiously supplied, even at this the very driest 
 season of the year, that their overflow sufficed to fill a large 
 reservoir from which ran on all sides rivulets which might 
 almost have been taken for natural, overshadowed by fig-trees 
 and pomegranates, while the palm-trees rivalled in height those 
 of Kaseem. The houses, like the gardens, were prettily placed 
 in shelving rows one above the other against the mountain 
 rise. Before the chiefs own residence was an open space, and 
 close by a true Wahhabee mosque, large and unadorned, a 
 mere meeting-house, unprofaned by the post-Mahomet inven- 
 tions of minarets and carpets. Here we were in Nejed; and if 
 I did not exactly sympathise with the feelings of Touchstone 
 on his arrival in Arden, I could not but feel that his remarks then 
 and there had a certain truth ; but travellers must be content. 
 
 However, the inhabitants of Nejed at large, and especially
 
 Chap. VIII] TO RIAp j^j 
 
 those of Sedeyr, have one good quality, very consolatory for 
 those who leave home to visit their land — I mean hospitality 
 to their guests. For this they are famed in Arabia and out 
 of Arabia, in prose and verse, and they really deserve their 
 reputation. The chief of Grhat was a native of the province, 
 young, cheerful, and exquisitely polite. We were all invited in, 
 our camels were looked after, and we ourselves soon seated in 
 the large and lofty K'hawah, where chequered sunbeams aslant 
 through the trellised windows illuminated the handsome group 
 seated in the upper and more honourable part of the hall. 
 There, by the host and his family, all in clean shirts and black 
 cloaks, with new coloured head-dresses and silver-hilted swords, 
 sat the Na'ib making a very good figure in his Persian dress 
 and large turban, while Aboo-'Eysa, who, to keep him com- 
 pany, had exchanged the soiled garments of the road for better 
 apparel, took his place close to the ambassador ; the attendants 
 of the Na'ib ranged themselves on one side, and Barakat and 
 I on the other. Many were the " Y'ahla " and " Marhaba's " 
 ("welcome, honoured guests," &c.) and many too the Allah- 
 seasoned phrases indispensable in Wahhabee conversation. Of 
 course no smoking was allowed ; even the Na'ib could not 
 venture on his Nargheelah. Aboo-'Eysa had taken a farewell 
 whitf at his " cutty-pipe," before entering the village, and had 
 advised me to do the same, remarking that " these dogs will 
 hold us for infidels if we do it in their presence," and now 
 looked as innocent of tobacco as the babe unborn. Coffee was 
 however plentiful, and very good. The conversation here and 
 henceforth up to Eiad, whether in towns or villages, among 
 high or low, ran mainly on two inexhaustible topics ; the one, 
 the excellences and virtues of Fey§ul, with his certain triumph 
 over the infidels of 'Oneyzah ; the other the wickedness and 
 depravity of Zamil and his party, and their certain defeat and 
 ruin. Then came " Allahii yfensor el-Muslimeen," " may God 
 give the victory to the Muslims;" "AlMiu yensor Feysul," 
 " may Grod give the victory to Feysul ; " " W'elladee yusellimu 
 Feysul," " by Him who protects Fey.sul ; " " Allahii yesallit el- 
 Muslimeen 'ala'] 'keffar," " may Grod give over the infidels to 
 the power of the Muslims;" and so on, till we began to say with 
 Aboo-'Eysa, " Kuffaroona b'il-Muslimeen," " they put us to our
 
 344 FROM BEREYDAII [Chap. VIII 
 
 wits' end with tlieir ]\fuslims," and wished as heartily for their 
 defeat as they did for that of their opponents. Of F'eysul no 
 one dared speak except in a subdued tone of reverence appli- 
 cable to a demigod at the very moment of apotheosis; of 
 one whom to obey was the sure countersign of predestination, 
 and to oppose, the most unpardonable impiety. All along the 
 devout interjections "-Astaghfir Allah," "La Ihlh ilia Allah," 
 " Towwakil 'ala' Allah," and the rest of that catalogue, filled up 
 every chink of talk and dotted the whole conversation, till 
 there was no getting on consecutively with any ordinary topic, 
 80 thickly did supernatural agency meet one at every turning. 
 Of the pecidiar doctrines and state of mind that give rise to 
 80 marked a phraseology, and to the usages here prevailing, I 
 shall not at present speak, for fear of rendering our journey 
 through Sedeyr interminable from the outset. I will only 
 remark that Aboo-'Eysa and ourselves observed the conformity 
 of manner which courtesy required, and either said nothing, or 
 assented when assent was possible. The Meccans were often 
 in fault, and the Persians proved even less polite and less 
 prudent ; and had it not been that partly consideration for the 
 rank of the Na'ib and the business on which he was bound, 
 and partly the natural desire of earning a good report among 
 strangers, restrained their hosts from frequent repartee or 
 comment, serious and even dangerous disputes might have 
 occurred ; indeed Aboo-'Eysa had more than once need of all 
 his conciliatory skill to avert the ill consequences of Iranian bad 
 humour and incivility. Oftener the silent hearers " thought 
 the more," perhaps, but said nothing; for a Nejdean makes it 
 his boast to put up with rudeness and passion, and considers 
 the bearing such with equability and composure to be the terft- 
 proof of superiority in character and good-breeding. Never 
 did I see Chesterfield's master maxim of acknowledoingf no 
 insult save such as gives one a right to run the insulter 
 through the body, better exemplified than by the inhabitants 
 of Nejed, who fully understand the important truth that self- 
 restraint is the first condition of being a gentleman. Like 
 every other rule, this admits of exceptions, personal or local ; 
 but the dominant tone of society, especially in Sedeyr, is one of 
 dignified and even refined politeness.
 
 Chap. VIII] TO RIAT) ^^^ 
 
 These men in their hearts hold Egjrpt, Persia, Bagdad, Damas- 
 cus, and, to sum up, all the world withoutside of Nejed, to be 
 little better than dens of thieves and lairs of heresy and infi- 
 delity. Yet scarcely will they have heard, in answer to the 
 first customary demands of introduction, that their guest is from 
 any one of the above-named places, than they will begin a 
 eulogy of town, country, and people, as though they had been 
 the objects of their lifelong admiration, and extol the learning, 
 piety, and good fame of those whom they most disagree with, 
 and against whom they are ready to draw the sword of Islam 
 at a moment's notice ; and this they will do in so perfectly quiet, 
 easy, and natural a way, that it is difficult not to believe tlieir 
 words the faithful echo of their innermost thoughts ; nor need 
 their guest, if gifted with ordinary prudence, fear any hint of 
 disapproval touching his own personal ways and deeds. " Ed- 
 deyf ma 'akam melik," " the guest while in the house is its 
 lord," is a trite saying with Nej deans, and expresses to the life 
 the deference with which they treat whoever has once been 
 received under their roof. Nor when the stranger walks the 
 streets will any one stare at him, much less stop to gaze ; nor 
 will even the boys gather and laugh at him, nor will any 
 whisper or aside remark be heard as he passes by. Perhaps 
 foreigners do not come off so smoothly everywhere else. I 
 ought to add that our own half-Syrian dress was hardly less 
 outlandish and " furrener-looking " in Nejed than the long robe 
 of a Lithuanian Jew or the furs of a Cossack in the streets of 
 Norwich or Derby. The Persians appeared even more exotic. 
 But Nej dean civility was above all such considerations. My 
 readers must however recall to mind that Sedeyr surpasses in 
 this respect the other provinces of Toweyk, and in consequence 
 some modification and deduction must be made before the 
 portrait thus drawn can be suitably applied to 'Aared, Aflaj, 
 and Yemamah. Besides, I speak only of what passes between 
 hosts and guests reciprocally received and acknowledged for 
 such; witli casual strangers and unauthenticated foreigners 
 much less courtesy is used, occasionally none. 
 
 The hospitality of Sedeyr is elegant and copious. After 
 coffee and small talk in the K'hawah, we mounted to the upper 
 storey, where we found a large room with an open verandah
 
 346 FEOM BEREYDAH [CnAr. VIII 
 
 prepared for our more express reception, and fruits, melons, and 
 peaches to wit, piled up in large dishes, to employ our leisure 
 moments till supper should be ready. Here we were supposed 
 to make ourselves perfectly at home, and might even light 
 the " pipe of peace," the scandal of publicity not being con- 
 sidered to affect tliese apartments thus set apart exclusively for 
 our use. Our host and his kinsmen came in and out, always 
 ready for talk or service, and we began from their conversation 
 to collect much valuable information about the actual state and 
 government of Nejed proper. 
 
 Here ]\Iohanna's men left us and returned home. No personal 
 danger was to be apprehended on the road by travellers like 
 ourselves "fi wejh Feysul," "in the countenance of Fey.sul," or 
 *' under " it, to make the Arab phrase Englisli ; and besides, we 
 were sure of being henceforth accompanied from village to 
 village, and from town to town, by tlie inhabitants of the 
 country itself; not indeed for security, but for honour. I need 
 hardly say that the honour was mainly intended for the Na'ib 
 and Aboo-'Eysa ; for us, throughout this stage of our itinerary, 
 we attracted comparatively little attention, and this was indeed 
 to be desired, thovigh we had no lack of courteous and friendly 
 treatment everywhere. 
 
 Next morning early, when we mounted each his camel or 
 dromedary, we foimd the chief, with some youths of his kin, 
 already on horseback to escort us on our Avay. We followed for 
 about half an hour the ascending course of the gorge, under the 
 shade of forest trees — the plane was one, somewhat to my sur- 
 prise — intermingled with palms, between whose foliage white 
 glimpses of the overhanging cliff glittered to the morning light, 
 till we arrived at the " 'Akabah " or ascent. It may be worth 
 noticing that all steep ascents in these countries bear the name 
 of " 'Akabah " or " Thenee'yah," which latter may be translated 
 " winding," a suitable term, since the rapidity of the hill-rise 
 renders a corkscrew arrangement of the path often necessary 
 to make it practicable for four-footed climbers, goats excepted. 
 Hence such or such a pass is distinguished by the addition of 
 the name belonging to the nearest locality ; v. g. here it is 
 " 'Akabat-el-Ghat," "the ascent of Ghat," and so on, to avoid, 
 and not unfreqiiently to produce, confusion.
 
 Chap. VIII] TO EIAJP ^A-J 
 
 We were now at the cul-de-sac, or abrupt termination of 
 the mountain cleft, and in front a narrow twisting path, like an 
 uncoiled ribbon of white satin, reaching up several hundred 
 feet to the table-land above, amid rocks and masses of lime 
 and marl mingled with sandstone. A little water jvist oozing 
 out at the base, like " Sybil's well," showed the line taken by 
 the stream after rain. Here ensued a contest of politeness, the 
 chief insisting on accompanying us further, and Aboo-'Evsa 
 (for the Persians remained like mutes) on his returning home. 
 After many pretty speeches on either side, our quondam host 
 wished us all in general, and then every one in particular, good 
 speed, and went back, while a few of his relatives continued for 
 our escort. 
 
 Soon we attained the great plateau, of which I have a few 
 pages since given an anticipated description. And here for the 
 first time since our passage of the Grhoui- between Graza and 
 Ma'an — a region already sufficiently delineated — we met with 
 a clouded sky and a disturbed atmosphere. But my readers 
 will recall to mind that it was now the 7th of October, and 
 not be surprised at an autumn storm. The sky, hitherto 
 perfectly clear, was suddenly, indeed almost instantaneously 
 overcast, and a furious gust of wind rushed down, while 
 clouds of dust darkened the air, till we could hardly see our 
 way. This came in time to interrupt a most "tedious brief" 
 story about the miraculous disappearance of a Persian prin- 
 cess (I forget her name), the imaginary wife of Hoseyn, son 
 of 'Alee, and mother of the famous Zeyn-el-'Abideen, all on an 
 Oriental Pegasus, a silly Shiya'ee tale with which the Na'ib 
 was entertainiug me in atrociously bad Arabic, till the violent 
 gale cut short all conversation. Next followed a few drops of 
 rain, but the wind was too high to allow of a good shower, and 
 in about half an hour the whole had blown over ; however, the 
 breeze which succeeded was delightfully cool, and worthy of 
 the Apennines. 
 
 About noon we halted in a brushwood covered plain, to light 
 fire and prepare coffee. After which we pursued our easterly 
 way, still a little to the north, now and then meeting with 
 travellers or peasants ; but a European would find these roads 
 very lonely in comparison with those of his own native country.
 
 348 FR03I BEREYDAII [Cn.vr. VIII 
 
 All tlie more did I admire tlie perfect sidjmission and strict 
 pulice enforced by tlie central oovernment, so tliat even a casual 
 robbery is very rare in the provinces, and highwaymen are 
 totally out of the question. At last, near the same hour of 
 afternoon that had brought us the day before to Ghat, we came 
 in sight of ^lejmaa', formerly capital of the province, and still 
 a place of considerable importance. The population may be, 
 to judge by appearances and hearsay, between ten and twelve 
 thousand souls, and the town is advantageously situated on a 
 little eminence amid a broad shallow valley, and surrounded by 
 a luxuriance of gardens and trees, surpassing whatever I have 
 seen elsewhere in Sedeyr, even at Djelajil. though this latter 
 is famed in Arab verse. The city walls were high, that is, of 
 about thirty feet, and a large square fortress in the heart of the 
 town commands it and all the country round. The outer 
 bulwarks are girdled by a very deep trench partly full of water ; 
 the plantations are, Nejdean fashion, all without the walls. 
 
 Here the family of Es-Sedeyree, to give tliem tlieir ordinary 
 and territorial name, ruled tlie entire province till within a 
 quite recent date. The Wabhabee monarchs, whose stavnich 
 adherents they had always been, had confirmed them in their 
 hereditary authority, and the loss of nominal independence was 
 compensated by an accession of real power. In the present 
 generation the head of the family was Ahmed, left by his 
 fatlier's death, while yet young, chief at Mejmaa', along with 
 his junior brothers Mohammed and 'Abd-el-jNIahsin. Sedeyr 
 had been for centuries past closely allied mth 'Aared, and no 
 party grudge or rivalry of old standing existed between these 
 two main sections of Nejed; and hence the Wahhabite autocrat 
 tolerated here a deviation from his ordinary line of policy, and 
 allowed the local family to remain for a while in possession of 
 their ancestral rights, without attempting to dislodge them in 
 favour of his creatures or slaves. But when in process of 
 time Sedeyr had become thoroughly incorporated with 'Aared, 
 and the pervading infiltration of Wahhabee doctrines rendered 
 resistance improbable, P^eyijul ventured to draw, so to speak, 
 on his stock-in-hand of Sedeyr popularity, and resolved to apply 
 his general rule to this long exceptional case by the deposition 
 of the indigenous chiefs of Mejmaa'. This he accomplished
 
 Chap. VIII] TO El AD j^p 
 
 no less warily than effectually. First lie named the eldest, 
 Ahmed, leader in an expedition, which I will afterwards describe, 
 against 'Oman, and, having got him once there, fixed him per- 
 manently in that remote region as governor of the Wahhabee 
 outpost at Bereyraah, but really in a sort of honourable banish- 
 ment. The second Sedeyree, Mohammed, was next removed to 
 another and a distant station by being appointed vice-governor 
 of the town of Hofhoof in Hasa, where, however, further changes 
 awaited him. The youngest of the three, 'Abd-el-Mah§in, was 
 for a space left in the post that his elder brothers had suc- 
 cessively occupied, as chief over his native province. But not 
 long before the epoch of our visit, Fey§ul ultimately deprived 
 him too of his authority and title, and reduced him to what 
 might be called the position of a private nobleman at Mejmaa', 
 which now by the same act ceased to be capital of Sedeyr. 
 This precedence was henceforth conferred by the Eiad govern- 
 ment on the town of Toweym, a day's journey to the south-east, 
 and hither a new administrator of the province and a native 
 of 'Aared was sent, in the name of the Wahhabee sovereign. 
 'Abd-el-Mahsin was deeply wounded, he could not be other- 
 wise, by these measures, with all the members of his family ; 
 but they did not feel themselves strong enough, especially in 
 Ahmed's absence, to try the doubtful chance of resistance and 
 a war like that of 'Oneyzah, so they put the best face possible 
 on the matter, and stayed at home, quietly occupied with their 
 property and commerce, and waiting till " the whirligig of time 
 should bring in his revenges." 
 
 'Abd-el-AIah§in gave us a splendid reception. His palace, 
 once centre of Sedeyr, is large and lofty, and he liad pre- 
 pared our lodgings in an upper story, the balconies of which 
 commanded a noble view of the mountain steppes north and 
 east, with the gardens and groves below in green masses at our 
 feet. Here we rested that evening, not unlike yesterday's, 
 except in the superior quality of the entertainment, and that 
 somewhat fewer eulogies of Fey.sul were interchanged ; this was 
 natural, the past considered. Aboo-'Eysa was an old friend of 
 our host's, and gathered from liim the latest news of Eiad and 
 the interior of the empire, details which he subsequently dis- 
 cussed with us in private. Mohammed 'Alee wrote his journal
 
 350 FROM BEREYDAH, [Cn.vp. VIII 
 
 by the gleam of a Persian lamp ; he was in the habit of noting 
 down minutely all incidents day by day, and had compiled a 
 very amusing work for light reading, and enough, were it 
 translated and published, to throw mine, I fear, into the shade. 
 In was composed in Persian, but the Na'ib sometimes favoured 
 me \vdth a recital, Avhile he rendered it, for my ignorance, into 
 bad Arabic or good Hindoostanee. I did not deem it necessary 
 to let him know in return that I also kept a journal, for fear of 
 awakening his suspicions; indeed they were already too mucli 
 on the alert by reminiscences of Englishmen at Hyderabad or 
 Bombay, and then lulled again to repose by Arab semblances, 
 or by the skilful anodynes of Aboo-'Eysa, who everywhere 
 extolled the medical skill and upheld the authentic Syrian 
 character of his destined partner in the therapeutic firm of 
 Hoflioof. 
 
 Here the Na'ib's stock of tobacco began to run short, and he 
 knew not whence to get a fresh supply, in a land where that 
 plant is only knovra by the name of " el Mukzhee," or " the 
 shameful," or by a still worse and wholly untranslatable 
 denomination, which would imply it to be the immediate pro- 
 duction of the Evil One, but after a fashion tliat the fiery dryness 
 of his Satanic complexion might seem to render hardly credible. 
 Nevertheless, such is the belief of the Wahhabees, who steadily 
 assert that the first tobacco-sprouts arose from this very singular 
 and diabolical irrigation, whence a name not to be mentioned 
 to ears polite. "WTio then could dream, I do not say of em- 
 ploying, but of trafficking in, or even of possessing, so infamous 
 an article ? However, throughout the world, and by conse- 
 quence in Nejed too, no law but is violated, and no customs 
 regulation but suffers from contraband. In this hope, founded 
 on the weakness of human nature, Hoseyn, the servant of 
 the Na'ib, went a hunting, money in hand, amid the ware- 
 houses of Mejmaa', and excited immense disgust by his public 
 enquiries after the " shameful ; " but his first efforts met with 
 no success. At last he applied to Aboo-'Eysa, whose experience 
 of the land had taught him facts and mana3uvres beyond the 
 attainment of a raw thick-witted Bagdadee. Our friend had often 
 been in precisely the same predicament wherein the Na'ib now 
 lay, but knew much better where and how to distinguish between
 
 Chap. VIII] TO RIAT) jp 
 
 the real and tlie apparent, and under what veils private practice 
 might contravene public observance. In fact, the number of 
 smokers in Nejed is nowise small, and includes many a name 
 of high birth and strict outside profession. Furnished with the 
 requisite sum, Aboo-'Eysa set out on a quieter but a more 
 effectual search, and soon reappeared with a bag containing two 
 good pounds avoirdupois of the Satanic leaf, which he handed 
 over to the Na'ib, after deducting a well-earned perquisite in 
 kind, shared between him and ourselves. 
 
 We were up early next morning, for the night air was brisk, 
 and a few hours of sleep had sufficed us. The whole level of 
 the depression where Mejmaa' stands almost equals that of the 
 surface of the first plateau, and to this now succeeded a second 
 of yet greater height, forming part of the midrib of Toweyk. 
 We took the high ground as the shorter route, instead of 
 keeping to the lower steppe, and went on with a wide land- 
 scape on either side, but not in front, where at some distance 
 to the east a third and loftier ledge arose to shut out the 
 distant view. 
 
 After sunrise we came on a phenomenon of a nature, I believe, 
 without a second or a parallel in Central Arabia, yet withal 
 most welcome, namely, a tolerably large source of running water, 
 forming a wide and deepish stream, with grassy banks, and frogs 
 croaking in the herbage. We opened our eyes in amazement ; 
 it was the first of the kind that we had beheld since leaving 
 the valley of Djowf. But though a living, it is a short-lived 
 rivulet, reaching only four or five hours' distance to Djelajil, 
 where it is lost amid the plantations of the suburbs. I have 
 already stated that the mountain eastward rose higher than the 
 level on which we were now travelling, and consequently 
 neitlier this stream, nor any other hereabouts, if such exist, 
 could reach even the Dahna, much less the sea. 
 
 Djelajil was indeed close at hand ; we passed it about mid- 
 day, but without halting. It is a place remarkable for its 
 remote antiquity, being mentioned by 'AmrooT Keys and 
 'Antarah before the Mahometan era ; at the present time it is 
 still a considerable town, with an unusual extent of palm- 
 groves and irrigation around, furnished by the stream just 
 spoken of. But its buildings and castle offer nothing worthy
 
 352 FPiO.V BEREYDAH [Chap. VIII 
 
 of notice, unless that they look very pretty peeping out amid 
 the trees. An hour later we had on the opposite, that is, the 
 left hand, the town of Eowdah or " garden," an almost generic 
 name; it seemed the counterpart of Djelajil in size and ad- 
 iacent fertility. I should not omit to say that Djelajil means 
 on translation "bells," especially those attached to the necks 
 of mules or sheep, sometimes of camels. 
 
 At last we entered in between the heights of the uppermost 
 plateau ; they rose here and there like huge flat-topped towers 
 or wide platforms on either side, leaving however large 
 openings betwixt, and pasture plains of great extent While 
 crossing one of these, we met a numerous band of the Meteyr 
 Bedouins, once masters and tyrants of north-eastern Nejed, 
 now, like their brother nomades, humble subjects of Wahhabee 
 rule, and even drilled into a sort of equivocal orthodoxy, which, 
 however, when at a safe distance from the centre of authority, 
 they every now and then throw off, crying out "Batelna-1- 
 Islam," " Batelna-§-Salah," " we have done with Islam," " we 
 have done with the prayer," meaning the five legal daily 
 prayers of the Mahometans. They are comparatively rich in 
 herds and flocks, and range over a wide extent of territory; 
 indeed we shall a few chapters later meet with a colony of 
 them on the other side of the Persian Gulf. This was the 
 only considerable body of Bedouins that we saw from Ha'yel to 
 Biad, nor did I witness any other throughout Nejed, Ha§a, and 
 'Oman. 
 
 I will here anticipate our first interview with some of the 
 nomades of Benoo-Kahtan, which, in fact, occurred next day. 
 The origin of this tribe is from Yemen, and they form part 
 not of the northern or Ismaelitic, but of the southern or 
 Kahtanic Arab family. I will not yet enter into the question 
 of nomenclature, and of its historical foundation ; the fact of 
 the great bipartition of the Arab race is certain, and will be 
 fiu-ther iUustrated in the progress of this work The indi- 
 viduals whom we now met were strikingly unlike in appear- 
 ance, manner, and dialect to the Bedouins of Shomer and 
 Nejed ; their stature was small and slender, almost approaching 
 to the Indian type, their tone of voice low, and their whole 
 deportment much gentler than that of the northern nomades.
 
 Chap. VIII] TO RIAD 2S3 
 
 who love to affect a boisterous roughness of deportment often 
 amounting to a bullying swagger, whereas the southerners take 
 a measured and somewhat submissive tone. Their dialect, too, 
 was unmistakably different, not only in the pronunciation of 
 what one may call the " debatable " consonants of Arabic, 
 namely, "Djeem," "Kaf," and " Kaf," but in the words them- 
 selves. The proverbs of Meidanee, and certain pieces in the 
 Hamasa of Aboo Temmam, may give the learned reader a fair 
 idea of this idiom. More copious yet less elegant, it is to the 
 Arabic of the Goran much what the Greek of Homer is to that 
 of Isocrates or Xenophon. We held a long conversation with 
 these men ; they were three in number, and, they said, travellers 
 from Wadi Seleyyel, that is, from the angle lying between 
 Dowasir and Wadi Nejran. Omitting for the moment several 
 details regarding the geography of that corner of the Wahhabee 
 empire, and the Kahtanite Arabs in general, I will only add 
 here that this particular tribe, the Benoo-Kahtan, are widely 
 disseminated, and split up into many subdivisions ; some 
 occupying the southerly pastures of Nejed beyond the 'Aared, 
 others making their residence in Yemen. They are considered 
 to be less warlike than the northern clans, for instance, Meteyr, 
 Ajman, and 'Oteybah, and are certainly inferior to them in 
 physical bidld and energy. 
 
 We had not long traversed the Meteyr encampment, when we 
 came in view of the walls of Toweym, a large town, containing 
 between twelve and fifteen thousand inhabitants, according to 
 the computation here in use, and which I follow for want of 
 better. It is less advantageously situated for irrigation than 
 Mejmaa', and decidedly colder in climate, being high perched 
 at the level, not of the first, but of the second plateau, and 
 surrounded by irregular piles of the third and loftiest range, 
 though at some little distance. The actual governor, the 
 successor or supplanter of the Sedejnrees (I forget his name), 
 showed himself by no means sociable. Aboo-'Eysa and my- 
 self rode for some time up and down the narrow streets of 
 the town, looking for a subordinate to announce our arrival to 
 his excellency, and finding none ; and when at last the message 
 was delivered, hospitality was slow in forthcoming; the palace 
 door remained shut, and the governor was evidently loth to 
 
 VOL. I. A A
 
 354 FROM BEREYDAJI [Chap. VIII 
 
 introduce us into the interior; whether he feared our seeing its 
 nakedness or its plenty I cannot tell. Ultimately he distri- 
 buted us for lodging amid the dwellings of his attendants : the 
 Na'ib and his suite were in one of these subordinate K'hawahs, 
 ourselves in another, the Meccans in a third ; Aboo-'Eysa went 
 and came between. Our vicarious host was a coarse good- 
 humoured man of arms, and treated us well. But the lane 
 where his house stood was close and narrow, and the air op- 
 pressive ; so, after taking coffee and eating a few dates of the 
 long-shaped yellow variety almost peculiar to Nejed, Barakat 
 and I sauntered out to see the town. 
 
 The houses are here built compactly, of two storeys in 
 general, sometimes three ; the lower rooms are often fifteen or 
 sixteen feet high, and the upper ten or twelve ; while the 
 roof itself is frequently surrounded by a blind wall of six feet 
 or more, till the whole attains an altitude equal to that of many 
 London domiciles, and is not altogether unimposing. Little 
 or no attempt is, however, made at domestic ornament, and 
 hardly any symmetry is observed between house and house 
 except what mere chance circumstances may have determined. 
 The streets are narrow and tortuous — mere lanes the most; 
 and a committee for city ventilation would do no harm. I need 
 not say that in this unrainy climate the roads are very seldom 
 paved, nor indeed need to be, save in some limited instances. 
 
 The market-place of Toweym is unusually large, a very 
 respectable square, and by an arrangement of rare occurrence 
 situated close to the inner side of the town walls, not in the 
 centre of the city. Here are several shops and warehouses, and 
 a large mosque ; but the want of minarets and cupolas deprives 
 religious constructions in Nejed of the outward advantages of 
 appearance they possess elsewhere; the Mesjid (literally, " pro- 
 stration place") of Toweym resembled a large railway station 
 more than anything else, but differed from such in having no 
 refreshment room, unless, indeed, the side-building destined for 
 cold-water ablution might merit that title. The town gates are 
 strong for the country, guarded by day and shut by night ; the 
 walls in tolerably good repair, and surrounded with a deep 
 outer trench, but no water. 
 
 As sunset approached, we went out of the town to look at
 
 Chap. VIII] TO MIAJp 2S5 
 
 the fields and groves ; the soil hereabouts is good, but water is 
 scarce ; however, the dates are excellent. While we sat on a 
 little hillock commanding the road, we had plenty of opportunity 
 for conversation with the numerous passers-by, in and out of 
 the town, for villages are thickly clustered on all sides ; it is, 
 by Arabian standard, a populous land. We profited by the 
 native eloquence and classic dialect of the inhabitants, especially 
 the townsmen, and did our best to draw them out into such con- 
 versation as should make them show their real dispositions. 
 They were of a truth genuine Wahhabees, and heart and soul 
 devoted to Feysjul and his family. Possibly some little local 
 grudges against Mejmaa' and the Sedeyree may have contributed 
 to their satisfaction with a more immediate dependence on 
 Riad, and beyond a doubt they have made considerable progress 
 in numbers and opulence during late years. At nightfall we 
 returned home to our supper, sent from the governor's palace ; 
 it was neither very good nor very bad ; the bread was leavened, 
 as we found it henceforth to the Persian Gulf — a great im- 
 provement on the unleavened cakes of Shomer and Kaseem, 
 though in Kaseem too the passage of the Persian pilgrims 
 tends to set up a new and better custom. Lastly, a quiet pipe 
 on the roof under the bright stars, and then to rest, but in- 
 doors, for it was too cold for open air sleeping. It is a great 
 blessing in Arabia that neither gnats nor mosquitoes, nor a 
 certain saltatory insect very common in Southern Europe and 
 in Syria ("letters four do form its name") are here known. 
 The absence also of flies, great and small, horse and house, is 
 astonishing ; I know of no other country in the world so totally 
 devoid of that most familiar and often importunate little 
 creature. Would one could say the same of another familiar 
 beast, which signifies love, at least in Welsh heraldry ! Snakes 
 in Nejed are no less rare than in Ireland or Malta. In an 
 elegant romance published by M. Lamartine under the title of 
 the " Journal of Fath-Allah Sey'yir," companion of the ill-fated 
 Lascaris, a work ah'eady alluded to, these reptiles are spoken 
 of as very common in Central Arabia ; nay, appalling to think 
 of, M. Lamartine's hero discovers a whole thicket full of their 
 sloughs, of all colours and sizes — a sort of serpent's cloak-room, 
 I suppose. Happy the travellers who possess so rich and so
 
 356 FROM BEREYDAII [Chap. VIII 
 
 inventive an imagination ! a few boa-constrictors make no bad 
 variety, at least in a narrative. But I was not favoured with 
 any such visions, " nol' vedi, ne credo che sia." 
 
 Early next day we took leave of our unsociable host, who, 
 however, did us the honour of stepping down to his palace gate 
 and seeing us ofif in person. At a short distance from Toweym 
 we passed another large village with battlemented walls, and 
 on tlie opposite side of the road a square castle, looking very 
 mediaeval ; this was Hafr. Our companions from Toweym said 
 that the place had been formerly a rival of theirs, and for 
 years had waged a petty war against them, doul)tless much to 
 the detriment of both parties. But under the rule of El)n- 
 Sa'ood " there is no other plunderer but he," and the inhabitants 
 of Sedeyr are bound over to keep the peace with each other, 
 and so far certainly to their common advantage. A couple of 
 hours farther on we reached Thomeyr, a straggling townlet, more 
 abounding in broken walls than houses ; close by was a tall 
 white rock, crowned by the picturesque remains of an old 
 outwork or fort, overlooking the place. Here our party halted 
 for breakfast in the shadow of the ruins. Barakat and myself 
 determined to try our fortune in the village itself; no guards 
 appeared at its open gate, we entered unchallenged, and roamed 
 tlirough silent lanes and heaps of rubbish, vainly seeking news 
 of milk and dates in this city of the dead. At last we met a 
 meagre townsman, in look and apparel the apothecary of Romeo ; 
 and of him, not without misgivings of heart, we enquired where 
 aught eatable could be had for love or money. He apologized, 
 though there was scarce need of that, for not having any such arti- 
 cle at his disposal ; "but," added he, "in such and such a house 
 there will certainly be something good," and thitherwards he 
 preceded us in our search. We found indeed a large dwelling, 
 but the door was shut ; we knocked to no purpose ; nobody at 
 home. Our man now set us a bolder example, and we al- 
 together scrambled through a breach in the mud wall, and found 
 ourselves amid empty rooms and a desolate courtyard. " Every- 
 liody is out in the fields, women only excepted," said our guide, 
 and we separated no better off than before. Despairing of the 
 village commissariat, we climbed a turret on the outer walls, 
 and looked round. Now we saw at some distance a beautiful
 
 Chap. VIII] TO. RIAT) ^SJ 
 
 palm-grove, where we concluded that dates could not be wanting, 
 and off we set for it across the stubble-fields. But on arriving 
 we found our paradise surrounded by high walls, and no gate 
 discoverable. While thus we stood without, like Milton's fiend 
 at Eden, but unable, like him, " by one high bound to overleap 
 all bound," up came a handsome Solibah lad, all in rags, half 
 walking, half dancing, in the devil-may-care way of his tribe. 
 " Can you tell us which is the way in ? " was our first question, 
 pointing to the garden before us ; and, " Shall I sing you a song ? " 
 was his first answer. " We don't want your songs, but dates : 
 how are we to get at them ? " we replied. " Or shall I perform 
 you a dance?" answered the grinning young scoundrel, and forth- 
 with began an Arabian polka-step, laughing all the while at our 
 undisguised impatience. At last he condescended to show us the 
 way, but no other than what befitted an orchard-robbing boy, 
 like himself, for it lay a little farther off, right over the wall, 
 which he scaled with practised ingenuity, and helped us to fol- 
 low. So we did, though perhaps with lionester intentions, and, 
 once within, stood amid trees, shade, and water. The " tender 
 juvenile" then set up a shout, and soon a man appeared, "old 
 Adam's likeness set to dress this garden," save that he was not 
 old but young, as Adam might himself have been while yet in 
 Eden. We were somewliat afraid of a surly reception, too well 
 merited by our very equivocal introduction ; but the gardener 
 was better tempered than many of his caste, and after saluting 
 us very politely, offered his services at our disposal. On learning 
 that we were from Damascus, he grew positively friendly, led 
 us through an umbrageous alley to a little lodge or watch-hut 
 in the enclosure, and there presented us to a cousin of his, who 
 also said he had been to " Sham," or Damascus. But " Sham " 
 has in Nejed as loose an application as Nejed has in Sham, and 
 we found ere long that our new acquaintance had never really 
 overpassed the limits of Arabia ; he had only gone some way on 
 the northern pilgrim road towards Tabook and its neiglibour- 
 hood ; however, this was enough to make him a lion in his 
 village, and he was a groat autliority about Damascus, though 
 he had stopped short at a full fortnight's distance from its gates. 
 We made friends, and a very tolerable extemporary breakfast 
 of curds and dates, with clear cold water, such as our hearts
 
 358 FROM BEREYDAH [Chap. VIII 
 
 desired, was set before us. The young $olibah had gone fruit- 
 hunting on his own account. We then proposed to piurchase a 
 stock of dates for our onward way, whereon the gardener con- 
 ducted us to an outhouse where heaps of three or four kinds 
 of this fruit, red and yellow, round or long, lay piled up, and 
 bade us choose. At his recommendation we filled a large cloth 
 which we had brought with us for the purpose with excellent 
 ruddy dates, and gave in return a small piece of money, welcome 
 here as elsewhere. We then took leave, and returned, but this 
 time through the garden gate, to the stubble-fields, and passing 
 under the broken walls of the village, reached our companions, 
 who had become anxious at our absence ; and Aboo-'Eysa gave 
 us in private a long lecture on prudence and circumspection in 
 Wahhabee lands, very suitable, but from which, as is commonly 
 the case, we seldom profited till it was too late. 
 
 Leaving Thomeyr, we climbed the highest shelf of Central 
 Toweyk, and traversed its bare upper ledge or table-land; 
 the view all around was splendid, and forced the admiration of 
 the Na'ib himself, though little disposed to praise anything 
 in Nejed. Only to the east lofty mountain-lines limited the 
 prospect ; south, west, and north, plateau and plain lay below 
 in a bird's-eye landscape of immense extent. This district 
 comprises, to the best of my observation, the most elevated 
 point of inner Arabia, which I should place at about fifteen or 
 twenty miles south-east of Thomeyr. The pass tlirough which 
 our road lay is called Theneeyat-'Atalah," that is, *' the barren," 
 though often simply known by the autonomastic designation 
 of " Eth-Theneeyah," or " the pass " jjar excellence, because 
 the highest in the land. The easterly mountain is"Djebel 
 Atalah " itself, berhymed in Arab song. Here stands Yabroon, 
 a town once, it would seem, of some importance, now dwindled 
 to a mere village, and only mentioned to me by the natives 
 as marking the extremity of the Soley' valley in its northerly 
 intersection of Toweyk, and on account of a fair occasionally 
 held there in the course of the year. 
 
 Our path, a very stony one, led for tliree or four hours along 
 the ridge ; nor was it till late in the afternoon tliat we began to 
 descend a very steep and slippery track, amid marl and grey- 
 stone intermixed, till step b}^ step we reached the lower level,
 
 Chap. VIII] TO lilAD 
 
 3S9 
 
 the same on which we had travelled the day before. All were 
 heartily tired; the camels after so prolonged a march laboured 
 heavily in their tread, and theNa'ib gave vent to his ill temper 
 by a furious quarrel with his men ; the occasion was a pome- 
 granate, which he had eaten alone without offering tliem a 
 share : hinc ircc et lacrymw. I mention this for a sample of 
 many similar squalls that ruffled the placidity of the Shiya'ee 
 band. But it is only justice to say that Mohammed-' Alee's 
 better mood soon returned, and he was then heartily ashamed 
 of his own past indecorum. 
 
 Amid such alternations within and without, we were in all 
 cases obliged to push smartly on if we wished to reach in time 
 Sadik, our destined night's halt. And at last we caught a 
 glimpse of it amid uneven ground, just after threading a pretty 
 knot of small hills, where couching gazelles started up on our 
 approach and ran away ; but evening was now far advanced, nor 
 did we come under the walls till dark. A clean sandy space, 
 hard by a well, and sheltered around by lofty palm-trees, 
 afforded us a halting place. Here all alighted, while Aboo-'Eysa 
 alone entered the town to give its governor notice of our arrival. 
 He very courteously invited us, great and small, to his residence, 
 despite the lateness of the hour. But the Na'ib, dead tired, 
 refused to rise from his carpets where he had flung him down ; 
 the sand was soft, and the night air not over cold. Accordingly 
 the governor sent us out where we were a supply of meat, 
 curds, honey, melons, and bread, enough for a good supper, to 
 which the Arabs added coffee and the Persians tea. Somewhere 
 about midnight we made a hearty meal by the light of our 
 fires, and bivouacked beside them. 
 
 Aboo-'Eysa knew, though he would not say, that next day's 
 march was almost equal in length to the preceding one. In 
 spite of all remonstrances from the jaded travellers, he put us 
 by dawn in movement, and we left Sadik without having seen 
 the inside of its walls. Those of the party who had visited it on 
 former occasions, stated it to be a considerable village, a small 
 town, in fact, equal to Mejmaa'. We had not gone far on our 
 way when the chiefs own brother, in a handsome red dress, and 
 accompanied by some swordsmen of his train, rode after us to 
 beg us to retrace our steps and honour his abode by partaking
 
 360 FROM BEREYDAII \Cu\v. VIII 
 
 therein of an early dinner. But want of leisure rendered tliis 
 impossible ; so we thanked him for his offer, and he returned, 
 after smoking a furtive pipe witli Barakat and myself. 
 
 The road now wound between shrubs and bushes, where 
 hares and partridges abounded; the Na'ib had slung to his 
 saddle a good double-barrelled English fowling-piece, brought 
 from India ; but though he talked much and big about his gun 
 and his sporting achievements, we could nohow persuade him 
 to make use of it on this or any other occasion, whence my 
 readers will, I fear, draw the same inference that we did, namely, 
 that he was no great shot. A hare now crossed our path, and 
 gave rise to a fierce dispute between the Sonnees and Shiya'ees 
 of our party, touching the lawfulness of eating hare's flesh. 
 The Sonnees, at least those of the Hanbalee sect, to which all 
 Nejdeans belong, whether Wahhabees or not, hold swine's flesh 
 alone to be forbidden them ; but the Shiya'ees have a prohibitory 
 list of almost or quite as many articles as the Jews themselves, and 
 among these puss is included. These sectaries do not indeed 
 plead guilty to copying in this or in any other respect the children 
 of Israel, for whom they profess, equally with the Sonnees, su- 
 preme dislike and contempt ; acting in virtue, they say, of certain 
 traditions, handed down from their demigods, 'Alee, Hoseyn, 
 Zeyn-el-'Abideen, Djaa'fer, and the like, and founded on trivial 
 analogies or mystical confusion of ideas. Tlius, for the illegality 
 of hare's meat they adduce a sj^ecial reason, too stupid by far, 
 and too coarse to be recorded here. I do not wonder at the 
 great progress of Pantheism or ^Materialism, whether under the 
 name of Babism or any other, among the Shiya'ees, now and 
 in former times, so full is their current system of the sheer- 
 est practical and theoretical absurdity, though with occasional 
 glimpses too of high and noble truths, but all distorted and 
 overlaid with an incrustation of Iranian folly. The present 
 controversy ran high, and nothing was wanting to bring it to 
 a matter-of-fact issue except the essential article of a certain 
 well-known receipt, " first catch your hare ; " but the Na'ib 's 
 backwardness in fulfilling that, left matters at the degree 
 of theory only, much to Barakat's regret and mine, a feeling 
 wherein our Nejdean companions heartily sympathized. 
 
 Issuing from the Arcadian labyrinth of rock and shrubbery,
 
 Chap. VIII] TO RIAT) j6l 
 
 we came before noon on an open plain, and bad on our rigbt 
 band the town of Hoolab, a large and busy locality ; tbe size 
 and outline of its towered walls reminded me of Conway Castle, 
 but tbe construction differs, being bere almost wholly of sun- 
 dried bricks, with little stone, and that unhewn. This town, 
 men say, is one of the most flourishing in Sedeyr ; perhaps its 
 comparative proximity to Shakra and the Woshem road con- 
 tributes to its prosperity. The inhabitants are not only active 
 traders but diligent agriculturists, and the country around is 
 planted and tilled to a notable distance. Hoolab, like many 
 other villages hereabouts, has decidedly improved under Wah- 
 habee rule, and that from two main causes : the first is the 
 cessation of local rivalries and frontier feuds; the second the 
 increased importance of the central districts in general, and 
 hence a correlative influx of wealth and commerce. These 
 advantages are common to the whole circle of Djebel Toweyk, 
 including the five genuine Nejdean provinces, namely Sedeyr, 
 Woshem, 'Aared, Yemamah, and Aflaj, nor is even Wadi 
 Dowasir absolutely excluded. So poor indeed was Nejed, so 
 ruinously subdivided, so cut off from the world around, and 
 overrun by pilfering nomades or tyrannized by petty chieflets a 
 century ago, that any change soever could hardly fail to prove 
 a bettering for the land, then at its very nadir in every 
 respect. And thus a central and national government, strong 
 enough to maintain order at home, and to draw in the wealth 
 and strength of richer lands without, has of course been for Nejed 
 a great and positive gain. Imagine, for example's sake, that 
 Switzerland, with her rocky cantons, suddenly became mistress 
 and centre of government for Italy on the south, and the whole 
 German Confederation and Rhenish provinces to tbe north. 
 Germany indeed, and Italy, would be little likely to benefit from 
 such a transaction ; but tbe Swiss provinces would certainly rise 
 in wealth and importance, at any rate for a time. In the same 
 manner the opulent lands of ITa.sa, Kateef, Kaseem, and the like, 
 are real sufferers from their forced annexation to Nejed, and, in 
 vulgar phrase, "pay the piper," while Nejed herself profits by 
 their losses, and battens on their fat and increase. But to 
 resume our itinerary. 
 
 We left behind us many other villages and hamlets of less
 
 362 FROM BEREYDAII [CnAr. VIII 
 
 note, near and far, till after a few hours of very pretty road 
 over the undulations of the plateau, now mounting, now de- 
 scendino- its whitened ledges, we reached at sunset the town of 
 Horeymelah where we were to pass the evening. 
 
 This town, the birthplace of the well-known Mohammcd- 
 ebn-'Ahd-el-Wahliab, founder and name-giver of the sect now 
 dominant throughout nearly half Arabia, forms the northerly 
 wicket-gate or key to the central stronghold of Nejed, guarded 
 in like fashion by Shakra to the west, Kharfah to the south, 
 and the defile of Wadi Soley' to the east; four localities that 
 occupy the corresponding entrances to the famous valley once 
 Wadi Moaeylemah, now by name Wadi Haneefah, in whose 
 deep labyrinth lies the capital, and the very heart of Nejed. 
 Horeymelah is situated almost on the boundary line between 
 'Aared and Sedeyr, but belongs to the latter. It blocks up the 
 funnel-like end of the gorge through which we had been 
 travelling half the day, with just enough open space around for 
 the customary plantation-halo of a Nejdean town; the outer 
 fortifications are, as beseems the position, remarkably strong, 
 and the population about ten thousand in number. What 
 most siu-prised me on our first entrance here, was the view 
 of a large castle, placed on a rising ground within the town 
 itself, and announcing in its symmetrical construction a degree 
 of architectural and defensive science uniisual in these coun- 
 tries. My wonder was however lessened on learning that this 
 fortress was the work of Ibraheem Bacha, erected during the 
 Eo-yptian occupation of Nejed subsequent to the fall of 
 Dercy'eeyah. Young though Ibraheem then was, his fertile 
 mind had already conceived the system which in after years 
 covered Syria and the north with monuments of his prodigious 
 energy, and of his consummate skill in everywhere selecting 
 for his strategic constructions precisely the points best at 
 once for securing subjection and barring invasion. Similar 
 vestiges of the great Basha yet stand, though dismantled, 
 at Hom§, at Baa'lbec, at Antioch, at Nebk, and other places 
 out of number, to attest alike the talent of the Egyptian 
 who reared them and the supine negligence and apathetic folly 
 of the Ottoman who has abandoned them to decay. The 
 castle of Horeymelah was the first of Ibraheem's strong posts
 
 Chap. VIII] TO EIAD j6j 
 
 that I saw in Nejed, but we met with more farther on; and I 
 was told that other like works of his yet exist in Woshem and 
 on the skirts of Kaseem, but my line of route did not permit 
 me to visit them. 
 
 Betah, a native of the town and a zealous Wahhabee, heart 
 and soul devoted to the interests of the Sa'ood family, was 
 governor here. He was of good parentage, and not deficient 
 in the kind of education peculiar to his country and sect ; he 
 received us very courteously, and introduced us without delay 
 into his spacious abode within the castle. But the evening was 
 warm, almost close, and after a few minutes of ceremony 
 in the K'hawah, we unanimously voted for the open aii-. 
 Carpets were accordingly spread and cushions arranged on the 
 large flat roof above the second storey, and thither we mounted 
 by a flight of stone steps, ill-lighted, and particularly fit to 
 break the necks of those who should venture on them at niglit 
 time. On one side of the roof a third storey rose higher still, 
 and the parapet against which we reclined our weary backs 
 overhung the central market-place of the town. 
 
 Our host was a retainer and a personal friend of 'Abd-Allali, 
 son of Fey§ul, and, if we take his word, had accompanied 
 the prince in no less than thirty military expeditions. Many 
 were the anecdotes he recounted touching the prowess of the 
 heir-apparent, but I reserve them for the history of the Sa'ood 
 family in a following chapter. My own thoughts were at tlie 
 moment much more occupied with the memory of the extra- 
 ordinary man who, born in this corner of the earth, had lived 
 to exercise over his countrymen an influence equal to that of 
 his compatriot Moseylemah in old times, nay, almost of his yet 
 more famous namesake Mohammed or Mahomet himself. 
 
 Mohammed-ebn-'Abd-el-Wahhab, founder of the sect named 
 after him Wahhabees, was born in Horeymelah somewhat be- 
 fore the middle of the last century. His ancestral origin, a 
 circumstance never " lightly touched, much less forgot," by Arab 
 biographers, was from the Mesaleekh, a powerful clan, whose 
 nomade branch still frequents tlie neighbourhood of Zobeyr and 
 the north-west of the Persian Gulf. Like many Nejdeans of 
 the better sort, he began life as a travelling merchant, and liis 
 first excursions were in the direction of Bas^rah and Bairdad.
 
 364 FROM BEREYDAH [Cn.vr. VIII 
 
 That he visited Persia also, India, and even Constantinople, 
 according to the statements of some writers, is at least wliolly 
 unconfirmed by local tradition, my only guide and authority in 
 this sketch. Commerce ultimately led him to Damascus, where 
 he fell in with some of the learned and very bigoted sheykhs 
 of that town, lianbelees like himself, or Shafi'ees, but alike op- 
 posed whether to the prevailing laxities of the Nakshbundees 
 and other northern free-thinkers, or to the superstitious practices 
 of Darweeshes, Fakeers, Welees, and whatever else Persian or 
 Turkish ideas have introduced almost everywhere in the East. 
 The son of 'Abd-el-Wahhab was above thirty years of age, and 
 in the full vigour of his jjhysical and intellectual existence, a 
 vio-our much above the average standard. To the persevering 
 doo-gedness and patient courage of his Nejdean countrymen, he 
 added a power of abstraction and generalization rare among 
 them ; his eye was observant and his ear attentive, he had 
 already seen much and reflected deeply. But the lessons of 
 the Damascene sheykhs aided him to combine once for all, and 
 to render precise, notions that he had long before, it seems, 
 entertained in a floating and unsystematized condition. He 
 now learned to distinguish clearly between the essential ele- 
 ments of Islam and its accidental or recent admixtures, and at 
 last found himself in possession of what had been the primal 
 view and starting-point of the Prophet and his first companions 
 in Hejaz twelve ages before. 
 
 To appreciate accurately and distinctly the innermost thought 
 and purpose of the first founder of a sect at more than a thousand 
 years' distance, and through all the complicated strata of ortho- 
 doxy and heterodoxy laid over it by parties and commentators, 
 by times and races, is no easy task, nor is every eye capable of 
 so keen a view, nor every mind of so comprehensive a grasp. 
 This requires uncommon analytic and deductive power, with 
 that intuitive tact which few possess, and which forms the basis 
 of what men call genius in every science or art. Strength of 
 will, nay, audacity itself, is no less needful too than strength of 
 intellect. All these Mohammed-ebn-'Abd-el-Wahhab united 
 in eminent measure. To him is the praise, if praise it be, 
 of having discovered amid the ruins of the Islamitic pile its 
 neglected keystone, and, harder still, of having dared to form
 
 Uhap. VIII] TO lilAI) ■ 365 
 
 the project to replace it, and with it and by it reconstruct the 
 broken fabric. 
 
 This keystone, this master-thought, this parent idea, of which 
 all the rest is but the necessary and inevitable deduction, is 
 contained in the phrase, far oftener repeated than understood, 
 " La Ilah ilia Allah," " there is no god but God." A literal 
 translation, but much too narrow for the Arab formula, and 
 quite inadequate to render its true force in an Arab mouth or 
 mind. 
 
 " There is no god but G od " are words simply tantamount in 
 English to the negation of any deity save one alone ; and thus 
 much they certainly mean in Arabic, but they imply much 
 more also. Their full sense is, not only to deny absolutely and 
 unreservedly all plurality whether of nature or of person in 
 the Supreme Being, not only to establish the unity of the 
 Unbegetting and Unbegot, in all its simple and uncommunicable 
 Oneness, but besides this the words, in Arabic and among 
 Arabs, imply that this one Supreme Being is also the only Agent, 
 the only Force, the only Act existing throughout the universe, 
 and leave to all beings else, matter or spirit, instinct or in- 
 telligence, physical or moral, nothing but pure unconditional 
 passiveness, alike in movement or in quiescence, in action or in 
 capacity. The sole power, the sole motor, movement, energy, 
 and deed, is God ; the rest is downright inertia and mere instru- 
 mentality, from the highest archangel down to the simplest atom 
 of creation. Hence, in this one sentence, " La Hah ilia Allah," 
 is summed up a system which, for want of a better name, I 
 may be permitted to call the Pantheism of Force, or of Act, 
 thus exclusively assigned to God, Who absorbs it all, exercises 
 it all, and to Whom alone it can be ascribed, whether for pre- 
 serving or for destroying, for relative evil or for equally re- 
 lative good, I say " relative," because it is clear that in such 
 a theology no place is left for absolute good or evil, reason or 
 extravagance ; all is abridged in the autocratical will of the one 
 great Agent: "sic volo, sic jubeo, stet pro ratione voluntas;" 
 or, more significantly still, in Arabic, " Kema yesha'o," " as He 
 wills it," to quote the constantly recurring expression of the 
 Coran. 
 
 Thus immeasurably and eternally exalted above, and dissimilar
 
 ^66 FROM BEREYDAII [CnAr. VHI 
 
 from, all creatures, which lie levelled before Him on one common 
 plane of instrumentality and inert ess, God is One in the totality 
 of omnipotent and omnipresent action, which acknowledges 
 no rule, standard, or limit, save His own sole and absolute will. 
 He commimicates nothing to His creatures, for their seeming- 
 power and act ever remain His alone, and in return He receives 
 nothing from them ; for whatever they may be, that they are in 
 Him, l)y Him, and from Him only. And secondly, no superiority, 
 no distinction, no preeminence, can be lawfully claimed b}^ one 
 creature over its fellow, in the utter equalisation of their unex- 
 ceptional servitude and abasement ; all are alike tools of the 
 one solitary Force which employs them to crush or to benefit, 
 to truth or to error, to honour or shame, to happiness or misery, 
 quite independently of their individual fitness, deserts, or ad- 
 vantage, and simply because He wills it, and as He mils it. 
 
 One might at first sight think that this tremendous Autocrat, 
 tliis uncontrolled and unsympathizing Power, would be far above 
 anything like passions, desires, or inclinations. Yet such is 
 not the case, for He has with respect to His creatures one main 
 feeling and source of action, namely, jealousy of them, lest they 
 should perchance attribute to themselves something of what is 
 His alone, and thus encroach on His all-engrossing kingdom. 
 Hence He is ever more prone to punish than to reward, to inflict 
 pain than to bestow pleasure, to ruin than to build. It is His 
 singular satisfaction to let created beings continually feel that 
 they are nothing else than His slaves, His tools, and contemp- 
 tible tools also, that thus they may the better acknowledge His 
 superiority, and know His power to be above their power, His 
 cunning above their cunning. His will above their will, His 
 pride above their pride ; or rather, that there is no power, 
 cunning, will, or pride save His own. 
 
 But He Himself, sterile in His inaccessible height, neither 
 loving nor enjoying aught save His own and self-measured decree, 
 without son, companion, or counsellor, is no less barren for Himself 
 than for His creatures, and His own barrenness and lone egoism 
 in Himself is the cause and rule of His indifferent and unre- 
 garding despotism around. The first note is the key of the 
 whole tune, and the primal idea of Grod runs through and 
 modifies the whole system and creed that centres in Him.
 
 Chap. VIII] TO RIAD ^5- 
 
 That the notion here given of the Deity, monstrous and 
 blasphemous as it may appear, is exactly and literally that 
 which the Coran conveys or intends to convey, I at present 
 take for granted. But that it indeed is so, no one who has 
 attentively perused and thought over the Arabic text (for mere 
 cursory reading, especially in a translation, will not suffice), can 
 hesitate to allow. In fact, every phrase of the preceding sen- 
 tences, every touch in this odious portrait, has been taken, to 
 the best of my ability, word for word, or at least meaning for 
 meaning, from the " Book," the truest mirror of the mind and 
 scope of its writer. 
 
 And that such was in reality Mahomet's mind and idea is 
 fully confirmed by the witness-tongue of contemporary tradition. 
 Of this we have many authentic samples : the Saheeh, the 
 Commentaries of Beydawee, the Mishkat-el-Me§abeeh, and 
 fifty similar works, afford ample testimony on this point. But 
 for the benefit of my readers in general, all of whom may not 
 have drunk equally deep at the fountain-heads of Islamitic 
 dogma, I will subjoin a specimen, known perhaps to many 
 Orientalists, yet too characteristic to be here omitted, a repetition 
 of which I have endured times out of number from admiring 
 and approving Wahhabees in Nejed. 
 
 Accordingly, when God — so runs the tradition ; I had better 
 said, the blasphemy— resolved to create the human race, He took 
 into His hands a mass of earth, the same whence all mankind 
 were to be formed, and in which they after a manner pre- 
 existed ; and having then divided the clod into two equal por- 
 tions. He threw the one half into hell, saying, " These to eternal 
 fire, and I care not ; " and projected the other half into heaven, 
 adding, "and these to Paradise, and I care not." 
 
 Commentary would here be superfluous. But in this we 
 have before us the adequate idea of predestination, or, to give 
 it a truer name, pre-damnation, held and taught in the school 
 of the Coran. Paradise and hell are at once totally independent 
 of love or hatred on the part of the Deity, and of merits or 
 demerits, of good or evil conduct, on the part of the creature • 
 and, in the corresponding theory, rightly so, since the very 
 actions which we call good or ill-deserving, right or wrouo- 
 wicked or virtuous, are in their essence all one and of one and
 
 368 FROM BEREYDAH [CnAP. VHI 
 
 accordingly merit neither praise nor blame, piniislnnent or re- 
 compense, except and simply after the arbitrary value whicli 
 the all-regulating will of the great despot may choose to assign or 
 impute to them. In a word, He burns one individual through 
 all eternity amid red-hot chains and seas of molten fire, and seats 
 another in the plenary enjoyment of an everlasting brothel 
 between forty celestial concubines, just and equally for his own 
 good pleasure, and because He wills it. 
 
 Men are thus all on one common level, here and hereafter, 
 in their physical, social, and moral light — the level of slaves 
 to one sole INlaster, of tools to one universal Agent. But the 
 equalizing process does not stop here : beasts, birds, fishes, in- 
 sects, all participate of the same honour or debasement ; all are, 
 like man, the slaves of God, the tools and automata of His will ; 
 and hence ]Mahomet is simply logical and self-consistent when in 
 the Goran he informs his followers, that birds, beasts, and the 
 rest are " nations " like themselves, nor does any intrinsic dis- 
 tinction exist between them and the human species, except what 
 accidental diversity the " King, the Proud One, the Mighty, 
 the Giant," &c., as he stylos his God, may have been pleased 
 to make, just as He willed it, and so long as He may will it. 
 
 However, should any one think himself aggrieved by such 
 association, he may console himself by reflecting that, on the 
 other hand, angels, archangels, genii, devils, and whatever otlier 
 spiritual beings may exist, are no less on his level also ; and 
 that if he himself be no better than a camel, he is, however, no 
 worse than Gabriel or any seraph. And then, over all and above 
 all, " La Hah ilia Allah," " there is no god but God." 
 
 Human nature is sometimes blamed for its inconsistency : 
 were it not for that very inconsistency, it would often be much 
 more worthy of blame. The best men are inconsistent, and 
 the worst are no less so ; and this is just what renders the good 
 endurable, and the bad tolerable. 
 
 What keeps a spirit wholly true 
 To that ideal which he bears ? 
 
 No man ever acted up to his theory, and it is well ; for ex- 
 cellent though his theory may be, it is still theory, and needs 
 the qualification of circumstance ; nay more, no man ever was or 
 will he in theory perfectly consistent with his theory itself; and
 
 Chap. VIII] TO RIAT) jgo 
 
 these deviations are precisely what in general saves it from 
 absurdity. The same remark applies to error and evil : total 
 error is fortunately no less impossible than total wickedness and 
 depravity. Mind and morals may be far gone, yet have always 
 some lucid intervals, some redeeming features. My readers will 
 hence understand that in the plan above traced of the Mahometan 
 theory as embodied in the Coran, I have only intended to convey 
 the leading idea, to pourtray the ruling lineaments, to analyse the 
 ultimate and essential constituents, without taking into account 
 liealthierbut unhomogeneous admixtures, and anomalous touches 
 of better grace. Such undoubtedly exist in the Coran itself, 
 and others are recorded by credible tradition ; happy inconsis- 
 tencies where the Prophet degenerated upwards into a man ; and 
 the Coran forgot itself for a moment to become almost reason- 
 able and human. But these are after all heteroclite exceptions, 
 and can then only be adduced in opposition to the great scheme 
 of the work and its writer, when one feeble line shall prove Shake- 
 speare no poet, or one devout phrase indict Voltaire of Christi- 
 anity. " Nemo mortalium omnibus horis," &c. and that is all. 
 
 Neglect of this discrimination has led some apologists into 
 eulogies of IMahomet which Mahomet himself would have been 
 the first to reject ; to transform the " Messenger of God " into a 
 philanthropist, and the Coran into a gospel. To this end 
 detached sentences have been at times assumed for criteria of 
 the whole work, and rare anomalies brought forward as the 
 general and dominant tenor of the Prophet's life and writings. 
 I do not wonder at it : " the Devil can quote Scripture for his 
 purpose," and angels may the Coran for theirs. But ordinary 
 men would do well to take matters as they stand, and to give 
 each his due according to what he really meant, not according 
 to what they would wish him to mean. Thus much may 
 suffice to meet half way a certain class of objections, more 
 ably put forward, I think, than firmly founded. Let us now 
 return to the subject in hand. 
 
 "What system of morality or government, what social code or 
 political institutions, what life and ways may be built up on 
 the foundation, and deduced from the principles laid down in the 
 Coran, need not be matters of speculation. " The worshipper 
 models himself on what he worships," is an Arab proverb no 
 
 VOL. I. B B
 
 370 FEOM BEREYDAII [Chap. VIII 
 
 less true in religion tlian in love ; history confirms the axiom ; 
 and fifty days passed at Kiad will in the following chapters 
 illustrate the condition of a land where these doctrines have 
 prevailed for a century with all the concentrated unity of 
 thought and purpose proper to Nejdeans, and fostered by the 
 isolated position of their native countr)\ The tree is best 
 known by its fruits ; and should any of my readers, though I 
 should be reluctant to suppose it, yet hesitate between approval 
 and rejection of Coranic theology, its practical results and out- 
 working in the Wahhabee capital may help him to make up 
 his mind. 
 
 All we are at present concerned with is that such is the per- 
 vading idea, the central figure, the master or mother thought, 
 in l)rief, the keystone of Islam, as INIahomet conceived it and 
 as the Wahhabee understood it. Later doctrines and schools, 
 introducing now free will, now merit, now hierarcliical institu- 
 tions and mutual dependence of man on man, now devising 
 intercessors and mediators, living or dead, selecting holy 
 23laces, honouring saints and tombs, framing ascetic brother- 
 hoods and darweesh associations, were by the Wahhabee recog- 
 nised henceforth in their true light, from his point of view, 
 as innovations, corruptions, and distortions of the great and 
 simple vision of one solitary autocrat, over one even mass of 
 undistincruished and undistinc^uishable slaves. 
 
 This deduction was eminently logical. HoNv, in fact, can the 
 Absolute leave room for intercessors, or the Uncommunicable 
 admit of a hierarchy linking the creature witli the Creator ? 
 what free will can find place in a passive automaton ? or what 
 meaning can be attached to ascetic practices and good works 
 when the universal Lord and Euler has declared that He cares 
 not what His slaves may do, or to what He destines tliem ? To 
 suppose sanctity or distinction in a creature, is an invasion of 
 the all-absorbing rights of the Creator ; and neither place nor 
 title can avail where the beast and the archangel, heaven and 
 hell, are all the same before and below the unmoved and inac- 
 cessible One. That Mahomet had thus thought and acted 
 accordingly whenever these heretical deviations came under his 
 notice, the son of 'Abd-el-Wahhab well knew ; and very fairly 
 inferred that he would have looked ujjon with equal abhorrence
 
 Chap. VIII] TO RIAT) 3-7 1 
 
 and treated with no less rigour the analogous corruptions and 
 overlayings of later times. 
 
 But if the theoretical conclusion was inevitable, the practical 
 application was no less evident. Henceforth, thus reasoned 
 the Wahhabee reformer, the line was to be drawn at the life of 
 Mahomet himself, and of those who, from their intimate and 
 personal association, might be considered as forming one with 
 the Prophet himself : the epoch of the Sahhabah was the extreme 
 Eubicon of whatever Islam could approve and admit; all beyond 
 incompatible and hostile. With the courage worthy of a great 
 if not of a good cause, Mohammed-ebn-'x\bd-el-Wahhab resolved 
 to consecrate the remainder of his life to the restoration of 
 this primaeval image of Islam, the Islam of Mahomet, of the 
 Sahhabah, and now his own ; convinced that this alone was the 
 true, the unerring, the heaven-revealed path, and all beside it 
 mere human superaddition and, in Lord Bacon's famous phrase, 
 Idols of the Cave. 
 
 Wrong, inevitably wrong, in his starting-point, he was right 
 in all the rest; equally keen-sighted in his perceptions, just 
 in his deductions, and honest in his aim. Self-consistency, 
 though not always virtuous, is at least honourable ; and what- 
 ever religion a man may profess, it is certainly more praise- 
 worthy in him to hold it for what it really is and then act 
 up to it, than to content himself with a vitiated dogma and 
 an inadequate practice. Nor can a Mahometan, being such, 
 receive other than praise when he looks for and follows out the 
 authentic religion of Mahomet. 
 
 The position which the Wahhabee assumed in Mahomet- 
 anism, and the exact nature of Mahometanism itself, will 
 become yet clearer to my readers if they will permit me, 
 though at the risk of prolonging the present digression, to take 
 notice on my way of an incorrect idea, conveyed in an expres- 
 sion alike incorrect, yet often applied to this very subject. 
 More than one writer, treating of this phase of Islam, has 
 entitled it a "Mahometan Protestantism," and compared it 
 with the religious movement of our own sixteenth century 
 known as the " Eeformation." Now the fact is, that between 
 the mutual bearings of Mahometanism and Wahhabeeisra on 
 the one side, and of Christianity in general and dogmatic 
 
 B B 2
 
 3 "72 FROM BEItEYDAII [Chap. VllI 
 
 Protestantism (if I may use the words tlius for the comjiavison's 
 sake) on tlie other, tliere exists no real parallel, and the very 
 sli'^'ht analogy traceable is fanciful and delusive. The cases are 
 uholly different ; nor is the explanation far to seek. 
 
 The Wahhabee reformer formed the design of putting l)ack 
 the liour-haud of Islam to its starting-point ; and so far he did 
 well, for that hand was from the first meant to be fixed. Islam 
 is in its essence stationary, and was framed thus to remain. 
 Sterile like its God, lifeless like its first Principle and supremo 
 Original in all that constitutes true life— for life is love, par- 
 ticipation, and progress, and of these the Coranic Deity has 
 none — it justly repudiates all change, all advance, all develope- 
 ment. To borrow the forcible words of Lord Houghton, the 
 " written book " is there the " dead man's hand," stiff and 
 motionless ; whatever savours of vitality is by that alone con- 
 victed of heresy and defection. 
 
 But Christianity with its living and loving Grod, Begetter 
 and Begotten, Spirit and Movement, nay more, a Creator 
 made creature, the Maker and the made existing in One, a 
 Divinity communicating itself by uninterrupted gradation and 
 decree from the most intimate union far ofif to the faintest 
 irradiation, though all that It has made for love and governs in 
 love ; One who calls His creatures not slaves, not servants, but 
 friends, nay sons, nay gods — to sum up, a religion in whose seal 
 and secret " Grod in man is one with man in God," must also be 
 necessarily a religion of vitality, of progress, of advancement. 
 The contrast between it and Islam is that of movement with 
 fixedness, of participation with sterility, of developement with 
 barrenness, of life witli petrifaction. The first vital principle 
 and the animating spirit of its birth must indeed abide ever the 
 same, bvit the outer form must change with the changing days, 
 and new offshoots of fresh sap and greenness be continually 
 thrown out as witnesses to the vitality within, else were the 
 Vine withered and the Branches dead. I have no intention 
 here, it would be extremely out of place, of entering on the 
 maze of controversy, or discussing whether any dogmatic attempt 
 to reproduce the religious phase of a former age is likely to 
 succeed. I only say that life supposes movement and growth, 
 and both imply change ; that to censure a living thing for
 
 Chap. VIII] TO RIAT) 213 
 
 growing and changing is absui-d ; and tluit to attempt to hinder 
 it from so doing by pinning it down on a written hihel, or 
 nailing it to a Procrustean framework, is tantamount to killing- 
 it altogether. Now Christianity is living, and because living- 
 must grow, must advance, must change, and was meant to do 
 so ; onwards and forwards is a condition of its very existence ; 
 and I cannot but think that those who do not recognize this, show 
 themselves so far ignorant of its true nature and essence. On 
 the other hand, Islam is lifeless, and because lifeless cannot grow, 
 cannot advance, cannot change, and was never intended so to do ; 
 stand-still is its motto and its most essential condition ; and there- 
 fore the son of 'Abd-el-Wahhab, in doing his best to bring it 
 back to its primal simplicity, and making its goal of its starting- 
 point, was so far in the right, and showed himself well acquainted 
 with the nature and first principles of his religion. 
 
 These remarks also, while they vindicate the Nejdean reformer 
 and his reform from misapplied parallelisms, may serve to 
 give a yet clearer idea of Islam and of its Wahhabee revival. 
 Erring indeed it was ; but its error lay exclusively and un- 
 avoidably in the premises adopted, nohow in tlie conclusions. 
 
 With a head full of his project, and a heart set on carrying it 
 into execution, Mohammed the Wahhabee returned to his native 
 Nejed, after an absence, so runs the tale, of six years, most of 
 which he had passed in Damascus. Central Arabia was at that 
 epoch divided between innumerable chiefs, of whom the most 
 powerful were Ebn-Ma'ammer at 'Eyanah in Wadi Haneefah, 
 and Da'as at the important locality of Manfoohah in Kharj. 
 But these, and with them all their brethren or rivals in 
 authority, were subject in a general way to Ebn-Muflik, the 
 successor of the Carmathian princes in Kateef and Hasa. 
 Almost every trace of Islam had long since vanished from 
 Nejed, where the worship of the Djann, under the spreading 
 foliage of large trees, or in the cavernous recesses of Djebel 
 Toweyk, along with the invocation of the dead and sacrifices at 
 their tombs, was blended with remnants of old Sabaean super- 
 stition, not without positive traces of the doctrines of Mosey- 
 lemah and Kermoot. The Coran was unread, the five daily 
 prayers forgotten, and no one cared where Mecca lay, east or 
 west, north or south ; tithes, ablutions, and pilgrimages were
 
 J "74 FMOM BEREYDAH [Cn.vr. VIII 
 
 things unheard of. Such was the political and religious con- 
 dition of the laud wlien the Wahhabee arrived, resolved to 
 restore the days of the Prophet and the Sahhubah among his 
 backsliding countrymen, and confident of success. The event 
 justified his hopes. 
 
 " Catch the fish by its head," says a vulgar but shrewd Arab 
 proverb ; and in accordance with its advice, Mohammed left 
 his birthplace HorejTnelah, to establish himself in the more 
 important locality of 'Eyfinah, under the immediate protection 
 of its ruler, Ebn-]Ma'ammer. Many and extravagant are the 
 stories current in Nejed regarding the bygone greatness of 
 'Eyanah and the tyranny of its chiefs. Thus, I have heard it 
 said that, on occasion of some frontier war or other, Ebn- 
 INIa'ammer called out all the military force of his capital, and 
 gave directions that every man a smith by trade, who chanced 
 to be enlisted in the army, should cast down a leaden bullet at 
 the town gate while the troops passed out of it ; and that the 
 bullets then and thus collected, and reckoned up, amounted to 
 six hundred, being the number of blacksmiths alone in 'Eyanah. 
 How large a population this supposes is easier to calcidate than to 
 believe. But patting these and similar exaggerations aside, it 
 is certain that 'Eyanah was at that epoch the first city of Nejed, 
 and probably inferior to none there existing at the present day 
 in size and number of inhabitants ; at least its ruins, surpassing 
 in extent those of Derey'eeyah itself, would seem to testify so 
 much. Close by the town walls rose a monument marking the 
 spot where a certain Sa'ad, a mythical hero of old times, was 
 believed to be buried. This tomb and its real or imaginar}^ 
 tenant were the supreme object of popular veneration ; Sa'ad 
 engrossed all the prayers and religious honours of 'Eyanah, his 
 tomb was the palladium of the Nejdean capital, and here sacri- 
 fices were offered and sacred rites performed. Enough certainly 
 to stir up a more sluggish spirit than that of the Wahhabee 
 apostle. 
 
 But Mohammed's zeal, though ardent, was not rash, and he 
 well knew to bide patiently and prudently the slow develope- 
 ment of great designs. In the house where he now took up his 
 quarters by the side of the market-place, he remained for a 
 considerable time, leading a quiet and almost retired life, neither
 
 CHAr. VIII] TO RIAT) jyr 
 
 dogmatizing nor in any other way affecting to distinguish him- 
 self from those around. His personal character and travelled 
 experience soon gained him that solid reputation and esteem 
 which learning and gravity, combined with an eloquent yet 
 prudent tongue, seldom fail to confer in Arabia, especially when 
 such qualities are moreover supported by substantial wealth. 
 All knew and respected him, and Ebn-Ma'ammer himself 
 delighted to honour the Wahhabee. 
 
 At last Mohammed felt that the moment was come to attempt 
 the effectuation of his great scheme, nor could an occasion be 
 long wanting. One evening, while he was sitting on his house- 
 roof overlooking the market-place, a townsman who had lost a 
 camel passed by beneath, invoking with a loud voice the local 
 patron or demigod Sa'ad to restore him his stray beast. " W 
 lema la tedaa'o bi rabb' is-Sa'ad ? " " And why do you not 
 rather call on the God of Sa'ad?" exclaimed the Wahhabee, 
 in a voice audible not only by the individual below, but by 
 all comers and goers in the market and street. Language 
 so unusual — for the like had not for centuries been heard in 
 'Eyanah — drew on enquiry, enquiry led to controversy and all 
 its ordinary consequences. The ice was broken, the ship was 
 launched, and soon the inhabitants of 'Eyanah were divided 
 into two parties, this for Sa'ad, that for Islam ; while every day 
 added to the number and zeal of the disciples of the new 
 teacher. 
 
 Ebn-Ma'ammer cared for none of these things, and took no 
 apparent notice of the religious fermentation around. But 
 some of the principal townsmen, more firmly attached to 
 their old belief and customs, viewed the matter in a truer and 
 more serious light. After having repeatedly attempted, but 
 in vain, to arouse Ebn-Ma'ammer from his inaction, they sent 
 notice to the supreme governor at Kateef, Ebn-Muflik, ac- 
 quainting him with the rapid spread of the novel dogma, and 
 the culpable negligence of the local chief, and setting forth the 
 danger of a revival of Islam, not in 'Eyanah only, but through- 
 out Nejcd. 
 
 Ebn-Muflik hated jMahoraetanism with the hatred of a 
 Carmathian. He lost no time in sending his orders to Ebn- 
 Ma'ammer, and commanded him to put a stop to the preaching.
 
 376 FROM BEREYDAH [CnAP. VIII 
 
 and to arrest the preacher; threatening him moreover with his 
 worst anger should lie continue to count t-nance the Wahhabee. 
 But instead of a full compliance, which might yet in all pro- 
 bability have extinguished the rising flame, Ebn-Ma'ammer 
 had recourse to one of those half measures which have in every 
 age and land only fanned the proselytizing fire. He informed 
 Mohammed that he could no longer protect him, and recom- 
 mended him to avoid the danger of arrest and its consequences 
 by a timely departure from his territory. 
 
 This seeming check was in reality the turning tide of the 
 Wahhabee's good fortune, and well did he take it. Barely six 
 leagues distant from 'Eyanah, but situated in a different 
 branch of Wadi Haneefah, rose the stronghold of Derey'eeyah, 
 destined to a great celebrity and a terrible downfall. Here, 
 surrounded by a small but energetic population, lived Sa'ood 
 son of 'Abd-el-'Azeez, son of the elder Sa'ood, first chief of the 
 district, and descended from the 'Anezah clan — not the 'Anezah 
 of Syria, but a brancli of the great family of Rabee'aa'l-Feres, 
 through Asd, and near kin to Wa'il and Taghleb. The pre- 
 sent ruler, Sa'ood-eth-Thanee, or the second, was young, bold, 
 and strong in the devoted attachment of his kinsmen and 
 retainers. Placed between Ebn-Ma'ammer on his north, and 
 Da'as on the south-east, he was an object of jealousy to 
 either, and his principality stood in considerable danger from 
 its powerful and ill-disposed neighbours. 
 
 At Sa'ood's castle-gate Mohammed now alighted, and 
 claimed that protection which an Arab chief rarely refuses to 
 a fugitive and a suppliant. But their mutual position was soon 
 changed, and Sa'ood learned to look on his refugee with other 
 eyes, when the Wahhabee, confiding in the ardent spirit and 
 capacious mind of his young host, laid open before him a project 
 fertile in consequences for this world and the next, explained its 
 nature and resources, and concluded by saying, " Pledge me your 
 word that you will make the cause of God your cause, and the 
 sword of Islam your sword, and I will pledge you mine, that 
 before your death you shall be sole monarch of Nejed, and the 
 first potentate in Arabia." 
 
 Wild though such promises may seem to one unversed in
 
 Chap. VIII] TO III AT) ^yy 
 
 the East and its denizens, Sa'ood saw the possibility of their 
 fulfilment, and unhesitatingly accepted the offer. He pro- 
 fessed Islam in all its purity " on the hand," to use an Arab 
 phrase, that is, under the direction of the Wahhabee, and chose 
 him to be henceforward his sole counsellor and guide. The 
 example of the chief was naturally imitated by all of his kindred 
 and retinue. This was about the year 1760. 
 
 With the enthusiasm of a proselyte and the ambition of a 
 conqueror, Sa'ood now gave himself out as Apostle of the 
 new doctrine and Sword of the Faith. In the name of Grod 
 and Islam he attacked one after another his misbelieving 
 neighbours, or requited their assaults by repulse followed 
 closely by aggression, while to all he held forth. Mahomet- 
 like, the option between the Coran and the sword. Weaker 
 wills bent or broke, as they always must, before the stronger ; 
 Sa'ood and his men brought, in old Oliver's words, " a con- 
 science to their work," and every year added to the territory of 
 Derey'eeyah, and the number of the Wahhabee faction. 
 Meanwhile its progress was concurrently favoured by the 
 decline and ruin of 'Eyanah ; an event brought about not by 
 war or hostile intrigue, so far as I could learn, but by the 
 operation of internal causes, and the decay that sooner or later 
 attends misgovernment and despotism. The event itself is 
 historical, but the Nejdean chroniclers have embodied it in a 
 popular legend, which I give because it is illustrative of the 
 Arab turn of mind, though I can hardly allow it any further 
 value. 
 
 The tale runs thus. One morning as E^n-Ma'ammer rode 
 out to the chase, accompanied by a band of nobles and guards- 
 men, he met at the town gate a poor lad, the only son of a 
 widow, bearing on his back a bundle of sticks just collected for 
 sale in the market. Ebn Ma'ammer was girt with a new and 
 yet unproved sword. At the sight of the boy he turned to his 
 retinue, and proposed in cruel jest to make a first trial of his 
 weapon on the peasant before them. Not a voice was raised to 
 protest against the barbarous design ; and the chief, giving his 
 horse a spring forward, drew liis sword, and cut the unlucky 
 lad asunder at a blow. The victim's aged mother had wit-
 
 378 FROM BEJREYDAII [Cu.vr. VIII 
 
 nessed from a little distance this act of gratuitous barbarity. 
 She came forward, stood in front of the tyrant's horse, and 
 raising her hands to heaven called for vengeance on Ebn- 
 Ma'ammer and all his race. From that hour, so follows the 
 tradition, the wells throughout the valley dried up, the gardens 
 withered, and in less than a year the chief and all his family 
 perished by untimely ends, while the townsmen of 'Eyanah, 
 scattered over the land, left their ruined capital a lasting- 
 memorial of crime and punishment. We shall subsequently 
 meet with an analogous, but, I have reason to think, a mure 
 authentic narration, in the history of the Wahhabee kings. 
 
 Against Da'as, the despot of Yemamah, Sa'ood waged a long 
 and doubtful war. At last Islam triumphed, and southern 
 Nejed was, for a while, entirely subdued. Here too the deus 
 ex macldnd is not omitted in the Arab version of events, and 
 the final defeat and overthrow of the enemy is ascribed to a 
 miraculous earthquake, and the terror it caused amid the troops 
 of the unbelievers. Da'as fled to Kateef and died there. 
 
 Meanwhile Ebn-Muflik had been succeeded in the Carma- 
 thian principality by his son 'Arilr. True to the eternal hatred 
 vowed by his sect against the followers of Mahomet, he sent 
 more than once numerous armies to crush the new Islam, and 
 even, if one account be correct, entered Nejed in person, and 
 besieged Derey'eeyah. But of the circumstances which sig- 
 nalized this decisive struggle between Sa'ood and 'Arar, I could 
 learn nothing worth record. After sustaining a bloody and 
 total discomfiture, 'Arar is said to have escaped alone across 
 the Dahna, whos^ sands devoured whatever of his army the 
 sword of the Wahhabee had spared, intrenching himself in 
 the fort of Kateef, where he died soon after of a broken heart. 
 But his relations defended the town, and continued the govern- 
 ment in the name of the family. 
 
 Master of the central provinces, Sa'ood next turned his arms 
 against more distant and opulent regions ; Kaseem and Ha§a, 
 Dowasir and Seleyyel were by him added to the Wahhabee 
 empire, though Kateef and its Carmathian garrison resisted 
 during his reign. But with this single exception, all that lies 
 between the fi'ontiers of Mecca and the Persian Gulf had been 
 conquered by the chief of Derey'eeyah, and when he died after
 
 Chap. VIII] TO EIAJ[) 379 
 
 fifty years of sway the promise made him by Mohammed-ehu- 
 'Abd-el-Wahhab had been accomplished to the fulL Sa'ood 
 left to his sons the undisputed sovereignty of Inner Arabia, and 
 a name respected and even dreaded throughout the entire 
 Peninsula. 
 
 Here let us leave awhile the history of the Sa'ood dynasty, 
 and return to the mainspring and organizer of these strange 
 events, Mohammed the Wahhabee. This great man, for he merits 
 the name, passed his latter years at Derey'eeyah, and cooperated 
 by word and writing with the sword of Sa'ood. He composed 
 many treatises, some of which I have read ; their invariable 
 theme is the explanation and confirmation of the doctrines 
 characteristic of his sect, treatises which a Supralapsarian might 
 peruse with edihcation, and an Antinomian almost mistake 
 for the Acts of the Synod of Dort. However — and in this he 
 proved the sincerity of a zeal not perhaps according to know- 
 ledge, but at any ra,te no pretence — he never took on himself 
 any political authority, or arrogated the right of interfering, 
 directly at least, with affairs of state ; content with the office 
 of master in Israel, and with the respect of all around him to 
 his latest day, he died before his patron at Derey'eeyah, and 
 was tliere buried, leaving several sons, whose names I have 
 heard variously reported. His grandson, 'Abd-er-Kahman is 
 still alive, though in decrepit old age, at Eiad, where I have 
 more than once seen and conversed with him. 'Abd-el-Lateef, 
 son of 'Abd-er-Rahman, and great-grandson of the founder of 
 the sect, is at present Kadee in the capital; he is a middle-aged 
 man of about forty, and happy in a numerous family, of whom, 
 and of 'Abd-el-Lateef himself more anon. I was told, but on 
 slight authority, that 'Abd- Allah, father of 'Abd-er-Eahman and 
 son of Mohammed the Wahhabee, was put to death in the great 
 massacre of the Nejdean doctors, by order of Ibraheem Basha, 
 in 1818. 
 
 The whole family has constantly held the highest judicial and 
 religious posts in the Wahhabee empire, and has amassed con- 
 siderable wealth, let us hope by none but honest means. Its 
 members, who have not tliought fit to imitate in this respect 
 the modesty of their great ancestor, exercise a predominant in- 
 fluence in the state, and, though never decorated with the official
 
 380 FROM BEIiEYDAH [CiiAr. VIII 
 
 titles belonging- to pnrely civil or military authority, do yet, in 
 reality, rule the rulers of the land, and their own masters of the 
 Sa'ood dynasty never venture to contradict them, even on matters 
 of policy or war. But we must soon touch afresh on these topics, 
 and it is now time to leave them awhile, and return to our 
 diary, interrupted by the memor}'- of Mohammed-ebn-'Abd-el- 
 Wahhab in his native town of Horeymelah. 
 
 Our evening party lasted on far into the starry niglit ; the 
 Persian Na'ib and his satellites retired to rest, while Aboo-'Eysa 
 and ourselves remained to listen to the fire-eating discourses of 
 Betilh, and lead him on from tale to tale. Like most Nejdeans, 
 he added innate eloquence of diction to grammatical purity of 
 language ; and Barakat was here, as often elsewhere during our 
 journey, compelled to admit that neither at Zahleh nor at 
 Damascus is the spoken dialect, even amongst the best educated 
 and the most pretentious, worthy the name of Arabic if com- 
 pared to the diction of Nejcd. 
 
 Next morning we resumed our route, accompanied byBetah's 
 men, who were charged to escort us to the frontiers of the 
 province. These were not distant, and long before noon we entered 
 on a white and marly j)lain, an expansion of the gorge up 
 wliich we liad come, and saw before us the little town of Sedoos, 
 the northern limit of 'Aared, and scene of several skirmishes 
 during the Egyptian war. We here left the lower grounds, 
 with their broad but circuitous route, to follow a straight cut 
 across the mountain, whose ledge we climbed (so steep tliat 
 the camels had much ado to master it), and reached a table- 
 land of considerable elevation, yet well provided with grass and 
 trees. The horizon was still bounded on the east by Toweyk 
 itself; south and west it was comparatively open. Our day's 
 march was long, and we pushed on briskly and silently, till 
 in the late afternoon we halted under a pretty grove, lighted 
 our fires, and partook of what food ordinary Arab travellers 
 have leisure or means to prepare. When we moved off once 
 more evening was at hand, bvit before sunset we attained 
 the extreme southerly verge of the heights, and skirted them 
 for half an hour on a narrow path, having the depths of 
 Wadi Haneefah immediately below. Then came a long and 
 difficult descent into the valley, where, at the precipice foot.
 
 Chap. VIII] TO lilAT) 38 1 
 
 an overhanging- rock sheltered a hirge deep pool of clear water, 
 of which we all gladly drank, for the day had been hot, and 
 since leaving Sedoos we had not met with either well or 
 fountain. 
 
 Now we threaded the valley in a south-westerly direction. 
 The first shades of nightfall were closing in, when we found 
 ourselves among the vestiges of 'Eyanah. For half a league or 
 more the ground was intersected by broken walls, and heaps 
 once towers and palaces, amid headless palm-trees, ranges of 
 ithel marking where gardens had been, dry wells, and cisterns 
 choked with dust. Not a living soul appeared as we wound 
 through lines of rubbish that indicated where streets had been, 
 and passed the lone market-gate, yet standing, and ojjen on emp- 
 tiness. I did not wonder that the Arabs attributed such strange 
 and utter ruin to a widow's curse ; it must have been a bitter 
 one. Certainly the remains of Nineveh and Ctesiphon scarcely 
 seemed to me more marked by the Nemesis of tyranny and 
 crime than the ruins of 'Eyanah. It is a curious fact that 
 Ibraheem Basha, struck by the advantageous position of the 
 town, and perhaps not unwilling to establish a permanent 
 counterpoise to the influence of Derey'eeyah by the revival of 
 old animosities, endeavoured in his day to rebuild and repeople 
 this locality, cleared out the old wells and sunk new ones, 
 brought artisans and mechanicians to the work ; but all in vain, 
 the curse was too strong even for him, and he was obliged to 
 abandon the now waterless and hopeless site to abiding desolation. 
 
 Wadi Haneefah is hereabouts a good league in breadth, and 
 fall of trees and brushwood, while its precipitous sides are 
 caverned out into countless recesses for the wolf and hysena ; deer 
 abound also, and we saw the latter, besides hearing the growl 
 of the ruder animals. To avoid tlie windings of the main valley, 
 we left it shortly after getting clear of 'Eyanah, and proceeded 
 on a small cross-branch leading due south, not without some 
 danger of losing our way in the darkness, till ultimately the 
 whole caravan, Persians, Arabs, and the one European also, 
 fairly tired out with floundering amid sands, rocks, thorns, and 
 ithel, insisted on a halt. Aboo-'Eysa, the most indefatigable 
 of guides, and scarcely inclined to make allowance in others 
 for a weariness which he never appeared himself to feel, was
 
 382 FROM BEREYDAII [Cn.vr. VIII 
 
 compelled, iliough after much expostulation, to consent to our 
 just request. We liglited fires, a practical hint to all our 
 neighbours of claw and tooth not to approach too near, and lay 
 do^vn to sleep. 
 
 The relentless Aboo-'Eysa availed himself of a simulated 
 mistake between the rising moon and the dawn of morning to 
 rouse us from rest two or tliree hours before day. Once up, 
 we consented to continue our march, and soon regained the 
 Wadi Haneefah close by the little village of Eowdah. Here in 
 the first century of Islam was laid the scene of the great battle 
 between Khfdid-ebn-Waleed, the " Sword of the Faitli," and 
 Mosey lemah the false prophet of Nejed, and here the death of 
 the latter ensured the triumph of Mahometanism throughout 
 Arabia. 
 
 The history of Moseylemah is well kno^vn. Born about the 
 same time as Mahomet, lie assumed in Nejed the prophetic 
 title already claimed by his contemporary in Hejaz, and was 
 acknowledged by his eastern countrymen for the autlientic 
 messenger of Grod, no less than his competitor by the inhabi- 
 tants of the western coast. IMoseylemah at first sought the 
 alliance and cooperation of the Hejazee, but met with the 
 scornful refusal of conscious superiority. Henceforth he em- 
 ployed every resource of eloquence and satire to render Mahomet 
 and his book at once odious and ridiculous in the eyes of the 
 Nej deans, an attempt in which he fully succeeded. \M3enever 
 a new chapter or Soorali of the Goran appeared, Grabriel-brought 
 from heaven, a burlesque imitation awaited it, the work of 
 Moseylemah. I have, while in Nejed, been favoured with the 
 recitation of many of these ludicrous pieces, yet retained by 
 tradition ; but, like most parodies, they were little worthy of 
 memory, and often very coarse. 
 
 The doctrines of Moseylemah seem to have had what we 
 should call a socialist tendency, and, though ultimately more 
 favourable to civilization and advancement than those of Ma- 
 homet, may have offered less show of dignity and surface morality 
 to their followers. They were a mitigated form of the school 
 entitled three centuries later the Carmathian, rejected fataHsm, 
 contained a confused idea of the Incarnation, and invested their 
 preachers and teachers with a semi-mediatorial character ; but
 
 Chap. VIII] TO EI AT) 383 
 
 liistory or calumny ascribes to them and to their propagator 
 the freedom of unrestrained licence, and the positive encou- 
 ragement of sensuality. When men of an age far back are 
 only known through their enemies, it is difficult to get at the 
 truth concerning either their opinions or their persons. Thus 
 Richard III. was perhaps in reality " a marvellous proper 
 man," nor was Cromwell's nose so red or so bulbous as some 
 historians have been pleased to paint it. 
 
 While matters stood thus, a third impostor appeared in Soutli- 
 western Arabia; but this was a woman, by name Shejfdi; she 
 too obtained credit amoDg her neighbours, and drew after her 
 a large retinue of Yemanite followers. But feeling that it was 
 not good for the woman to be alone in the impending contest 
 of swords no less than of creeds, she anticipated difficulties by 
 entering into epistolary correspondence with Moseylemah ; a 
 softer feeling soon tempered the liarshness of controversy, and 
 the union of beliefs was cemented by the bond of marriage. The 
 immediate result of this Austrian match was a considerable 
 accession of power for Moseylemah, or "the Liar," as Mahomet 
 had before styled him, in a nickname devoted to undesirable 
 immortality; and hence the liar of Mecca did not think it 
 prudent to measure arms as yet with the liars of Eiad and Yemen 
 conjoined. For eight or ten years Moseylemah enjoyed the 
 quiet possession of his Nejdean pre-eminence. But when ex- 
 tended conquests had disciplined the warriors of Hejaz, and 
 repeated victories had raised their courage to the highest pitch, 
 Aboo-Bekr, then caliph, gave orders to Khalid and liis troops 
 to compel Moseylemah to a decisive option between the Goran 
 or the sword of his rival. The war, animated on either side 
 by religious zeal and national hatred, was obstinate and bloody ; 
 but Khalid won his way step by step up Wadi Haneefah till he 
 reached Rowdah, where Moseylemah, with his choicest troops, 
 had taken up a last position, covering thus the immediate 
 approaches to 'Eyanali, Derey'eeyah, Riad, and Yemamah. So 
 formidable was the Nejdean force, that Khalid himself, it is 
 said, hesitated for a whole day and night to hazard an assault 
 which his council of war unanimously dissuaded. But with 
 the second morning his wonted audacity returned, and he gave 
 his men order to advance. The battle, once engaged, lasted till
 
 384 FROM BEREYDAII [Chap. VI TI 
 
 sunset. Moseylemah fell fighting bravely sword in liand, and 
 with him a countless multitude of tlie warriors of Nejed; the 
 victors lost no less than four hundred, if fame say true, of those 
 honoured with the title of Sahhabah, or personal companions of 
 the Prophet, besides a far greater number of ordinary soldiers. 
 The body of Moseylemah was with difficulty recognized amid 
 the heaps of slain ; his head was cut off and brought to Khfdid, 
 who caused it to be set on a spear, in view of all, lest any 
 doubt should remain among friends or enemies concerning the 
 death of the ill-starred propliet. He next marched on Kiad, 
 the birth-town of Moseylemah, and then, as now, the capital, 
 resolved to put its inhabitants to the sword. But the citizens, 
 no less aware of the losses their assailant had sustained than of 
 his ferocity as conqueror, had recourse to a well-calculated stra- 
 tagem, whereby to obtain more favourable conditions of sur- 
 render. Whatever swords and lances the arsenal of Riad yet 
 contained were brought out and put into tlie hands of women 
 and children, of old age and infirmity ; while the feeble multitude, 
 thus equipped in martial guise, were stationed round the walls 
 and gates of the fortified city. Khfdid came up, and was greeted 
 by a continuous glitter of steel from battlement and tower, 
 while the rays of the morning sun flashed back from waving 
 spears and brandished swords. Astonished at a show of re- 
 sistance where he had expected oidy a defenceless prey, and 
 conscious of his own diminished numbers, Khalid offered ne- 
 gotiations which were taken up by the Nej deans with well 
 affected indifference ; what they had hitherto lost was, said 
 they, but the least part of their strength, and they could well 
 afford to lose more before giving in. To shorten the tale, they 
 exacted guarantees for their life and liberty, for freedom and 
 self-government, under one only condition on their part, the 
 profession of Islam ; and Khfdid knew not how easy a booty 
 he and his army had forfeited, till their plighted oath had put 
 it beyond reach. However, the sect as such had received a 
 mortal blow; Islam was now the official religion of the land, 
 and the few constant adherents of the fallen cause emigrated 
 of their own accord to Ha§a and Basrah, where, in common with 
 other malcontents, they laid the foundations of the Carma- 
 thian faction. The name of Moseylemah was devoted to
 
 Chap. VIII] TO RIAB 38^ 
 
 opprobrium, and his native valley took the more seemly title of 
 Wadi Haneefah, or " valley of orthodoxy." Yet national sympathy 
 often tempers, even among Wahhabees, the bitterness of sect- 
 arian hatred, and the hapless leader of Nejedis not unfrequently 
 mentioned by his fellow-countrymen mth a certain tenderness 
 amounting almost to regret. "Mahomet and Moseylemah 
 were both prophets," said one day in my hearing an orthodox 
 denizen of Eiad ; " but the former had a more propitious star." 
 
 My fair readers will perhaps be anxious to know the fate of 
 the prophetess Shejah, once spouse of Moseylemah, and now 
 his disconsolate widow. I am happy to find, from authentic 
 records, that the lady, like many others, proved that if she 
 knew how to get into a scrape, she knew also how to get out 
 of it, better than most awkward men would do. In fine, she 
 dried her tears, execrated the memory of her former prophet 
 and lord, became a devout Musselman, or Musselwoman, after 
 Beppo orthography, and married a better mate ; thus atoning 
 for a heretical by an orthodox alliance: the prudent reverse 
 of him who "loved not wisely but too well," and no less 
 entitled to the admiration and imitation of her sex than 
 Othello of his. 
 
 With such tales Aboo-'Eysa and the Nejdeans our companions 
 entertained us while in the early grey of morning we passed 
 close under the plantations of Kowdah down the valley, now 
 dry and still, once overflowed with the best blood of Arabia, 
 and through the narrow and high-walled pass which gives 
 entrance to the great strongholds of the land. The sun rose 
 and lighted up to our view wild precipices on either side, with a 
 tangled mass of Ijroken rock and brushwood below, while coveys 
 of partridges started up at our feet, and deer scampered away 
 by the gorges to right and left, or a cloud of dust announced 
 the approach of peasant bands or horsemen going to and fro, 
 and gardens or hamlets gleamed through side openings or stood 
 niched in the bulging passes of the Wadi itself, till before noon 
 we arrived at the little hamlet of Malka, or "the junction." 
 
 Its name is derived from its position. Here the valley divides 
 in form of a Y, sending off two branches — one southerly to 
 Derey'eeyah, the other south-east-by-east through the centre 
 of the province, and communicating with the actual capital, 
 
 VOL. 1. c c
 
 J 86 FROM BEREYDAIl [Chap. VIII 
 
 Iviad. At the point of bipartition stands wliat would in India 
 1)0 called a bungalow, and in Syria a khan ; namely, a sort of 
 open house for the accommodation and rest of travellers ; 
 close by is a large well, and a garden, the property of the heir- 
 apparent 'Abd- Allah. The broad foliage of hg-trees and citrons 
 overhangs the road, and invites to repose. We rested the hours 
 of noon, partly in the guest-house and partly in the garden, 
 while the Nu'ib availed himself of the seasonable leisure to dye 
 with fresh henna his beard and moustache, whose whitening 
 undergrowth threatened to belie the artificial youth of their 
 tips. He flattered himself with the prospect of a speedy audi- 
 ence from the Wahhabee monarch, and was fain to muster all 
 the advantages of personal appearance by way of a supplement 
 to diplomatic impoi'tance. Delusive hopes ! vain endeavours ! 
 but meanwhile let him blacken his grey hairs and give sixty 
 the semblance of thirty-five ; it certainly improves his looks. 
 
 Aboo-'Eysa had meditated bringing us on that very even- 
 ing to Riad. But eight good leagues remained from Malka 
 to the capital ; and when the Na'ib had terminated his cosmetic 
 operations, the easterly-turning shadows left us no hope of 
 attaining Eiad before nightfall. However, we resumed our 
 march, and took the arm of the valley leading to Derey'- 
 eeyah ; but before reacliing it we once more quitted the Wadi, 
 and followed a shorter path by the highlands to the left. Our 
 way was next crossed by a long range of towers, built by 
 Ibraheem Basha as outposts for the defence of this important 
 position. Within their line stood the lonely walls of a large 
 square barrack ; the towers were what we sometimes call Mar- 
 tello — short, large, and round. The level rays of the setting 
 sun now streamed across the plain, and we came on the ruins 
 of Derey'eeyah, filling up the whole breadth of the valley 
 beneath. The palace walls, of unbaked brick, like the rest, 
 rose close under the left or northern edge, but unroofed and 
 tenantless ; a little lower down a wide extent of fragments 
 showed where the immense mosque had been, and hard by, the 
 market-place ; a tower on an isolated height was, I suppose, the 
 original dwelling-place of the Sa'ood family while yet mere 
 local chieftains, before growing greatness transferred them to 
 their imperial palace. The outer fortifications remained almost
 
 Chap. VIII] TO RIAD 387 
 
 uninjured for much of tlieir extent, with turrets and bastions 
 reddening in the western light ; in other places the Egyptian 
 artillery or the process of years had levelled theui with the 
 earth; within the town many houses were yet standing, but 
 uninhabited ; and the lines of the streets from gate to gate were 
 distinct as in a ground-plan. From the great size of the town, 
 for it is full half a mile in length, and not much less in breadth, 
 and from the close packing of the houses, I should estimate its 
 capacity at above forty thousand indwellers. The gardens lie 
 without, and still " living waved where man had ceased to live," 
 in full beauty and luxuriance, a deep green ring around the 
 grey ruins. For although the Nej deans, holding it for an ill 
 omen to rebuild and reinhabit a town so fatally overthrown, 
 have transplanted the seat of government, and with it the bulk 
 of city population, to Eiad, they have not deemed it equally 
 necessary to abandon the rich plantations and well -watered 
 fields belonging to the old capital ; and thus a small colony of 
 gardeners in scattered huts and village dwellings close under 
 the walls, protract the blighted existence of Derey'eeyah. 
 
 While from our commanding elevation we gazed thought- 
 fully on this scene, so full of remembrances, the sun set, 
 and darkness grew on. We naturally proposed a halt; but 
 Aboo-'Eysa turned a deaf ear, and affirmed that a garden 
 belonging to 'Abd-er-Kahman, already mentioned as grandson 
 of the first Wahhabee, was but a little farther before us, 
 and better adapted to our night's rest than the ruins. In 
 truth, three hours of brisk travelling yet intervened between 
 Derey'eeyah and the place in question ; but our guide was 
 unwilling to enter Derey'eeyah in company of Persians and 
 Syrians, Shiya'ees and Christians ; and this he afterwards con- 
 fessed to me. For whether from one of those curious local 
 influences which outlast even the change of races, and give one 
 abiding colour to the successive tenants of the same spot, or 
 whetlier it be occasioned by the constant view of their fallen 
 greatness and tlie triumph of their enemies, the scanty popu- 
 lation of Derey'eeyah comprises some of the bitterest and most 
 bigoted fanatics that even 'Aared can offer. My readers will 
 here recall to mind the fate of my unlucky precursor in Nej dean 
 exploration, and the events which stained these very sands with 
 
 c c 2
 
 388 FROM BEREYDAH TO RIAT) [Chap. VIII 
 
 his blood. Accordingly we moved on, still keeping to the 
 heights, and late at night descended a little hollow, where amid 
 an extensive garden stood the coimtry villa of 'Abd-er-Rahnifin. 
 
 We did not attempt to enter the house ; indeed at such an 
 hour no one was stirring to receive us. But a shed in the 
 garden close by sufficed for travellers who were all too weary to 
 desire aught but sleep ; and this we soon found in spite of dogs 
 and jackals, numerous here and throughout Nejed. 
 
 From this locality to the capital was about four miles' distance. 
 Our party divided next morning : the Na'ib and his associates 
 remaining behind, while Barakat and myself, with Aboo-'Eysa, 
 set off straight for tlie to^vn, where our guide was to give notice 
 at the palace of the approach of the Persian dignitary, that the 
 honours due to his reception might meet him half way. At our 
 request, the Meccans stayed also in the rear; we did not desire 
 the equivocal effect of their company on a first appearance. 
 
 For about an hour we proceeded southward, through barren 
 and undulating ground, unable to see over the country to any 
 distance. At last we attained a rising eminence, and crossing 
 it, came at once in full view of Riad, the main object of our long 
 journey, the capital of Nejed and half Arabia, its very heart of 
 hearts.
 
 H I II li if r I' n c/ 
 
 o;F HMD,. 
 
 I Cr-Ki/ S(fii(ireJMarke( J'foc-e i T.AfarJxl; fliJf/Jia's s/wpx 
 S ffdu-se cf 2hd el Kereeni 
 
 'J. Hi/acf a/' Fevsul 
 
 3 Covefvt/ i-al/pn' on cokum>.s 
 
 ■1 Mosaiw 
 
 ^ Pntacc. o/' />ie//ywef 
 
 e. Mar/- of'Ahd /II/ja/i. 
 
 ■9 ffcx/^& ofSoweyUm 
 ' 10. Sou^e 0/ Ibc/ d J.ateef 
 
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 16 Palaff of a coujSin- of F^fsitLs 30 GarUe/t. of Md,ey.ffa///r{Mi. 
 
 16. Second t{iia/-t^ of t/u- fown. | 31. Curbete/y 
 
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 11. ^U {^jdJ^i^- 6eJon//i/iq to t/ii- TptiA/u'/ii'/'' /amjfy 
 
 . i-*c<MiI<siiih. London
 
 389 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 ElAD 
 
 As when a scout 
 Through dark and secret ways with peril gone 
 All night, at last by break of cheerful dawn 
 Obtains the brow of some high-climbing hill, 
 Which to his eye discovers unawares 
 The goodly prospect of some foreign land 
 First seen, or some renowned metropolis. — Milton 
 
 A VIEW OF KIAD AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD — A MEETING — CEMETEET — 
 ENTRANCE OE THE TOWN — MARKET-PLACE — HALT AT THE PALACE — 'ABD- 
 EL-'aZEEZ, his OFFICE AND CHARACTER — INTERIOR OF THE PALACE — ITS 
 ARCHITECTURE, SIZE, AND ARRANGEMENTS — THE K'hAWAH— DINNER — 
 THE RECEPTION OF THE NA'iB — HIS DISGUST — OUR LODGINGS IN THE 
 PALACE OF DJELOO'WEE — EFFECT OF OUR ARRIYAL ON FEYSUL — HIS 
 RETREAT OUT OF TOATN — RIAD SPIES — 'aBD-EL-HAMEED THE PESHA- 
 WUREE — HIS HISTORY, CHARACTER, AND CONVERSATION — 'ABBOOD THE 
 MEDDEY'yEE — CHOLERA IN NEJED — INSTITUTION OF THE " ZELATORS " — 
 THEIR SYSTEM — POWER — ITS RESULTS AT RIAD, IN NEJED, AND IN THE 
 PROVINCES — PRESENT POSITION OF THE ZELATORS — REACTION — 'ABBOOD 
 AND HIS CONVERSATION — OFFER MADE BY 'aBD-EL-'AZEEZ — OUR REFUSAL — 
 
 INTERVIEW OF ABOO-'eYSA WITH FEYSUL OUR DIFFICULTIES — BRIBING 
 
 THE GOVERNMENT — CONFIDENTIAL ARRANGEMENTS WITH ABOO-'EYSA — 
 OUR NEW DWELLING NEAR THE NA'IB — COFFEE — ITS aUALITIES AND TRADE 
 WINE — REASON OF ITS PROHIBITION BY MAHOMET — WINE IN CHRIS- 
 TIANITY AND IN MAHOMETANISM — ANALOGOUS PROHIBITIONS IN ISLAM — 
 ITS ULTIMATE TENDENCY — POSITION OF ISLAM RELATIVE TO OTHER 
 RELIGIONS — CHARACTER OP ITS PRAYERS AND INSTITUTIONS — CONCEN- 
 TRATION OF MAHOMET'S SCHEMES — PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES — EXCEP- 
 TIONS AND REACTION — OUR LIFE AT RIAD — A VISIT TO THE MARKET- 
 PLACE — MIXED POPULATION — SKETCHES — FOUR DIVISIONS OF THE TOWN 
 — GREAT SQUARE AND DJAMIA' — PECULIARITIES OF WAHHABEE WORSHIP — 
 ANECDOTE OF A DAMASCENE SHEYKH AT RIAD — THE KHOTBAH — OTHER 
 WAHHABEE DIFFERENCES — WALLS OF THE TOAVN — GARDENS — CLIMATE — 
 
 SHEEP, CATTLE, GAME — THE NEGRO POPULATION, WHY NUMEROUS HERE 
 
 AFFINITY BETAVEEN THE AFRICANS AND SOUTHERN ARABS — ISMAEL AND 
 KAJJTAN — NEGRO EMANCIPATION — THE KHODEYREEYAH — THEIR SOCIAL
 
 390 lilAD [Chap. IX 
 
 POSITION — POPULATION OF NEJEI) — BEN00-EE3IEEM — THEIR PECtTLIAU 
 CHAKACTER — DECLINE OF COMMERCE — AGRICULTURE — AVARLIKE IMPULSE 
 — REFLECTIONS — LANGUAGE OF NEJED — THE TWO GREAT ARAB DIALECTS 
 — THEIR ORIGIN AND DIFFERENCE — REMARKS. 
 
 Before us stretched a wild open valle}^, and in its foreground, 
 immediately below the pebbly slope on whose summit we 
 stood, lay the capital, large and square, crowned by high 
 towers and strong walls of defence, a mass of roofs and ter- 
 races, where overtopping all frowned the huge but irregular 
 pile of Fey^ul's royal castle, and hard by it rose the scarce 
 less conspicuous palace, built and inhabited by his eldest son, 
 'Abd-Allah. Other edifices too of remarkable appearance broke 
 here and there through the maze of grey roof-tops, but their 
 object and indwellers were yet to learn. All around for full 
 three miles over the surrounding plain, but more especially to 
 the west and south, waved a sea of palm-trees above green 
 fields and well-watered gardens ; while the singing droning 
 sound of the water-wheels reached us even where we had 
 halted, at a quarter of a mile or more from the nearest town 
 walls. On the opposite side southwards, the valley opened 
 out into the great and even more fertile plains of Yemamah, 
 thickly dotted with groves and villages, among which the large 
 town of Manfoohah, hardly inferior in size to Kiad itself, niiglit 
 be clearly distinguished. Farther in the background ranged 
 the blue hills, the ragged sierra of Yemamah, compared some 
 thirteen hundred years since by 'Amroo-ebn-Kelthoom the 
 Shomerite, to drawn swords in battle array ; and behind them 
 was concealed the immeasurable Desert of the South, or Dahna. 
 On the west the valley closes in and narrows in its upward 
 windings towards Derey'eeyah, while to the south-west the low 
 mounds of Aflaj are the division between it and Wadi Dowasir. 
 But eastward it communicates through undulating and broken 
 ground with the long valley of Soley' or Wadi Soley', whose 
 northerly branch runs far up behind the inner chain of Toweyk 
 under the mountain of 'Atalah, while its southerly extremity 
 traverses a broad extent of sands, thinly sprinkled with an 
 occasional grove or village, and, passing through them, ends at 
 the town of Hootah, long the rival and now the discontented 
 vassal of Kiad. Here the province of Hareek borders the 
 desert, and encroaches on it northward and eastward, till it
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJEl) 39 1 
 
 almost gives a hand to the outskirts of Katar and the limits of 
 'Omanite rule. Due east in the distance a long- blue line marks 
 the furthest heights of Toweyk, and shuts out from view the 
 low ground of Ha§a and the shores of the Persian Gulf. In all 
 the countries which I have visited, and they are many, seldom 
 has it been mine to survey a landscape equal to this in beauty 
 and in historical meaning, rich and full alike to eye and mind. 
 But should any of my readers have ever approached Damascus 
 from the side of the Anti-Lebanon, and surveyed the Ghootali 
 from the heights above Mazzeh, they ma}" thence form an 
 approximate idea of the valley of Eiad when viewed from the 
 north. Only this is wider and more varied, and the circle of 
 vision here embraces vaster plains and bolder mountains ; while 
 the mixtiu-e of tropical aridity and luxuriant verdure, of crowded 
 population and desert tracts, is one that Arabia alone can 
 present, and in comparison with which Syria seems tame, and 
 Italy monotonous. 
 
 A light morning mist, the first we had witnessed for many 
 days, hung over the town, and bespoke the copious moisture of 
 its gardens. But the hot sun soon dissipated the thin and 
 transient veil; whilst the sensible increase of heat indicated 
 a region not only more southerly in latitude than that hitherto 
 traversed, but also exposed to the burning winds of the neigh- 
 bouring desert, that lies beyond the inner verge of Yemamah, 
 like one vast furnace, up to the very shores of the Indian 
 Ocean. 
 
 Barakat and myself stopped our dromedaries a few minutes 
 on the height, to study and enjoy this noble prospect, and to 
 forget the anxiety inseparable from a first approach to the 
 lion's own den. Aboo-'Eysa too, though not unacquainted with 
 the scene, willingly paused with us to point out and name the 
 main features of the view, and show us where lay the onward 
 road to his home in Ha§a. We then descended the slope and 
 skirted the walls of the first outlying plantations which gird 
 the town. Here more than one wliom we met saluted our 
 guide in the friendly tone of an old acquaintance ; but above 
 all, a lad whom Aboo-'Eysa had picked up some years before ; 
 a destitute orphan of this vicinity, whose education and means 
 of livelihood he had, with a generosity less remarkable in Arabia 
 than it might be elsewhere, provided for, till the youth was
 
 J 92 JilAp [Chap. IX 
 
 able to work out for hiinsrlf his own way in the worhl. He 
 now liappened to he tilling a water-skin from a well near the 
 roadside at the moment of our arrival. The boy ran up to kiss 
 Aboo-'Eysa's hand, and to prove by the evident sincerity of his 
 delig-ht at seeing him again, that gratitude is no less an Arab 
 than a European virtue, whatever the ignorance or the prejudices 
 of some foreigners may have affirmed to the contrary. Witli a 
 little knot of companions walking by our side, and laughing 
 and talking their fill, we entered on a byway leading between 
 the royal stables on one hand, and a spacious garden belonging 
 to 'Abd-el-Lateef, Kadee of the town, on the other. After a 
 while we came out on the great cemetery, which spreads along 
 tlie north-eastern wall, and contains the population of many 
 past years ; low tombs, without st«ne or memorial, inscription 
 or date. Among these lies Turkee, father of the present 
 monarch, and close beside him his slaughtered rivals Mesbaree 
 and Ebn-Theney'yan, with many others of note in their day, 
 now undistinguished from the meanest and poorest of their 
 fellow-countrymen. 
 
 This burial-ground is intersected by several tracks, leading to 
 the different town-gates ; we ourselves now followed a path 
 ending at the north-eastern portal, a wide and high entrance, with 
 thick s(|uare towers on either side ; several guardsmen armed 
 with swords were seated in the passage. Aboo-'Eysa answered 
 their challenge, and led us witliin the town. Here we found 
 ourselves at first in a broad street, going straight to the palace ; 
 on each side were large houses, generally two storeys high, wells 
 for ablution, mosques of various dimensions, and a few fruit 
 trees planted here and there in the courtyards. After ad- 
 vancing two hvmdred yards or rather more, we had on our riglit 
 liand the palace of 'Abd-AUah, a recent and almost a sym- 
 metrical construction, square in form, with goodly carved gates, 
 and three storeys of windows one above the other. We con- 
 templated and were contemplated by groups of negroes and 
 servants, seated near the doors, or on the benches outside, in 
 the cool of the morning shade. A little farther on, to the left, 
 we passed the palace of Djeloo'wee, brother of Feysul, and at 
 this time absent on business in the direction of Kela'at-Bisha'. 
 At last we reached a great open square : its right side, the 
 northern, consists of shops and warehouses ; while the left is
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF KEJED 3^3 
 
 entirely absorbed by the huge abode of Nejdean royalty; iu 
 front of us, and consequently to the west, a long covered pas- 
 sage, upborne high on a clumsy colonnade, crossed the breadth 
 of the square, and reached from the palace to the great mosque, 
 which it thus joins directly with the interior of the castle, and 
 affords old Feysul a private and unseen pasage at will from his 
 own apartments to his official post at the Friday prayers, without 
 exposing him on his way to vulgar curiosity, or perhaps to the 
 dangers of treachery. For the fate of his father and of his 
 great-uncle, his predecessors on the throne, and each of them 
 pierced by the dagger of an assassin during public worship, has 
 rendered Feysul very timid on this score, though not at prayer- 
 time only. Behind this colonnade, other shops and ware- 
 houses make up the end of the square, or more properly paral- 
 lelogram ; its total length is about two hundred paces, by 
 rather more than half the same width. In the midst of this 
 space, and under the far-reaching shadow of the castle walls, are 
 seated some fifty or sixty women, each with a stock of bread, 
 dates, milk, vegetables, or firewood before her for sale ; around 
 are crowds of loiterers, camels, dromedaries, sacks piled up, and 
 all the wonted accompaniments of an Arab market. 
 
 But we did not now stop to gaze, nor indeed did we pay 
 much attention to all this ; our first introduction to the monarch, 
 and the critical position before us, took up all our thoughts. 
 So we paced on alongside of the long blind wall running out 
 from the central keep, and looking more like the outside of 
 a fortress than of a peaceful residence, till we came near 
 a low and narrow gate, the only entry to the palace. Deep 
 sunk between the bastions, with massive folding doors iron- 
 bound, though thrown open at this hour of the day, and giving 
 entrance into a dark passage, one might easily have taken it 
 for the vestibule of a prison ; while the number of guards, some 
 black, some white, but all sword-girt, who almost choked the 
 way, did not seem very inviting to those without, especially to 
 foreigners. Long earth-seats lined the adjoining walls, and 
 afforded a convenient waiting-place for visitors ; and here we 
 took up our rest at a little distance from the palace gate ; 
 but Aboo-'Eysa entered at once to announce our arrival, and 
 the approach of the Nrrib. 
 
 The morning was not far advanced, it might be eight o'clock
 
 394 ^^^'^^ [CuAr. IX 
 
 or little later. Tlie passers-by were many, for the adjoining- 
 market was open, and every one coming and going on his daily 
 business. However no one approached to question us, though 
 several stared ; we were somewhat surprised at this unwonted 
 absence of familiarity, not yet fully knowing its cause. After 
 a srood half-hour's waiting the ice was broken. 
 
 The first who drew near and saluted us was a tall meagre 
 figure, of a sallow complexion, and an intelligent but slightly 
 ill-natured and underhand cast of features. He was very well 
 dressed, though of course without a vestige of unlawful silk in 
 his apparel, and a certain air of conscious importance tempered 
 the affability of his politeness. This was 'Abd-el-'Azeez, whom, 
 for want of a better title, and without the smallest allusion to 
 Downing Street, I shall call tlie minister of foreign affairs, 
 such being the approximate translation of his official style, 
 " 'Wezeer-el-Kharijeeyah." His office extends to whatever does 
 not immediately regard the internal administration, whether 
 political, fiscal, or military. Thus it is his to regulate the 
 reception of ambassadors from foreign courts, or the expedition 
 of such from Riad itself; to his department belongs the convey- 
 ance of government letters, messages, and all the detail of lesser 
 affairs regarding allies or neighbours, especially where the 
 Bedouin tribes of Nejed are concerned; in his keeping are the 
 muster-rolls of the towns and provinces; and lastly, he exercises 
 an executive superintendence over export and import duties, a 
 profitable charge, particularly when in the hands of one not 
 over famed for strictness of conscience or contempt of gain. 
 His personal qualities are those which distinguish the majority 
 of old Riad families, and are indeed common enough through- 
 out 'Aare<l. A reserved and equable exterior, a smooth tongue, 
 a courteous though grave manner, and beneath this, hatred, 
 envy, rapacity, and licentiousness enough to make his intimacy 
 dangerous, his enmity mortal, and his friendship suspected. 
 Tliis is the peculiar stamp of the 'Aared race, the pith and 
 heart of the Wahhnbee government ; we have already seen a 
 sample of it in Mohanna at Bereydah ; but here it is a province 
 of JMohannas. " Hateful and hating each other," were words 
 contantly recurring to my mind while amongst them ; and 
 Saul or Doeg, Joab or Achitophel may furnish their correct
 
 CUAP. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 39^ 
 
 type to my readers. However tlie base-work and ground- 
 colour of their character is envy and hatred; rapacity and 
 licentiousness, though seldom wholly wanting, are accessory 
 embellishments ; pride is universal, vanity rare. Add to this, 
 great courage, endurance, persistence of purpose, an inflexible 
 will united to a most flexible cunning, passions that can bide 
 their time, and audacity long postponed till the moment to 
 strike once, and once only ; and it will be easily understood 
 why the empire of these men is alike widely spread and widely 
 hated, submitted to and loathed, now firm in quiet pressure, and 
 now varied by broad blood-streaks and desolating terror. 
 
 But before I enter on the details of the fifty days that fol- 
 lowed in this strange town, and whatever remains to relate 
 regarding it, I must draw somewhat largely on the stock of 
 confidence and belief which I trust that my readers kindly 
 afford me as an Englishman, though a traveller. I am quite 
 aware that the events, the characters, the scenes which I must 
 now set before them are in their telling subject to a double 
 inconvenience ; the first that of appearing, to some at least, 
 hardly credible, the second that of making myself much 
 more often than is desirable the hero of my own tale. But 
 either inconvenience, however great, must of necessity yield to 
 the truth of facts ; so it looked, and so it happened ; I can only 
 relate, and leave comments to others. My object is to give as 
 correct, indeed as complete an idea as may be of a land, a 
 government, a town, a people, not uninteresting nor unin- 
 structive when considered whether in themselves or in the 
 analogies they present with other nations, systems, or govern- 
 ments. Such analogies, most often suggested by themselves 
 beside or against my will, cannot fail to present themselves to 
 the minds of my readers ; nor, if example be of any use, is it 
 amiss that they should ; our best glass for seeing our own selves 
 is our neighbour's face. May I be permitted to hope that, 
 whoever may perchance consider his natural face in this Eastern 
 mirror, will not at once, like one of old, go his way, and forget 
 what manner of man he was, or is. These remarks will, I trust, 
 suffice as preface and apology, where needed, for what follows. 
 
 Accompanied by some attendants from the palace, 'Abd-el- 
 'Azeez came stately up, and seated himself by our side. He
 
 396 lilAJ) [CuAP. IX 
 
 next began the cu.stoniary interrogations of whence and what, 
 >vith much smiling courtesy and show of welcome. After 
 hearing our replies, the same of course as tliose given else- 
 where, he invited us to enter the precincts, and partake of his 
 Majesty's coffee and hospitality, while he promised us more 
 immediate communications from the king himself in tlie 
 course of the day. Accordingly we followed him within the 
 gate, and passing its long and obscure continuation came into a 
 sort of interior lane, or open corridor. On one side were the 
 apartments occupied by the sovereign, his private audience 
 room, his oratory, so to call it, or special Musalla, "place of 
 prayer," and behind these the chambers of his numerous harem, 
 and of his unmarried daughter, an old maid of fifty at least, 
 who acts as her father's secretary in important correspondence, 
 and with whom, for this very reason, Fey.sul has never been 
 willing to part, in spite of her numerous and pressing suitors. 
 This quarter of the palace is spacious and lofty, three stories 
 in height, and between fifty and sixty feet from the ground to 
 the roof-parapet. In these very rooms was Mesharee killed by 
 'Abd-AUah, the father of our old acquaintance Telfd. In front 
 of this mass of building, but on the inner side and on the right 
 of the passage just mentioned, is a square unroofed court, sur- 
 rounded witli seats, and here Feysul sometimes gives a half-public 
 audience. P^rom this court a private door, well guarded and 
 narrow like the first, lead to the apartments described, whi«*h 
 form, so to speak, a separate palace within the palace. They 
 own, however, a second point of communication with the rest 
 of the building, by means of a covered way, thrown out from 
 the second storey across the passage where we now stood ; a 
 third is given by the long gallery that leads above its columns 
 to the mosque at about a hundred yards' distance; on all other 
 sides whatever- intercourse from without is carefully excluded. 
 I ought here to add that all the windows are strongly cross- 
 barred, and the doors solid and provided with stout locks 
 and bolts, while on the outside a glacis encircles the lower 
 part of the walls, and adds to their thickness, besides giving 
 them the appearance of regular fortification. Lastly, the 
 ground storey has no windows, large or small, opening on the 
 exterior.
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 39-7 
 
 On the other side of the passage the first door we meet with 
 is that of the K'hawah. To this apartment, entrance is given 
 bj a vestibule wherein visitors deposit their shoes or swords, 
 or both if they have both ; the K'hawah itself is sufficiently- 
 large, about forty feet in length and of nearly equal Avidth, but 
 low and ill-lighted. Farther on is another door, conducting to 
 the prison. I visited two of its chamber or cells ; they would 
 hardly have attracted the censure even of a Howard — large, airy, 
 and provided with whatever might be reqiusite for the comfort 
 of their indwellers. The Habs-ed-Dem, literally " Prison of 
 Blood," that is, that for state criminals of the first order, is 
 underneath, below ground, and probably affords worse lodg- 
 ings ; but I did not think it prudent to ask admittance. Just 
 beyond this prison, and opposite to the courtyard on the 
 other side already mentioned, a long flight of stairs leads up 
 through the open air to the second storey ; here is a guest's 
 dining-room, capable of admitting forty at a time, and plea- 
 santly cool. Immediately behind it is said to exist in the 
 very thickness of the wall a small closet, communicating with 
 the secret passage to the harem ; and in this unworthy niche 
 popular scandal ensconces Feysul, who may thus himself unseen 
 overhear through the thin partition whatever escapes his un- 
 suspecting guests in a moment of convivial freedom, and record 
 it for his own ends. A Hamlet's rapier were the best thing for 
 such rats behind the arras ; the more so since here " Is it the 
 king?" might be answered in the affirmative. Beyond are rooms 
 inhabited by servants and attendants. 
 
 Farther on the passage enters the main body of the palace, 
 passing under the second storey, and at once branches off on 
 either side. Eight hand it leads to the great kitchen, next to 
 the indoors Musalla, or oratory for the inhabitants of the 
 palace, Feysul and his harem alone excepted; and beyond 
 terminates in a second and spacious courtyard, on one side of 
 which is the arsenal and powder magazine, and on the other 
 workshops of various descriptions, a watchmaker's among the 
 rest, all for the king's immediate service. Hard by the 
 kitchen are the rooms of 'Abd-el-Hameed, native of Balkh, a 
 dubious character, supposed to be deeply engaged in religious 
 study, and really busied in very different pursuits ; but of him
 
 398 HI AT) [CuAP. IX 
 
 more anon. On this same side inhabits onr friend 'Abd-el- 
 'Azeez, the foreign minister; but I never entered his sah)()n, 
 contenting myself with identifying the door and locality for 
 information's sake. 
 
 The left branch passage leads to the large and handsome 
 apartments tenanted by Mahboob, prime minister of the empire. 
 Exactly opposite lives the Metow'waa', or chaplain of the palace, 
 and next door to him another learned Nejdean, both plunged 
 in studies on antecedent reprobation, and the polytheism of 
 all sects, their own excepted. Farther on are the extensive 
 quarters of Djowhar, the state-treasurer (his name, which being 
 interpreted means "Jewel," is at least appropriate), and opposite 
 to these is a long suite of rooms where lives one Nasir, a sort 
 of coiu't chamberlain, but which are also at the disposal of 
 fSa'ood, second son of Feysul, when he visits his father at Riad. 
 Last, but not least, Aboo-Shems, head artilleryman of the 
 array, inhabits this same section of the palace. Besides these 
 notables, a crowd of full sixty or seventy attendants, mostly 
 negroes, are lodged within the precincts ; while all and each, 
 from the highest to the lowest, have their separate apartments 
 for the numerous wives with which orthodoxy blesses them ; 
 and again, every single household is entirely distinct from the 
 rest : hence my readers may imagine how vast and how ill- 
 assorted this mass of biulding must be. Lastly, there exists on 
 the left a long courtyard or area, corresponding to that already 
 mentioned on the right ; and here too is situated the Bab-es- 
 Sirr, or secret gate, constructed to serve in the eventualities 
 of a siege, of treason, or other desperate emergencies. The 
 entire hive of habitations is surrounded by high walls and 
 hollow round towers for defence ; two-thirds of the circidt have 
 the additional safeguard of a deep trench, but without water. 
 
 If my readers have seen, as most of them undoubtedly 
 will, the Paris Tuileries, they may hereby know that the 
 whole extent of Feysul's palace equals about two-thirds of that 
 construction, and is little inferior to it in height ; if indeed we 
 except the angular pyramidal roofs or extinguishers peculiar to 
 the French edifice. But in ornament the Parisian pile has the 
 better of it, for there is small pretension to architectural em- 
 bellishment in this Wahhabee Louvre. Without, within, every
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 399 
 
 other consideration has been sacrificed to strength and security ; 
 and the outer view of Newgate bears a very strong resemblance 
 to the general effect of Feyijul's palace, though I know not how 
 far the interior of the London felon-cage may be like that of 
 the Nejdean den of thieves. However, this latter is at any rate 
 well furnislied and fitted up, especially in the sections allotted 
 to the royal family themselves, to Mahboob and to Dj owhar ; 
 the upstairs rooms too are fairly lighted ; not so the ground 
 storey, which would be all the better for gas, could it but be 
 introduced here. 
 
 I should have said that the quarter set apart for royalty, that 
 is, Fey^ul and his many queens, is itself a quadrangle with an 
 inner court, but into this I was never permitted to enter ; these 
 are family apartments on which no prying eye may look. The 
 divan for special receptions, the only room hereabouts into 
 which a stranger can be introduced, is large and comfortable, 
 being about fifty feet long, twenty or more in breadth, and 
 high in proportion. 
 
 In the first court, and in that on the left where resides 
 the valorous Aboo-Shems, several rusty specimens of artillery 
 strike awe into Arab souls. I counted above twenty field- 
 pieces, half a dozen of them still available for service ; there 
 were, I was told, others, which I did not see. At Ha^a 
 and Kateef there exist about thirty more; so that Feyfjul's 
 battery-list may sum up sixty or so of these warlike engines ; a 
 fourth of them in all, according to my personal inspection, are 
 fit for use ; and the rest " as good, for aught his kingship 
 knows," but they are " honeycombed." 
 
 Such is the palace, as I afterwards came to know it in 
 detail, and such its contents. For the present we stopped 
 short at our visit to the K'hawah. The head coffee-maker 
 was a good-natured fellow, and, strange to say, not a negro, 
 nor even a man of 'Aared, but from the Hareek ; several guests 
 were seated around, and conversation followed, but every one 
 was manifestly under restraint. The fact is, that in this town, 
 and yet more of course in the palace, no one ambitious of 
 sleeping in a whole skin can give his tongue free play ; and all 
 have in consequence the manner of boys when the school- 
 master is at home. However, the coffee was excellent ; in that
 
 400 in AD [CuAP. IX 
 
 point Riad and its KMiTiwahs arc iinrivalkd, and we remained 
 awhile in aromatic enjoyment, awaiting further orders from 
 'Abd-el-'Azeez, or some other of the court. 
 
 J3ut the coincident arrival of the Na'ib and his train was 
 too serious a preoccupation to admit of much thought being- 
 yet given to us ; and when noon came we were still sitting 
 almost disregarded in the K'hawah, while our baggage and 
 camels waited patiently in the sun outside. At last a negro 
 slave came up, and invited us in the king's name to dinner 
 within the guest-room upstairs, and there accordingly we ate 
 our rice and mutton with a garnish of dates, and on rising 
 from table were reminded by our dusky Ganymede to pray God 
 for a long reign to Feysul our host. 
 
 Aboo-'Eysa meanwhile, in company with the outriders sent 
 from the palace, had gone to meet the Na'ib and introduce 
 him to the lodgings prepared for his reception. Very much 
 was the Persian astounded to find none of tlie royal family 
 among those who thus came, no one even of high name or 
 office ; but yet more was his surprise when, instead of imme- 
 diate admittance to Fey.sul's presence and eager embrace, he 
 was quietly led aside to the very guest-room whither we had 
 been conducted, and a dinner not a whit more sumptuous than 
 ours was set before him, after which he was very coolly told 
 that he might pray for Feysul and retire to his quarters, while 
 the king settled the day and hour whereon he would vouchsafe 
 him the honour of an audience. 
 
 I never saw any one so unutterably disgusted as our Persian 
 on this occasion. In broken Arabic, and loud enough to be 
 heard by half the palace, he vented his spleen against Arabs, 
 Bedouins, Wahhabees, Nejed, town, country, and all. The 
 men of 'Aared, who heard and half understood, looked very 
 grave, but were much too polite to say anything. Perhaps 
 Feysul too was there, invisible in his recess, to overhear the 
 conversation. Aboo-'Eysa well knew that antipathy was in 
 this case mutual, and that if the Na'ib thought the Wahhabees 
 and their king mere barbarians, unworthy, in European phrase, 
 to black his shoes, they, in their turn, looked on him as a 
 despicable foreigner, an infidel, and a destined log for hell 
 fire, thus fairly equalizing the balance of reciprocal aversion.
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 4OI 
 
 Hence he could not but feel the position to be very uncomfort- 
 able, and tried to console the indignant Shirazee with excuses 
 and explanations of the "se non vero, ben trovato " kind. 
 All this in our presence, for the Iranian band arrived just at 
 the conclusion of our meal. I had much ado not to laugh at 
 both parties, thinking " six of one, and," &c., but tried my 
 utmost to look grave, in consideration of the Nej deans around, 
 and took my cue from Aboo-'Eysa. Meanwhile we suggested 
 to this latter in an undertone, that for us too lodging for man 
 and beast would be very desirable, and that if we had dined, 
 our dromedaries had not. Our guide was well acquainted 
 with the ins and outs of the palace, and in less than no time 
 had found out 'Abd-el-'Azeez, and arranged matters with him 
 in our behalf. Nay, the minister of foreign affairs conde- 
 scended to come in person, and, sweetly smiling, informed us 
 that our temporary habitation was ready, and that Aboo-'Eysa 
 would conduct us thither without delay. We then begged to 
 know, if possible, the king's good will and pleasure regarding 
 our stay and our business in the town. For on our first in- 
 troduction we had duly stated, in the most correct Wahhabee 
 phraseology, that we had come to Kiad " desiring the favour of 
 Grod, and secondly of Fey§ul ; and that we begged of God, and 
 secondly of Fey^ul, permission to exercise in the town om* 
 medical profession, under the protection of God, and in the 
 next place of P'eyjsul." For Dogberry's advice to "set God 
 first, for God defend but God should go before such villains," 
 is here observed to the letter ; whatever is desired, purported, 
 or asked, the Deity must take the lead. Nor this only, but 
 even the subsequent mention of the creature must nowise be 
 coupled with that of the Creator by the ordinary conjunction " w' " 
 that is, "and," since that would imply equality between the 
 two; flat blasphemy in word or thought. Hence the disjunctive 
 " thumma," or " next after," " at a distance," must take the 
 place of " w'," under penalty of prosecution under the statute. 
 " Unlucky the man who visits Nejed without being previously 
 well versed in the niceties of grammar," said Barakat ; " under 
 these schoolmasters a mistake might cost the scholar his head." 
 But of this more anon : to return to our subject, 'Abd-el- 
 'Azeez, a true politician, answered our second interrogation 
 VOL. I. D u
 
 402 RIAT) [CnAr. IX 
 
 with a vague assurance of good will and unmeaning patronage. 
 Meantime the Naib and his train marched off in high dudgeon 
 to their quarters, and Aboo-'Eysa gave our dromedaries a kick, 
 made them rise, and drove them before us to our new abode. 
 
 This was in a section of Djeloo'wee's palace, now vacant, as 
 before stated, through the absence of the prince on a half- 
 military, half-fiscal expedition. A spacious K'hawah, with two 
 adjoining rooms and an upstairs chamber, had been set apart 
 for our use. We put up the dromedaries in the courtyard, 
 and installed ourselves in the K'hawah. 
 
 But it is time to " shift the scene, to represent " what measures 
 were being taken behind the stage in the palace itself on our 
 account, and what effect this morning's incidents had produced 
 on Feysjul and his court. We were not long in learning the 
 particulars, equally ludicrous and characteristic of the land and 
 of its rulers, and well calculated to assign the full measure of 
 their weakness, no less than other circumstances had given us 
 that of their strength. The facts were as follow : — 
 
 When Feysul received intelligence of this bevy of strangers 
 at his door, the Persian "charge d'affaires" with all his 
 grievances, the Meccans with their impudent mendicity, and 
 the Syrians with their medical pretensions, he fairly lost 
 his balance of mind, and went next to mad. Old and blind, 
 superstitious and timid, bigoted and tyrannical, whatever con- 
 struction the utmost conjecture could put on this motley band 
 thus rushing almost unannounced into his very capital, nay. 
 encamped at the doors of his own palace, served only t( 
 augment his alarm, suspicion, and disgust. The sacred centre 
 of Nejdean orthodoxy profaned in one and the same momen 
 by the threefold abomination of Persians, Meccans, and Syrian? 
 Shiya'ees, Sonnees, and Christians, heretics, polytheists, anc 
 infidels, was surely enough to call down fire from heaven, o, 
 awake an earthquake from beneath. An invasion of cholera wa: 
 the very least that could be next anticipated. There was, how- 
 ever, worse yet : the begging Meccans might indeed be easil} 
 got rid of, and a scanty gift would, it was to be hoped, purchase 
 the relief of the capital from the pollution of their presence. 
 But the Na'ib, with Teheran and the Shah of Persia at his back, 
 was a very different affair, and Feysul knew too well that
 
 CHAr. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 4O3 
 
 the complaints now about to be laid before him were over true, 
 and that for all vexations inflicted by Aboo-Boteyn or Mohanna, 
 he himself, their master, was really and ultimately responsible. 
 Besides, it was precisely by the Persian dagger of a Persian 
 assassin that his ancestor 'Abd-el-'Azeez-ebn-Sa'ood had fallen ; 
 and who could tell whether the Na'ib, or at any rate one of his 
 attendants, might not have a similar weapon ready for the Chief 
 of the Orthodox? For the two Syrians, worse still. They must 
 be Christians, possibly assassins, certainly magicians. The least 
 to be apprehended from them was a spell, an evil eye, perhaps 
 a poisonous incantation. To sum up, one and all were spies ; 
 of that*at least there could be no doubt. 
 
 Whether Mahboob, 'Abd-el-'Azeez, and the court in general, 
 seriously partook in the terrors of Feysul, I know not, nor much 
 think it. However, they had the prudence to sing in their 
 master's tune, and all pronounced the danger real and imminent. 
 What measures then might yet avail to avert it ? or how dispose 
 of so many enemies at once ? The unanimous conclusion was 
 that, prudence being the best part of valour, his most sacred 
 Majesty should, without delay, escape from the capital, and from 
 the ill-omened vicinity of so many infidels and sorcerers, spies 
 and assassins, and conceal his royal person in some secure 
 retreat, while due measures should in his absence be taken to 
 sound the intentions and watch the proceedings of these most 
 suspicious strangers, and to anticipate or prevent their per- 
 fidious designs. 
 
 Accordingly, hardly had the Na'ib retired to his appointed 
 dwelling and we to ours, while the Meccans had been stowed 
 away in another nook, but not far off, when Fey§ul, accompanied 
 by Mahboob, 'Abd-el-'Azeez, and a few others, passed in great 
 secresy through the Bab-es-Sirr, left the castle, traversed the 
 town as quietly as possible, and buried himself in the recesses 
 of a secluded garden belonging to 'Abd-er-Rahman the Wah- 
 habee. Guards were placed all round the orchard, and hope 
 revived that, what between the remoteness of the spot, the 
 blessings of the pure orthodoxy of its possessor, the thickness 
 of the foliage, and the swords of the negroes, Feysul might 
 yet elude the contaminations of polytheism and the perils of 
 assassination, spells, and evil eyes. Meanwhile a respite was 
 
 D u 2
 
 404 HI AT) [Chap. IX 
 
 thus assured, and leisure gained for better detecting the mystery 
 of iniquity, and baffling it of its aim. 
 
 No time was, however, to be lost, and tlie great engine of 
 Wahhabee government, its spy system, than which no Tiberius 
 ever organized a better, was set in play. Meanwhile the un- 
 conscious conspirators and magicians were innocently engaged 
 in arran^inof their bao:;i"age, and were induloino- themselves 
 in the narcotic vapours which they had been unable hitherto 
 from sheer politeness to enjoy; but not till after carefully 
 closing doors and windows, lest the odour of the "shameful"' 
 should diffuse itself through tlie hallowed breezes of the street. 
 Sudden a modest knock sounds at tlie door. Quick, p!*[)es are 
 laid aside ; Barakat goes to the vestibule to enquire who may 
 be outside, and gives the tobacco-smoke time to evaporate by 
 a minute's delay, before he opens the entrance. 
 
 In glided a figure that we were little prepared to see in 
 Riad. Clad in the dress proper to Afifghanistan, with an elegant 
 white tvu'ban, and the unmistakable features of the north-west 
 Punjab frontiers, 'Abd-el-Hameed, tlie seeming student of the 
 palace, stood before us. A better spy, or one more likely to 
 tlirow us off our guard, could not have been hit upon. For in 
 addition to his being a stranger like ourselves, and therefore 
 well calculated to attract our sympathy and open our hearts, 
 he was possessed of all that grace of manner and apparent 
 candour which his countrymen can so skilfully assume when 
 required, and of which some of my readers may not improbably 
 have made experience in the East. Master in the school of 
 dissimulation, so much so that he had even taken in the 
 Wahhabees themselves, who believed him anything but what he 
 really was, he might trust to succeed even with us, in spite of 
 our spells and divining art. 
 
 This man was by his own account son of the governor of 
 Balkh, and an orthodox Sonnee of the Haneefee class. Having 
 set out from his native land on a pilgrimage to Mecca, with 
 riches, attendants, and what not, the very king's son of the 
 fairy tale, he had, so said he, suffered a disastrous shipwreck 
 on some unknown rock in the Persian Gulf; and, liarder still, 
 pirates had robbed him of whatever the greedy deep had spared. 
 Servantless, moneyless, companionless, he had arrived on the
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF XEJED 405 
 
 Wahbabee frontiers, wbere tbe fame of Feyijul's generosity bad 
 attracted bim to Eiad, in bope of receiving necessary aid 
 wberewitbal to complete bis pilgrimage and return to bis 
 anxious parents. But once in tbat eartbly paradise of piety 
 and learning, be bad opened bis eyes to tbe pure ligbt and un- 
 adulterated faitb of tbe Wabbabee, and bencefortb resolved to 
 renounce borne and all its pleasures, and to pass bis remaining 
 days in tbe study and practice of genuine Islam, amid congenial 
 souls, far from tobacco, celestial mediators, and polytbeism. 
 
 Provided by Feysul's liberality witb a suitable equipment of 
 books and wives, be edified palace and town by bis devout 
 prayers and composed exterior ; bis time was divided between 
 tbe mosque and tbe harem, bis mouth always full of the praises 
 of God and Feysul, bis conversation invariably of piety or 
 women. No doubt could be entertained touching the sincerity 
 of bis conversion, and tbe sacrifice made by the fervent prose- 
 l}te of ancestral balls and rule was everywhere extolled and 
 appreciated. It may seem almost cruel to tarnish such pure 
 gold, or to detract from so justly earned a reputation. But we 
 are now far away from Eiad, and it will do 'Abd-el-Hameed no 
 wrong if another and a truer version of bis history is published 
 in England. Native not of Balkh but of Peshawur, not a Sonnee 
 but a Sbiya'ee of tbe Shiya'ees, no governor's son but of very 
 plebeian extraction and worse than plebeian morals, he bad in 
 a market squabble stabbed a man, and anticipated justice by 
 flight. Wandering about in an exile from which prudence 
 could not permit him for some years to return, he bad fixed on 
 Eiad as a convenient retreat till the storm at home should have 
 blown over, and practised on Nejdean gullibility by assuming 
 the disguise which now he bore. But a true Sbiya'ee at heart, 
 be never failed to couple every uttered blessing on the Caliphs, 
 tbe Sahhabab, and their living copies around him, with an 
 inward curse on them all, and amused himself with the cre- 
 dulity of men whom he held in his heart for very fools and 
 infidels. Besides board and lodging, good clothes and plenty 
 of wives were excellent things, and witb such solaces his period 
 of banishment passed by agreeably enough, while waiting till cir- 
 cumstances should permit bim a safe return to his own land. 
 
 All this we learned subsequently through the Na'ib, who
 
 4o6 raAT) [Cjiw. ix 
 
 himself a native of a cognate country, and in his earlier years 
 a frequent traveller in the upper valley of the Indus, proved, 
 diamond cutting diamond, too sharp for our Peshawuree, and 
 entertained me with a Hindoostanee version of the whole affair. 
 Once on this cue, I set my own wits to work, and drew out of 
 'Abd-el-Hameed (though this name, too, was a mere aUas, but 
 I have forgotten his authentic denomination) sufficient con- 
 firmation of whatever the Sliirazee had told. These facts, 
 however imimportant in themselves, are worth recounting, he- 
 cause illustrative of many parallel episodes in Oriental history. 
 Not that perhaps, on the whole, imposture is much easier in 
 the East than in the West, or in ancient than in modern times. 
 We have our own examples too ; and if Europeans and recent 
 centuries have a superior advantage in point of critical learning 
 and scientific investigation. Orientals, and the bygone ages 
 that they even now represent, have often all the keener eye- 
 sight for practical search and detection, because less dulled by 
 "poring over miserable books." However, be it that "all men 
 are liars," as some one said it in haste ; all men in common are 
 capable of being deceived too, even Arabs and Nej deans. 
 
 Our Peshawuree or Balkhee sat down, and after a few in- 
 different remarks began to consult me about some ailment of 
 his outer man. But this not being the exact object of his visit, 
 he soon got off the tack, and commenced cross-questioning 
 and thromng out hints like angling-hooks, in hopes to fish up 
 truth from the bottom of the well. Meanwhile the two Meccans 
 had dropped in, and were in their turn submitted to the same 
 interrogatory system, but were not detained long, since the 
 main purport of their business, namely, begging, was soon 
 understood. So 'Abd-el-Hameed returned to the charge with 
 us ; tried me with Hindoostanee, Persian, and even a few words 
 of broken English, but all in vain, and ended by inwardly con- 
 cluding that the matter was far from satisfactory. Then he 
 rose in a rather abrupt manner, and left us to give his report 
 to those who had sent him. 
 
 That this report was highly unfavourable I afterwards learnt. 
 Not that he sincerely imagined our coming to have any 
 dangerous import for the person of Fey§ul, or that we were in 
 truth professors of the black art. But he was afraid of rivals
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 407 
 
 in the good graces and favours of the palace, and felt like a 
 tradesman who sees an opposition shop opening across the way, 
 hence he prudently desired to see us as far off as possible, and 
 to this effect spared neither suggestion nor calumny. 
 
 Not long had the Peshawuree quitted us, when another and 
 a very different, but even more dangerous agent presented 
 himself at our door, with an air bespeaking authority, varnished 
 over by studied meekness, and a downcast eye ever prying to 
 observe unobserved. It was a " Meddey'yee," or " Zelator," one 
 of the secret council and intimate organization of the Eiad 
 government. 
 
 But considering that my readers are perhaps not sufficiently 
 acquainted with these functionaries, it will be best here to give 
 a slight digression regarding the first origin, the character, and 
 the progress of the " Meddey'yee " institution, and of those who 
 compose it. This will throw more light than anything yet said 
 on the Wahhabee organization, of which the Meddey'yees are, 
 in fact, the mainspring and directors. 
 
 Their institution, at least in its present form, is by no means 
 of ancient date ; it belongs to the present reign, and is due to 
 recent events. In the year 1854 or 1855, for precise accuracy 
 of chronology in these countries is utterly hopeless, the world- 
 wide visitation of the cholera, after travelling over the more 
 important and thickly peopled lands and kingdoms of the 
 East, bethougl\t itself of Central Arabia, hitherto, it might seem, 
 forgotten or neglected by that scourge in the midst of more 
 virgent occupations. Crossing the desert from the west, it fell 
 on Nejed like a thunderbolt, and began its usual ravages, witli 
 a success totally unchecked, my readers may well imagine, by 
 any preventive or curative measures. The upper mountain 
 district of Sedeyr alone escaped ; the lower provinces of Yema- 
 mah, Hareek, Woshem, and Dowasir suffered fearfully, and the 
 'Aared itself was one of the most severely treated. Tlie capital, 
 lying in a damp valley, and close built, was depopulated ; a 
 third of its inhabitants are said to have perished within a few 
 weeks ; among the victims were some members of the royal 
 family, and many others of aristocratic descent. 
 
 Now so it was, that for some years previous, relaxation in 
 religious and sectarian peculiarities had been introducing itself
 
 408 IlIAT) [Chap. IX 
 
 into Riad ; prosperity, and yet more the preceding Egyptian 
 occupation, followed by frequent intercourse with the men and 
 government of Cairo, an intercourse continued during the entire 
 reign of 'Abbas Basha, nor wholly interrupted under that of 
 Sa'eed, had combined to encourage this deplorable falling 
 away. Usages which, when known only through the medium 
 of polemical treatises and controversial diatribe, excited just 
 horror, now seemed less abominable on practical acquaintance 
 and closer view, so contagious is bad example. The " sluimcful " 
 had sent up its vapoiu-s in the K'hawahs of the capital, and 
 heads had been seen profaned by the iniquity of silk and gold 
 thread. No reasonable mind could hesitate whence tlie origin 
 of the cholera ; the crime was notorious, the piniishment mere 
 justice. Of course the best, indeed the only, remedy for the 
 epidemic was a speedy reform, and an efficacious return to tlie 
 purity and intolerance of better days. 
 
 Feysul now convoked an assembly of all the principal men 
 in the town. When met, he addressed them in a speech 
 with which I shall not tire the patience of my readers, though 
 my own had to bear with its rehearsal. It consisted mainly of 
 those arbitrary and unadvised interpretations of the ways of 
 Providence to man, unfortunately common everywhere, and 
 justifiable nowhere. The upshot was, that they had all done 
 wrong, very wrong ; that great scandals had been given or per- 
 mitted, that the fine gold had become unquestionably dim, and 
 the silver alloyed with dross, and tliat their only liope lay in 
 strict search and trial of their ways, with suitable repentance 
 and reform. But for himself, added the monarch, he was now 
 old and infirm, nor able unaided and alone to carry into effect 
 measures proportioned to the gravity of the occasion. Accord- 
 ingly he discharged the obligation of his own conscience on 
 theirs, and rendered them responsible before the God of Islam 
 for the longer duration of the cholera, or whatever else might 
 take place, should his timely warning be neglected. 
 
 The elders of the town retired, held long consultation, and re- 
 turning, proposed the following scheme, which received the kingly 
 ratification. From among the most exemplary and zealous of 
 the inhabitants twenty-two were to be selected, and entitled 
 " Meddey'yeeyah " "men of zeal," or " Zelators," such being the
 
 Chap. TX] THE CAPITAL OF KEJEB 409 
 
 nearest word in literal translation, and this I sliall henceforth 
 employ, to spare Arab cacophony. Candidates of the requisite 
 number were soon found and mustered. On these twenty-two 
 Feysul conferred absolute power for the extirpation of whatever 
 was contrary to Walihabee doctrine and practice, and to good 
 morals in general, from the capital firstly, and then from the 
 entire empire. No Eoman censors in their most palmy days had 
 a higher range of authority or were less fettered by all ordinary 
 restrictions. Not only were these Zelators to denounce offenders, 
 but they might also in their own unchallenged right inflict the 
 penalty incurred, beat and fine at discretion, nor was any certain 
 limit assigned to the amount of the mulct, or to the number of 
 the blows. Most comprehensive too was the list of offences 
 brought under the animadversion of these new censors ; absence 
 from public prayers, regular attendance five times a day in the 
 public mosques being henceforth of strict obligation ; smoking 
 tobacco, taking snuff, or chewing (this last practice, vulgarly 
 entitled "quidding," had been introduced by the jolly tars of 
 Koweyt and other seaports of the Persian Gulf) ; wearing silk 
 or gold ; talking or having a ligh^t in the house after night 
 prayers ; singing or playing on any musical instrument ; nay, 
 even all street games of children or childish persons : these 
 were some of the leading articles on the condemned list, and 
 objects of virtuous correction and severity. Besides, swearing 
 by any other name save that of God, any approach to an invo- 
 cation, or even ejaculation directed to aught but Him ; in short, 
 whatever in word or deed, in conversation or in conduct, might 
 appear to deviate from the exact orthodoxy of the letter of the 
 Coran and the Wahhabee commentary, was to be denounced, 
 or even punished on the spot. Lastly, their censorship extended 
 over whatever might afford suspicion of irregular conduct ; for 
 instance, strolling about the streets after nightfall, entering too 
 frequently a neighbour's house, especially at hours when the 
 male denizens may be presumed absent, with any apparent 
 breach of the laws of decorum or decency ; all these were ren- 
 dered offences amenable to cognizance and correctional measures. 
 It is easy to imagine what so wide-reaching a power might 
 become when placed in the hands of interested or vindictive 
 administrators. However, the number of the Zelators them-
 
 4IO RIAX) [Chap. IX 
 
 selves, and the innate touglmess and resistance of the Arab 
 character, somewhat diminished the ill consequences which 
 might naturally have been expected from this over-absolute 
 and scarce-defined authority, though many and most atrocious 
 instances of its exercise and abuse were related in my hearing. 
 These Zelators are bound to a very simple style of dress, 
 devoid of ornament or pretension ; they may not even wear the 
 sword, mark of directly temporal or mihtary authority. But in 
 compensation, each one bears in hand a long staff, Avhich serves 
 the double object of official badge and instrument of chastise- 
 ment, much like the truncheon of our own policeman ; this, 
 combined with do-wmcast eyes, slow walk, subdued tone of voice, 
 the head-dress drawn cowl-fashion low over the forehead, but 
 without head-band, and a constant gravity of demeanour, 
 suffices to distinguish them at first sight from the ordinary 
 crowd. Of course, in their conversation, pious texts and 
 ejaculations, accompanied by the forefinger upraised every half- 
 minute at least, in season and out of season, to testify to the 
 unity of God, are even more frequent with them than among 
 the common faithful. Pacing from street to street, or unex- 
 pectedly entering the houses to see if there is anything incorrect 
 going on there, they do not hesitate to inflict at once, and 
 without any preliminary form of trial or judgment, the penalty 
 of stripes on the detected culprit, be he who he may; and 
 should their own staves prove insufficient, they straightway call 
 in the assistance of bystanders or slaves, who throw the guilty 
 individual prone on the ground, and then in concert with 
 the Zelator belabour him at pleasure. A similar process is 
 adopted for those whom negligence has kept from public 
 prayer ; the Zelator of the quarter, accompanied by a band 
 of the righteous, all well armed with stout sticks, proceeds to 
 the designated dwelling, and demands an entrance, which no 
 one dares refuse. It is then a word and a blow, or rather many 
 blows and few words, till the undevout shortcomer is quickened 
 into new fervour by the most cogent of all a ])osteriori 
 arguments. Should he happen to be absent from home at the 
 moment of the visit, nay, sometimes even after the administration 
 of the healing chastisement, a pledge for future good conduct, 
 as a cloak, a sword, a head-dress, or the like, is taken from
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 411 
 
 the house, nor restored till several days of punctual attendance 
 at the Mesjid have repaired the scandal of past negligence, and 
 proved the sincerity of the conversion by its perseverance. But 
 should any rash individual attempt to resist force by force, he 
 may be sure of the roughest treatment ; and should he lift his 
 hand against the sacred person of the Zelator, the sacrilegious 
 member is destined to the block and the knife. However, where 
 direct mutilation or capital punishment is due, for instance, in 
 a case of avowed and formal heresy or infidelity, the crime is 
 referred to the tribunal of Fey§ul himself, nor does he fail to 
 prosecute the culprit with the utmost rigour. 
 
 Furnished with such powers, and backed up by the whole 
 weight of government, it may be easily supposed that the 
 new broom swept clean, and that the first institution of 
 the Zelators was followed by root-and-branch work. Eank 
 itself was no protection, high birth no shelter, and private or 
 political enmities now found themselves masters of their aim. 
 Djeloo'wee, Feysul's own brother, was beaten with rods at the 
 door of the king's own palace for a whiff of tobacco smoke ; 
 and his royal kinsman could not or would not interfere to save 
 him from undergoing at fifty an ignominy barely endurable at 
 fifteen. Soweylim, the prime minister, and predecessor of 
 Mahboob, was on a similar pretext, but in reality (so said 
 universal rumour) at the instigation of a competitor for his 
 post, seized one day while on his return homeward from the 
 castle, thrown down, and subjected to so protracted and so cruel 
 a fustigation that he expired on the morrow. If such was the 
 chastisement prepared for the first personages in the state, what 
 could plebeian offenders expect? Many were the victims, 
 many the backs that smarted and the limbs crippled or broken. 
 Tobacco vanished, though not in fumo, and torn silks strewed 
 the streets or rotted on the dunghills; the mosques were 
 crowded, and the shops deserted. In a few weeks the exemplary 
 semblance of the outward man of the capital might have moved 
 the admiration of the first Wahhabee himself. 
 
 Similar measures were enforced throughout Nejed. Fervent 
 Zelators, armed with rods and Gorans, and breathing out ven- 
 geance upon all " right-hand and left-hand defections," visited 
 the various towns and villages with the happiest results ; and
 
 412 BIAT) [Chap. IX 
 
 the entire 'Aared, Sedeyr, Woshem, Yemrimah, and tlu'ir 
 neighbours, were speedily reformed and remodelled on the 
 pattern of Riacl. 
 
 But the zeal for revival did not stop here. The " infidels " of 
 Kaseem and Ha?a, along with the backsliders of Hareek, were 
 now to learn that Feysul would not tolerate any longer among 
 them crimes reprobated by the genuine believers, and that tliey 
 in their turn must conform at least their exterior to the decencies 
 of orthodoxy, wliatever might be the fashion of their hearts 
 and minds. jNIissions, headed by Zelators, were organized, and 
 a crusade against the prevailing scandals of the guilty provinces 
 was set on foot. But in spite of the practical arguments that 
 accompanied the Word, orthodoxy was destined here to meet 
 with but a partial triumph. A strong reaction manifested 
 itself, and in some places, at Bereydah in Kaseem, for example, 
 and at Zekkfirah in Hasa, blows were returned with interest, 
 and in one village of Kaseem at least, to my knowledge, the 
 ardour of the Zelator was allayed by a sound ducking in a 
 neighbouring pond. A compromise now took place : dresses 
 wherein silk should not exceed a third part, or at most a half, of 
 the material, were permitted, though with a sigh ; and tobacco 
 vendors or smokers were henceforth to content themselves with 
 observing decent privacy in the sale or consumption of the 
 forbidden article, on which condition they might do as they 
 chose, unmolested, save in the public streets or market-place. 
 Compulsory attendance at prayers was rarely enforced, and the 
 roll-call of names, customary in the mosques of Nejed, was 
 elsewhere prudently omitted. However, a certain degree of 
 outward conformity had been attained, and with that Feysul 
 and his Star Chamber were fain to content themselves for the 
 moment, and hope for better times. 
 
 Of the Zelator mission at Ha'yel and in Djebel Shomer, with 
 its exit, I have already spoken ; further results of tlie Wahhabee 
 revival remain for mention when our narrative reaches in its 
 course the provinces of the East. 
 
 But even in Nejed and in Riad itself the overstretched 
 cord ended by relaxing a little, nor could the unpopidarity of 
 the new institution remain wholly concealed. Yet it was kept 
 up, though the cholera, scared no doubt by the tremendous
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 413 
 
 outbreak of orthodox severity, had fled the land ; nor was the 
 theory of the new censorship changed, only its practical exercise 
 assumed a milder form, while the thing itself was carefully 
 maintained, a bulwark against future heaven-sent scourges or 
 earthly fallings-away, and a powerful administrative engine or 
 rod when required. The slaves were indeed less busy than 
 before, and the domestic visits of rarer occurrence ; chastisement 
 was sometimes preceded by admonition, and the dorsal vertebrge 
 of culprits more seldom broken. But the number of the 
 Zelators was constantly filled up, whenever death or retire- 
 ment occasioned a vacancy ; the nomination of each new can- 
 didate depending on themselves, and in concert with Feysul. 
 Twice every week they have official right to a private audience 
 of the king ; the days assigned are JMonday and Thursday, the 
 hour sunrise or a little earlier. No small or unimportant 
 favour this from a monarch whose joublic audiences are at the 
 very most once a month, and who in private is almost inaces- 
 sible to all save his prime minister, his negro slaves, and his 
 harem. The Zelators are, in fact, the real council of state ; 
 and no question of peace or war, alliance or treaty, but is 
 suggested or modified by them. They represent wliat we may 
 with all due respect entitle the High Conservative party, amid 
 that inevitable tendency of all organized society to advancement, 
 from which not even Wahhabees are exempt. But more of 
 this and of them hereafter. 
 
 Meanwhile I might almost leave my readers to suppose in 
 what light such a body, and those who compose it, are regarded 
 by the mass of the population. Surrounded with all the 
 deference and all the odium consequent on their office and 
 character, they meet everywhere with marks of open respect 
 and covert distrust and hatred. Are a circle of friends met in 
 the freedom of conversation, let a Zelator enter, their voices 
 are hushed ; and when talk is resumed, it follows a tack in 
 wliich the recording angels of Islam themselves would find 
 nothing to modify. Are a bevy of companions walking gaily 
 with too light a gait down the street ? at the meeting of a 
 Zelator, all compose their pace, and direct their eyes in 
 momentary modesty on the ground. Is a stealtliy lamp lighted 
 at unreasonable hours, at a rap on the shutters suspected for
 
 414 RIAX) [Cn.vr. IX 
 
 that of the Zelator, tlic "glim is doused," and all is silent in 
 darkness. Or, worse than all, is the forbidden pipe sending up 
 its sinful fumes in some remote corner ? at the fatal tap on the 
 outer door, the unholy implement is hastily emptied out into 
 the hearth, and then carefully hidden under the carpet, while 
 everyone hurries to wash his mouth and mustachios, and by 
 the perfume of cloves or aromatic herbs give himself an orthodox 
 smell once more. In short, schoolboys cauglit out by a severe 
 under-master at an illicit prank, pious ladies surprised in reading 
 the last French novel, or teetotallers suddenly discovered with a 
 half-empty black bottle and tumbler on the table, never look 
 more awkward, more silly, and more alarmed than Nej deans 
 on these occasions when a Zelator comes upon them. 
 
 I was often more especially amused (to anticipate incidents 
 of the following days) by the figure Aboo-'Eysa used to make 
 in such a scrape. He knew the Zelators for what they were, 
 and they too knew him for what he was; but high court 
 protection and a position of wealth and influence in the one 
 party, and an official character not to be insulted with im- 
 punity in the other, occasioned a degree of mutual forbearance, 
 curiously constrained and transparently comic. While the 
 fury of religious renovation lasted, Aboo-'Eysa had prudently 
 kept out of harm's way; and if indispensable business drew 
 him to Riad, would pitch a tent without the walls, there with 
 his boon companions to smoke, eat and drink, and curse the 
 Zelators, nor enter the city save by stealth, and to visit the 
 palace only. Now that the first fervour, like all first fervours, 
 had somewhat cooled down, he ventured on lodging within the 
 town, and only took care to be out of the way on Fridays or at 
 prayer-time. However, while he was in the capital his silken 
 robe judiciously disappeared, his ornamental head-kerchief was 
 folded up and laid aside to make place for an old cotton rag, 
 and he studiously avoided certain devouter quarters of the 
 town and the vicinity of the great Wahhabee family. As for 
 paying any one of them a visit, he would as soon have called 
 on the fiend himself. But when unavoidable necessity or 
 chance brought him in their way, he did his best to look very 
 good, and measured his conversation with suitable decorum of 
 phrase. They, on the other hand, condescendingly winked at
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 415 
 
 frailties decently though imperfectly veiled, and atTected not 
 to notice what could not be wholly hidden. However, in the 
 moments of mutual absence neither spared the other : Aboo- 
 'Eysa named them " dogs," " hypocrites," and much more ; 
 while the fingers of the Zelators tingled to be at the praise- 
 worthy occupation of " purifying his hide," for so the profane 
 technicality of Nejed styles the merited chastisement of dis- 
 senters and ill-doers. But it is time to return to our new 
 acquaintance, the occasion of this long digression. 
 
 'Abbood, for such was his name, though I never met the like 
 before or after in Arabia Proper, however common it may be 
 in Syria and Lebanon, took a different and a more efficacious 
 mode of espionage than 'Abd-el-Hameed had done before him. 
 Affecting to consider us Mahometans, and learned ones too, he 
 entered at once on religious topics, on the true character of 
 Islam, its purity or corruptions, and enquired much after the 
 present teaching and usages of, Damascus and the North, 
 evidently in the view of catching us in our words. But he 
 had luckily encountered his match ; for every citation of the 
 Coran we replied with two, and proved ourselves intimately 
 acquainted with the " greater " and the " lesser " polytheism of 
 foreign nations and heterodox Mahometans, with the commen- 
 taries of Beydowee and the tales of the Hadeeth, till our friend, 
 now won over to confidence, launched out full sail on the sea of 
 discussion, and thereby rendered himself equally instructive 
 and interesting to men who had nothing more at heart than to 
 learn the tenets of the sect from one of its most zealous 
 professors, nay, a Zelator in person. 
 
 Error, especially on such matters and under such circum- 
 stances, inspires a thinking mind with much more compassion 
 than indignation; and pity, if not alwa3^s akin to love, is at 
 least next door to toleration. We found it easy enough to give 
 certain tokens of sympathy, and even of guarded approval, 
 which encouraged our teacher to a fuller display of doctrine ; 
 while we trusted that a favourable report, thus won, might 
 render tlie minds of his fellows less hostile, or even well- 
 disposed. 'Abbood ended by becoming half a friend, and his 
 regrets at our being, like other Damascenes, yet in tlie outer 
 porch of darkness, were tempered by a hope, which he did not
 
 41 6 BIAT) [Cnxr. IX 
 
 disgui.se, of at least putting a window into our porch for its 
 better enlightenment. 
 
 Other visitors came and went ; Aboo-'Eysa, too, as in duty 
 bound, called on us towards evening to see if all was well, and 
 how we were lodged. The locality did not much please us, 
 because too near to the rojal palace, almost, in fact, belonging 
 to it ; besides, the apartments were over large, nor could we 
 arrange them with anything like comfort for their very size ; 
 our furniture was too limited for the task, and our means 
 also. So we begged Aboo-'Eysa to look out for us another 
 and a more proportionate dwelling, suited to our modest 
 circumstances and the character of our profession. Many had 
 indeed already demanded medical advice and assistance, nor 
 could any other occupation suit us better in this town. Our 
 friend promised, and kept his word. 
 
 Next day, in the forenoon, while we were sauntering about 
 the market-place, we met the minister 'Abd-el-'Azeez, who 
 had that morning returned to the capital. With a smiling face 
 and an air of great benignity he took us aside, and informed 
 us that the king did not consider Riad a proper field for our 
 medical skill; that we had better at once continue our journey 
 to Hofhoof, whither Aboo-'Eysa should conduct us straight- 
 way ; and that the monarch would furnish each of us with a 
 camel, a new suit of clothes, and money. 
 
 To make a bridge of gold (even though the sum offered 
 was small) for a flying enemy is a wise measure, whether in 
 Macedonia or in Nejed; and Fey§ul thought that he could not 
 better ensure his safety from our spells and incantations than 
 by making us his friends, but at a reasonable distance. We, in 
 our innocence, did not yet know the reason of this manoeuvre, 
 and attributed it to other and lighter motives. So, instead of 
 acquiescing, we represented to 'Abd-el-'Azeez that our stay at 
 Eiacl would be alike advantageous to the bodies of the towns- 
 men and to our own purses ; whereas an over-speedy departure 
 might sound ill, and prejudice our success even at Hoflioof. 
 He promised to consult Feysul once more upon the matter, but 
 gave us to understand that there was little prospect of an 
 " amendment " in the royal decree. Of course our persistence 
 in wishinsr thus to remain at Riad could have no other effect
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 4T7 
 
 than to confirm the timid suspicions of the old tyrant ; but this 
 we knew not. 
 
 Meanwhile the privy council assembled aroimd the king in 
 the garden, had come to a somewhat similar resolution about 
 the Persians, whom Fey.sul determined to dismiss at tlie 
 shortest possible notice, though with fair words and some 
 trifling present, but without personal audience or effective 
 redress. For this he had more than one reason ; but it was 
 the dread of assassination that worked strongest of all on his 
 evil conscience. 
 
 However, Arab prudence made him unwilling to precipitate 
 matters ; and a little after noon he sent for Aboo-'Eysa, who im- 
 mediately went to the garden where his Majesty lay concealed. 
 What passed on that occasion we afterwards learnt in detail 
 from different sources. Fey.sul received Aboo-'Eysa with an 
 air of grave severity, and reproached him for having brought 
 so ill-conditioned a cargo to the palace gates. Our guide 
 made all possible excuses, and was backed up in his apology 
 by the prime minister Mahboob, a staunch friend of Aboo- 
 'Eysa's, or at least of his presents. For what regarded the 
 Persians, it was resolved on better thoughts to give them some 
 kind of satisfaction ; but Fey§ul, ever fearful of treachery, 
 could not yet be persuaded to receive the Na'ib in person ; and 
 accordingly that part of the business was committed to Mah- 
 boob, who was to give the Shirazee a hearing, and afterwards 
 make his report to the king. Then came our affair : here the 
 monarch showed himself extremely refractory, and JMahboob 
 partook, or seemed to partake, in his uneasiness. Indeed 
 Feysul was half inclined to send us away, not to Hasa, but by 
 the very route on which we had come ; an ominous proceeding 
 for us, and more likely to conclude in having us " packed with 
 post-horse up to heaven," than conveyed by the leisurely pace 
 of camels to Kaseem or Shomer. At last the old king softened 
 down, and concluded by saying that we might go on to Hasa, 
 for the furtherance whereof he again proferred the liberal assist- 
 ance already notified by 'Abd-el-'Azeez ; but both he and his 
 counsellors were decidedly averse to our remaining any longer 
 in Riad. 
 
 When the Na ib heard this news, lie burst out into a new fit 
 
 VOL. I. E E
 
 41 8 lilAT) [CuAP. IX 
 
 of passion, and said niut-li of a very undiplomatic nature re- 
 garding the king and liis ministers ; nor could he well under- 
 stand how a Bedouin, for so he persisted in styling Feysid, 
 could treat with such hauglity coolness the majesty of the Shah 
 of Persia, represented in his envoy. However there was no 
 help for it, so he smoothed his ruffled brow, chewed a little 
 opiiun, smoked a nargheelah and set about drawing up a long- 
 list of grievances and damages for the perusal of Mahboob on 
 their approaching interview. 
 
 Our own position was now an awkward one, nor did we 
 exactly know how to amend it. We were thoroughly deter- 
 mined not to quit Riad till after fully satisfying our curiosity 
 relative to its government, people, and whatever else it con- 
 tained : yet how to prolong our stay ? To persist on our own 
 score in remaining after a twice-repeated order to depart, would 
 have been sheer madness, and must inevitably lead to the worst 
 consequences ; concealment or disguise was out of the question. 
 Aboo-'Eysa was no less annoyed than ourselves ; our friend- 
 ship, once commenced at Bereydah, had by frequent intercourse; 
 there, and yet more by our journey together from Kaseem to 
 Riad, become a real intimacy ; and though he did not precisely 
 comprehend our object in so vehemently desiring a longer 
 sojourn in the ^Yahhabee capital, he sympathized with oiu- 
 vexation at so silly yet so serious an obstacle to oiu* wishes. At 
 last, after much thinking and discussion, he proposed to try a 
 measure with the etflcacy of which long experience had ren- 
 dered him particularly conversant. The king, though obstinate 
 and timorous, was likely in a matter of this sort to let himself 
 ultimately be guided by the advice of his ministers. If 
 Mahboob and 'Abd-el-'Azeez could be brought round to our 
 cause, a revision of the royal edict might then be coniidently 
 expected. Now incorruptibility was no more a virtue of the 
 Nejdean court than Charles the Second's, or Louis-Philippe's, 
 and that Aboo-'Eysa had the best possible reasons to know. 
 However, even here a direct offer of minted coin would not 
 look well. In this dilemma, two pounds weight of scented 
 wood, or " 'Ood," a special favourite with Arabs, and above all 
 with Nej deans, might prove a propitiatory offering of good savour, 
 and render our modest petition more acceptable and efficacious.
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 419 
 
 This he offered to procure at his own cost, and to manage its 
 presentation. M'e, my readers may well suppose, made no 
 difficulty. Night had already set in ; but Aboo-'Eysa was not 
 the man to delay in a business where time was so precious. 
 He went at once on his quest; and his acquaintance with the 
 people of the town enabled him soon to find the desired 
 perfumes, which he returned to show us, and then departed a 
 second time, without delay, to leave them in our name at the 
 doors of Mahboob and 'Abd-el-'Azeez. Late in the night he 
 returned, and bade us await in sure hope a more favourable 
 intimation on the morrow. 
 
 Nor were his expectations deceived. Before noon he was 
 again summoned to the suburban retreat of royalty, and there 
 told, that since, all things maturely considered, the town of Eiad 
 did seriously stand in need of an ^sculapius, we might be 
 permitted to remain in that quality, and freely exercise our 
 profession under Feysul's own patronage, without fear of oppo- 
 sition or disquiet. 
 
 Thus far was well. But these events, along with others less 
 important but equally significant, had now fairly opened our 
 ejT^es to the difficulties around us. A suspicious king, a suspici- 
 ous court, an unfriendly council, a land infamous as the very 
 mouse-trap of Arabia : we could not but see that if one bad 
 hour had been got safely through, others and perhaps worse 
 must be in store, and that a purchased friendship might soon 
 either exact too high a price for its continuation, or even turn 
 to open and fatal enmity. We stood more than ever in need of 
 counsel and support, of one who could point out to us the rocks 
 in our way, and aid us to avoid them. For all this Aboo-'Eysa 
 was evidently our man ; yet the insight we had hitherto allowed 
 him into our character and object was hardly sufficient to 
 ensure, and still less to direct, his cooperation. On the other 
 hand, to tell him all, was nothing else than to put ourselves 
 neck and heels at his mercy, and to give him the tempting- 
 means of purchasing high favour and importance at court by 
 our betrayal. However, all that we had seen or heard of him 
 led us to judge him incapable of similar baseness, and even to 
 think him likely to enter in some measure into our views, and 
 cooperate to their accomplishmeDt.
 
 420 EIAT) [Cu.vr. IX 
 
 Much did Barakat and I talk over the matter during the 
 following evening. At last we resolved to give Aboo-'Eysa the 
 same degree of confidence which we had placed in Telfd, and 
 that without delay, lest some untoward circumstance should 
 intervene and complicate maters further. I wished Barakat to 
 take on him the management of this somewhat delicate busi- 
 ness, wherein a born Arab was evidently less likely to compro- 
 mise himself than a foreigner and a European ; but he covild 
 not make up his mind, and for want of better means I consented 
 to venture on it myself next morning. 
 
 After coffee and what other preliminaries beseemed the 
 occasion, I took our guide apart, and explained to him who we 
 really were, and the scope of our long journey, with everything 
 else requisite for him to know in order to help us efficaciously, 
 and bear an aiding hand in what was yet to do. 
 
 Aboo-'Eysa heard in deep attention and a silence only inter- 
 rupted by an occasional question, or a passing though amiable 
 reproof of our preceding hesitation in meeting his offered 
 friendship with the confidence it deserved. The conversation 
 lasted till noon drew nigh, and the western shadow of the wall 
 under which we were sitting had shrunk vip to a narrow and 
 insufficient line of shelter. Our conclusion was as follows : 
 firstly, to stand by each other through thick and thin, good 
 fortune and bad, so long as Providence should cast our lot 
 together. Second, Aboo-'Eysa engaged himself to bring forward 
 my medical position into the greatest possible prominence, and 
 to ensure me by all wa3^s and means a wide-spread and honour- 
 able reputation. Thirdly, that neither of us should quit KiaiJ 
 without the consent and agreement of the otlier; but on the 
 contrary, we should mutually wait each other's leisure till Aboo- 
 'Eysa had finished his business in the capital, and we ours, and 
 then set off on our way together. Fourthly, that Aboo-'Eysa 
 should do all in his power to procure me a thorough acquaint- 
 ance with Hasa and the eastern provinces. Plfthly and lastly, 
 my friend proposed and earnestly recommended to me a visit to 
 the islands of the Persian Gfulf, and, above all, to the kingdom 
 of 'Oman. For this last appendix to our scheme I felt at the 
 time very little inclination, thinking our journey already long- 
 enough, especially with the additional delay necessary in Hasa.
 
 CuAP. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJEB 42 1 
 
 So we agreed to leave this point open for future discussion. 
 After settling our plans thus far, we rose and returned to the 
 K'hawah, where Barakat was awaiting the result of our con- 
 ference. To him, as to a young and inexperienced man, Aboo- 
 'Eysa gave much sage advice, and exhorted him to seriousness 
 of demeanour and reservedness of tongue, particularly while at 
 Eiad. We tlien partook in common of a more cheerful meal 
 than we had enjoyed for many days, well pleased in the security 
 that reciprocal trust affords, and the triple cord which is not 
 easily to be broken. 
 
 While these complicated intrigues went on among and around 
 us, several circumstances occurred, which must here find place, 
 because necessary to the thread of the narrative, though I had 
 designedly omitted them hitherto, in order to follow out more 
 distinctly the main affair on whch all the rest depended. My 
 readers will accordingly permit me a retrograde step in our 
 story, till we bring it again up to the point thus reached by 
 anticipation, and then continue it after a smooth and methodical 
 course. 
 
 I had said some pages back that Djeloo'wee's palace soon 
 appeared to Barakiit and myself not well adapted to our medical 
 avocations, and besides too near the castle of P^eyj^ul for strangers 
 and " infidels " like ourselves. In consequence, Aboo-'Eysa had 
 promised to look us out a more suitable dwelling-place. Next 
 morning, before we met 'Abd-el-'Azeez, our guide visited us, 
 and told us that a very comfortable abode had been put at 
 our disposition, free of expense. This Aboo-'Eysa had managed 
 throuoch some friend of his at court, and without consulting 
 Feysul or his ministers. Without delay we went to look at the 
 proffered quarters. 
 
 Leaving the palace of Djeloo'wee, we passed down the great 
 street to the market-place, whicli we next crossed diagonally, 
 till we had the castle gate opposite to us on the other side ; and 
 then threaded a labyrinth of narrow by-streets, till a walk of 
 about eight minutes brought us in front of a high covered 
 passage ; through this we entered a broad mipasse, on either 
 side of which were several small Jiabitations, while a large two- 
 storeyed house closed the further end. This stately mansion was 
 now tenanted by the Na'ib Mohammed-' Alee and his train ; its
 
 422 HI AT) [CnAi*. IX 
 
 original owner, a man of good family, and wealthy in Arab esti- 
 mation, had become obnoxious to the " Zelators " of tlie town, 
 and wius compelled to anticipate a sound palm-stick thrashing, 
 or worse, by a timely retreat to Ha.sa, where we afterwards met 
 him; one of hundreds in the like predicament. His house was 
 confiscated, not indeed absolutely, but in a provisional manner, 
 by the government, and its vacant walls, by order of Feysul, 
 now sheltered the Na'ib and his companions. Some way down 
 the " Place " on the right, a side door gave admittance to a 
 humbler dwelling, belonging, like many of the town houses 
 hereal)outs, to the palace, and rented on lease. It was in every 
 respect fitted to our manner of life ; and if its tenants, our 
 predecessors, suffered any inconvenience from evacuating the 
 premises in om- favoiu', this was fully made up to them by the 
 munificent present of six Djedeedahs (a term to be explained 
 afterwards), or about two shillings English, which our free and 
 gracious liberality bestowed upon them. Whence my readers 
 may infer, that the value of money in Riad, and its proportion 
 to house-rent, are not far from what they appear to have been 
 in London under the reign of Edward JI, or even later. 
 
 Here we were possessors of no less than three apartments : the 
 first a reception room, or K'hawah, near the entrance, with its 
 appropriate vestibule and fireplace ; it was long in form and 
 somewhat dark, like most K'hawahs at Kiad, where the southerly 
 climate and increasing heat renders the construction of apart- 
 ments subservient to the greatest shelter obtainable from the 
 sun's access, much more than is wont at Ha'yel, or even in 
 Kaseem and Sedeyr. In the interior, and behind the K'hawah, 
 was a courtyard, in the middle of which a fine and odoriferous 
 shrub of the verbena species attested the semi-sentimental 
 rurality of Nejdean townsmen ; the practice of nursing one or 
 two plants to give a city residence something of a country air, 
 not being confined to London and its balcony flower-pots. 
 Within the courtyard stood also a kitchen, separated from the 
 rest of the dwelling. On the other side we had a good- sized 
 chamber, of which I made my druggery and consultation room. 
 Its roof was flat, like that of the K'hawah, and both were sur- 
 rounded by a high parapet; a wooden staircase led up to the 
 one terrace, and a flight of stone steps to the other. Another
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJEB 423 
 
 small room had been converted by the late tenants into a store 
 for furniture and provisions not requisite for immediate use, 
 and of this they kept the keys, to our exclusion. 
 
 We were here not too far from the market-place, yet at a 
 decorous distance from the palace, and exactly in the quarter 
 where dwell the fewest Zelators and none of the old Wahhabee 
 family ; indeed, this part of the town had the reputation, bad 
 or good, of being not only the least bigoted, but even a sort of 
 stronghold for the party of progress, since even Eiad owns such. 
 Lastly, we became hereby next-door neighbours to the talkative 
 Na'ib, whose mixed slirewdness and simplicity, ready tongue 
 and broken Arabic, rendered him always an amusing and 
 sometimes an instructive companion. In short, we thought 
 ourselves fortunate in this second selection of lodgings, and 
 took it for a favourable argury for our business at Eiad. 
 Without demur we cheerfully fell to putting all things in order, 
 and became decent housekeepers in our way. 
 
 Flour, rice, meat, and coffee were, or rather should have 
 been, regularly furnished us from the palace, of which we were 
 considered the guests. But finding that we did not much stand 
 in need of the royal liberality, and that a little show of indepen- 
 dence would do no harm, we were not over diligent in asking 
 for or even in receiving the supply, and it often went by our 
 easy connivance to the jDrivate advantage of the purveyors. 
 Only we insisted rigorously in obtaining our stated allowance 
 of coffee, for it was excellent, and our consumption thereof 
 unbounded. Aboo-'Eysa, who passed two-thirds of his leisure 
 hours under our roof, had set us up in coffee-pots and other 
 requisites; to procure a new mortar, similar to that carried off 
 by the faithless Habbasli at Bereydah, had been our first care 
 on ariving here. Now our guide was a desperate coffee-drinker, 
 so were also my companion and myself ; moreover, we made it 
 a rule tliat no one should enter our premises without a dose of 
 this nature, at any rate ; so tliat from earliest morn till latest 
 evening our fire was never extinguished, nor had our cups time 
 to dry. 
 
 I must here beg my reader's permission for a brief episode 
 or digression on the subject of the above-mentioned beverage. 
 In my quality of an Oriental of many years' standing, I am
 
 4^4 Jil-^ P [CnAp. IX 
 
 annoyed at the ignorance )'et prevailing on so important a 
 matter in the enlightened West ; and as a doctor (at least in 
 Arabia) I cannot see with silent indifference the nervous systems 
 of my fellow-men so rudely tampered with, or their mucous 
 membranes so unseasonably" drenched, as is too often the case 
 to the west of the Bosphorus. 
 
 Be it then known by way of prelude, that coffee though one 
 in name is manifold in fact; nor is every kind of berry entitled 
 to the high qualifications too indiscriminately bestowed on the 
 comprehensive genus. The best coffee, let cavillers say what 
 they will, is that of the Yemen, commonly entitled " Mokha," 
 from the main port of exportation. Now I should be sorry to 
 incur a lawsuit for libel or defamation from our wholesale or 
 retail salesmen ; but were the particle not prefixed to the 
 countless labels in London shop-windows that bear the name 
 of the Eed Sea haven, they would have a more truthy import 
 than what at present they conve}'. Very little, so little indeed 
 as to be quite inappreciable, of the Mokha or Yemen berry ever 
 finds its way westward of Constantinople. Arabia itself, Syria, 
 and Egypt cons-ume fully two-thirds, and the remainder is almost 
 exclusively absorbed by Tuikish and Armenian ffisophagi. Nor 
 do these last get for their limited share the best or the 
 purest. Before reaching the harbours of Alexandria, Jaffa, 
 Beyrouth, &c., for further exportation, the INIokhan bales 
 have been, while yet on their way, sifted and resifted grain 
 by grain, and whatever they may have contained of the hard, 
 rounded, half transparent, greenish-brown berry, the only one 
 really worth roasting and pounding, has been carefully picked 
 out by experienced fingers ; and it is the less generous 
 residue of flattened, opaque, and whitish grains wliich alone, or 
 almost alone, goes on board the shipping. So constant is this 
 selecting process, that a gradation regular as the degrees on a 
 map may be observed in the quality of Mokba, that is, Yemen, 
 coffee even within the limits of Arabia itself, in proportion as 
 one approaches to or recedes from Wadi Nejran and the neigh- 
 bourhood of Mecca, the first stages of the radiating mart. I 
 have myself been times out of number an eyewitness of this 
 sifting; the operation is performed with the utmost serious- 
 ness and scrupulous exactness, reminding me of the diligence
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 425 
 
 ascribed to American diamond searchers, wlien scrutinising the 
 torrent sands for their minute but precious treasure. 
 
 How this coffee is reared on the plant, how gathered, how 
 stored, my readers will find sufficiently described in Niebuhr's 
 work on Arabia, where he speaks of Yemen and its neighbour- 
 hood ; a work to which I have already more than once alluded. 
 Truthful like an Englishman, judiciously accurate as a Ger- 
 man, that author, unless my experience much belies me, is 
 the facile princeps of all modern travellers in Arabia, both 
 for correct observation and descriptive fidelity. Wherever my 
 own way coincided with that of this distinguished explorer, or 
 lay near it, I invariably found the localities and the races, the 
 customs and the institutions, perfectly accordant with the 
 results of his investigation, neither more nor less ; the book 
 forms an advantageous contrast to the rhodomontade of some 
 voyagers, and the negligent inaccuracy of others. Occasional 
 allowance must however be made for changes introduced by 
 the lapse of a century ; and a line should also be drawn 
 between what Niebuhr states on the authority of his own per- 
 sonal inspection, and what he recounts after hearsay from 
 Arabs and others. This latter species of information is at 
 times unavoidably meagre or even incorrect; and the writer's 
 own want of a thorough familiarity with the Arab tongue 
 cannot be fully made up for even by extensive erudition on 
 other points, and a judgment eminently critical. In this 
 respect our own countryman Lane, if Egypt forbear her title 
 to his nationality, has a positive a,dvantage over the enter- 
 prising German ; and hence Lane's portrait of the Arab race, 
 or rather of its colonists on the banks of the Nile, is livelier 
 than Niebuhr's, and fuller also. But to return to our cups — 
 coffee-cups I mean : we have yet a word to say on the first and 
 best species, the coffee of Yemen. 
 
 This berry quits its native land on three main lines of export 
 — that of the Eed Sea, that of the inner Hejaz, and that of 
 Kaseem. The terminus of the first line is Egypt, of the second 
 Syria, of the third Nejed and Shomer. Hence Egypt and 
 Syria are of all countries without the frontiers of Arabia the 
 best supplied with its specific produce, though under the re- 
 strictions already stated ; and through Alexandria or the Syrian
 
 426 HI AT) [Cii.vr. IX 
 
 seaports Constantinople and tlio Nortli ol)tain tlicir diminislicd 
 share. 1)1 it tliis last stage of transport seldom conveys the 
 geniune article, except by the intervention of private arrange- 
 ments and personal friendship or interest. Where mere sale 
 and traffic are concerned, substitution of an inferior quality, or 
 an adulteration almost equivalent to substitution, frequently 
 takes place in the different storehouses of the coast, till whatever 
 Mokha-marked coffee leaves them for Europe and the West, is 
 often no more like the real offspring of the Yemen plant than 
 the logwood preparations of a I^ondon fourth-rate retail wine- 
 seller resemble the pure libations of an Oporto vineyard. 
 
 The second species of coffee, by some preferred to that of 
 Yemen, but in my poor opinion inferior to it, is the growth of 
 Abyssinia ; its berry is larger, and of a somewhat different and 
 a less heating flavour. It is, however, an excellent species ; 
 and whenever the rich land that bears it shall be permitted by 
 man to enjoy the benefits of her God-given fertility, it will 
 probably become an object of extensive cultivation and com- 
 merce. With this stops, at least in Eastern opinion and taste, 
 the list of coffee, and begins the list of beans. 
 
 Here first and foremost stands the produce of India, with a 
 little, similar to it in every respect, from the plantations of 
 'Oman. This class supplies almost all coffee-drinkers, from the 
 neighbourhood of Dafar to Basrah, and thence up to Bagdad 
 and Mosoid; Arabs, Persians, Turks, Cui'des, be they who they 
 may, have there no other beverage. To one unaccustomed to 
 what Yemen supplies, the Indian variety may seem tolerable, 
 or even agreeable. But without any affectation of virtuoso 
 nicety, I must say that for one fresh arrived from Nejed and 
 Kaseem it is hardly potable. The distorted and irregular 
 form of the berry, its blackish stain, and above all the absence 
 of the semi-transparent alabaster-like appearance peculiar to the 
 good Yemanite variety, renders the difference between the two 
 kinds appreciable to the unassisted eye, not only to the palate. 
 
 It is possible that time and care may eventually render 
 Indian coffee almost a rival of the Yemen, or at least of the 
 Abyssinian. Hitherto it certainly is not, though it might be 
 hard to say to what particular causes, inherent in soil, climate, 
 or cultivation, its inferiority is ascribable.
 
 Chap, IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 4^1-] 
 
 American coffee holds, in the judgment of all Orientals, the 
 very last rank ; and the deterioration of this product in the 
 New World from what is in the Old, is no less remarkable than 
 that observed in rice, tea, &c., and is of an analogous character. 
 
 Of Batavian coffee I purposely say nothing, having never to 
 my knowledge tasted it. I hear it sometimes praised, but by 
 Europeans ; Orientals never mentioned it before me, perhaps 
 they confounded it with the Indian. 
 
 While we were yet in the Djowf, I described with sufficient 
 minuteness how the berry is prepared for actual use ; nor is the 
 process any way varied in Nejed or other Arab lands. But in 
 Nejed an additional spicing of saffron, cloves, and the like, is 
 still more common ; a fact which is easily explained by the 
 want of what stimulus tobacco affords elsewhere. A second 
 consequence of non-smoking among the Arabs, is the increased 
 strength of their coffee decoctions in Nejed, and the pro- 
 digious frequency of their use ; to which we must add the 
 larger "finjans," or coffee-cups, here in fashion. So sure are 
 men, when debarred of one pleasure or excitement, to make it 
 \\\) by another. 
 
 Might I be permitted to add, on this occasion, a few lines 
 relative to the famous prohibition of wine enforced by the 
 Goran, and well known to all my readers ? Much has been 
 said on the subject, yet not perhaps enough to explain, at least 
 satisfactorily, the Prophet's abstinence on this point. Eastern 
 Christians have invented, for it is a mere invention, a story of 
 Mahomet's having been intoxicated at some time or other, and 
 that while raving drunk he killed his preceptor, the Nestorian 
 monk Boheyrah, known in ecclesiastical annals by the Greek 
 name of Sergius ; and that it was his intense vexation at this 
 unhappy consequence of the wine-cup which, say they, induced 
 him to prohibit it altogether. A fable which the smallest know- 
 ledge of facts and dates suffices to disprove ; nor should I have 
 even allowed it a word's notice, had not some Europeans taken 
 it up with an ill-deserved seriousness. Others again, like 
 those who suppose Moses to have prohibited swine's flesh 
 because unwholesome in the East (a motive difficult to re- 
 concile with the long list of other meats, now in daily and not 
 unhealthy use, but equally unlawful for an Israelite), imagined
 
 428 in AD [C'liAi-. IX 
 
 tliat ^Mahomet, in a fit of zeal wortliy Fatlier Matliew, la- 
 mented the excesses arising from the abuse of wine among his 
 compatriots, namely, bickerings, frays, bloodshed, and the like ; 
 and that on this ground he resolved to root out the wide-spread 
 evil by fulminating his absolute veto on the cause. Js'ow here 
 I would remark that the Arabs of ante-Islamitic ages, though, 
 like all men, liable to an occasional outburst of jollity, were 
 not, however, Irishmen, nor were Connaught wakes the fashion 
 in Nejed; and hence the primal foundation of the parallel is 
 wanting. True indeed that some of the older Arab poets make 
 mention of wine and its exliilarating effects witli all the 
 enthusiasm of a Horace or an Anacreon. But poets, as the 
 Coran very justly remarks, " say what they do not do," and are 
 very insufficient witnesses in so grave a matter and so sweeping 
 an imputation. It is true also that some recent Mahometan 
 writers have countenanced the same idea regarding this law ; 
 but their ignorance of the past, and their utter and glaring 
 want of critical discernment, render their comments less valu- 
 able than they have been sometimes thought. Drunkenness was 
 never an Arab vice, neither before the epoch of JMahomet, nor 
 nowadays among the populations who know not or observe 
 not his prohibition. 
 
 What then was the real, or, at any rate, the main reason for 
 this strange, and, I must add, unwise embargo ? unmse certainly, 
 were it founded on no better grounds than what we have just 
 rejected as insufficient or fabulous. The strongest arguments 
 would lead us to assign it, with considerable probability, to the 
 Prophet's antipathy to Christianity, and to a desire to broaden 
 tlie line of demarcation between his followers and those of 
 Christ. 
 
 Wine has, in fact, been not only tolerated by the Founder of 
 Christianity, but even, if I may so say, patronized, and raised 
 to a dignity of the highest religious import ; nay, in the belief 
 of three-fourths of the Christian world, absolutely supernatural. 
 Close on its religious and mystical use follows its social quality ; 
 and among all nations who own, in Eastern phrase, " the Gospel 
 for their book ; " that is, are Christians in the most com- 
 prehensive sense of the term, wine has always been in high 
 favour, the accompaniment of civilization, of friendship, of
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 429 
 
 cheerful and elegant life, of social, domestic, even of political 
 union, and in this view has been everywhere greatly esteemed 
 and largely employed. This Mahomet well knew ; his Greek 
 neighbours alone, with whose ways and customs he was by no 
 means unacquainted, might suffice him for a good example of 
 the fact. Meanwhile his seer-like sagacity, in which he had 
 few equals, led him to anticipate from the Christians far more 
 dangerous opponents, and a more lasting and more perilous 
 hostility than whatever might be expected from Jews or Per- 
 sians, and at the same time the prudent and almost respectful 
 toleration which numbers and strength exacted, rendered 
 pre-eminently necessary the establishment of distinctive nay 
 disjunctive marks, calculated to maintain his followers in a 
 permanent antagonism with those whom they could not lightly 
 despise, nor yet securely persecute. To declare the social, the 
 sacred liquor which had become well nigh typical of Christianity, 
 and in a manner its badge, " unclean," " an abomination," and 
 " the work of the devil," was to set up for his own followers a 
 counter-badge, equally unmistakable and irreconcilable, of a 
 nature to last through all time, of daily occurrence, and of equal 
 application in the mosque that antithesis of the sanctuary, and 
 in the harem that contradiction of the house. Nor has this 
 skilful though deeply injurious prohibition failed of its pur- 
 posed intent. 
 
 This is by no means a solitary example : many other un- 
 eqiuvocal indications of the same bent of policy occur in the 
 Mahometan system, whether we view it in the Coran or in 
 tradition cotemporary with its writer. We cannot reasonably 
 ascribe to any other source the profound aversion to all imagery 
 or painting, so essential to the Oriental idea of Christianity, as 
 any of my readers who have chanced to enter a Greek or 
 Armenian church can witness, so hated by Mahomet, who took 
 timely care to instil a similar feeling into his companions and 
 soldiers. From the same source was derived, beyond a doubt, 
 his anathema on bells (if indeed we can by a mere analogy give 
 that name to the contrivances of church-going sound that 
 hold the place of bells in the East), less from the fear of dis- 
 turbing angelic slumbers, as some have politely supposed, than 
 because this signal of prayer was universal among the rival sect.
 
 43 O HI AT) [Chap. IX 
 
 Hence, too, Mahomet's barbarous detestation of music, Avhicli 
 he classed amid the worst devices of the deVil to lead mankind 
 astray, thus confirming Lorenzo's oft-cited sentence on "the 
 man tliat hath not music in his soul," &c. ; lines which can 
 scarcely find a fitter application. Hence, also, his disapproval 
 of prayers offered up between sunrise and tlie two or three 
 liours that follow it, till the forenoon or Dhoha, and also of 
 adorations addressed to the Divinity between the afternoon or 
 " 'Asr " and sunset, not only to avoid tlie interposition of Satan's 
 horns, according to the popular commentary, but rather because 
 those are the very times in which Oriental Christians assemble 
 to the daily worship of mass and vespers, still so frequented in 
 their lands. We may even not unreasonably ascribe to the 
 same antithetical disposition, though indirectly manifested, his 
 discouragement of commerce, hinted in the Coran, and more 
 clearly set forth by tradition ; and above all, his extreme dislike 
 to ships and seafaring displayed in tlie authentic but most 
 vm-Englisli words of the Hejazee camel-driver : " Men nezel' el- 
 bahra morreteyni f kad kefer; " — "He who twice embarks on 
 sea is a very infidel." In fact, commerce has, with few excep- 
 tions, gone no less steadily hand in hand with Christianity, than 
 its decline and stagnation have with Islam ; and the religion 
 which selected its first vicarious cliief from a fislierman's boat, 
 has done much to whiten the sea with tliose countless sails, tlie 
 object of Maliomet's instinctive distrust and aversion. 
 
 In a word, to set his religion and his followers in diametrical 
 opposition to Christianity and Christians was a main feature 
 of Mahomet's plan, and in this he fidly succeeded ; nor have a 
 thousand years and more brought nigher by one hair's breadth 
 sects wliose very badge denotes the " strong antipathy " of con- 
 tradictory terms. Next after Christianity there remained in 
 Arabia itself two other principles, also antagonists of Islam, and 
 against whose influence certain precautions were necessary, but 
 in an inferior degree : I mean Judaism and Paganism. From 
 the former a sufficient distinction was ensured by the Ca'abah- 
 directed adoration, by the use of camel's flesh, prohibited in 
 the older law ; by the peculiar modifications of Islamitic jDoly- 
 gamy, and many other points too numerous for reckoning 
 here. P\-om the Pagans or Sabffians of Arabia, such as they
 
 CnAP. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 43 i 
 
 were, Mahomet had comparatively little to fear, either in the 
 way of direct opposition, or of assimilation. Compromise was 
 of itself impossible, nor was the struggle with these opponents 
 likely to be of long duration or of doubtful exit. But in 
 regard to Christianity the position was very different ; a contest 
 whose length might eqiial that of the ages lay before ; the hos- 
 tile forces seemed not unequally balanced, while there existed 
 enough on either side of a kindred nature to render the danger 
 of some compromise fatal to the very essence of Islam not 
 wholly improbable, when intercourse and time should have 
 familiarized minds wearied by long war and controversy. Ac- 
 cordingly, special distinctions, and a counter-current pervading 
 each detail of daily life, was here requisite to keep up a rivalry 
 of dissimilarity essential to the existence of the Islamitic sect 
 as such. 
 
 Succeeding centuries confirmed both the reality of the danger, 
 and the importance of the measures taken in advance against it ; 
 the history of the ascetic brotherhoods and secret sects of the 
 East, from the Dardanelles to the Indus, illustrates either point, . 
 and proves how near the verge of dissolution Islam was brought 
 more than once by the indirect infiltration of expansive ideas 
 and Christian thought. Should time and circumstances permit, 
 the subject were worthy of a fuller illustration than it has yet 
 received ; for the moment I must, though with regret, pass it 
 by, and return to Mahomet where we left him, ordering like a 
 skilful captain his battle array for dubious conflict. 
 
 To remind his followers daily and hourly what religion, what 
 organization they belonged to, by a series of constantly recur- 
 ring rites and duties, short enough not to tire, yet so frequently 
 renewed as to render forgetfulness impossible ; while each prayer, 
 each formula, should contain a recapitulation of the vital dogma, 
 a quintessence of the distinguishing spirit, stimulating in its 
 very monotony, copious in its briefness ; and at the same time to 
 make them no less feel themselves always distinct from all 
 other sects, opposed to all others, incompatible with all others 
 — such was the end proposed by the Prophet, and in great 
 measure attained. With this steadily held in view, and em- 
 bodied in practice, he could well afford certain half-conciliatory 
 phrases and polite reticences towards a religion feared though
 
 432 RIAT) [Chap. IX 
 
 hated; while combated, yet exacting a certain moderation, 
 and the regard due to power and permanence. 
 
 The subject is important, and my readers will, I trust, afford 
 me their patience in this long interpolation of my narrative, 
 and allow me to revert a moment to its first occasion, the noted 
 prohibition of the grape-juice. In this Mahomet had a second 
 and simultaneous object in view, less distinct perhaps even to 
 himself, yet not less efficacious. To promote the union of his 
 followers amongst themselves in religion and war, to identify 
 these two ends in one, and for this to dissuade and discourage 
 all other union which might tend to divert their attention else- 
 where, and thereby diminish the undivided energy of concentra- 
 tion, was a project worthy of the Meccan Prophet, and the 
 means adopted to its realization were alike characteristic of the 
 system and the man. Thus, in the first place, he endeavoured 
 to ensure the frequent assemblage of the " believers " not once 
 but five times a day, in the legal, I had almost said the official, 
 prayers ; while he gave to those very prayers that military turn 
 •and semblance which must strike the most superficial observer. 
 Is it a regiment with a drill-sergeant at its head, or a band of 
 worshippers with an Imam ? is a question naturally occurring 
 to any one who comes on a body of Mahometans, few or many, 
 in a mosque, or under the open sky, when engaged in their 
 stated and national prayers. Again, the whole frame of govern- 
 ment, of civil, judicial, and military administration, was con- 
 structed not, like in Christianity, alongside of religion and 
 distinct from it, though cooperative ; but interwoven with it, 
 or rather forming but one and the same system, and composing 
 with the distinctive creed itself a unity no less real than that 
 presented by two sides of the same medal, or two hands of the 
 same body. And thus again he set before his followers the 
 yearly " Grhazoo," or war against infidels, as a main, nay, the 
 main object of their corporate existence, a primal duty, an 
 essential condition. 
 
 This was much ; but more yet was requisite to ensure the 
 attainment of a design difficult because comprehensive; and 
 measures to prevent and exclude must be added to positive 
 injunctions and observances. Accordingly, whatever might 
 distract the attention or disperse the energy of the "believers"
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 433 
 
 through other spheres of thought and action, was to be so far 
 as possible avoided, discouraged, or prohibited. Commerce and 
 trade were represented as unbecoming a true Muslim, and 
 even agriculture found little favour in the eyes of the son of 
 'Abd- Allah. " Angels visit not a house where a plough is laid 
 up " are words of the Meccan Prophet recorded by his favourite 
 concubine 'Eyshah, that Atys of Islam, and they require no 
 comment. But social life yet remained — whether that more 
 external portion, consisting principally in what we entitle by 
 a somewhat inadequate term, " diversions ; " or that more 
 intimate, well known ^nd dear to every Christian, above all 
 to every Teutonic heart, the life of the family — Home. 
 Both were sacrificed to the Moloch of military and fanatical 
 existence. 
 
 Mahomet knew that men will not gather together for social 
 pleasure without some amusement, which may serve at once 
 for the link and the symbol of their union. He knew it, and let 
 fall his withering anathema on whatever could become such a 
 link and symbol. Grames of chance, recitations of literature 
 and poetry, scenic representations, music, nay, conversation in 
 which the name of God should not be the staple of discourse, 
 were all censured, stigmatized, or absolutely forbidden. Of this 
 we have undoubted and cotemporary records. But among all 
 means invented by human ingenuity, or God-sent in mercy, for 
 cheering the gloom of life, and drawing together in friendship, 
 intimacy, and mirth, none equals the juice of the grape, the 
 liquid soul of social intercourse, the promoter of good will, of 
 civilization, of kindly and expansive brotherhood. This then 
 was to be more especially anathematized, this more severely 
 and decidedly prohibited. Nor is it perhaps an exaggerated 
 phrase to add, that by few of his blighting enactments did 
 Mahomet go further to curse his followers with that sterile 
 incapacity of progress, association, tolerance, and improvement, 
 which has rendered them the admiration of kindred despotism, 
 the hatred and the byword of the Christian, nay, even of the 
 Pagan world, than when he ordered his followers to shun wine 
 as a work of the devil, and banished its use from among the 
 nations of Islam. 
 
 Did the limits of my present work permit me to cite the 
 
 VOL. I. F F
 
 434 ItlAV [Chap. IX 
 
 annals of Arab history, and the poetical memorials of ante- 
 Islamitic life and society, my readers would be better able to 
 appreciate the degree of civilization already attained by a large 
 portion of the Arab race, and the share borne by conviviality 
 and merry-making in national advancement. But this topic 
 requires a separate treatise and untired perusers ; mine have 
 been already dragged across half the Peninsula, and the other 
 half lies before them. Gladly would I permit myself a few 
 quotations from the Anacreontic songs above alluded to ; but 
 they must be full and many to furnish anything like proof or 
 even illustration ; conditions incompatible with the restrictions 
 of my actual scope. 
 
 Further, but always to the same stifling result, wives and 
 children were, according to Mahomet, " a dangerous temp- 
 tation ; " and all the bloom of domestic attachment and family 
 ties was blighted in the bud by enactments rendering marriage 
 no better than mere concubinage, while polygamy and facile 
 divorce by a natural consequence divided the children from 
 their parents, and set the one against the other, till the 
 dwelling of the Mahometan resembles alternately the stable of 
 beasts, or the battle-field of the twin founders of Roman 
 legend. Those of my readers who may have had the patience 
 to wade through the bloody and impure scenes of a Mahometan 
 djmasty, may there have seen represented on the theati'e of 
 royal or sultanic life what passes in the domicile of the peasant 
 or the shopkeeper in the lands cursed with the Coran. 
 
 Thus the whole energy, the whole existence, of his followers 
 was, in Mahomet's idea, to centre in three objects and three 
 alone — prayers, war, and women. The first and second a duty, 
 the third a pastime. 
 
 That a state of life wherein no pleasure, no diversion, no by- 
 work was to be tolerated, save one of the merest and the lowest 
 sensuality, might lead yet a step further, and conduce to the 
 prevalence of nameless vices, and " disgrace baboons are free 
 from," in Cowper's words, was a result too probable to escape 
 the keen foresight of Mahomet, and he liimself predicted it in 
 a sentence recorded by tradition, " I fear for my sect the 
 crimes of Sodom and their pimishment." Nor needs it a seer 
 to understand that man when debarred from lawful enjoyment
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 435 
 
 will seek unlawful, and that where women are too degraded for 
 respect, they may be also too despised for love. But while he 
 foresaw he also prudently tolerated ; and the slight, nay almost 
 nominal chastisement denounced on this class of offenders in 
 his code, anticipated the frequency of the evil, while it opposed 
 the decent censure of an insufficient penalty. 
 
 " All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," is an old 
 and true saying ; one may add that it goes far to make him a 
 wicked one. Fighting and praying, praying and fighting, with 
 an occasional intercalary episode of mere and ignoble sen- 
 suality, may suffice to absorb the energies of warriors in the 
 first flush of conquest, and of zealots yet blood-hot with recent 
 fanaticism. But when these stimulants, powerful as they un- 
 doubtedly are, come to flag or fail, as at length they must, on what 
 is the weariness and satiation of the mind to fall back ? Not on 
 love, for that has been debased to lust ; not on domestic ties, 
 divorce and polygamy have sapped them ; not on wine, games, 
 and mirth, for they are inventions of the devil ; not on agri- 
 culture, under penalty of the privation of angelic visits ; not on 
 commerce, for it is a turning aside from the " All-Powerful, 
 the Nourisher," to created means ; not on science, for "much 
 enquiry is heresy," the Prophet has declared it. It is hard to 
 see how one can blame a horse so straitly hedged in for leaping 
 the fence, unless, indeed, he lies down to rot in ordure and 
 inaction. 
 
 That such is the natural, the simply inevitable tendency of 
 Mahometan institutions, among which the prohibition of wine 
 may stand as a fair though not the most important sample, ap- 
 pears to me to be perfectly evident, and will so, I think, to any 
 who are even in a moderate degree conversant with human 
 nature. Results are the tests of systems ; and narrownesss of 
 mind, frightful corruption or rather extinction of morality, cruel 
 or desolating war on the frontiers ; within, endless discord in 
 all its forms, family, social, and civil, convulsive fanaticism 
 alternating with lethargic torpor, transient vigour followed 
 by long and irremediable decay, such is the general his- 
 tory of Mahometan governments and races. And that such 
 is actually and visibly the case, has been already shown in 
 part by the existing development and course of events in that 
 
 IF 2
 
 436 EI AT) [Cn.vr. TX 
 
 model state of genuine Islam, that Utopia of Coranism, the 
 Wahhabee empire, and will even more appear in all its odious 
 lucidity through the further course of this narrative — the recital 
 of what has been seen by the eye, and heard by the ear, not from 
 far oft', but on the very spot. 
 
 I am well aware of individual, nay, even of national though 
 transitory exceptions to the general rule. Under the worst 
 systems good may sometimes spring up and even flourish for a 
 while, just as evil may under the very best. Human nature is 
 constituted to react against its ruin, much in the same way 
 that it reacts but too often against its reparation ; and even the 
 Coran cannot wholly stifle the germs of family love, of conjugal 
 attachment, of generous activity, of kindly toleration, of 
 wholesome civilization; nor always prevent them from coming 
 to at least a stinted maturity and bearing abnormal fruit. 
 This holds good in all lands and with all people, but more 
 especially among the Arab race, highly endowed with the 
 choicest gifts of nature, and above all with an elastic and irre- 
 pressible vitality. It is by dint of fixing the attention on such 
 happy though rare exceptions, on such fortunate and un- 
 intended anomalies, that some writers of cultivated minds and 
 no contemptible judgment have, as I must modestly yet 
 seriously hold, strangely deluded themselves, or sought to 
 delude, into ascribing to the Coran what is in fact in spite of 
 the Coran, and extolling Islam for the results of reaction 
 against Islam — in a word, putting the irregularity for the rule, 
 and the antagonism for the principle. With equal justice 
 might we give Charles I credit for the abolition of the Star 
 Chamber, or ascribe the Habeas Corpus Act to the political 
 conscience of his royal son. 
 
 Eeaction social, political, national, and religious has in 
 truth been often and widely at work within the territories of 
 ]\Iahometanism, and sometimes it has produced admirable 
 results, and sometimes monstrous. This is the inevitable law 
 of that process, wherever called into existence, physical or 
 moral. But it is only justice to see in what is worthy of praise 
 the true tendency of the reacting mind, while in the hideous 
 excesses too frequently near allied with better things, we mark 
 the brutalising degradation induced by the yoke long worn.
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF XEJED 437 
 
 and at last spurned and broken. Men are not born beasts, but 
 they may be almost made such. 
 
 And here again, to return to the land of our travels, we have 
 already observed somewhat of this same inevitable reaction 
 within the Arabian peninsula ; more, and of a deeper character, 
 is still to come. But my readers may not unreasonably think 
 that we have dwelt enougli for the present on this matter, so I 
 Avill hasten to reconduct them to our K'hawah, where coffee- 
 cups led us on to wine-cups, and wine to the whole theory of 
 Islam, at least in the intention of its founder. 
 
 Installed in the manner already described, and with a month 
 and more of quiet residence before us, we assorted our domestic 
 arrangements, and agreed on a sort of division of labour. 
 Aboo-'Eysa was to keep up what I may call our foreign rela- 
 tions, to bring us news from court, put the great ones there 
 into good humour with us, and give us everywhere a first-rate 
 medical reputation. Barakat was to do the household work, 
 purchase daily necessaries, cook when occasion required it — 
 all, in short, except the coffee department, which Aboo-'Eysa 
 reserved to himself. For myself, I was to be the great and 
 learned ^sculapius, poimd medicines, treat the cases, " look 
 wiser than any man could possibly be," with Lord Thurlow, 
 and talk correspondingly. 
 
 Certainly we had not to complain of want of occupation. But 
 before inti'oducing the motley crowd that besieges our door, 
 or unravelling the threads of the strange intrigues which ran 
 through this period of our travelling life like the underplot of a 
 novel, and ended, novel-like, in a wild catastrophe, let us take 
 a morning stroll through the town, and obtain thereby a general 
 knowledge of Riad and its inhabitants. 
 
 It is about sunrise ; little folks like ourselves are up and 
 stirring, and great ones, like the king and his court, have lain 
 down to sleep. What ! to sleep ? Even so ; for having all in 
 Wahhabee devoutness risen by starlight to anticipate congre- 
 gational morning prayers, with private protestations and Coranic 
 readings to their hearts' content, and having next assisted at 
 the protracted ceremonies of matutinal worship, drawled out 
 to a most intolerable length by some sour- looking " Zelator " 
 or " Metow'waa' " (my readers are ])y this time familiar with
 
 43 8 HI AD [Cdap. IX 
 
 these terms, and will not require their repeated explanation), 
 they have now turned in ag"ain for a subsidiai*y nap of about 
 two hours, till a suitable elevation of the sun in the forenoon 
 shall reawake them to the supererogatory prayers of Dhoha, 
 and then to daily life. However, the less dignified or less 
 devout, like ourselves, are up and about their business, enjoying 
 too the cool air, for the sun's first rays are tempered by a light 
 mist, habitual in this valley during the winter half of the 
 year. 
 
 We wish to buy dates, onions, and butter — all three firstrate 
 articles in the 'Aared. Dates are here of many varieties ; the 
 red ones are the best, but certain long yellow dates, without 
 kernels, are particularly cheap and of good flavour. As for the 
 onions of 'Aared, I never saw the like elsewhere, either for size 
 or quality. Pity that the angels of Islam do not agree with 
 me in approving them ; hence good Wahhabees can only eat 
 onions with the precaution of careful mouth-rinsing and hand- 
 washing afterwards, especially if prayer-time be near, lest the 
 odour — not of sanctity — should compel the guardian spirits 
 to keep their distance, and thus leave the worshippers to un- 
 assisted and defective devotions. Luckily soap or potash is 
 in plenty, and besides there are here many not good Wah- 
 habees, and we are of their number. Butter is whitish, and 
 sold in the form of small round cakes, much as in Kaseem ; 
 my Indian readers will not require the remark that this delicacy 
 has to be constantly kept in water to prevent its melting. 
 
 We Avrap our head-gear, like true Arabs, round our chins, 
 put on our grave-looking black cloaks, take each a long stick 
 in hand, and thread the narrow streets intermediate between 
 our house and the market-place at a funeral pace, and speaking 
 in an undertone. Those whom we meet salute us, or we salute 
 tliem ; be it known that the lesser number should always be the 
 first to salute the greater, he who rides him who walks, he 
 who walks him who stands, the stander the sitter, and so forth ; 
 but never should a man salute a woman ; difference of age or 
 even of rank between men does not enter into the general rules 
 touching the priority of salutation. If those whom we have 
 accosted happen to be acquaintances or patients, or should 
 they belong to the latitudinarian school, our salutation is duly 
 returned. But if, by ill fortune, they appertain to the strict
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 430 
 
 and high orthodox party, an under-look with a half-scowl in 
 silence is their only answer to our greeting. Whereat we smile, 
 Malvolio-like, and pass on. 
 
 At last we reach the market-place ; it is full of women and 
 peasants, selling exactly what we want to buy, besides meat, 
 firewood, milk, &c., &c. ; around are customers, come on errands 
 like our own. We single out a tempting basket of dates, and 
 begin haggling with the unbeautiful Phyllis, seated beside her 
 rural store. We find the price too high. " By Him who 
 protects Feysul," answers she, " I am the loser at that price." 
 We insist. " By Him who shall grant Fey§ul a long life, I 
 cannot bate it," she replies. We have nothing to oppose to 
 such tremendous asseverations, and accede or pass on, as the 
 case may be. 
 
 Half of the shops, namely, those containing grocery, house- 
 hold articles of use, shoemakers' stalls and smithies, are already 
 open and busily thronged. For the capital of a strongly cen- 
 tralized empire is always full of strangers, come will they nill 
 they on their several affairs. But around the butchers' shops 
 awaits the greatest human and canine crowd : my readers, I 
 doubt not, know that the only licensed scavengers throughout 
 the East are the dogs. Nej deans are great flesh-eaters, and no 
 wonder, considering the cheapness of meat (a fine fat sheep 
 costs at most five shillings, often less), and the keenness of 
 mountaineer appetites. I wish that the police regulations of 
 the city would enforce a little more cleanliness about these 
 numerous shambles ; every refuse is left to cumber the ground 
 at scarce two yards' distance. But dogs and dry air much 
 alleviate the nuisance — a remark I made before at Ha'yel and 
 Bereydah ; it holds true for all Central Arabia. 
 
 But before we pursue our walk, let us consider a little more 
 closely the personages now gathered on the space frowned over 
 by the high castle walls, and limited by the massive colonnade 
 of Fey^ul's secret gallery, and the shops and houses which com- 
 plete the irregular square. Some townsmen of good appearance 
 are already present, nor does their outer semblance much differ 
 from the wont of Shomer or Kaseem, except by a greater sim- 
 plicity of dress and a somewhat lower stature and duskier 
 complexion. Perhaps the general absence of the long " love- 
 locks," so general in the two districts above mentioned, is the
 
 440 HI AT) [CiiAi". IX 
 
 most remarkable feature of diversity. But tliere are many 
 strangers here too, and some hardly less foreigners than our- 
 selves. That slender and swarthy form, clad in a saffron-dyed 
 vest of a closer cut than the ample Nojdean shirt, with a 
 crooked dagger at his girdle, and a short yellow stick in his 
 hand, is a native of the outskirts of 'Oman, a land with which the 
 Wahhabees liavenow not mifrequent nor always friendly doings. 
 Tliat other in a party-coloured overdress, with a large blue 
 turban fringed red and yellow, overshadowing a cast of features 
 totally unlike those of Central Arabia, and somewhat verging on 
 the Persian or the Indian type, is an inhabitant of Bahreyn ; 
 commerce or tribute has dragged him here, sore against his 
 will ; for, like his 'Omanite brother, with whom he appears on 
 terms of great familiarity, he is only thinking how to make the 
 best of a bad bargain, and then get away faster than he came. 
 The servants of our friend the Na'ib, with their rakish Bagdad 
 air, and the wrinkled ill-tempered Meccans, may be easily dis- 
 tinguished in the crowd. But here comes a procession ; it is a 
 great man from JNIedinah, detesting and detested by all around, 
 who, witli his numerous attendants richly clad, himself rustling 
 in silk and embroider}^, has found his way to I?iad on business 
 of high import ; perhaps to intercede, but in vain, for his friends 
 in 'Oneyzah, perhaps to concert some wicked scheme in the 
 Wahhabee interest for the downfall of the present Shereef. Be 
 that as it may, all frown at him, and he frowns at all : I know 
 not on which side is the deeper contempt and hatred. 
 
 Close by I see a tall slender figure, remarkably handsome, 
 and clad in a not inelegant though unadorned dress. It is 
 Eafia', one of the Sedeyree family, a chief esteemed alike for 
 courage in war and for prudence in peace ; but now, like all 
 his relatives, under an official cloud, because belonging to the 
 too-national party of the province, and suspected of a want 
 of sincere attachment to the 'Aared dynasty. Possibly these 
 suspicions are not wholly out of place ; and were it known at 
 court, as it is, though under the rose, to Aboo-'Eysa and myself, 
 that those thin lips not unfrequeutly inhale a certain smoke of 
 American origin, Rafia' would, I fear, be held for even worse 
 than he is at present. Territorial disputes furnish the pretext 
 of his presence here ; the desire of his kinsman 'Abd-el-Mahsin-
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF XEJED 44 r 
 
 es-Sedeyree to find out what chance he has of being reinstated 
 in his ancestral authority, is the real but hidden motive. A 
 reference to our day's halt atMejmaa', in the preceding chapter, 
 will explain all this to my readers, should they have forgotten 
 the causes of disaffection among the nobles of Sedeyr. 
 
 Then pushes along through the crowd, dragging his cloak 
 with Bedouin carelessness on the ground till its lower edge 
 becomes an irregular fringe of torn thread, a chief of 'Oteybah 
 or Ajman. Formerly masters, one of Western, the other of 
 Eastern Nejed, during the anarchy which followed the Egyptian 
 war, these tribes were the first to feel the sword of 'Abd- Allah, 
 son of Fey?ul, and after counting their slaughtered warriors by 
 hundreds, and their plundered camels by thousands, reluctantly 
 assumed the semblance of compliance and the reality of sub- 
 mission. Now compelled, like Pope's ghosts, to haunt the 
 places where their freedom died, they pay melancholy visits to 
 Riad, and loiter for months together in its streets, awaiting an 
 audience of their " Uncle " Feysul, who gives them to drink 
 full draughts from the bitter cup of contempt and conquest. 
 VcB victis in Arabia and all over the world. Nor are our 
 Bedouin friends much to be pitied, for they have only got what 
 they well deserve, did they not meet it at the hands of men 
 almost or quite as great robbers and ruinous tyrants as them- 
 selves. 
 
 Amid the rabble are many other elements, exotic to Riad, 
 though never wholly absent from it. Camel drivers from 
 Zulphah, who in their frequent intercourse with Zobeyr and 
 Basrah, have alloyed Wahhabee gravity and Nejdean decency 
 with the devil-may-care way of those ambiguous lands half 
 Shiya'ee, half infidel ; some ill-conditioned youth, who having 
 run away from his father or the Metow'waa' at Riad, has awhile 
 sought liberty and fortune among the sailors of Koweyt or 
 Taroot, and returned with morals and manners worthy of 
 Wappiug or Portsmouth, for Jack-tars are much the same 
 everywhere ; some thin Yemanee pedlar, come up by Wadi 
 Nejran and Dowasir to slip quietly in and out through the 
 streets of the capital and laugh at all he sees; perhaps some 
 Belooch or Candahar darweesh, like those who accompanied us 
 a month ago to Bereydah, and who here awaits companions
 
 442 7?7J7) [Chap. IX 
 
 with whom to cross the eastern arm of the desert on his way to 
 the Persian Gulf; mixed with these, the beggars of Dowasir, 
 more fanatic, more viciously ill-tempered, and more narrow in 
 lieart and head than the men of 'Aared themselves, with tlie 
 addition of a laziness, meanness, and avarice quite their own ; 
 close by, some young, lean, consumptive-looking student, who, 
 cursed with a genius, has come to study at Riad, where he lives 
 on the Goran and the scanty alms of the palace ; his head full 
 of true orthodox learning, and his belly empty or nearly so ; 
 and others less significant, each on " his business and desire, 
 such as it is," might an Arab Hamlet say. 
 
 Barakat and I resolved on continuing our walk through the 
 town. Kiad is divided into four quarters : one the north-east- 
 ern, to which the palaces of the royal family, the houses of the 
 state oflficeis, and the richer class of proprietors and govern- 
 ment men belong Here the dwellings are in general high, 
 and the streets tolerably straight and not over narrow ; but the 
 ground level is low, and it is perhaps the least healthy locality 
 of all. Next the north--\vestern, where we are lodged ; a large 
 irregular mass of houses, varying in size and keeping from the 
 best to the worst ; here strangers, and often certain equivocal 
 characters, never wanting in large towns, however strictly 
 regulated, chiefly abide ; here too are many noted for dis- 
 affection, and harbouring other tenets than those of the son of 
 'Abd-el-Wahhab, men prone to old Arab ways and customs in 
 " Church and State," to borrow our own analogous phrase ; 
 here are country chiefs, here Bedouins and natives of Zul- 
 phah and the outskirts find a lodging ; here, if anywhere, is 
 tobacco smoked or sold, and the Goran neglected in proportion. 
 However, I would not have my readers to think our entire 
 neighbourhood so absolutely disreputable. Even here certain 
 virtuous Metow'waa's and holy Zelators shine like lights in a 
 dark place, and serve for good examples or spies among a 
 population highly edified, no doubt, by the very virtue that it 
 has not the courage to imitate. 
 
 But we gladly turn away our eyes from so dreary a view to 
 refresh them by a survey of the south-western quarter, the 
 chosen abode of formalism and orthodoxy. In this section of 
 Eiad inhabit the most zealous Metow'waa's, the most energetic
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF XEJED 44J 
 
 Zelators, here are the most irreproachable five-prayers-a-day 
 Nej deans, and all the flower of Wahhabee purity. Above all, 
 here dwell the principal survivors of the family of the great 
 religious Founder, the posterity of 'Abd-el-Wahhab escaped 
 from the Egyptian sword, and free from every stain of foreign 
 contamination. Mosques of primitive simplicity and amj)le 
 space, where the great dogma, not however confined to Eiad, 
 that "we are exactly in the right, and every one else is in the 
 wrong," is daily inculcated to crowds of auditors, overjoyed to 
 find Paradise all theirs and none's but theirs ; smaller oratories 
 or Mu§allas, wells for ablution, and Ca'abah-directed niches 
 adorn every corner, and fill up every interval of house or 
 orchard. The streets of this quarter are open, and the air 
 healthy, so that the invisible blessing is seconded by sensible 
 and visible privileges of Providence. Think not, gentle reader, 
 that 1 am indulging in gratuitous or self-invented irony ; I am 
 only rendering expression for expression, and almost word for 
 word, the talk of true Wahhabees, when describing the model 
 quarter of their model city. This section of the town is 
 spacious and well-peopled, and flourishes, the citadel of national 
 and religious intolerance, pious pride, and genuine Islam, not 
 without a considerable dash of covert immorality and licensed 
 vice, suitable in those who hold orthodoxy for the only virtue, 
 heterodoxy the only evil or crime. 
 
 Lastly, the south-eastern quarter, entitled the " Khazik ; " it 
 is also large, and more thickly inhabited than any other, but 
 deficient in individuals of note and wealth ; here the lower 
 classes of the population find in general their abode, and 
 peasants and other incomers from the surrounding villages 
 their lodging. This is naturally the worst built and worst 
 kept part of the town, the ground too is low, and the air not 
 healthy ; I was told that the ravages of the cholera here in 
 1854-5 were fearful, and can well believe it. 
 
 There is no distinct separation otherwise than by broad 
 streets between these several quarters, no gates, no wall of 
 division. However, each is really considered as a municipal 
 whole — " circle," a Parisian might call it (a ridiculous de- 
 nomination, because it implies continual interstices or inter- 
 sections) — and each one has its own name, but I have forgotten
 
 444 ^'^'^^ [Chap. IX 
 
 those given to the three first sections. Tlie word " Khazik," 
 applied to the fourth, signifies " crowded " or " stifling." In 
 the second and fourth quarters we meet with hardly any liouse- 
 enclosed gardens or orchards; a few occur in the first, and 
 more in the third; but the general rule of Nejed that the 
 gardens should be for the most part without the to\vn-circuit, 
 holds good in Riad also. 
 
 The junction-point or centre in which these divisions meet 
 and intersect is the market-place, with the royal palace ad- 
 joining it on one side, and the great mosque or Djamia' on the 
 other; this word Djamia' means, literally, "collecting" or 
 " uniting," because here attends the great concourse of Friday 
 worshippers to the full and official performance of public ser- 
 vice, elsewhere somewhat curtailed. Hence, too, Friday itself 
 is called " Djema'," i. e. " collection." In no Nejdean town is 
 there more than one authentic Djamia'; the other places of 
 prayer are entitled "^Nlesjids," or, if small, "Musallas." In this 
 point they conform themselves better than other Mahometans 
 to the tradition of the Prophet, wl o would never have approved 
 the multiplication of Djamia's, customary in Syria, Egypt, 
 Turkey, &c. Tlie Djamia' of Riad is a large flat-roofed paral- 
 lelogram, supported on square wooden pillars thickly coated with 
 earth ; the building is low, and has no pretensions to archi- 
 tectural beauty. Barak at and myself calculated the space be- 
 tween the long rows of columns, and found that it could contain 
 above two thousand individuals at a time ; and an equal number 
 can without difficulty find their place within the open court- 
 yard in front. Now Mahometans when at prayer leave a consi- 
 derable space between their ranks to allow room for prostration 
 without striking their heads on the heels of the row before 
 them ; and hence double the above number, namely, a second 
 two thousand, might easily be admitted within the Djamia' 
 itself, and as many within the walled court, would they 
 content themselves with sitting or standing. Whence my 
 readers may conclude the size of this huge but most inelegant 
 construction. Tower or " Ma'dinah " (minaret, we generally 
 call it) there is none; but in its stead a small platform slightly 
 raised from the roof-level ; above the Mihrab, or station 
 allotted to the Imam at time of prayers, there stands on the
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJEB 44^ 
 
 roof a sort of closet or small apartment, into which old Fey§ul 
 finds admittance on Fridays by the covered gallery before de- 
 scribed, and acts invisible Imam to the assembly below. No 
 mats or carpets ; reason why — Mahomet and his companions 
 the Sahhabah did not employ such; in compensation, the 
 ground is strewed with small pebbles, needlessly annoying to 
 the shin-bones and knees of the faithful. 
 
 Once more I must refer those of my readers who are un- 
 acquainted with the formalities of Mahometan prayer to Lane's 
 minute and accurate description. However, I cannot dispense 
 with noticing some slight differences here prevailing in that 
 function ; slight, I mean, in the eyes of non-Islamitic observers, 
 but of the highest importance amongst the " believers ; " these 
 differences give Wahhabee worship a peculiar type, and be- 
 come specific badges of the sect, like kneeling or sitting, 
 surplice or black gown, in our own seventeenth century — nay, 
 even later. 
 
 In the first place, our Nej dean friends do not esteem ablution 
 with water before prayer to be of such imperious necessity as 
 do ordinary Maliometans ; the least pretext, often mere laziness, 
 suffices to substitute for it the brief ceremonies of " Tey'yum- 
 mam," described by Lane. Not that water is scarce ; Riad (to 
 say nothing of other Nejdean toAvns, where, however, the same 
 negligence prevails) is full of wells, and every source has by 
 its side the little reservoir for partial or complete ablution 
 ("Wedoo," or " Grhasel") ; but in this carelessness the Wah- 
 habees really copy the Prophet, who, if tradition paint him 
 true, was by no means scrupulous on this point. 
 
 Secondly, they often enter the mosque, Djamia', or Musalla, 
 without taking off their shoes, or rather sandals, and will even 
 wear them while saying their prayers, a strange sight and 
 a scandalous to any ordinary Mahometan. When questioned 
 on the lawfulness of this proceeding, they will reply by way 
 of explanation or apology, " 'Ard5na tahirah," " Our ground is 
 pure ; " though what particular claim their ground has to such 
 transcendent purity, I never could learn. I fancy that the 
 asperity of its pebbles, and the frequent occurrence of small 
 thorns, is a truer reason for their remaining shod. Be that as 
 it may, a ShJifia' of Damascus or a Mfdekee of Egypt would be
 
 446 HIAT) [CuAi>. IX 
 
 little edified by the spectacle. However, the precedent of 
 Mahomet, who is reported to have sometimes kept his boots on 
 during prayer, coines in here ao-ain to their aid. 
 
 Thirdly, their Adan, or proclamation of prayer, is just half 
 the length of that common in other Mahometan countries : what 
 is elsewhere repeated four times, the Wahhabee repeats only 
 twice ; what otiiers say twice, they once. In this, again, they 
 keep close to early tradition. And all additional phrases and 
 embellishments, elsewhere subjoined from time to time in 
 honour of the Prophet, the Suhhabah, &c., are here studiously 
 rejected. 
 
 Fourthly, diu-ing prayer time they are much less careful than 
 other Mahometans to avoid irregular movements and slight de- 
 viations of posture. In this, too, no less than in the preceding 
 differences just noticed, I doubt not that the Wahhabees come 
 much nearer to the prayer, first said at Medinah — where Belfd 
 was Mu'eddin, Mahomet himself Imam, and the Sahhabah the 
 congregation — than do their Mahometan brethren of other 
 countries. For, after all, the first founder of Islam and his 
 associates were Arabs, and, because such, were assuredly not over 
 nice about minute ceremonies, nor inclined to fetter themselves 
 with scrupulous detail. The extreme precision observed now- 
 adays by Shafi'ees, Malekees, and Hanefees at Damascus, Cairo, 
 and Constantinople, savours much more of the Persian, the Turk, 
 and the Curde, nay, the Greek, than of the Arab, less punctilious 
 than they, not with man only, but even with God Himself. 
 Consequently in this point also we may consider the Wahhabees 
 to be more correct and more justly discriminating than the 
 other sects of Islam. 
 
 However, modern Mahometans in general are of a different 
 opinion; and three years since a very amusing instance of 
 this occurred at Riad. The Sheykh Mohammed-el-Bekree, a 
 Damascene of some importance in his native city, and an 
 especial authority in matters of religion and law, arrived in the 
 Nejdeau capital during the autumn of 1861. What wind blew 
 him thither I do not know for certain ; probably, like many others 
 of similar character, he had found Damascus, Fu'ad Basha, and 
 the Commissioners, rather too hot for him after the affair of 
 July in the preceding year, and thought a temporary absence
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAVITAL OF NEJED 44-7 
 
 from the Turkish territory no taore than prudent. What- 
 ever the cause, he came from Mecca to Riad, where he was 
 announced for a learned doctor and master in Israel, at least 
 among the Shafi'ees. Fey§ul received him honourably, and the 
 city judge, or Kadee, himself, 'Abd-el-Lateef, great-grandson of 
 the first Wahhabee, claimed the honour of making him his 
 guest. All at first went on very well ; and Arab politeness kept 
 down the antipathy of sectarianism and the irritation of contro- 
 versy. At last Friday came, and the Bekree, who had hitherto 
 avoided joining the Wahhabees in any public worship, could 
 not on that day decently decline the invitation of his host, him- 
 self the Khateeb or preacher on the occasion. To the mosque 
 he went, framed, like a good Muslim, his intention of union in 
 spirit only with what should be truly orthodox, and disavowal 
 of any schismatical brotherhood, and stood up amid the foremost 
 ranks to prayer. When, alas ! the Imam on duty, a Metow'- 
 waa' of the town, after the initial Tekbeer-el-Ihram (see Lane), 
 with which commences the worship in its strictest sense, and 
 while engaged in reciting the Fatihah, permitted, horrible to 
 relate, his hands, instead of their due and decent folding on his 
 breast, to become occupied in trifling with the corners of his 
 head-gear, and arranging the collar of his shirt. At this sight 
 the pent-up zeal and indignation of the Bekree could be re- 
 strained no longer ; to continue his prayers with so indecorous an 
 Imam for precentor would have been worse than omitting them 
 altogether. " Allahomma, ena noweytu'l-kharooj min-es Salah," 
 " Grod, I purpose quitting the prayer," he called out at the 
 very top of his voice, turned abruptly round, and left the 
 mosque in fearful excitement. 
 
 Of course the congregation finished their service as usual, an 
 earthquake would not have hindered them from that. But no 
 sooner had the concluding " Es-salamii 'aleykum w'rahmet- 
 Ullah " given the signal of dismissal, than old and young, high 
 and low, great and small, rushed furiously to the house of 
 'Abd-el-Lateef, where Mohammed-el-Bekree was sitting alone 
 on his mat in supreme dudgeon, to exact from him an account 
 for his scandalous behaviour. Had he been a Nejdean he would 
 have made a prudent apology, or rather he would never have 
 compromised himself at all. But he was a Syrian, and a
 
 448 RIAT) [Chap. IX 
 
 Damascene, the most irascible of all Syrians, and now his blood 
 Avas fully up. So he answered them by a volley of abuse, giving 
 them to understand, in the clearest Arabic, that they, their 
 prayers, their sect, their founder, were all impious, abominable 
 schismatics, heretics, infidels, and worse than infidels. Now 
 the dammed-up waters on the other side found an outlet; tu 
 quoques and worse showered on him from all quarters, and 
 well for the Bekree that he wasinNejed, where a first impulse, 
 however violent, is seldom or never acted on. But the by- 
 standers gave him the broadest hints what they thought of him 
 and of his doings, and so left him for the present. The Bekree 
 imagined that the storm had now blown over. But ere evening 
 he received a message from Feysul, warning him that he had 
 better make himself scarce that very night, for that the king 
 himself could not ensure him safety on the morrow. Nejdean 
 anger is, in fact, no fire of straw, it burns hotter the second day 
 than the first, and the third than the second. Mohammed-el- 
 Bekree took the advice, and before Saturday morning dawned 
 was far away from Eiad on his road to Hai?a. 
 
 The Khotbah, or sermon, an essential part of PVi day prayers, 
 is very peculiar here. All mention of caliphs, Sahhabah, and 
 whatever might seem to imply personal or hereditary excellence 
 among men, is left out. jNIahomet alone finds grace, but in 
 few words, and with none of the rhetorical amplifications which 
 adorn his name elsewhere. The name of the Sultan of Con- 
 stantinople is also omitted, and in its stead comes " Our 
 Sultan," i.e. Fey§ul, and the "armies of the Muslims," that is, 
 of the Wahhabees, for they never apply the title of Muslims to 
 any others save themselves ; Turks, Egyptians, &c., being 
 here invariably " KutFar," " infidels," or " Mushrekeen," " poly- 
 theists." Nor do they pronounce in Nejed the odious series 
 of imprecations against unbelievers, often recited at Cairo and 
 Damascus ; " dallil el-kuftar," " humble " or " abase the infidels," 
 is the only but sufficiently comprehensive petition addressed to 
 heaven on their account. Of other sermons, and what is there 
 taught, I will speak afterwards when the opportunity arrives 
 for a fuller explanation of Wahhabee doctrine ; this digression 
 is ceremonial only, not dogmatical. 
 
 Nor dare I in these pages expose to the laughter of European
 
 Cn.vr. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 449 
 
 readers certain peculiarities of Nejdean ablution when it is per- 
 formed, nor are Latin foot-notes now in fashion. But these 
 oddities afford inexhaustible amusement to Arabs of other lands 
 or persuasions ; and should any one discreetly ask them of me 
 in Arabic, I will avail myself of the synonyms of that com- 
 prehensive language to recount a story or two which will make 
 my questioner laugh no less than it did the good folks of 
 Bahrejm and 'Oman, who related or listened to the like in my 
 presence. 
 
 Another discrepancy in worship is negative only, but re- 
 markable. It is customary among Mahometans to repeat ten 
 times over after morning and sunset prayers a long sentence, 
 principally extracted from the Coran, and containing Divine 
 praises. Now everywhere but in Nejed each individual on 
 these occasions holds in his hands the common Eastern rosary, 
 and counts on its beads the number of recitations, thus to 
 prevent mistake. But the Wahhabees have acutely remarked 
 that the Prophet does not appear to have used any such im- 
 plement, and accordingly reject it, while they employ their 
 unaided fingers for the jiurpose of devotional computation, 
 folding and unfolding them successively stave after stave. 
 Indeed, not only on this but on all other occasions is the rosary 
 wholly banished from Nejed, and a stranger who bears it is 
 pretty sure to hear unfavourable comments on modern and 
 superstitious inventions. 
 
 I^et us now resume and conclude our survey of the town. 
 The great mosque we have already seen ; there are thirty or 
 more small ones, or Mesjids, in the different quarters, some 
 of them of spacious dimensions, especially that wherein the 
 Kadee 'Abd-el-Lateef ordinarily acts as Imam, and that which 
 is honoured by the daily presence of 'Abd-Allah, the heir- 
 apparent. This latter edifice is in the first quarter of the city, 
 the other in the third ; both attract attention by their size and 
 neatness, but are, like the rest, perfectly unadorned. In each 
 and all the names of those whom vicinity obliges to attendance 
 are read over morning and evening ; a muster-call, the better 
 to ensure presence and detect defaulters. The " voluntary 
 system " has few partisans in Eia(l. 
 
 Round the whole town run the walls, var3nng from twenty 
 
 VOL. I. G G
 
 45 O RIAD [Chap. IX 
 
 to thirty feet in lieight ; they arc strong, in good repair, and 
 defended by a deep trench and embankment. Beyond them 
 are the gardens, much similar to those of Kaseem, both in 
 arrangement and produce, despite the difference of latitude, 
 here compensated by a higher ground level. But immediately 
 to the south, in Yemfimah, the eye remarks a change in the 
 vegetation to a more tropical aspect ; of this, however, I will 
 not say more for the present. 
 
 A striking feature in this southerly slope of the central 
 plateau, is the much greater abundance of water here than on 
 its northern terrace in Sedeyr. This comparative moisture of 
 the soil and of the atmosphere, the latter being, in fact, a con- 
 sequence of the former, is first perceptible about Horeymelah, 
 whence it increases progressively southward, till it attains its 
 maximum in the Yemilmah ; further on towards Hareek and 
 Dowasir it again diminishes, partly, I suppose, from the 
 growing distance from the mountainous district, partly from 
 the vicinity of the Great Desert and its arid heat. 
 
 I have already mentioned the frequency of butchers' shops 
 in the market. The Nejdean breed of sheep is well known and 
 much esteemed, even beyond the limits of Arabia. This is 
 natural, for good and copious pasture, with a fairly temperate 
 climate, render Nejed a land eminently adapted to the propa- 
 gation and perfection of the ovine species. However, in tlic 
 judgment of many, amongst whom I myself am one, they arc 
 inferior as an article of food to the sheep of Diar-Bekr and the 
 frontiers of Curdistan. In the market of Damascus, whither 
 they sometimes find their way, they fetch a high, but not tlio 
 highest price. Their wool is remarkably fine, almost equalling 
 that of Cacheraire in softness and delicacy. I need hardly say 
 that they are broad-tailed ; all Arab sheep are so more or less. 
 Were Arabia in the enjoyment of circumstances more favour- 
 able to commerce and what else accompanies it, half the Turkish 
 empire might hence alone be supplied with wool and mutton ; 
 the proportion of pasture land in this country almost equalling 
 the arable and the unreclaimable desert taken together. But 
 the difficulty of exportation from the centre across the frontiers 
 is naturally great, and has been rendered yet more so artificially, 
 I mean by misgovernment or by careless indolence. 
 
 Camels abound; it is a "wilderness of camels." The breed hero
 
 Cn.\r. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 45 i 
 
 resembles in the main that of Shomer ; but the colour, there 
 most often between red and yellow, is in Nejed generally white 
 or grey ; black is rare everywhere. The stature, too, of the 
 Nejdean camel is somewhat slimmer and smaller than the 
 northern, and the hair is finer. They are cheaper in propor- 
 tion than sheep ; twenty-five to thirty shillings is an average 
 camel-price ; not much for so powerful an animal. Dromeda- 
 ries begin to grow frequent ; but of them more anon. 
 
 Oxen and kine are much more common in Nejed than in the 
 northerly provinces ; in Yemilmah they abound, and are not 
 rare, as I was told, in Wadi Dowasir. These beasts are gene- 
 rally small-limbed, but always furnished with the hump of 
 their Indian compeers, though less fortunate than they in 
 atti'acting respect or adoration. Tlie prevailing colour is dun. 
 Buffaloes are unknown in Central Arabia. 
 
 Grame, both small and great, feathered or quadruped, is 
 plenty throughout all this district, but is seldom hunted. 
 Partridges, quails, Kata (a variety of the partridge kind), and 
 pigeons, are to be met with everywhere ; and I heard of, but did 
 not see, the Kalam, a kind of bustard, and identical, I suppose, 
 with the Hobfira of dictionaries, though not of spoken Arabic : 
 I have myself seen and shot this bird in the neighbourhood of 
 Kajcote. But small shot have never been introduced into 
 Nejed; and to bring down a bird on the wing surpasses the 
 skill of most Arab marksmen ; besides, matchlocks and bullets 
 are ill adapted to quail or partridge shooting. There are no 
 ostriches in the uplands of Toweyk. Of gazelles, numerous 
 here even more than elsewhere, I have spoken already, nor did 
 I see or hear of any other variety of the deer species. Nor are 
 gazelles much hunted, unless by some chance Solibah. Wild 
 l)oars and pigs are frequent in the mountain ; needs hardly say 
 that these animals are here of no greater use tlian ornament. 
 Only their tusks are sometimes converted, but beyond the limits 
 of Wahhabee lands, into queer snuff-boxes, and sometimes into 
 pipes, a twofold abomination. But even a Solibah would not 
 touch the flesh of the unclean animal, little more in favour 
 witli Eastern Christians than with Mahometans themselves, 
 except where Eviropeans have by their example accustomed a 
 small number of individuals to consider it as a lawful luxury. 
 
 My readers must certainly be desirous to icarn something 
 
 o G 2
 
 452 HI AD [Cu.vr. IX 
 
 about the horse in Central Arabia; the more so that Nejdean 
 horses are to Arab horses in general what Arab horses are 
 to those of other countries. And besides, what Englishman 
 would esteem worthy his perusal a work on Arabia which 
 should not contain at least ten pages on this subject ? I am 
 equally desirous of mounting with all speed what I confess to 
 be my o-\vn hol)by-horse ; but I must awhile moderate my 
 reader's impatience and my own, and we will wait together 
 till dawns the happy day when we may visit the royal Riad 
 stables, and at leisure survey tlie " creme de la creme " of the 
 race ; and then all who care shall have free admittance in my 
 company. 
 
 And now from this incidental mention of horses, the noblest 
 of the bestial tribes, let us make an onward step to man, and 
 add a few words regarding the general character and tlie 
 principal elements of the population of Riad itself and of the 
 surrounding districts. For fine buildings and gardens, wild 
 animals or domestic, valleys and mountains, do not make a 
 country ; " el beled bi' ahlihi," " a land is to be estimated after 
 its indwellers," says a trite Arab proverb ; and the chief game 
 to an enquiring mind, though in another sense than that of 
 Nimrod, is man. Or, to borrow the not inelegant lines of an 
 Eastern poet — lines which may recall to some readers one of 
 Heinrich Heine's most perfect epigrams : — 
 
 I pass along by the dear dwelling, the dwelling of Leyla, 
 
 And I bestow a kiss first on this wall and then on that ; 
 
 Yet think not that the dwelling-place itself is the object of my love : 
 
 The object of my love is She who inhabits the dwelling. 
 
 We ^vill observe a due gradation in this important matter, and 
 accordingly begin from the lowest in the human scale — its 
 negro type. 
 
 Throughout Arabia we had frequently met with negroes — in 
 Djowf, Shomer, Kaseem, and Sedeyr. But we had only met 
 with them in the condition of slaves, and rarely in other than 
 in the wealthier households, where these Africans were living, 
 contented indeed and happy, fat and shining, but invariably 
 under servitude, and in consequence entitled to no share in 
 the political, or even in the civil, scheme of Arab society.
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 453 
 
 Similar is their condition througliout Nejed itself so far as 
 'Aarecl. But here a change takes place ; not only are negro 
 slaves much more numerous than in the north, but even a 
 distinct and free population of African origin comes into 
 existence, along with its unfailing accompaniment of mulatto 
 half-castes, till at last they form togetlier a quarter, sometimes 
 a third, of the sum total of inhabitants. Eiad abounds with 
 them, Manfoohah and Selemee'yah yet more, while they swarm 
 in the Hareek, Wadi Dowasir, and their vicinity. This is the 
 result of several causes : firstly, the nearness of the great slave- 
 marts, whether on the eastern or on the western coast, like 
 Djiddah in Hejiiz, and the numerous sea-ports of 'Oman on the 
 other side ; nor is this a nearness of space only, but of con- 
 necting routes, intercourse, and commerce. Hence the first 
 draught of slaves to Central Arabia, whether from the starting- 
 point of Mecca or from that of Hofhoof, passes directly 
 through 'Aared, and many of them find a master here without 
 going any farther. Alongside of this cause, and dependent on 
 it, is the comparative cheapness of price : a negro here fetches 
 from seven to ten pounds English in value ; at Ha'yel or the 
 Djowf it would be thirteen or fourteen. The climate also of 
 Southern Nejed, which exhibits a certain similarity to the 
 African, renders this part of Arabia more suited to negro habits 
 and constitutions than are the high lands of Toweyk or 
 Shomer, and thus contributes to their multiplication. Lastly, 
 there exists in the indigenous population itself a certain bent 
 of character inclining to sympathy with the dusky races ; this 
 originates in a fact of extensive historical and ethnological 
 bearing, and meriting further elucidation. My readers will 
 permit me a few words on the subject. 
 
 At this point of Arabia, its geographical centre, commences, 
 properly speaking, the intermixture of the Kahtanic with the 
 Ismaelitic family ; and before we go much deeper to the south 
 and east, we shall find the former predominate over and ulti- 
 mately exclude the latter. Now the Kahtanic race furnishes 
 the link between the Arab and the Abyssinian, joining hands 
 with the white or fair families of mankind on the right, 
 and wi-li the dusky or black on the left. These gradations, 
 namely, of the Northern or Ismaelitic Aral), of the Southern or
 
 454 lilAi;) [Chap. IX 
 
 Kahtanic, and of the Abyssiuians, are, in spite of individual or 
 local exceptions, often the result of anomalous circumstances, 
 diritinctly marked out by corresponding shades of manners, 
 intellect, and associations, no less than by the physical features 
 of skin and muscle. In this series the Knhtanic Arabs are, so 
 to speak, nearer related to the negro than are the Ismaelitic 
 tribes, and hence more readily admit Africans to fellowship, 
 intermarriage, and civil rights, nay, even to government — a fact 
 Avhich has not escaped the discerning eye of Niebuhr. 
 
 The terms Kahtanic and Ismaelitic have, in my mind, rather 
 a symbolical than a definite value — much like when we class 
 languages into Semitic, and so forth, after the triple nomen- 
 clature of the family of Noah. How much historical weight 
 may be allowed to these very terms is a matter of controversy ; 
 in this particular case, I should, with all due deference for the 
 learning and research of those who may hold a different opinion, 
 be inclined to admit the reality of the primal facts, while at 
 the same time I cannot give equal credit to all the deductions 
 and details drawn out by many Eastern and by sorne European 
 authors. Constant tradition, and a chronology plausible in the 
 main, with all its occasional and manifest defects, have certainly 
 great value, and deserve respect even where they cannot com- 
 mand absolute belief; yet while we concede the general truth 
 of the origin or pedigree assigned by national tradition, 
 we must expect to find also many modifications, exceptions, 
 and even distortions, in the account of events seen through the 
 haze of so many ages, and transmitted to our view by instru- 
 ments of notoriously defective character. Thus, while we accejit, 
 nor can we in reason do otherwise, the correctness of the Mosaic 
 genealogy, so far as it goes, and of the incidents and pedigrees 
 therein recorded, we cannot but hesitate in the application of 
 these same data, whether made by ancient chronologers or by 
 modern critics, and acknowledge that the base-work is, perliaps 
 designedly, much too narrow for the extensive superstructure 
 of certain Biblicists, while it is also by far too solid for the demo- 
 litionary process of hypercritical writers. These may see too 
 little in it, and those too much. Meanwhile there is no harm 
 in the use of symbols, however defective, when nothing better 
 is at hand to represent a meaning ; a little precaution is all
 
 CnAP. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 455 
 
 that is required to give them their due value, and they may be 
 safely entrusted to any one but an enthusiast or a sceptic. And 
 it is under these restrictions that I employ the terms Kahtanic 
 and Ismaelitic. 
 
 Kahtan, or in Hebrew orthography Jektan, is acknowledged 
 by all Arabs for the first author and founder of their race and 
 nationality, while his residence is no less unanimously fixed in 
 Yemen. Some corroboration of this idea may be found in 
 the names of his numerous progeny recorded in the sacred 
 volume, names yet existing in the south-west of Arabia under 
 the typical metamorphosis of localities ; and some, too, may be 
 derived from the annals of neighbouring nations, especially of 
 the Abyssinians. My readers, will, I hope, be satisfied by a 
 mere notice of a subject whose complete investigation does not 
 belong to the province of this work, which is rather descriptive 
 than historicaL The same remarks and the same degree of 
 proof may be applied to what we learn from Arab or Hebrew 
 records concerning Ismael and his establishment in northern 
 Arabia. But here immediately follows a curious discrepancy 
 between the Jewish and the Arab narrative. In Genesis we 
 find Ismael married to an Egyptian woman, and from their 
 union derives his succeeding race. On the other hand, Arab 
 chronicles with one consent marry him into the family of 
 Djorhem, a descendant of Kahtan. This Gordian knot might 
 perhaps be easiest cut by supposing Ismael to have been a 
 bigamist, no uncommon thing in those days. But the truth 
 lies deeper. 
 
 The learned Fresnel, if I remember right, has indicated the 
 clue to the serious solution of this problem. The writers who 
 describe the alliance of Ismael with the Djorhemites are all 
 Mahometans, and consequently in duty bound to give whatever 
 possible lustre to the pedigree of their Prophet. Now Mahomet 
 was undoubtedly of Ismaelitic origin ; the tribe of Kenanah, 
 from which he sprung, was near akin to that of Keys, and both 
 were descended from Nezar, whoae very name was the war- 
 cry of the Northern Arabs in their combats with the armies 
 of Yemen. But, on the other hand, superior antiquity and 
 untainted purity of pedigree had given the descendants of 
 Kahtan an advantage of nobility acknowledged throughout
 
 456 lilAp .[Cu.vr. IX 
 
 the Peninsula, so mueli, (hat to them alone was the title of 
 " Arabs " applied in its strict and ancestral sense. Mahomet 
 was accordingly less noble in birth than those whom he sub- 
 dued ; the Prophet a plebeian when compared to his aristo- 
 cratic disciples. To obviate this inconvenience, a serious one 
 in Eastern eyes, a marriage of Ismael into the Kahtan^'c family 
 was invented, and whatever honour the fathership of the son of 
 Abraham could not confer, was supplied by the Djorhemite 
 mother. The same fortunate match ennobled in common all 
 the tribes of the north, and put them on a level with the proud 
 chieftains of Yemen, while an additional reason for political 
 and religious union was deduced from an affinity cemented at 
 so early a date. 
 
 However, the entire testimony of history and tradition pre- 
 vious to the Hejirah rejects this convenient but imaginary 
 alliance, and the course of events in later times bears much 
 witness to the diversity, none to the community, of the two 
 great races. We shall now see what light personal observation 
 of actual peculiarities and present life, language, and institu- 
 tions in Arabia may throw on the question. Existing facts are 
 also sources of real knowledge, and the more dependable because 
 the less subject to misconstruction and falsification. Hitherto 
 we have been travelling among the northern races, we are now 
 on the confines of the southern; thus far our hosts have laid 
 claim to be the children of Nezar and Ismael ; a little farther 
 on they will entitle themselves descendants of Ya'areb and Kahtan. 
 We have seen what are the first in peace and in war, in family, 
 business, and government ; we shall soon see what are the latter. 
 How far these various points confirm their own assertion of 
 hereditary disjunction, I shall sometimes notice myself, and 
 sometimes leave to my readers to infer. The personal identifi- 
 cation of Ismael or of Kahtan is another question ; it depends on 
 history and criticism, and does not affect the fact of a manifest 
 and existing diversity in blood, whether we place the origin of 
 that diversity in the two above-named personages or elsewhere. 
 This preface may suffice to render intelligible much hardly 
 to be else understood or appreciated in the remainder of our 
 Avork ; let us now revert a moment to our African friends. 
 
 The number of negro slaves in these provinces gives rise to
 
 Chap. IX} THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 457 
 
 a second stage of existence for the black, common in tlic East, 
 though not equally compatible with his condition in the far 
 West. I mean that not of emancipation only, but of social 
 equality also, with those around him — not by Act of Parliament 
 or of Congress, but by individual will and public feeling. 
 Nothing is more common for a Mahometan, but above all for an 
 Arab, whether Mahometan or not, than to emancipate his slaves, 
 sometimes during his own lifetime, on occasion of some good 
 success, of a religious obligation, of a special service rendered, 
 nay often out of sheer good will, and sometimes on his death-bed, 
 when he often strives to ensure a favourable recejDtion in the 
 next world by an act of generous humanity (at his heir's expense) 
 done at the moment of quitting this. Another cause in opera- 
 tion is one readily imagined in a land where morals are lax, 
 and legal restraint on this point yet laxer — I mean the univer- 
 sality of concubinage between the master and his female slave. 
 If the vicarious husband be a Mahometan, the boys sprung from 
 this union are free-born, and so, I believe, tlie girls, at least 
 in the eye of the law. Among non-Mahometan Arabs the 
 children, male or female, are regarded as slaves, unless formally 
 emancipated ; the reason being that such connections are here 
 stamped with an illegal character ; whereas Mahomet has been 
 more indulgent to his followers in this respect. However, I 
 was told that among the non-]Mahometan Arabs also, the Bia- 
 deeyah of 'Oman, for example, it is rare that a father does not 
 subsequently confer freedom on his children, however born, 
 and this is a copious source of black or dusky citizens in 
 Arabia. 
 
 These new possessors of civil liberty soon marry and are given 
 in marriage. Now, although an emancipated negro or mulatto 
 is not at once admitted to the higher circles of aristocratic life, 
 nor would an Arab chief of rank readily make over his daughter 
 to a black, yet they are by no means under the ban of incapa- 
 city and exclusion which weighs on them in Massachusetts and 
 Oregon, even after the legalizing measures of Congress, and the 
 victorious eloquence of their American or English patrons. 
 Accordingly, negroes can without any difficulty give their sons 
 and daughters to the middle or lower class of Arab families, 
 and thus arises a new generation of mixed race, here denomi-
 
 45^ -^-^^47) [Chai*. IX 
 
 nated " Khodeyreeyab " or " Benoo-Kliodeyr," the wliicli being- 
 interpreted raeans, " the Greens," or " the sons of the Green 
 one." jNIy readers must not, however, suppose that muhitto 
 flesh in Arabia is so literally grass as to bear its very hue. The 
 colours green, black, and brown, are habitually confounded in 
 common Arabic parlance, though the difference between them 
 is, of course, well known and maintained in lexicons, or where- 
 ever accuracy of speech is aimed at. These " green ones," again, 
 marry, midtiply, and assume various tints, grass-green, emerald, 
 opal, and the like ; or, in exactor phrase, bro^vn, copper-coloured, 
 olive, and what Americans, I believe, call yellow. Like their 
 progenitors, they do not readily take their place among the 
 nobles or upper ten thousand, however they may end by doing 
 even this in process of time ; and I have myself while in Arabia 
 been honoured by the intimacy of more than one handsome 
 " Green-man," with a silver-hilted sword at his side, and a rich 
 dress on his dusky skin, but denominated Sheykh or Emeer, and 
 humbly sued by Arabs of the purest Ismaelitic or Kahtanic 
 pedigree. Eiad is full of these Kliodeyreeyah shopkeepers, 
 merchants, and officers of government; and I must add that 
 their desire, common to all parvenus, of aping the high ton 
 and rulino: fashion, makes them at times the most biuoted and 
 disagreeable Wahhabees in the city ; a tendency which is the 
 more fostered by hereditary narrowness of intellect. Some of 
 them take an opposite direction, and imitate their African 
 grandfathers and grandmothers in indifference, not unfrequently 
 in covert aversion to Mahometanism and Wahhabeeism alto- 
 gether. " What stuff and nonsense they do talk about predesti- 
 nation and divine decrees," said to me one day, but in private, 
 a dashing young Khodeyree, who in the mosque figured among 
 the devout est of the Muslims. " If I choose to do the thin<>-, I 
 do it ; and if I choose not to do it, I don't do it ; and there is an 
 end of the matter." lieasoning, if not conclusive, yet not 
 wholly easy to refute. 
 
 Thus in Central Nejed society presents a new element per- 
 vading it from its highest to its lowest grades. Another peculi- 
 arity, not physical indeed, but moral, offers itself in the 
 character of the indigenous population, taken apart from the 
 embellishment or distortion caused by religious tenets. Not
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 459 
 
 only as a Walihabee, but equally as a Nejdean, does the native 
 of 'Aared, Aflaj, Yemamab, Hareek, and Dowasir, differ, and 
 tbat widely, from bis fellow Arab of Sliomer and Kaseem, nay, 
 of Wosbem and Sedeyr. Tlie cause of tbis difference is mucb 
 more ancient tban tbe epocb of tbe great Wabbabee, and must 
 be sougbt first and foremost in tbe pedigree itself. 
 
 Tbe nortbern and central population, exclusive of tbe five 
 provinces just enumerated, claims — nor is tbere any positive 
 reason for disputing tbeir claim — to be descended from tbe great 
 tribes of Ta'i, Wa'il, Mazin, Harb, Kenanah, Sedoos, Tagbleb, 
 and otbers celebrated in Arab records ; but all, except Ta'i, 
 tracing back tbeir origin to Kahtan, Rabeea', and Modar, and 
 forming tbe bulk of tbat great national confederation wbicb a 
 hundred and twenty years before Mahomet broke tbe yoke of 
 Yemen, and brought freedom to Nejed. With these have been 
 mingled from time to time families immigrant from Yemen, 
 and owning Kahtan for parent, Kodaa' for instance, Salee'b, 
 Kelb, and Modbej. Tbe 'Anezab of the Syrian desert, with tbe 
 Bisbr, Howeytat, and tbe Sbomer of Euphrates, belong ulti- 
 mately to the same stock. But from tbe northern frontier of 
 'Aared to the Great Desert or Dahnii, in place of tbe pedigrees 
 now mentioned, we meet with a new name, peculiar to tliese 
 lauds, but very familiar to Arab ears, and of frequent occur- 
 rence in prose and verse. It is Tameem, the most numerous 
 and perhaps the most warlike among the families of Nezar ; 
 and from Tameem alone the indigenous Arabs of 'Aared, Yema- 
 mab, Aflilj, and Hareek with part of Dowasir, are, or believe 
 themselves, derived. Now Benoo-Tameem have been in all 
 ages distinguished from other Arabs by strongly drawn lines 
 of character, the object of tbe exaggerated praise and of the 
 biting satire of native poets. Good or bad, these character- 
 istics, described some thousand years ago, are identical with 
 the portrait of their real or pretended descendants. " Do you 
 wonder at the men of 'Aared ? " said a man of Ha.sa in reply to 
 my unfavourable comments on Eiad and its people ; " surely 
 you cannot have forgotten tbat they are Benoo-Tameem ? " 
 Mucli less spirited, less profusely generous, less prone to move- 
 ment and hazardous enterprise, less cheerful and open too tban 
 tbe majority of Arab clans, they were known as more perse-
 
 460 HI AD [Chai-. IX 
 
 vering, more united, more prudent ; sparing of words, not easily 
 roused nor quick to manifest their feelings, but firm of purpose, 
 terrible in revenge, deep and implacable haters, doubtful friends 
 to all save their own immediate kindred — may I say it without 
 offence, and under obvious qualifications, the Scots of the 
 Peninsula? Their very expression of feature, reserved, often 
 contracted, gloomy, or at best serious, contrasts strangely with 
 the frank and pleasing faces of the northerly tribes, while it 
 implies greater capacity for rule, organization, and, no less, 
 oppression. Acting far more than any other Arabs on system, 
 and less on impulse, of a narrower but a more concentrated 
 frame of intellect and will, their union and perseverance are 
 morally sure to triumph in the long run over their disunited 
 and desultory neighbours, and the Nejdean empire necessarily 
 tends to absorb or crush the greater part of the Peninsula, 
 perhaps at no distant period. 
 
 This same type stamps all their words and ways, even in 
 house-life and in market dealings. He who converses with 
 them would do well to measure his expressions, and his very 
 gestures, as they theirs, or he will be in danger of giving, so to 
 speak, much, and getting little. Nor let him open his heart 
 and mind to men who will think twenty, nay, twice hundred 
 times, before opening theirs to him, nor make too much display 
 before the envious, nor confide in a race where treachery is 
 quite as common as good faith. Not indeed that he will often 
 meet with a downright verbal lie, but he may often be caught 
 by a practical one ; to say nothing and yet lie, is an art well 
 known and practised throughout 'Aared. 
 
 Along with this unamiable cast of mind and temper goes a 
 greater simplicity in dress and in house ornament, the cutting 
 of rinoiets and the absence of ostentation in the use of wealth 
 and goods. All this is simply natural to the men of 'Aared 
 and Yemamah, independent of Wahhabee puritanism, and the 
 rigour of its code. But even this double rigour, innate and 
 legal, cannot always prevent their immense pride from finding 
 vent in gorgeous trappings and costly furniture, when the 
 consciousness of absolute and domineering strength affords 
 security in so doing. Fortunately for them, the number of 
 those who can safely enjoy such exceptional privileges is small ;
 
 CHAr. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 46 I 
 
 and the common routine is one of moderation, approacliino- to 
 austerity. 
 
 The Nej dean of these provinces is essentially agriculturist or 
 shepherd. Woshem, indeed, because situated on the high road 
 of Hejaz, and the north of Sedeyr from its comparative 
 proximity to the boundaries of Koweyt and Basrah, have some- 
 thing more of a commercial character, which in Arabs implies 
 a love of travel and no reluctance to a temporary change of his 
 native land for foreign scenes. Before that the Wahhabee 
 government had, by creating a new and important centre in 
 Nejed itself, tended to draw inwards around it the energy 
 formerly directed outwards to the circumference, the class of 
 travelling merchants, now confined to Shakra' or Zulphah, 
 seems to have been equally numerous in Lower Sedeyr and in 
 'Aared itself. Of this the personal history of Mohammed-ebn- 
 'Abd-el-Wahhab has afforded us an example ; others may be 
 found in old Arab writers, like Hareeree and Ebn-Kha]lican, 
 in the Kitab-el-Aghanee, and Rowdat-el-Abrar ; and even in 
 later compilations, for example, in the biographies of Makarree 
 and the curious but equivocal Mustadref. But at the present 
 day, the men of Sedeyr from Toweym southwards, of 'Aared 
 Yemamah, Afliij, and Dowasir, are very rarely seen on tradino- 
 business beyond the narrow circle of their own provinces. The 
 commerce furnished by Riad and the other great Nejdean centres 
 of population is in its active part abandoned to foreigners 
 to merchants from Hasa, from Kateef and 'Oman, from Mecca 
 Wadi Nejran and Yemen. The born Nejdean does indeed keep 
 his storehouse, but will not go in quest of what to store it 
 withal. An exception must be made in favour of the natives of 
 Hareek ; but of them I shall speak farther on. 
 
 On the contrary, agriculture and gardening are much in 
 vogue. Everyone owns his little plot of ground, whence he 
 derives his own chief maintenance and that of his family ; the 
 monarch himself is not exempt from this law, for a con- 
 siderable portion of the royal revenue is invested in planta- 
 tions and fields. Nor are Nej deans contemptible cultivators • 
 the copious produce of their palm-trees, and of their corn or 
 maize grounds, attests not perhaps theoretical but certainly 
 practical skill. True, the plougli is of very simple construction
 
 462 HIAJ) [CnAr, IX 
 
 but a light soil and a mild climate do not exact the liard 
 stress and deep furrows which demand the more complicated 
 instrument of the North. A rough hurdle answers all the 
 purposes of an iron-toothed harrow, and a large shovel, often 
 wooden, does the work of a spade. Irrigation is everywhere 
 indispensable, no produce worthy of a husbandman can here 
 thrive without it ; and I have already said that a little more 
 mechanical art might be advantageously bestowed on their 
 pulleys and buckets. However, considering the number and 
 the wants of the population — both comparatively less than they 
 would be in most parts of Europe over an equal space and 
 under parallel circumstances — what they have suffices them ; 
 and the Nejdean, if not active, is far from lazy. 
 
 However, respect for prophetic tradition and strict orthodoxy 
 have somewhat impaired tillage, and many prefer theological 
 resignation to the labour of human arms. In this they have at 
 least the merit of self-consistency, though practised blindly to 
 their own detriment. Others, in whom the Goran and primi- 
 tive example have not wholly extinguished common sense, 
 reo-ret the decline of so creditable a means of liveliliood, and 
 add hereby one item more to their many complaints against 
 the work of the Wahhabee and its results. 
 
 Meanwhile another and a very different source of action and 
 ■ occupation has been opened, or at least enlarged and facilitated, 
 by the present state of affairs. Nej deans were ever prone to 
 quarrel and war ; their character, pourtrayed a few lines back, 
 implies no less ; and the motto " thou shalt want ere I want " 
 is not so peculiar to the highlands of Scotia that it might not 
 have been ^yiih. fidly eqiial propriety blazoned on many an 
 escutcheon in the highlands of Nejed. But so long as their 
 feuds and forays, wars and plunder, were bounded by the 
 ranges of Toweyk, there was little to gain or lose ; the poor 
 pillaged the poor, and the beggar, to permit ourselves a vulgar 
 allusion, sued the beggar. But now, under the powerful 
 dynasty of the Ebn-Sa'oods, the case has changed. War 
 became henceforth methodical, and in consequence successful ; 
 better still, it is directed, not against their needy fellow- 
 Nejdeans, but against the wealthy coast of Haija, the traders 
 and the pearl-fishers of 'Oman, or to bring the spoils of Mecca
 
 Chap. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 463 
 
 and Meclinah, of Meshid-Hoseyn and Zobeyr, into the dwellings 
 and the treasury of Derey'eeyah and its dependencies. War 
 is a lottery, and a lotteiy has more attractions than the plough 
 and the spade ; but war attended by such circumstances, and 
 presenting all the excitement of fanaticism, novelty, and 
 rapacity, could not fail to engross the public mind, while it 
 supplied the public wants. From the first campaigns of 
 Sa'ood-ebn-Sa'ood down to our own time, every man of 'Aared 
 and her sister provinces looks on the sword as a foremost 
 means of private and household subsistence no less than of 
 public revenue and state acquirement ; and hence the whole 
 current of Wahhabee being sets in a direction the very reverse 
 of commerce, and not over favourable to agriculture. The 
 " armies of the Muslims," — of themselves, their victories, 
 their hopes, their anticipated triumph over the " infidels " 
 their neighbours, are the staple of their thoughts, the key-note 
 of their conversation, to the exclusion of other more peaceable, 
 but more humanizing and more useful topics. In this respect, 
 as in many others, has Wahhabeeism tended to deteriorate 
 the Nejdean character. 
 
 The language here spoken, like that of Kaseem, is still in the 
 main the pure and unchanged dialect of the Coran, no less 
 . living and familiar to all now than in the seventh century. 
 However, in 'Aared it begins to suffer a slight alteration, due 
 in a measure to the influence of Riad vulgarity, the Cockneyism, 
 I might sa,y, of the capital. This depravation consists partly 
 in an affected use of the diminutive, causing, much laughter to 
 a new arriver, and considerably vitiating the correctness of the 
 terms employed. Were this a work of philology I would 
 willingly give some amusing examples picked up in liiad ; but 
 this kind of witticism loses its force by translation. Another 
 defect here common, is the narrowing of what Arab grammarians 
 significantly call the "satiated vowels," and which represent 
 the broadest and fullest sounds of d, e, and u. These satiated 
 vowels undergo in Riad and Southern Nejed a fasting regi- 
 men, and are starved down into ordinary a, e, and u. Nor are 
 the common people so exact as the natives of Kaseem and 
 Sedeyr in expressing the vocal inflexion denoting diversity 
 of case ; sometimes they substitute one such termination for
 
 464 niAT) [CnAr. IX 
 
 another, and sometimes omit them altogetlicr. However, it 
 is a curious fact, tliat when suhstitution takes place, it is not 
 arbitrary, but follows a law well known to students, for whose 
 sake I will add a few words more on this topic. 
 
 Every Oriental scholar knows that in nouns of genuine Arab 
 formation and declension, the three cases designated, though 
 only approximately, by nominative, genitive, and accusative, 
 the second of which comprises also our ablative and dative, 
 while the vocative is divided between the first and the third, 
 that these three cases, I say, are distinguished from each other 
 by the terminal sounds entitled respectively Fathah, Kesrah, and 
 Dammah, subjoined to the last consonant of the word, and that 
 in this variation consists what grammarians call the "ta'areeb," 
 or " arabization " of the word. Secondly, every one knows 
 that in words considered to be exotic, and not of pure and 
 primal Arab descent, the second inflexion or " Kesrah " is 
 omitted, and its place is supplied by the " Fathah," which has 
 thus to do double duty, while the three ordinar}'^ cases are 
 reduced to two. In this lies the main point of discrimination 
 between terms strictly Arabic, and what are not so. A rule, 
 however, applicable to substantives only, or whatever corre- 
 sponds by its use to a substantive, since verbs and particles, the 
 remaining elements of Arab speech, enjoy freedom from the' 
 Kesrah Schibboleth, except in rare and peculiar circumstances, 
 easily perceived and accounted for. 
 
 Now it is equally well known that the Coran, to adopt for a 
 moment Muslim phraseology, is the one and infallible, because 
 heaven-sent ; nay, the Divine authority in grammar not a whit 
 less than in everything else. So also the Koreyshee or the 
 Ismaelitic dialect, being the only one in which the Deity 
 speaks, and which is still, as we have already seen, the abiding 
 heritage of Central Arabia, is in consequence the standard of 
 genuine Arabic for all Mahometan philologists, and the test 
 alike of vernacularism and of correctness. Meanwhile, we find 
 these same writers admitting also the existence of a collateral 
 but diiferent dialect, not wholly disavowed by grammar, yet 
 set apart as foreign, or, rather, non-Coranic. We are thus 
 assured of three fjicts respecting this second dialect ; namely, 
 that it is of ancient origin, at least coaeval with the Koreyshee
 
 CHAr. IX] THE CAPITAL OF NEJED 465 
 
 employed by the Prophet ; next, that it is essentially Arabic ; 
 and lastly, that it belongs to a race distinct from that indigenous 
 in the Hejaz or in Central Arabia. 
 
 It is remarkable that here, in the vicinity of Riad, and just 
 where the admixture of the Kahtanic stock begins to be 
 perceptible, we find the precise variety acknowledged by 
 grammarians also beginning simultaneously to modify the 
 j)revailing language ; and when we go farther southward and 
 eastward, it steadily increases, till in 'Oman it entirely supplants 
 the Coranic or Ismaelite forms of speech. In this diversity, 
 attended by such circumstances, and itself of so local a 
 character, it is difficult not to recognize an additional indica- 
 tion of that other diversity of race already alluded to as 
 existing, alike in fact and in history, between the inhabitants 
 of Northern and of Southern Arabia, the more so that the town 
 of Riad stands topographically on the boundary line. Certain 
 it is that the final Kesrah here first begins to make place for 
 the Fathah, and further on disappears almost entirely. Other 
 discrepancies between the Ismaelitic and the Kahtanic dialects 
 will be noticed when we reach 'Oman, the stronghold of the 
 latter. 
 
 These observations may strike some of my readers as new, 
 and perhaps wiredrawn or fanciful. They are, however, the 
 result of experience ; I have heard them confirmed by thinking 
 natives themselves, men capable of remarking, and of reasoning 
 on their own remarks. That Niebuhr and other travellers in 
 Yemen should not have specified, at least distinctly, such pecu- 
 liarities, nor drawn similar inferences, ought to occasion no 
 surprise. The Yemen, open now to Ethiopian, now to Turkish, 
 now to Egyptian invasion and occupation, itself a motley mart 
 of commerce, where Jews and Africans, northerners and 
 southerners (Asiatic I mean, not American) meet, traffic, and 
 dwell, must long since have lost with purity of blood purity of 
 language ; while its frequent, nay intimate, religious and com- 
 mercial dealings with Mecca and the adjoining Hejaz cannot 
 have failed to render whatever phonic forms are usual in the 
 latter district, prevalent in the former also. Not in Yemen, 
 at least not in its Tehamah or coast provinces, can we expect 
 to find very marked traces of Kahtanic dialect. 
 
 VOL. I. H H
 
 466 HI AT) [Chap. IX 
 
 We miglit now enter on a parallel Lnt a 3'et more vexed 
 subject of discussion, namely, tlie Nabatlia-ans and tlie Ilim- 
 yarites, of whom, and especially of the former, I here for the 
 first time in Arabia heard the names or found the traces. But 
 the former of these will soon claim an especial notice in the 
 Ha?a and the latter in 'Oman, and it will be then tlie moment 
 to speak of what secondary intimations Central Arabia affords 
 of their influence and existence. 
 
 But I had almost forgot that all this time we arc walking 
 about the capital or strolling in its gardens ; the noonday sun 
 is hot, and probably my companions are tired, and would like 
 to retm-n home, there to make a quiet meal off our dates and 
 onions, and wash it down with three cups of coffee, such as, 
 alas ! my reader is little likely to enjoy from Paris to Stamboul. 
 We will now accordingly rest awhile, and after a short repose 
 resume our interrupted tale, and amid the incidents of medical 
 and professional life pourtray to the best of our abilities what 
 yet remains for delineation of Iviad and of its inhabitants. 
 
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