"I give thefe^ Mioki for iAe fauniling if a, Ctri^Jgit m, iKh Colony' ' Bought with the income ofthe Azariah Eldridge Memorial Fund 19 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA PICTDEE of the KELLA WITHIN : MEDAIN sAlIH WANDERINGS IN ARABIA BY CHARLES M. DOUGHTY 1 1 • BEING AN ABRIDGMENT OF TRAVELS IN ARABIA DESERTA" ARRANGED WITH INTRODUCTION BY EDWARD GARNETT IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. II. NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS I 1908 CONTENTS CHAPTER I KHEYBAR "THE APOSTLE'S COUNTRY" The night at Kheybar. Abd el-H^dy. Ahmed. The gunner's belt. Khey- bar by daylight. Medina soldiery. Muharram. Sirur. The NasrSny brought before the vUlage governor. Amm Mohammed en-Nej^my. AmSn. TheGallas. E vening in the soldiers' kahwa. Ibrahim the kSdy. Hejdz Arabic. A worthy negro woman. Aram Mohammed's house. Wadles of Kheybar. The Albanians. The Nasrdny accused. Friendship with Amm Mohammed. Our well labour. His hunting. Abdullah's letter to the Governor of Medina. Abdullah's tales. His tyranny at Kheybar. Sedition in the village. Abdullah's stewardship. Dakhil the post. Aly, the religious sheykh, an enemy to death. The Nejumy's warning to Abdullah, spoken in generous defence of the Kasrany. The ostrich both bird and camel. Amm Mohammed had saved other strangers Pp. i_24 CHAPTER II THE MEDINA LIFE AT KHEYBAR Amm Mohammed's Kurdish family. His life from his youth. His son Haseyn. He is a chider at home. Ahmed. A black fox. The Nejdmy a perfect marksman. His marvellous eye-sight. The ignorances of his youth. A brother slain. His burning heart to avenge him. A Bednin marksman slain, by his shot, in an expedition. A running battle. He is wounded. Dakhil returns not at his time. The Nasrany's life in doubt. Amm Mohammed's good and Abdullah's black heart, Dakhil arrives in the night. Atrocious words of Abdullah. " The Engleys are friends and not rebels to the Soolfc^n." Andalusia of the Arabs. An English letter to the Pasha of Medina. Abdullah's letter. Spitting of some account in their medicine, ...... Pp. 25-37 vi CONTENTS CHAPTER III GALLA-LAND. MEDINA LORE The Abys.sinian Empire. GaUa-land. Perpetual warfare of (heathen) Gallas and (Christian) Abyssinians. A renegade Frank or TraveUer at Mecca and Medina. SMia drink. A hospitable widow (at Ta,yif). "The Nasara are the Sea's offspring." Wady Bishy. Muharram's death. The NasrSny accused. Sale of Muharram's goods. Aly, the (deadly) enemy of the Nasr^ny. A Roman invasion of ancient Arabia. Aelius Gallus sent by Augustus, with an army, to occupy the riches of A. Felix. The Hdlhal. The Hurda. The Kheyabara abstain from certain meats- Another Ageyly's death. — His grave ' violated by the witches.' Pp. 38-51 CHAPTER IV DELIVERANCE FROM KHEYBAR Aram Mohammed's wild brother-in-law. -The messenger arrives from Medina. The NasrSny procures that the water is increased at Kheybar. Ayn er-Reyih. A letter from the Pasha of Medina. Violence of Abdullah. Might one forsake the name of his religion, for a time 3 Amm Mohammed would persuade the Nasr^ny to dwell with him at Kheybar. The Engleys in India. The Nasr3,ny's Arabic books are stolen by a Turkish Colonel at Medina. Return of the camel-thief. The villagers of el-Hayat. Humanity loves not to be requited. Mutinous villagers beaten by Abdullah. Beyik es- sudr. Departure from Kheybar. Hamed. Love and death. Amm Moham med's farewell. Journey over the Harra. Come to Heteym tents. Habara fowl. Stormy March wind. The Hejjiir mountains. Eagles. Meet with Heteym. 'The Nasara inhabit in a city closed with iron.' Solubbies from near Mecca. The raftks seeking for water. Certain deep and steyned wells "were made by the j^n." Blustering March weather. The Harra craters. " God give that young man (Ibn Rashld) long life ! " Pp. 52-76 CHAPTER V DESERT JOURNEY TO HAYIL. THE NASRANY IS DRIVEN FROM THENCE Byida ibn Ajjiu^yn, seen again. Uncivil Heteym hosts. Ghrooeyb. SS,lih, again. Strife with the rafiks. A desolate night in the kh^la. ZSl Come to tents and good entertainment. A rautha in the desert. Hunter's CONTENTS vii roast. The Tih, or phantom theHil in tbe Sherar^t country. EjHd, his person. Braitshan, a Shammar Sheykh. The first hamlet in J. Shammar. Another grange in the desert. ' Between the dog and the wolf, ' The village el-Kasr. Tidings that the Emir is absent from H§,yil. Beny Temln. H§,yil in sight, Gofdr. Come to Hayil, the second time. Aneybar left deputy for Ibn Rashtd iu the town. The Nasrany is received with ill-will and fanaticism. Aneybar is now an adversary. A Medina SherJf in Hayil. The townspeople's fanaticism in the Ojorning ; a heavy hour. Depart, the second time, with trouble from Hayil. Come again to Gofar. B. Temin and Shammar. ... Pp. 77-106 CHAPTER VI THE SHAMMAR AND HARB DESERTS IN NEJD Herding Supper of milk. A flight of cranes. An evil desert journey, and night, with treacherous rafiks. Aly of Gussa again. BraitshiJn's booths again. "Arabs love the smooth speaking." Another evil journey. A menzil of Heteym ; and parting from the treacherous rafiks. Nomad thirst for tobacco. A beautiful Heteym woman. Solubba. Maatukand Noweyr. " NasS,ra " passengers. Life of these Heteym. Burial of tbe Nasrany's books. Journey to the Harb, eastward. Gazelles. Camel- milk bitter of wormwood. Heteym menzils. Come to Harb Aarab. False rumour of a foray of the Wah^by. El-Auf. An Harb sheykh. An Harb bride. Mount again, and alight by night at tents. Motlog and Tollog. Come anew to Ibn Nihal's tent. Ibn Nihal, a merchant Beduin. His wealth. A rich man rides in a ghrazzu, to steal one camel ; and is slain. ToUog's inhospitable ferlj. Wander to another menzil. "Poor Aly." An Ageyly descried. A new face. A tent of poor acquaintance. Pp. 107-136 CHAPTER VII JOURNEY TO EL-KASIm : BOREYDA Beduin carriers. Set out with Hamed, a Shammary. . Ayfln. Gassa Watchtowers. Bare hospitality in el-KasIm. The deep sand-land and its inhabitants. Aspect of Boreyda. The town. The Emir's hostel. , The NasrS.ny is robbed in the court yard. Jeyber, the Emir's ofiBcer. The Kasr Hajellan. Abdullah, the Emir's brother. Boreyda citizens; the best are camel masters in the caravans. Old tragedies of the Emirs. The town. A troubled afternoon. Set out on the morrow for Aneyza. Pp. 136-165 VOL. II. h viii CONTENTS CHAPTEE VIII ANEYZA The NefM (of el-Kasim). Passage of the Wady er-Rummah. The Nasrany, forsaken by his rafik, finds hospitality ; and enters Aneyza. Aspect of the town. The Emir Zdmil. His uncle Aly. The townspeople. Ab dullah el-Khenniyny. His house and studies. Breakfast with Z^mil. The Nasrany is put out of his doctor's shop by the Emir Aly. A Zelot. Breakfast with el-Khenneyny. Eye diseases. Small-pox in the town. The streets of Aneyza. The homely and religious life of these citizens. Women are unseen. Abdullah el-Bessam. A dinner in his house. N^sir es-Smiry. The day in Aneyza. el-Khenneyny's plantation. Hamed es- Safy, Abdullah BessHm, the younger, and Sheykh Ibn Ayith. An old Ateyba Sheykh : Zelotism. The infirm and destitute. The Nasrany's friends Pp.166-182 CHAPTER IX LIFE IN ANEYZA Rumours of warfare. A savage tiding from the North. The Meteyr Aarab. The 'Ateyba. A KahtS,ny arrested in the street. A capital crime. Friday afternoon lecture. The Muttowwa. An inoculator and leech at Aneyza. The Nasrany without shelter. Arabian sale horses ; and the Northern or Gulf horses. El-'Eyarieh. The Wady er-Rummah north ward. Khdlid bin Waltd. Owshazieh. Deadly strife of well-diggers. Ancient man in Arabia. The Nasrany is an outlaw among them. Pp. 183-196 CHAPTER X THE CHRISTIAN STRANGER DRIVEN FROM ANEYZA ; AND RECALLED Yahya's homestead. Beduins from the North. Rainless years and murrain. Picking and stealing in Aneyza. Handicrafts. Hurly-burly of fanatic women and children against the Nasrany. Violence of the Emir Aly, who sends away the stranger by night. Night journey in the Nefiid. The W. er-Rummah. Strife with the camel driver. Come to Khobra in the Nefud. The emir's kahwa. The emir's blind father. Armed riders of Boreyda. Medicine seekers. The town. An 'Aufy. The cameleer returns from Z^mil ; to convey the stranger again to Aneyza ! Ride to CONTENTS ix el-HeUlieh. El-Btikerieh. Hel^Ieh oasis. Night journey in the Nefme doubt whether we should not turn and avoid them, we iw a camel troop pasturing in a green place, far in front. The herders lay slumbering upon their faces in the green pass, and they were not aware of us, till our voice startled lem with the fear of the desert. They rose hastily and with read, seeing our shining arms ; but hearing the words of peace alaam aleyk) they took heart. When Eyad afterward related lis adventure, " Had they been g6m, he said, we should have bken wellah all that sight of cattle ! and left not one of them," 0 sitting down with them we asked the elder herdsman, ' How B durst lead his camels hither ? ' He answered, " Ullah yetowil mr ha'l weled! God give that young man [the Emir Ibn ashld] long life, under whose rule we may herd the cattle ithout fear. It is not nowadays as it was ten years yore, it I and my little brother may drive the 'bil to pasture all lis land over," He sent the child to mUk for us ; and way- orn, hungry and thirsting, we swallowed every man three or lur pints at a draught : only Merjan, because of his ague cake, )uld not drink much milk. The lads, that were Heteymies, id been some days out from the menzil, and their camels ere jezzln. They carried but their sticks and cloaks, and a )wl between them, and none other provision or arms. When mgry or thirsting they draw a naga's udder, and drink their 1. They showed us where we might seek the nomads in ont, and we left them. CHAPTER V DESERT JOURNEY TO HAyIL, THE NASRANY IS DRIVEN FROM THENCE We came in the afternoon to a sandstone platform standing like an island with cliffs in the basaltic Harra; the rafiks thought we were at fault, as they looked far over the vulcanic land and could not see the Aarab, From another high ground they thought they saw a camel-herd upon a mountain far off : yet looking with my glass I could not perceive them ! We marched thither, and saw a nomad sitting upon a lava brow, keeping his camels. The man rose and came to meet us ; and " What ho ! he cries, Khalil, comest thou hither again ? " The voice I knew, and now I saw it was Eyada ibn AjjuSyn, the Heteymy sheykh, from whose menzU I had departed with Ghroceyb to cross the Harra, to Kheybar ! Eyada saluted me, but looked askance upon my rafiks, and they were strange with him and silent. This is the custom of the desert, when nomads meeting with nomads are in doubt of each other whether friends or foemen. We all sat down; and said the robust Heteymy, " Khalil what are these with thee ? " — " Ask them thyself." — " Well lads, what tribesmen be ye, — that come I suppose from Kheybar ? " They answered, " We are Ageyl and the Bashat el-Medina has sent us to convey Khalil to Ibn Eashid," — " But I see well that ye are Beduw, and I say what Beduw ? " — Eyad answered, " Yd Fuldn, O Someone — for yet I heard not thy name, we said it not hitherto, because there might be some debate betwixt our tribes," — " Oho ! is that your dread ? but fear nothing [at a need he had made light of them both], eigh, Khalil ! what are they ? — ^Well then, said he, I suppose ye be all thirsty ; I shall milk for thee, Khalil, and then for these, if they would drink ! " When my rafiks had drunk, Eyad answered, " Now I may tell thee we are of Bishr," — " It is well enough, we are friends ; and Khalil thou art I hear a Nasrany, but how didst thou 78 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA see Kheybar? " — " A cursed place," — " Why wouldst thou go thither, did I not warn thee ? " — " Where is Ghroceyb ? " — " He is not far off, he is well ; and Ghroceyb said thou wast a good rafik, save that thou and he fell out nigh Kheybar, I wot never how, and thou wouldst have taken his thelul," — " This is his wild talk," — " It is likely, for Khalil (he spoke to my rafiks) is an honest man ; the medicines our hareem bought of him, and those of Kasim's Aarab, they say, have been effectual. How found ye him? is he a good rafik?" — "Ay, this ought we to say, though the man be a Nasrany ! but billah it is the Moslems many times that should be named Nasara," — " And where will ye lodge to-night?" — "We were looking for the Aarab, but tell us where should we seek their beyts," — " Yonder (he said, rising up and showing us with his finger), take the low way, on this hand ; and so ye linger not you may be at their menzil about the sunsetting. I may perhaps go thither my self in the evening, and to-morrow ride with you to Hayil." — We wondered to find this welfaring sheykh keeping his own camels ! We journeyed on by cragged places, near the east border of the Harra; and the sun was going down when we found the nomads' booths pitched in a hollow ground. These also were a ferij (dim. feraij, and pi. ferjdn), or partition, of Heteym. A ferij is thus a nomad hamlet ; and commonly the households in a ferij are nigh kindred. The most nomad tribes in Nejd are dispersed thus three parts of the year, till the lowest summer season ; then they come together and pitch a great standing menzil about some principal watering of their dlra. We dismounted before the sheykh's tent ; and found a gay Turkey carpet within, the uncomely behaviour of Heteym, and a miserable hospitality. They set before us a bowl of milk- shards, that can only be well broken between mill-stones. Yet later, these uncivil hosts, who were fanatical young men, brought us in from the camel-milking nearly two pailfuls of that perfect refreshment in the desert : — Eyada came not. These hosts had heard of the Nasrany, and of my journey with Ghroceyb, and knew their kinsman's tale, ' that (though a good rafik) Khalil would have taken the theliil, when they were nigh Kheybar.' Another said, 'It was a dangerous pas sage, and Ghroceyb returning had been in peril of his life ; for as he rode again over the Harra there fell a heavy rain. Then he held westward to go about the worst of the lava country ;< and as he was passing by a sandy seyl, a head of water camg COLD AND WIND 79 down upon him : his theliil foundered, and his matchlock fell from him : Ghroceyb hardly saved himself to land, and drew out the theliil, and found his gun again.' On the morrow we rode two hours, and came to another hamlet of Heteym. — This day we would give to repose, and went to alight at a beyt ; and by singular adventure that -was Saiih's ! he who had forsaken me in these parts when I came down (now three months ago) from Hayil. As the man stepped out to meet us, I called him by his name, and he wondered to see me. He was girded in his gunner's belt, to go on foot with a companion to el-HS.yat, two marches distant, to have new stocks put, by a good sany (who they heard was come thither), to their long guns. Salih and Eydd were tribesmen, of one fendy, and of old acquaintance. The booth beside him was of that elder Heteymy, the third companion in our autumn journey. The man coming in soon after saluted me -with a hearty countenance ; and Salih forewent his day's journey to the village for his guests' sake. This part of the vulcanic country is named Hebrdn, of a red sandstone berg standing in the midst of the lavas : northward I saw again the mountains Bushra or Buthra. Having drunk of their leban, we gave the hours to repose. The elder Heteymy's wife asked me for a little meal, and I gave her an handful, which was all I had ; she sprinkled it in her cauldron of boiling samn and invited me to the skimming. The housewife poured off the now clarified samn into her butter-skin ; the sweet lees of flour and butter she served before us. I had returned safe, therefore I said nothing; I could not have greeted Salih with the Scandinavian urbanity, " Thanks for the last time : " but his wife asked me, " Is Salih good, Khalil ? " They had a child of six years old ; the little boy, naked as a worm, lay cowering from the cold in his mother's arms; — and he had been thus naked all the winter, at an altitude (here) of four thousand feet ! It is a wonder they may outlive such evil days. A man came in who was clothed as I never saw another nomad, for he had upon him a home spun mantle of tent-cloth ; but the wind blew through his heavy carpet garment. I found a piece of calico for the poor mother, to make her child a little coat. When the evening was come Salih set before us a boiled kid, and we fared well. After supper he asked me were I now appeased? — mesquin! he might be afraid of my evil remem brance and of my magical books. He agreed with Eyad and Merjan that they, in coming-by again from Hayil, should return to him, and then all go down together to Kheybar ; where he 30 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA would sell his samn for dates, to be received at the harvest. Though one of the hostile Bishr, he was by adoption an Heteymy, and with Eyad would be safe at Kheybar. — But how might they find these three booths in the wilderness after many days ? Salih gave them the sh6r thus ; " The fourth day we remove (when I come again from el-Hdyat), to such a ground : when the cattle have eaten the herb thereabout, we shall remove to such other ; after ten or twelve days seek for us between such and such landmarks, and drinking of such waters." — He spoke to ears which knew the names of all bergs and rocks and seyls and hollow grounds in that vast wUderness : Eyad had wandered there in his youth. * * * * * * When the morning's light wakened us we arose and departed. We passed by the berg Hebran, and came to a vast niggera, or sunken bay in the lavas : Eyad brought me to see the place, which they name Baedi, as a natural wonder. This is the 3ummer water station of those Sbaa households which wander in the south with Misshel ; when the AuSjy pitch at Baitha Nethll. [n the basalt floor, littered with the old jella of the nomads' 3amels, are two ancient well-pits. Wild doves flew up from bhem, as we came and looked in ; they are the birds of the desert waters, even of such as be bitter and baneful to the Arabs. We sat to rest out a pleasant hour in the cliff's shadow (for we thought the Aarab beyond could not be far off) : and there a plot of nettles seemed to my eyes a garden in the desert ! — }hose green neighbours and homely inheritors, in every land, of auman nature. We rested our fill ; then I remounted, and they walked for ward. Merjan was weary and angry in the midst of our long lourney. I said to him, as we went out, " Step on, lad, or let me pass, you linger under the feet of the theliil," He murmured, and turning, with a malignant look, levelled his matchlock at my breast. So I said, " Reach me that gun, and I -will hang it at the saddle-bow, this will be better for thee : " I spoke to Eyad to take his matchlock from him and hang it at the peak, Eyad promised for the lad, " He should never offend me again : for give him now, Khalil — because I already alighted — I also must bear with him, and this is ever his nature, full of teen," ' Enough and pass over now ; — but if I see the like again, weled, [ shall teach thee thy error. Eyad, was there ever Beduwy who ihreatened death to his rafik ? "— " No, by Ullah," " But this man), cries the splenetic lad, is a Nasrany, — luith a Nasrdny oho need keep any law ? is not this an enemy of Ullah ? " At hat word I wrested his gun from him, and gave it to Eyad ; DIFFICULT RAFIKS 81 and laying my driving-stick upon the lad (since this is the only discipline they know at Medina), I swinged liim soundly, in a moment, and made all his back smart. Eyad from behind caught my arms ; and the lad, set free, came and kicked me in villanous manner, and making a weapon of his heavy head-cord, he struck at me in the face : then he caught up a huge stone and was coming on to break my head, but in this I loosed myself from Eyad, " We have all done foolishly (exclaimed Eyad), eigh ! what will be said when this is told another day ? — here ! take thy gun, Merjan, but go out of Khalil's sight ; and Khalil be friends with us, and mount again, Ullah ! we were almost at mischief ; and Merjan is the most narrow-souled of all that ever I saw, and he was always thus," We moved on in silence ; I said only that at the next menzil we would leave Merjan, He was cause, also, that we suffered thirst in the way ; since we must divide with him a third of my small herdsman's girby. Worse than all was that the peevish lad continually corrupted the little good nature in Eyad, with fanatical whisperings, and drew him from me. I repented of my misplaced humanity towards him, and of my yielding to such rafiks to take another way. Yet it had been as good to wink at the lad's offence, if in so doing I should not have seemed to be afraid of them. The Turkish argument of the rod might bring such spirits to better knowledge ; but it is well to be at peace with the Arabs upon any reasonable conditions, that being of a feminine humour, they are kind friends and implacable enemies. The Harra is here like a rolling tide of basalt : the long bilges often rise about pit-like lava bottoms, or niggeras, which lie full of blown sand. Soon after this we came to the edge of the lava- field ; where upon our right hand, a path descended to Thiirgh- rud, half a journey distant. " Come, I said, we are to go thither." But Eyad answered, '' The way lies now over difficult lavas ! and, Khalil, we ought to have held eastward from the morning : yet I will go thither for thy sake, although we cannot arrive this night, and we have nothing to eat." Merjan cried to Eyad not to yield, that he himself would not go out of the way to Thvirgh- rud. Bydd: " If we go forward, we may be with Aarab to night : so Salih said truly, they are encamped under yonder mountain." This seemed the best rede for weary men : I gave Eyad the word to lead forward. We descended then from the Harra side into a plain country of granite grit, without blade or bush, ' Yet here in good years, said Eyad, they find pasture ; but now the land is mahal, because no autumn rain had fallen in these parts.'— So we marched some miles, and passed by the (granitic) ThuUan Buthra, VOL, IL F 82 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA " — But where are we come! exclaimed the rafiks, gazing about them : there can be no Aarab in this khala ; could Salih have a mind to deceive us ? " The sun set over our forlorn march ; and we halted in the sandy bed of a seyl to sleep. They hobbled the theliil's forelegs, and loosed her out in the moonlight ; but there was no pasture. We were fasting since yesterday, and had nothing to eat, and no water. They found a great waif root, and there-with we made a good fire ; the deep ground covered us, under mountains which are named Ethmdd (pi, of Thammad). The silent night in the dark khala knit again our human imbecility and misery, at the evening fire, and accorded the day's broken fellowship. Merjan forgot his spite ; but showing me some swelling wheals, " Dealest thou thus, he said, with thy friend, Khalil? the chill is come, and with it the smart," — " The fault was thine ; and I bid you remember that on the road there is neither Moslem nor Nasrany, but we are rufahd, akhudn, fellows and brethren." — " Well, Khalil, let us speak no more of it." Merjan went out — our last care in the night — to bring in the weary and empty theliil ; he couched her to bear off the night wind, and we closed our eyes. The new day rising, we stood up in our sandy beds and were ready to depart. We marched some hours through that dead plain country ; and came among pale granite hills, where only the silver-voiced siskin, Umm SAlema, fiitted in the rocky solitude before us. We had no water, and Eyad went on climbing amongst the bergs at our right hand. Towards noon he made a sign and shouted, ' that Merjan come to him with our girby ', — They brought down the skin full of water, which Eyad had found in the hollow of a rock, overlaid with a flat stone ; the work, they supposed, of some Solubby (hunter). — Rubbing milk-shards in the water, we drank mereesy and refreshed ourselves. The height of the country is 4600 feet. We journeyed all day in this poor plight ; the same gritty barrenness of plain-land encumbered with granitic and basalt bergs lay always before us. Once only we found some last year's footprints of a rdhla. They watched the horizon, and went on looking earnestly for the Aarab : at half -afternoon Merjan, who was very clear sighted, cried out " I see z6l! " — zol (pi. azzudl), is the looming in the eye of aught which may not be plainly distinguished ; so a blind patient has said to me, "I see the z61 of the sun." Eyad gazed earnestly and answered, ' He thought billah he did see somewhat,' — Azzuai in the desert are discerned moving in the farthest offing, but whether wild creatures or cattle, or HARB HERDERS 83 Aarab, it cannot be told. When Eyad and Merjan had watched awhile, they said, " We see two men riding on one theliil ! " Then they pulled off hastily their gun-leathers, struck fire, and blew the matches, and put powder to the touch-holes of their long pieces I saw in Eyad a sort of haste and trouble ! " Why thus ? " I asked. — " But they have seen us, and now they come hither ! " — My two raiiks went out, singing and leaping to the encounter, and left me with the theliil ; my secret arms put me out of all doubt. Bye and bye they returned saying, that when those riders saw the glance of their guns they held off. — " But let us not linger (they cried) in this neighbourhood : " they mounted the theliil together and rode from me. I followed weakly on foot, and it came into my mind, that they would forsake me. The day's light faded, the sun at length kissed the horizon, and our hope went down with the sun : we must lodge again without food or human comfort in the khdla. The Beduin rafiks climbed upon all rocks to look far out over the desert, and I rode in the plain between them. The theliil went fasting in the mahal this second day ; but now the wilderness began to amend. The sun wa,s sinking -when Merjan shouted, ' He had seen a flock'. Then Eyad mounted with me, and urging his theliil we made haste to arrive in the short twilight ere it should be dark night : we trotted a mile, and Merjan ran beside us. We soon saw a great flock trooping down in a rocky bay of the mountain m front. A maiden and a lad were herding them • aud unlike all that I had seen till now, there -were uo goats in that noraad flock. The brethren may have heard the clatter of our riding in the loose stones, or caught a sight of three men coming, for they had turned their backs ! Such meetino-s are never without dread in the khala : if we had been. land-lopers they were taken tardy ; we had bound them, and driven off the slow-footed flock all that night. Perchaace such thoughts were in Eyad, for he had not yet saluted them ; aud I first haihd the lad, — ' Salaam aleyk ! ' He hearing it was peace, turned friendly ; and Eyad asked him " Fe7i el-madziba, where is the place of entertainment?" — we had not seen the booths The young Beduwy answered us, with a cheerful alacrity, " It is not far off." j We knew not what tribesmen they were, j The young man left his sister with the flock, and led on befor^ us. It was past prayer time, and none had said his devotioA : — they kneeled down now on the sand m the glooming, but (as strangers) not together, and I rode by them ; — a neglect of religion which is jiot marked in the weary wayfarer, for one must dismount to 84 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA say his formal prayers. It was dusk when we came to their menzil ; and there were but three booths. It had been agreed amongst us that my rafiks should not name me Nasrany, Gently the host received us into his tent and spread down a gay Turkey carpet in the men's sitting place, — it was doubtless his own and his housewife's only bedding. Then he brought a vast bowl, full of leban, and bade us slack our thirst : so he left us awhile (to prepare the guest-meal). When I asked my rafiks, what Aarab were these, E>ad whispered, "By their speech they should be Harb."— "And what Harb ? "— " We cannot teU yet," Merjan said in my ear, " Repentest thou now to have brought me with thee, Khalil ? did not my eyes lead thee to this night's entertainment ? and thou hadst else lodged again in the khala." The host came again, and insisted gently, asking, might he take our water, for they had none. My rafiks forbade him with their desert courtesy, knowing it was therewith that he would boil the guest-meal, for us ; but the goodman prevailed : his sacrifice of hospitality, a yearling lamb, had been slain already. Now upon both parts the Beduins told their tribes : these were Beny Salem, of Harb in Nejd ; but their native dira is upon the sultdny or highway betwixt the Harameyn. It was my first coming to tents of that Beduin nation ; and I had not seen nomad hosts of this noble behaviour. The smiling householder filled again and again his great milk-bowl before us, as he saw it drawn low : — we drank for the thirst of two days, which could not soon be allayed. Seeing me drink deepest of three, the kind host, maazth, exhorted me with ighrtehig ! 'take thy evening drink,' and he piously lifted the bowl to my lips, " Drink ! said he, for here is the good of Ullah, the Lord be praised, and no lack ! and coming from the southward, ye have passed much weary country." Bydd: "Wellah it is all mShal, and last night we were khliia (lone men without human shelter in the khala) ; this is the second day, till this evening we found you." — " El-bamd illah! the Lord be praised therefore," answered the good householder Eyad told them of the ghrazzu. " And Khalil, said our host, what is he ? — a MSshedy ? (citizen of the town of Aly's violent death or " martyrdom ", Mished Aly, before mentioned); methinks his speech, rdtn, and his hue be like theirs." — "Ay, ay^ (answered my rafiks), a Meshedy, an hakim, he is now returning to Hayil." — "An uncle's son of his was here very lately, a worthy man ; he came from Hayil, to sell clothing among the Aarab, — and, Khalil, dost thou not know him ? hp was as like to thee, billah, ag if ye were brethren." A NIGHT'S HOSPITALITY 85 We lay down to rest ourselves. Au hour or two later this generous maazlb and the shepherd, his brother, bore in a mighty charger of rice, and the steaming mutton heaped upon it ; their hospitality of the dfsert was more than one man might carry. — The nomad dish is set upon tbe carpet, or else on a piece of tent- cloth, that no fallen morsels might be trodden down in the earth : — and if tbey see but a little railk spilled (in this everlasting dearth and indigence of all things), any born Arabians will be out of countenance. I have heard some sentence of their Neby blaming spilt milk. — The kind raaazib called upon us, saying, Glim ! hyiihom Ullah ica cn-NSy, cflah- ! ' rise, take your meat, and the Lord give you life, and His Prophet.' Wo answered, kneeling about the dish, Ullah hy-ik, ' Miiy the Lord give thee life ' : — the host left ns to eat But first Eyad laid aside three of the best pieces, "for the maazib, and his wives ; they have kept back nothing, he said, for themselves," The nomad house mothers do always withhold somewhat for themselves and their children, bnt Eyad, the fine Beduin gentleman, savoured of the town, rather than of the honest simplicity of the desert. " Ah ! nay, what is this ye do ? it needeth not, quoth the return ing host, wellah we have enough; eflah ! only eat! put your hands to it." " Prithee sit down with us," says Eyad. "Sit down with us, 0 maazib, said we all ; without thee we cannot eat " " Ehheden, nay 1 pray you, never." — Who among Bednins is first satisfied he holds his hand still at the dish; whereas the oasis dweller and the townling, rises and going aside by himself to wash his hands, puts the hungry and slow eaters out of countenance. A Beduwy at the dish, if he have seen the town, will rend off some of the best morsels, and lay them ready to a friend's hand : — Eyad showed me now this token of a friendly mind. The Beduw are nimble eaters ; their fingers are expert to rend the meat, and they swallow their few handfuls of boiled rice or corn with that bird-like celerity which is in all their deeds. In supping with them, being a weak and slow eater, when I had asked their indulgence, I made no case of this usage ; since to enable nature in the worship of the Creator is more than every apefaced devising of hnman hypocrisy. If any man called rae I held that he did it in sincerity; and the Arabs commended that honest plainness in a stranger among them. There is no second giving of thanks to the heavenly Providence; but rising after meat we bless the man, saying (in tbis dlra) Unaam Ullah aleyk, 'the lord be gracious unto thee,' yd maazib. The dish is borne out, the underset cloth is drawn, and the bowl is fetched to us : we drink and return 86 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA to our sitting place at the hearth. Although welfaring and bountiful the goodman had no coffee ; — coffee Arabs are seldom of this hospitality. The guest (we have seen) should depart when the morrow breaks ; and the host sends him away fasting, to journey all that day in the khala. But if they be his friends, and it is the season of milk, a good householder will detain the last night's guests, till his jara have poured them out a draught. Our Beny Salem maazib was of no half-hearted hospitality, and when we rose to depart he gently delayed us. " My wife, he said, ia rocking the semila, have patience till the butter come, that she may pour jou out a little leban ; you twain are Beduw, but this Meshedy is not, as we, one -wont to walk all day m the wilderness and taste nothing," — The second spring-time was come about of my sojourning in Arabia ; the desert land flowed again with railk, and I saw with bowings down of the soul to the divine Nature, this new sweet rabia. " Ustihbah ! (cries the good man, with the hollow-voiced franchise of the dry desert), take thy morning drink." • — I speak many times of the Arabian hospitality, since of this I have been often questioned in Europe ; and for a memorial of worthy persons. The hospitality of the worsted booths, — the gentle entertainment of passengers and strangers in a land full of misery and fear, we have seen to be religious. I have heard also this saying in the mouths of town Arabians, — "It is for the report which passing strangers may sow of them in the country : for the hosts beyond will be sure to ask of their guests, 'Where lodged ye the last night; and were ye well entertained ? ' " We jo"urneyed now in a plain desert of gritty sand, which is called Shaaba ; beset with a world of trappy and smooth basalt bergs, so that we could not see far to any part : all this soil seyls down to the W. er-Rummah. We journeyed an hour and came by a wide rautha. Eautha is any bottom, in the desert, which is a sinking place of ponded winter rain : the streaming showers carry down fine sediment from the upper ground, and the soil is a crusted clay and loam. Rautha may signify garden, — and such is their cheerful aspect of green shrubs in the khala: the plural is ridth, [which is also the name of the Wahaby metropolis in East Nejd], I asked Eyad, " Is not this soil as good and large as the Teyma oasis ? wherefore then has it not been settled ? " — " I suppose, he answered, that there is no -ft'ater, or some wells had been found in it, of the auelin.' Gd likewise or khdb'ra is a naked clay bottom in the desert, THE HUNTER'S KITCHEN 87 where shallow water is ponded after heavy rain. Khdbra (or KhUbbera) is the ancient name of a principal oasis in the Nefiid of Kaslm : — I came there later. Eyad vrith a stone-cast kUled a hare ; and none can better handle a stone than the Aarab : we halted and they made a fire of sticks. The southern Aarab have seldom a knife, Eyad borrowed my penknife to cut the throat of his venison ; and then he cast in the hare as it was. When their stubble fire was burned out, Eyad took up his hare, roasted whole in the skm, and broke and divided it; and we found it tender and savoury meat. This is the hunter's kitchen : they stay not to pluck, to flay, to bowel, nor for any tools or vessel ; but that is well dressed which comes forth, for hungry men. In the hollow of the carcase the Beduwy found a little blood ; this he licked up greedily, with some of the ferth or cud, and mur mured the mocking desert proverb ' I am Shurma (Cleft-lips) quoth the hare,' They do thus in ignorance; Amm Mohammed had done the like in his youth, and had not considered that the blood is forbidden, I said to him, " When a beast is killed, although ye let some blood at the throat, does not nearly all the gore remain in the body ? — and this you eat ! " He answered in a frank wonder, " Yes, thou sayest sooth ! the gore is left in the body, — and we eat it in the flesh ! well then I can see no difference,'' The desert hare is small, and the delicate body parted among three made us but a slender break fast Eyad in the same place found the gallery (with two holes) of a jerboa ; it is the edible spring-rat of the droughty wilderness, a little underground creature, not weighing two ounces, with very long hinder legs and a very long tufted tail, silken pelt, and white belly ; in form she resembles the pouched rats of Australia Eyad digged up the mine with his camel stick and, snatching the feeble prey, he slit her throat with a twig, and threw it on the embers ; a moment after he offered us morsels, but we would not taste. The jerboa and the wabar ruminate, say the hunters ; Amm Mohammed told me, that they are often shot with the cud in the mouth. We loosed out the theliil, and sat on in this pleasant place of pasture Merjan lifted the shidad to relieve her, and " Look ! laughed he, if her hump be not risen ? " — The constraint of the saddle, and our diligence in feeding her in the slow marches, made the sick beast to seem rather the better. Seeing her old braadmark was the dubb4s, I enquired ' Have you robbed her then from the Heteym ? ' Eyad was amazed that I should know a wasm ! and he boasted that she was of the best blood of the Bendt (daughters of) et-Ti (or Tih) ; he had bought her 88 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA from Heteym, a foal, for forty reals: she could then outstrip the most theliils. Now she was a carrion riding beast of the Ageyl ; and such was Eyad's avarice that he had sent her down twice, freighted like a pack camel, with the Kheybar women's palm-plait to Medina ; for which the Beduins there laughed him to scorn. — The Tl or Tih is a fabulous wild burr, or dromedary male, in the Sherarat wilderness, ' He has only three ribs, they say, and runs with prodigious swiftness ; he may outstrip any horse.' The Sherarat are said to let their dromedaries stray in the desert, that haply they may be covered by the Tih ; and they pretend to discern his offspring by the token of the three ribs. The theliils of the Sherarat [an ' alien ' Arabian kindred] are praised above other in Western Arabia : Ibn Rashid's armed band are mounted upon the light and fleet Sherdries. — Very excellent also, though of little stature, are the (Howeytat) dromedaries in the Nefiid of el-Arlsh, Eyad seemed to be a man of very honourable presence, with his comely Jew-like visage, and well-set full black beard ; he went well clad, and with the gallant carriage of the sheykhs of the desert. Busy-eyed he was, and a distracted gazer : his speech was less honest than smooth and well sounding. I enquired ' Wherefore he wore not the horns ? — the Beduin lovelocks should well become his manly [Annezy] beauty.' Bydd : " I have done with such J'oung men's vanities, since my horn upon this side was shot away, and a second ball cropt the horn on my other ; — but that warning was not lost to me ! Ay billah ! I am out of taste of the Beduin life : one day we abound with the good of Ullah, but on the morrow our halal maybe taken by an enemies' ghrazzu ! Aud if a man have not then good friends, to bring together somewhat for him again, wellah he must go a-begging." Eyad had been bred out of his own tribe, among Shammar, and in this dira where we now came. His father was a substan tial sheykh, one who rode upon his own mare ; and young Eyad rode upon a stallion. One day a strong foray of Heteym robbed the camels of his menzil, and Eyad among the rest galloped to meet them. The Heteym Tin (nomads well nourished with milk) are strong-bodied and manly fighters; they are besides well armed, more than the Beduw, and many are marksmen. Eyad bore before his lance two theliil riders ; and whilst he tilted in among the foemen, who were all thelul riders, a bullet and a second ball cropt his braided locks ; he lost also his horse, and not his young life. " Eyad, thou playedest the lion ! " — " Aha ! and canst thou think what said the Heteym ? — ' By Ullah let that young rider of the horse come over to us when he will, and lie SHAMMAR BOOTHS 89 with our hareem, that they may bring forth valiant sons,' " — He thought, since we saw him, that Eydda ibn Ajjii6yn had been in that raid with them. " And when thou hast thy arrear.i, those hundreds of reals, wilt thou buy thee other halal ? we shall see thee prosperous and a sheykh again ? " — " Prosperous, and a sheykh, it might well be, were I another ; but my head is broken, and I do this or that many times of a wrong judgment and fondly : — but become a Beduwy again, nay ! I love no more such hazards : I will buy and sell at Hayil. If I sell shirt-cloth and cloaks and mandils (kerchiefs) in the siik, all the Beduw will come to me ; moreover, being a Beduwy, I shall know how to trade with them for camels and small cattle. Besides I will be Ibn Rashid's man (one of his rajajil) and receive a salary from him every month, always sure, and ride in the ghrazzus, and in every one take something ! " — " We shall see thee then a shopkeeper ! — but the best life, man, is to be a Bednwy," Merjdn: "Well said Khalil, the best life is with the Beduw." Bydd: "But I will none of it, and ' all is not Khiithera and Tunis ' ; " — he could not expound to me his town-learned proverb. * * * * * * We set forward ; and after mid-day we came to six Shammar booths. The sheykh, a young man, Braitshdn, was known to Eyad. My rafiks rejoiced to see his coffee-pots in the ashpit ; for they had not tasted kahwa (this fortnight) since we set out from Kheybar The beyt was large and lofty; which is the Shammar and Annezy building wise, A mare grazed in sight ; a sign that this was not a poor sheykh's household. The men who came in from the neighbour tents were also known to Eyad ; and I was not unknown, for one said presently, " Is not this Khalil, the Nasrany?" — he had seen, me at Hayil, We shonld pass this day among them, and my rafiks loosed out the theliil to pasture. In the afternoon an old man led us to his booth to drink more coffee ; he had a son an Ageyly at Medina, " I was lately there, said he, and I found my lad and his comrade eating- their victuals hdf, without samn ! — it is an ill service that cannot pay a man his bread." They mused seeing the Nasrany amongst them : — ' Khalil, an adversary of Ullah, and yet like another man ! ' Eyad answered them in mirth, " So it seems that one might live well enough although he were a kafir I " * * * * * * We heard that Ibn Rashid was not at HayU, "The Emir, they said, is ghrazzai (upon an expedition) in the north 90 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA with the rajajtl; the princes [as Hamiid, Sleyman] are with him, and they lie encamped at Heyennieh ", — that is a place of wells in the Nefiid, towards Jauf, The Shammar princes have fortified it with a block-house ; and a man or two are left in garrison, who are to shoot out at hostile ghrazzus : so that none shall draw water there, to pass over, contrary to the will of Ibn Rashid. We heard that AnSybar was left deputy at Hayil. — The sky was overcast whilst we sat, and a heavy shower fell suddenly. The sun soon shone forth again, and the hareem ran joyfully from the tents to fill their girbies, under the streaming granite rocks. The sheykh bade replenish the coffee pots, and give us a bowl of that sweet water to drmk — Braitshan's mother boiled us a supper-dish of temmn : the nomad hospitality of milk was here scant, — but this is commonly seen in a coffee sheykh's beyt. Departing betimes on the morrow we journeyed in a country now perfectly known to Eyad The next hollow ground was like a bed of colocynth gourds, they are in colour and bigness as oranges. We marched two hours and came to a troop of camels : the herds were two young men of Shammar. They asked of the land backward, by which we had passed, ' Was the rabla sprung, and which and which plants for pasture had we seen there ? ' Then one of them went to a milch naga to milk for us ; but the other, looking upon me, said, " Is not this Khalil, the Nasrany ? " [he too had seen me in Hayil] ! We were here abreast of the first outlying settlements of the Jebel ; and now looking on our left hand, we had a pleasant sight, between two rising grounds, of green corn plots. My raiiks said, " It is Chissa, a corn hamlet, and you m-iy see some of their women yonder ; they come abroad to gather green fodder for the well camels." A young man turned from beside them, with a grass-hook in his hand; and ran hither to enquire tidings of us passengers. — Nor he nor might those women be easily discerned from Beduw ! After the first word he asked us for a galliiin of tobacco ; — " But come, he said, with me to onr kasiir ; ye shall find dates and coffee, and there rest your selves." He trussed on his neck what gathered herbs he had in his cloak, and ran before us to the settlement. We found their kasiir to be poor low cottages of a single chamber — Gussa is a [new] desert grange of the Emir, inhabited only three months in the year, for the watering of the corn fields (here from six-fathom square well-pits sunk in the hard earth), tUl the harvest; then the husbandmen will go home to their villages : the site is in a small wady Here were but sis households of fifteen or twenty persons, TOBACCO TIPPLERS 91 seldom visited by tarkles (terdgy). Aly our host set before us dates with some of his spring butter and I6ban : I wondered at his alacrity to welcome us, — as if we had been of old acquaint ance ! Then he told them, that 'Last night he dreamed of a tarkly, which should bring them tobacco ! ' — Even here one knew me! and said, "Is not this Khalil, the Nasrany? and he has a paper from Ibn Rashid, that none may molest him ; I myself saw it sealed by the Emir. " " How sweet, they exclaimed, is dokhan when we taste it again ! — wellah we are sherarib (tobacco tip plers) " I said, " Ye have land, why then do ye not sow it ? "¦ — " Well, we bib it ; but to sow tobacco, and see the plant growing in our fields, that were an unseemly thing, makrHha ! " When we left them near midday, they counselled us to pass by Agella, another like ' dlra,' or outlying corn settlement ; we might arrive there ere nightfall. — Bej^ond their cornfields, I saw young palms set in the seyl-strand : but wanting water, many were already sere. Commonly the sappy herb is seen to spring in any hole (that was perhaps the burrow of some wild creature) in the hard khala, though the waste soil be all bare : and the Gussa husbandmen had planted in like wise their palms that could not be watered ; the ownership was betwixt them and the Beduw As they had shown us we held our way, through a grey and russet granite country, with more often basalt than the former trap rocks. Eyad showed me landmarks, eastward, of the wells es-Sdkf a summer water-station of Shammar. Under a granite hill I saw lower courses of two cell-heaps, like those in the Harras ; and in another place eight or more breast-high wild flagstones of granite, set up in a row. — There was in heathen times an idol's house in these forlorn mountains. Seeing the discoloured head of a granite berg above us, the rafiks climbed there to look for water ; and finding some they filled our girby. When the sun was setting we came to a hollow path, which was likely to lead to Agella. The wilder ness was again mahal, a rising wind ruffled about us, and clouds covered the stars with darkness which seemed to bereave the earth from under our footsteps. My companions would seek now some sheltered place, and slumber till morning ; but I encouraged them to go forward, to find the settlement to night. We journeyed yet two hours, and I saw some house building, though my companions answered me, it was a white rock : we heard voices and barking dogs soon after, and passed before a solitary nomad booth. We were come to the " dirat " el-Agella. Here were but two cabins of single ground-cham bers and wells, and cornplots. The wind was higli, we shouted 92 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA under the first of the house-walls ; and a man came forth who bade us good evening. He fetched us fuel, and we kindled a fire in the lee of his house, and warmed ourselves : then our host brought us dates and butter and leban, and said, ' He was sorry he could not lodge us within doors, and the hour was late to cook anything.' Afterward, taking up his empty vessel.^, he left us to sleep. We had gone, they said, by a small settlement, Hdfirat Zeyim ; my companions had not been here before Hayil was now not far ofl", Eyad said ; " To-morrow, we will set forward in the jehemma, that is betwixt the dog and the wolf, — which is so soon, Khalil, as thou mayest distinguish between a hound and the wolf, (in the dawning)." — The northern blast (of this last night in March) was keen and rude, and when the day broke, we rose shivering ; they would not remove now till the warm sun was somewhat risen. Yet we had rested through this night better than our hosts ; for as we lay awake in the cold, we heard the shrieking of their well-wheels till the morning light. Merjdn : " Have the husbandmen or the Beduw the better life? speak, Khalil, for we know that thou wast brought up among the Beduw," — "I would sell my palms, if I had any, to buy camels, and dwell with the nomads." — "And I," said he. As we set forward the ajjdj or sand-beanng wind encum bered our eyes. A boy came along with us returning to el-Kasr, which we shonld pass to-day: — so may any person join himself to what travelling company he will in the open Arabic countries. The wilderness eastward is a plain full of granite bergs, whose heads are often trappy basalt ; more seldom they are crumbling needles of slaty trap rock. Before noon, we were m sight of el-Kasr, under Ajja, which Meijan in his loghra pronounced Bjja: we had passed from the mdhal, and a spring greenness was here upon the face of the desert There are circuits of the common soil about the desert villages where no nomads may drive their cattle upon pain of being accused to the Emir : such township rights are called h'md [confer Numb, xxxv 2-5] We saw here a young man of el-Kasr, riding round upon an ass to gather fuel, and to cut fodder for his well camels. Now he crossed to us and cried welcome, and alighted ; that was to pull out a sour milkskin from his wallet — of which he poured us out to drink, saying, " You passengers may be thirsty ? " Then taking forth dates, he spread them on the ground before us, and bade us break our fasts : so remounting cheerfully, he said, " We shall meet again this evening in the village " The rafiks loosed out the thelul, and we lay do-wn in the sand of a seyl without shadow from the sun, to repose awhile. The THE WALLS OF EL-KASR 93 Ageylies chatted ; and when the village boy heard say between their talk, that there was a Dowlat at Medina, — " El-Medina ! cries he, kus umm-ha!" — Eyad and Merjan looked up like saints, with beatific visages ! and told him, with a religious awe, ' He had made himself a kafir ! for knew he not that el-Medina is one of the two sanctuaries?' They added that word of the sighing Mohammedan piety, " Ullah, ammr-ha, the Lord build up Medina" — I have heard some Beduwy put thereto ' mubrak thelul en-Wdby, the couching place of the prophet's dromedary,' [Christians in the Arabic border-lands will say in their sleeve, Ullah yuharrah-ha, ' The Lord consume her with fire ! '] It was new lore to the poor lad, who answered half aghast, that 'he meant not to speak anything amiss, and betook refuge in Ullah.' He drew out parched locusts from his scrip, and fell to eat again : locust clouds had passed over the Jebel, he said, two months before, but the damage had been light. The t6la, or new fruit-stalks of their palms, were not yet put forth ; we saw also their corn standing green : so that the harvest in Jebel Shammar may be nearly three weeks later than at Kheybar and Medina. At half-afternoon we made forward towards the (orchard) walls of el-Kasr, fortified with the lighthouse-like towers of a former age. Eyad said, 'And il' we set out betimes on the morrow, we might arrive in Hayil, hd'l hazta, about this time.' The villagers were now at rest in their houses, in the hottest of the day, and no man stirring. We went astray in the outer blind lanes of the clay village, with broken walls and cavernous ground of filthy sunny dust. Europeans look upon the Arabic squalor with loathing : to our senses it is heathenish. Some children brought us into the town. At the midst is a small open place with a well-conduit, where we watered the theliil : that water is sweet, but lukewarm, as all ground-water in Arabia. Then we went to sit down, where the high western wall cast already a little shadow, in the public view ; looking that some householder would call us. Men stood in their cottage thresholds to look at us Bednins : then one approached, — it seems these villagers take the charge in turn, and we stood up to meet him. He enquired, "What be ye, and whence come j^e, and whither will ye ? " we sat down after our answer, and he left us. He came again and said ' sum ! ' and we rose and followed him. The villager led us into his cottage yard ; here we sat on the earth, and he brought us dates, with a little butter and thin whey : when we had eaten he returned, and we were called to the village Kahwa, Here also they knew me, for some had seen me in Hayil, These 94 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA morose peasants cumbered me with religious questions ; tUl I was most weary of their insane fanaticism El-Kasr, that is Kasr el-Asheruwdt, is a village of two hundred and fifty to three hundred souls ; the large graveyard, without the place, is a wilderness of wild headstones of many genera tions. Their wells are sunk to a depth (the Beduins say) of thirty fathoms ! We now heard sure tidings of the Emir ; his camp had been removed to Hazsel, that is an aed or jau (watering place made in hollow ground) not distant, eastwards, from Shekaky in the Ruwalla country (where was this year a plentiful rabla), ' and all Shammar was with him and the Emir's cattle.' They were not many days out from Hayil, and the coming again of the Prince and his people would not be for some other weeks. These are the pastoral, and warlike spring excursions of the Shammar Princes. A month or two they lie thus in tents like the Beduw ; but the end of their loitering idleness is a vehement activity: for as ever their cattle are murubba, they will mount upon some great ghrazzu, with the rajjajil and a cloud of Beduw, and ride swiftly to surprise their enemies; and after that they come again (commonly with a booty) to Hayil. — All the desert abo'/e Ka.sr was, they told us, mahal. The rabia was this year upon the western side of Ajja ; and the Emir's troops of mares and horses had been sent to graze about M6gug. Eyad enquired, ' If anything had been heard of the twenty Ageyl riders from Medina ! ' The villagers of Kasr are Beny Temlm : theirs is a very ancient name in Arabia They were of old time Beduins and villagers, and their settled tribesmen were partly of the nomad life ; now they are only villagers They are more robust than the Beduin neighbours, but churlish, and of little hospitality. In the evening these villagers talked tediously with us strangers, and made no kahwa. Upon a side of their public coffee hall was a raised bank of clay gravel, the manim or travellers' bed stead, a very harsh and stony lodging to those who come in from the austere delicacy of the desert ; where in nearly every place is some softness of the pure sand. The nights, which we had found cold in the open wilderness, were here warm in the shelter of walls. — When we departed ere day, I saw many of these Arabian peasants sleeping abroad in their mantles; they lay stretched like hounds in the dust of the vUlage street. At sunrise we saw the twin heads of the Sumra H4yil, Eyad responded to all men's questions; "We go with this Khalil to Hayil, at the commandment of the Bashat el-Medina ; EYAD'S LIGHT HEAD 95 and are bearers of his sealed letter to Ibn Rashid ; but we know not what is in the writing, — which may be to cut off all our heads ! ' — also I said in my heart, ' The Turks are treacher ous ! ' — But should I break the Pasha's seal ? No ! I would sooner hope for a fair event of that hazard. This sealed letter of the governor of Medina, -^vas opened after my returning from Arabia, at a British Consulate ; and it contained no more than his commending me to ' The Sheykh' Ibn Eashid, and the request that he would send me forward on my journey. I walked in the mornings two hours, and as much at after noon, that my companions might ride ; and to spare their sickly theliil I climbed to the saddle, as she stood, like a Beduwy : but the humanity which I showed them, to my possibility, hardened their ungenerous hearts. Seeing them weary, and Eyftd complaining that his soles were worn to the quick, I went on walking barefoot to Gofar, and bade them ride still. — There I beheld once more (oh ! blissful sight,) the plum trees and almond trees blossoming in an Arabian oasis. We met with no one in the long main street ; the men were now in the fields, or sleeping out the heat of the day in their houses. We went by the Mandkh, and I knew it well ; but my companions, who had not been this way of late years, were gone on, and so we lost our breakfast. When I called they would not hear ; they went to knock at a door far beyond. They sat down at last in the street's end, but we saw no man. " Let us to Hayil, and mount thou, Khalil ! " said the rafiks. We went on through the ruins of the northern quarter, where I showed them the road ; and come near the desert side, I took the next way, but they trod in another. I called them, they called to me, and I went on riding. Upon this Eyad's light head turn ing, whether it were he had not tasted tobacco this day, or because he was weary and fasting, he began to curse me ; and came running like a madman, 'to take the theliil.' When I told him I would not suffer it, he stood aloof and cursed on, and seemed to have lost his understanding, A mile beyond he returned to a better mind, and acknowledged to me, that 'until he had drunk tobacco of a morning his heart burned within him, the brain rose in his pan, and he felt like a fiend,' — It were as easy to contain such a spirit as to bind water ! I rode not a little pensively, this third time, in the beaten way to Hayil; and noted again (with abhorrence, of race) at every few hours' end their "kneeling places"; — those little bays of stones set out in the desert soil, where wayfarers over taken by the canonical hours may patter the formal prayer of 96 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA their reUgion. — About midway we met the morning passengers from Hayil ' and looking upon me with the implacable eyes of their fanaticism, every one who went by uttered the same hard words to my companions, ' Why bring ye him again ? ' Ambar, Aneybar's brother, came next, riding upon an ass in a com pany ; he went to Gofar, where he had land and palms. But the worthy Galla libertine greeted us with a pleasant good humour, — I was less it might be in disgrace of the princely household than of the fanatical populace We saw soon above the brow of the desert the white tower-head of the great donjon of the castle, and said Merjan, " Some think that the younger children of Telal be yet alive therein. They see the world from their tower, and they are unseen." Upon our right hand lay the palms in the desert, es-Sherafa, founded by Metaab : — so we rode on into the town. We entered Hayil near the time of the afternoon prayers. Because the Emir was absent, there was no business ! the most shops were shut. The long market street was silent ; and their town seemed a dead and empty place, I saw the renegade Abdullah sitting at a shop door ; then Ibrahim and a few more of my acquaintance, and lastly the schoolmaster. The unsavoury pedant stood and cried with many deceitful gestures, "Now, welcome ! and blessed be the Lord ! — Khalil is a Moslem ! " (for else he guessed I had not been so foolhardy as to re-enter Ibn Rashid's town.) At the street's end I met with Aneybar, lieu tenant now in (empty) Hayil for the Emir ; he came from the Kasr carrying in his hand a gold-hilted back-sword : the great man saluted me cheerfully and passed by. I went to alight before the castle, in the empty Meshab, which was wont to he full of the couching thehiia of visiting Beduins : but in these days since Ibn Eashid was ghrazzai, there came no more Beduins to the town. About half the men of Hayil were now in the field with Ibn Rashid ; for, besides his salaried rajajil, even the salesmen of the siik are the Prince's servants, to ride with him This custom of military service has discouraged many traders of the East Nejd provinces, who had otherwise been willing to try their fortunes in Hayil. Some maUgnants of the castle ran together at the news, that the Nasrany was come again. I saw them stand in the tower gate, with the old coffee-server ; " Heigh ! (they cried) it is he indeed ! now it may please Ullah he will be put to death," — Whilst I was in this astonishment, Aneybar returned; he had but walked some steps to find his wit. " Salaam, aleyh ! " " Aleykdm es-salaam," he answered me again, betwixt good will and wondering, and cast back the head ; for they have all A PRINCELY CHILD 97 learned to strut like the Emirs. Aneybar gave me his right hand with a lordly grace : there was the old peace of bread and salt betwixt us. — " From whence, Khalil ? and ye twain with him what be ye ? — well go to the coffee hall ! and there we will hear more," Aly el-Ayid went by us, coming from his house, and saluted me heartily. When we were seated with Aneybar in the great kahwa, he asked again, " And you Beduw with him, what be ye ? " Eyad responded with a craven humility : " We are Heteym." — " Nay ye are not Heteym." — " Tell them, I said, both what ye be, and who sent you hither." Bydd : " We are Ageyl from Medina, and the Pasha sent us to Kheybar to convey this Khalil, with a letter to Ibn Rashid." — " Well, Ageyl, and what tribesmen ? " — " We must acknowledge we are Beduins, we are Auajy." Aneybar : " And, Khalil, where are your letters ? " — I gave him a letter from Abdullah es-Siruan, and the Pasha's sealed letter. Aneybar, who had not learned to read, gave them to a secretary, a sober and friendly man, who perusing the unflat tering titles " To the sheykh Ibn Bashid," returned them to me unopened. — Mufarrij, the steward, now came in; he took me friendly by the hand, and cried, " Sum ! " and led us to the mothlf. There a dish was set before us of Ibn Rashid's rusty tribute dates, and — their spring hospitality — a bowl of small camel leban. One of the kitchen servers showed me a piece of ancient copper money, which bore the image of an eagle ; it had been found at Hayil, and was Roman. The makhzau was assigned us in which I had formerly lodged ; and my rafiks left me to visit their friends in the town. Children soon gathered to the threshold and took courage to revile me. Also there came to me the princely child Abd el- Aziz, the orphan of Metaab : I saw him fairly grown in these three months; he swaggered now like his uncle with a lofty but not disdainful look, and he resembles the Emir Mohammed. The princely child stood and silently regarded me, he clapt a hand to his little sword, but would not insult the stranger ; so he said : " Why returned, Khalil Nasrany ? " — " Because I hoped it would be pleasant to thine uncle, my darling." — " Nay, Khalil ! nay, Khalil ! the Emir says thou art not to remain here." I saw Zeyd the gate-keeper leading Merjan by the hand; and he enquired of the lad, who was of a vindictive nature, of all that had happened to me since the day I arrived at Kheybar. Such questions and answers could only be to my hurt : it was a danger I had foreseen, amongst ungenerous Arabs. VOL. II. G 98 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA We found Aneybar in the coffee-hall at evening : " KhalU, he s£ad, we cannot send thee forward, and thou must depart to-morrow." — " Well, send me to the Emir in the North with the Medina letter, if I may not abide hia coming in Hayil," — " Here rest to-night, and in the morning (he shot his one palm from the other) depart ! — Thou stay here, Khalil ! the people threatened thee to-day, thou sawest how they pressed on thee at your entering," — " None pressed upon me, many saluted me." — " Life of Ullah ! but I durst not suffer thee to remain in Hayil, where so many are ready to kill thee, and I must answer to the Emir : sleep here this night, and please Ullah without mishap, and mount when we see the morning light." — Whilst we were speaking there came in a messenger, who arrived from the Emir in the northern wilderness : " And how does the Emir, exclaimed Aneybar, with an affected heartiness of voice ; and where left you him encamped ? " The messenger, a worthy man of the middle age, saluted me, without any religious mis- liking, he was of the strangers at Hayil from the East provinces. Aneybar : " Thou hast heard, Khalil ? and he showed me these three pauses of his malicious wit, on his fingers. To-morrow! —The light !—Depiart ! "— " Whither ? "— " From whence thou camest ; — to Kheybar : art thou of the din (their religion) ? " — " No, I am not," — " And therefore the Arabs are impatient of thy life : wouldst thou be of the din, thou mightest live always amongst them," — " Then send me to-morrow, at my proper charge, towards el-Kaslm." They were displeased when I mentioned the Dowla: Aneybar answered hardly, " What Dowla ! here is the land of the Aarab, and the dominion of Ibn Rashid. — He says Kaslm : but there are no Beduw in the town (to convey him). Khalil ! we durst not ourselves be seen in Kaslm," and he made me a shrewd sign, sawing with the forefinger upon his black throat. — " Think not to deceive me, Aneybar ; is not a sister of the Emir of Boreyda, a wife of Mohammed ibn Rashid ? and are not they your aUies ? " — " Ullah ! (exclaimed some of them), he knows everything." — Aneybar : "Well I well ! but it cannot be, Khalil : how sayest thou, sherif ? " — This was an old gentleman-beggar, with grey eyes, some fortieth in descent from the N6by, clad like a Turkish citizen, and who had arrived to-day from Medina, where he dwelt. His was an adventurous and gainful trade of hypocrisy: three months or four in a year he dwelt at home ; in the rest he rode, or passed the seas into every far land of the Mohammedan world. In each country he took up a new concubine ; and whereso he passed he glosed so fructuously, and showed them AN OLD GENTLEMAN BEGGAR OF MEDINA 99 his large letters patent from kings and princes, and was of that honourable presence, that he was bidden to the best houses, as becometh a religious sheykh of the Holy City, and a nephew of the apostle of Ullah : so he received their pious alms and returned to the illuminated Medina. Bokhara was a villegia' tura for this holy man in his circuit, and so were all the citie.? beyond as far as Cabul. In Mohammedan India, he went a begging long enough to learn the vulgar language. Last year he visited Stambiil, and followed the [not] glorious Mohammedan arms in Europe ; and the Sultan of Islam had bestowed upon him his imperial firman. — He showed me the dedale engrossed document, with the sign manual of the Calif upon a half fathom of court paper. And with this broad charter he was soon to go again upon an Indian voyage. — When Aneybar had asked his counsel, " Wellah yd el- MohafiWi (answered this hollow spirit), and I say the same, it cannot be ; for what has this man to do in el-Kasim ? and what does he wandering up and down in all the land; (he added under his breath), wa yihtub el-bildd, and he writes up the country." Aneybar: "Well, to-morrow, Khalil, depart; and thou Eyad carry him back to Kheybar." — Bydd: "But it would be said there, ' Why hast thou brought him again ? ' wellah I durst not do it, Aneybar." Aneybar mused a little. I answered them, " You hear his words; and if this rafik were willing, yet so feeble is their theliil, you have seen it your selves, that she could not carry me," — Bydd : " Wellah ! she is not able." — " Besides, I said, if you cast me back into hazards, the Dowla may require my blood, and you must every year enter some of their towns as Bagdad and Medina : and when you send to India with your horses, will you not be in the power of my feUow citizens?" — The Sherif: "He says truth, I have been there, and I know the Engleys and their Dowla : now let me speak to this man in a tongue which he will under stand, — he spoke somewhat in Hindostani — what ! an Engleysy understand not the language of el-Hind? " — Aneybar: "Thou Eyad (one of our subject Beduins) ! it is not permitted thee to say nay ; I command you upon your heads to convey Khalil to Kheybar; and you are to depart to-morrow, — Heigh-ho! it should be the hour of prayer ! " Some said. They had heard the ithin already : Aneybar rose, the Sherif rose solemnly and all the rest ; and they went out to say their last prayers in the great mesjid, * * * * * * When the morning sun rose I had as Uef that my night 100 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA had continued for ever, There was no going forward for me, nor going backward, and I was spent with fatigues. — ^We went over to the great coffee-hall. Aneybar sat there, and beside him was the old dry-hearted sherif, who drank his morrow's 3jup with an holy serenity. " Eyad affirms, I said, that he cannot, he dare not, and that he will not convey me again to Kheybar." — " To Kheybar thou goest, and that presently.'* Eyad was leading away his sick theliil to pasture under Ajja, but the Moghreby gatekeeper withheld him by force That Moor's heart, as at my former departure from Hayil, was full of brutality. " Come, Zeyd, I said to him, be we not both Western men and like countrymen among these Beduw ? " — " Only become a Moslem, and we would all love thee ; but we know thee to be a most hardened Nasrany — Khalil comes (he said to the bystanders) to dare us ! a Nasrany, here in the land of the Moslemin ! Was it not enough that we once sent thee away in safety, and comest thou hither again ! " Round was this burly man's head, with a brutish visage ; he had a thick neck, unlike the shot-up growth of the slender Nejd Arabians ; the rest of him an unwieldy carcase, and half a cart-load of tripes. In the absence of the princely family, my soul was in the hand of this Cyclops of the Meshab. I sat to talk peaceably with him, and the brute-mau many times lifted his stick to smite the kafir ; but it was hard for Zeyd, to whom I had sometime shown a good turn, to chafe himself against me. Tbe opinions of the Arabs are ever divided, and among three is commonly one mediator: — it were blameworthy to defend the cause of an adversary of Ullah ; and yet some of the people of Hayil that now gathered about us with mild words were a mean for me. The one-eyed stranger stood by, he durst not affront the storm ; but when Zeyd left me for a moment, he whispered in my ear, that I should put them off, whom he called in con tempt ' beasts without understanding, Beduw ! ' — " Only seem thou to consent with them, lest they kill thee ; say ' Mohammed is the apostle of Ullah,' and afterward, when thou art come into sure countries, hold it or leave it at thine own liking. This is not to sin before God, when force oppresses us, and there is no deliverance ! " Loitering persons and knavish boys pressed upon me with insolent tongues: but Ibrahim of Hayil, he who before so friendly accompanied me out of the town, was ready again to befriend me, and cried to them, " Back with you ! for shame, so to thrust upon the man ! 0 fools, have ye not seen him before ? " Amongst them came that Abdullah of the broken arm, the boy- FANATIC HAYIL lOl brother of Hamiid. I saw him grow taller, and now he wore a little back-sword ; which he pulled out against me, and cried, " 0 thou cursed Nasrany, that wilt not leave thy miscreance ! " — The one-eyed stranger whispered, " Content them ! it is but waste of breath to reason with them. Do ye — he said to the people — stand back ! I would speak with this man ; and we may yet see some happy event, it may please Ullah." He whispered in my ear, " Eigh ! there will be some mischief ; only say thou -wilt be a Moslem, and quit thyself of them. Show thyself now a prudent man, and let me not see thee die for a word ; afterward, when thou hast escaped their hands, settin sina, sixty years to them, and yulaan Ullah abu-hum, the Lord confound the father of them all ! Now, hast thou consented ? — ho ! ye people, to the mesjid ! go and prepare the muzayyin : Khalil is a Moslem ! " — The lookers-on turned and were going, then stood still ; they believed not his smooth words of that obstinate misbeliever. But when I said to them, " No need to go ! " — " Aha ! they cried, the accursed Nasrany, Ullah curse his parentage ! " — Zeyd (the porter) : " But I am thinking we shall make this (man) a Moslem and circumcise him ; go in one of you and fe1;ch me a knife from the Kasr : " but none moved, for the people dreaded the Emir and Hamiid (reputed my friend), " Come, Khalil, for one thing, said Zeyd, we will be friends with thee ; say, there is none God but the Lord and His apostle is Mohammed : and art thou poor we -will also enrich thee." — " I count your silver as the dust of this meshab: — but which of you miserable Arabs would give a man anything ? Though ye gave me this castle, and the beyt el-mdl, the pits and the sacks of hoarded silver which ye say to be therein, I could not change my faith," — "Akhs — akhs — akhs — akhs ! " was uttered from a multitude of throats : I had contemned, in one breath, the right way in religion and the heaped riches of this world ! and with horrid outcries they detested the antichrist, — " Eigh, Nasrany ! said a voice, and what found you at Khey bar, ha ? " — " Plenty of dates 0 man, and fever," — " The more is the pity, cried they all, that he died not there ; but akhs ! these cursed Nasranies, they never die, nor sicken as other men : and surely if this (man) were not a Nasrany, he had been dead long ago," — " Ullah curse the father of him ! " murmured many a ferocious voice, Zeyd the porter lifted his huge fist ; but Aneybar appeared coming from the siik, and Ibrahim cries, " Hold there ! and strike not Khalil," — Aneybar : " What ado is here, and (to Zeyd) why is not the Nasrany mounted ?— did I not tell thee ? " — " His Beduw were not ready ; one of them is gone to bid his kinsfolk farewell, and I gave the other leave to 102 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA go and buy somewhat in the siik," — Aneybar: " And you people will ye not go your ways ? — Sheytdn ! what has any of you to do with the Nasrany ; Ullah send a punishment upon you all, and upon him also." I said to Aneybar, " Let Eyad take new wages of me and threaten him, lest he forsake me." — " And what received he before ? " — " Five reals." — " Then give him other five reals, [Two or three had sufficed for the return journey ; but this was his malice, to make me bare in a hostile land,] When the theliil is come, mount, — and Zeyd see thou that the payment is made ; " and loftily the Galla strode from me, — Cruel was the slave's levity ; and when I had nothing left for their cupidity how might I save myself out of this dreadful country ? — Zeyd : " Give those five reals, ha! make haste, or by God — ! " — and with an ugh ! of his bestial anger he thrust anew his huge fist upon my breast I left all to the counsel of the moment, for a last need I was well armed ; but with a blow, putting to his great strength, he might have slain me, — Ibrahim drew me from them " Hold.! he said, I have the five reals, where is that Eyad, and I will count them in his hand, Khalil, rid thyself with this and come away, and I am with you," I gave him the silver, Ibrahim led on, with the bridle of the thelul in his hand, through the market street, and left me at a shop door whilst he went to seek Aneybar. Loitering persons gathered at the threshold where I sat ; the worst was that wretched young Abdullah el-Abeyd ; when he had lost his breath with cursing, he drew his little sword again : but the bystanders blamed him, and I entered the makhzan. The tradesman, who was a Meshedy, asked for my galliur. and bade me be seated ; he filled it with hameydy, that honey-hke tobacco and peaceable remedy of human life, " What tidings, quoth he, in the world ? — We have news that the Queen of the Engleys is deceased ; and now her sou is king in her room," Whilst I sat pensive, to hear his words ! a strong young swords man, who remained in Hayil, came suddenly in and sat down. I remembered his comely wooden face, the fellow was called a Moghr6by, and was not very happy in his wits. He drew and felt down the edge of his blade : so said Hands-without-head — as are so many among them, and sware by Ullah : " Yesterday, when Khalil entered, I was running with this sword to kill him, but some withheld me ! " The tradesman responded, " What has he done to be slain by thee ? " Swordsman : " And I am glad that I did it not : " — he seemed now little less rash to favour me, than before to have murdered me Aneybar, who this whUe strode unquietly up and down, in TYRANNY OF ANEYBAR 103 the side streets, (he would not be seen to attend upon the Nasrany), appeared now -with Ibrahim at the door. The Galla deputy of Ibn Rashid entered and sat down, with a mighty rattling of his sword of office in the scabbard, and laid the blade over his knees. Ibrahim requested him to insist no more upon the uniquitons payment out of Khalil's empty purse, or at least to make it less. " No, five reals ! " (exclaimed the slave in authority,) he looked very fiercely upon it, and clattered the sword. " God will require it of thee ; and give me a schedule of safe conduct, Aneybar." He granted, the trades man reached him an hand-breadth of paper, and Ibrahim wrote, ' No man to molest this Nasrany,' Aneybar inked his signet of brass, and sealed it solemnly, Aneybar Ibn Rashid. " The sherif (I said) is going to Bagdad, he will pass by the camp of the Emir : and there are some Beduw at the ga-te — I have now heard it, that are willing to convey me to the North, for three reals. If thou compel me to go with Eyad, thou knowest that I cannot but be cast away : treachery 0 Aneybar is punished even in this world ! May not a stranger pass by your Prince's country ? be reasonable, that I may depart from you to-day peaceably, and say, the Lord remember thee for good." The Galla sat arrogantly rattling the gay back-sword in his lap, with a countenance composed to the princely awe ; and at every word of mine he clapped his black hand to the hilt. When I ceased he found no answer, but to cry with tyranny, " Have done, or else by God — " ! and he showed me a hand-breadth or two of his steel out of the scabbard, " What ! he exclaimed, wilt thou not yet be afraid ? " Now Eyad entered, and Ibrahim counted the money in his hand : Aneybar delivered the paper to Eyad. — " The Emir gave his passport to me." — " But I wUl not let thee have it, mount ! and Ibrahim thou canst see him out of the town." At the end of the siik the old parasite seyyid or sherif was sitting square-legged before a threshold, in the dust of the street. "Out, I said in passing, -with thy reeds and paper ; and I will give thee a writing ? " The old fox in a turban winced, and he murmured some koran wisdom between his broken teeth. — There trotted by us a Beduwy upon a robust theliil. " I was then coming to you, cried the man ; and I vrill convey the Nasrany to el-Irak for five reals." Bydd : " Well, and if it be with Aneybar's allowance, I will give up the five reals, which I have ; and so shall we all have done well, and Khalil may depart in peace. Khalil sit here by the theliil, whilst I and this Beduwy go back to Aneybai', and make the accord, if it be 104 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA possible ; wellah ! I am sorry for thy sake." — A former acquaint ance, a foreigner from el-Hasa, came by and stayed to speak with me ; the man was one of the many industrious strangers in Hayil, where he sewed cotton quilts for the richer households, "This people, quoth he, are untaught! all things are in the power of Ullah : and now farewell, KhalU, and God give thee a good ending of this adventure." Eyad returned saying, Aneybar would not be entreated, and that he had reviled the poor Beduwy. " Up, let us hasten from them ; and as for Merjan, I know not what is become of him. I will carry thee to Gofar, and leave thee there. — No, wellah KhalU, I ara not treacherous, but I durst not, I cannot, return with thee to Kheybar : at Gofar I will leave thee, or else with the Aarab." — " If thou betray me, betray me at the houses of hair, and not in the settlements ; but you shall render the silver." — " Nay, I have eaten it ; yet I will do the best that I may for thee." We journeyed in the beaten path towards Gofar; and after going a mile, " Let us wait, quoth Eyad, and see if this Merjan be not coming." At length we saw it was he who approached us with a bundle on his head, — he brought temmn and dates, which his sister (wedded in the town) had given him. Eyad drew out a leathern budget, in which was some victual for the way that he had received from the Mothlf, (without my know ledge) : it was but a little barley meal and dates of ill kind, in all to the value of about one shilling. We sat down, Merjan spread his good dates, and we breakfasted ; thus eating together I hoped they might yet be friendly, though only misfortunes could be before me with such unlucky rafiks. I might have journeyed with either of them but not with both together. Eyad had caught some fanatical suspicion in HayU, from the mouth of the old Medina sherif ! — that the Nasara encroached continually upon the dominion of the Sultan, and that Khalil's nation, although not enemies, were not well-wishers, in their hearts, to the religion of Islam, When I would mount ; "Nay, said Eyad, beginning to swagger, the returning shall not be as our coming ; I will ride myself," I said no more ; and cast thus again into the wilderness I must give them line, — My companions boasted, as we went, of promises made to them both in Hayil, — Aneybar had said, that would they return hither sometime, from serving the Dowla, they might be of Ibn Rashid's (armed) service; — Eyad an horseman of the Emir's riders, and Merjan one of the rajajil. Two women coming out from Hayil overtook us, as they COME TO GOFAR 105 went to Gofar. " The Lord be praised (said the poor creatures, with a womanly kindness) that it was not worse. Ah ! thou, is not thy name KhalU ? — they in yonder town are jaMbara, men of tyrannous violence, that will cut off a man's head for a light displeasure, Eigh rae ! did not he so that is now Emir, unto all his brother's children ? Thou art well come from them, they are hard and cruel, kasytn. And what is this that the people cry, ' Out upon the Nasrdny ! ' The Nasara be better than the Moslemln." Bydd : " It is they themselves that are the Nasara, wellah, khubithin, full of malignity." " It is the Meshahada that I hate, said Meijan, may Ullah confound them," It happened that a serving boy in the public kitchen, one of the patients whom I treated (freely) at my former sojourning in Hayil, was Merjan's brother. The Meshahadies he said had been of Aney bar's counsel against me. — Who has travelled in Phoenician and Samaritan Syria may call to mind the inhumanity [the last wretchedness and worldly wickedness of irrational religions, — that man should not eat and drink with his brother!] of those Persian or Assyrian colonists, the Metowali. Forsaking the road we went now towards the east-building of Gofar : — the east and west settlements lie upon two veins of ground-water, a mile or more asunder. The western oasis, where passes the common way, is the greater ; but Eyad went to find some former acquaintance in the other with whom we might lodge. Here also we passed by forsaken palm-grounds and ruinous orchard houses, till we came to the inhabited ; and they halted before the friend's dar, Eyad and Merjan sat down to see if the good man (of an inhospitable race, the B. Temlm), would come forth to welcome us. Children gathered to look on, and when some of them knew me, they began to fleer at the Nasrany. Merjan cursed them, as only Semites can find it in their hearts, and ran upon the little mouthing knaves with his camel-stick ; but now our host coming down his alley saluted Eyad, and called us to the house. His son bore in my bags to the kahwa : and they strewed do-wn green garden stalks before the theliil and wild herbage. A bare dish of dates was set before us ; and the good-man made us thin coffee : bye and bye his neighbours entered. All these were B, Temlm, peasant-like bodies in whom is no natural urbanity ; but they are lumpish drudgers, living honestly of their o-wn — and that is with a sparing hand. When I said to one of them, " I see you all big of bone and stature, unlike the (slender) inhabitants of Hayil!" — He answered, dispraising them, " The Shammar are Beduw ! " Whilst we sat, there came in three swarthy strangers, who riding by to HayU alighted here 106 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA also to drink coffee, — They carried up their zlka to the Prince's treasury ; for being few and distant Aarab, his exactors were not come to them these two years : they were of Harb, and their wandering ground was nigh Medina, They mounted again immediately; and from Hayil they would ride continually to Ibn Rashid in the northern wilderness. My rafiks left me alone without a word ! I brought in there fore the theliil furnitures, lest they should lead away their beast and forsake me, Eyad and Merjan feared no more that they must give account for me ; and their -wildness rising at every word, I foresaw how next to desperate, must be my further passage with them : happily for my weary life the milk-season was now in the land, * * * CHAPTER VI THE SHAMMAR AND HARB DESERTS IN NEJD At daybreak we departed from Gofar : this by my reckoning was the first week in April, Eyid loosed out our sick theliil to pasture; and they drove her slowly forward in the desert plain till the sun went down behind Ajja, when we halted under bergs of grey granite. These rocks are fretted into bosses and caves more than the granite of Sinai : the heads of the granite crags are commonly trap rock, Eyad, kindling a fire, heated his iron ramrod, and branded their mangy theliil, — I had gone all day on foot ; and the Ageylies threatened every hour to cast down my bags, though now light as Merjan's temmn, which she also carried. We marched four miles further, and espied a camp fire; and coming to the place we found a ruckling troop of camels couched for the night, in the open khala. The herd-lad and his brother sat sheltering in the hollow bank of a seyl, and a watch-fire of sticks was burning before them. The hounds of the Aarab follow not with the herds, the lads could not see beyond their fire-light, and our salaam startled them : then f alUng on our knees we sat down by them, — and with that word we were acquainted. The lads made some of their nagas stand up, and they mUked full bowls and frothing over for us. We heard a night-fowl shriek, where we had left our bags with the thelul : my rafiks rose and ran back with their sticks, for the bird (which they called sirrUk, a thief) might, they said, steal something. When we had thus supped, we lay down upon the pleasant seyl sand to sleep. As the new day lightened we set forward. A little further we saw a flock of some great sea-fowl grazing before us, upon their tab shanks in the wilderness. — I mused that (here in Nejd) they were but a long flight, on their great waggle wings, from the far seabord ; a morrow's sun might see them beyond this burning dust of Arabia ! At first my light-headed rafiks mistook them for sheep-fiocks, although only black fleeces be 108 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA seen in these parts of Nejd : then having kindled their gun- matches, they went creeping out to approach them ; but bye and bye I saw the great fowl flag their wings over the wide desert, and the gunners returning. — I asked " from whence are these birds?" — " Wellah from Mecca," [that is from the middle Red Sea bord.] This soil was waste gravel, baked hard in the everlasting drought, and glowing under the soles of our bare feet ; the air was like a flame, in the sun. An infirm traveller were best to ride always in the climate of Arabia : now by the cruelty of my companions, I went always on foot ; and they themselves would ride. And marching in haste, I must keep them in view, or else they had forsaken the Nasrany : my plight was such that I thought, after a few days of such efforts, I should rest for ever. So it drew to the burning midst of the afternoon, when, what for the throes in my chest, I thought that the heart would burst. The hot blood at length spouted from my nostrils : I called to the rafiks who went riding together before me to halt, that I might lie down awhile, but they would not hear. Then I took up stones, to receive the dropping gore, lest I should come with a bloody shirt to the next Aarab : besides it might work some alteration in my rafiks' envenomed spirits ! — in this haste there fell blood on my hands. When I overtook them, they seeing my bloody hands drew bridle in astonishment ! Merjdn : " Now is not this a kafir ! " — "Are ye not more than kafirs, that abandon the rafik in the way?" They passed on now more slowly, and I went by the side of the theliil. — "If, I added, ye abandon the rafik, what honourable man will hereafter receive you into their tents ? " Merjan answered, " There is keeping of faith betwixt the Moslemln, but not with an enemy of Ullah ! " They halted bye and bye and Eyad dismounted : Merjan who was still sitting upon the theliil's back struck fire with a flint: I thought it might be for their galliiins, since they had bought a little sweet hameydy, with my money, at Hayil : but Eyad kindled the cord of his matchlock. I said, "This is what?" They answered, " A hare ! " — " Where is your hare ? I say, show me this hare ! " Eyad had yet to put priming to the eye of his piece; they stumbled in their words, and remained confused. I said to them, " Did I seem to you like this hare ? by the life of Him who created us, in what instant you show me a gun's mouth, I will lay dead your hare's carcases upon this earth : put out the match ! " he did so. The cool of the evening approached; we marched on slowly in silence, and doubtless they rolled it in their hollow hearts what might signify that vehement word of DESPERATE THOUGHTS 109 the Nasrany, " Look, I said to them, rizelleyn ! you two vile dastards, I tell you plainly, that in what moment you drive me to an extremity ye are but dead dogs ; and I will take this carrion theliil ! " My adventure in such too unhappy case had been nearly desperate ; nigher than the Syrian borders I saw no certain relief. Syria were a great mark to shoot at, and terribly far off ; and yet upon a good thelul, fresh watered — for extremities make men bold, and the often escaping from dangers — I had not despaired to come forth ; and one watering in the midway, — if I might once find water, had saved both thelul and rider. — Or should I ride towards Teyma ; two hundred miles from hence ? — But seeing the great landmarks from this side, how might I know them again ! — and if I found any Aarab westward, yet these would be Bishr, the men's tribesmen. Should I ride eastward in unknown diras ? or hold over the fearful Nefiid sand billows to seek the Sherarat ? Whithersoever I rode I was likely to faint before I came to any human relief ; and might not strange Aarab sooner kill the stranger, seeing one arrive thus, than receive me ? My eyes were dim with the suffered ophthalmia, and not knowing where to look for them, how in the vastness of the desert landscape should I descry any Aarab ? If I came by the mercy of God to any wells, I might drink drop by drop, by some artifice, but not water the thelul. Taking up stones I chafed my blood-stained hands, hoping to wash them when we should come to the Aarab ; but this was the time of the spring pasture, when the great cattle are jezzln, and oft-times the nomads have no water by them, because there is leban to drink, Eyad thought the game turned against him ! when we came to a menzil, I might complain of them and he would have a scorn, — " Watch, said he, and when any camel stales, run thou and rinse the hands ; for wellah seeing blood on thy hands, there will none of the Aarab eat with thee." — The urine of camels has been sometimes even drunk by town cara vaners in their impatience of thirst. I knew certain of the Medanite tradesmen to the Sherarat, who coming up at raid- sumraer from the W Sirhan, and finding the pool dry (above Maan) where they looked to have watered, filled their bowl thus, and let in a little blood from the camel's ear. I have told the tale to some Beduins ; who answered me, " But to drink this could not help a man, wellah he would die the sooner, it must so wring his bowels." It was evening, and now we went again by el-Agella, When the sun was setting, we saw another camel trocp not far off. 110 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA The herdsmen trotting round upon some of their Hghter beasts were driving-in the great cattle to a sheltered place between two hills ; for this night closed starless over our heads with falling weather. When we came to them the young men had halted their camels and were hissing to them to kneel, — ikh-hh-kh! The great brutes fall stiffly, with a sob, upon one or both their knees, and underdoubling the crooked hind legs, they sit pon derously down upon their haunches. Then shuffling forward one and the other fore-knee, with a grating of the harsh gravel under their vast carcase-weight, they settle themselves, and with these pains are at rest : the fore bulk-weight is sustained upon the zora ; so they lie stUl and chaw their cud, till the morning sun. The camel leaves a strange (reptile-like) print (of his knees, of the z6ra and of the sharp hind quarters), which may be seen in the hard wilderness soil after even a year or two. The smell of the camel is muskish and a little dog-like, the hinder parts being crusted with urine ; yet is the camel more beautiful in our eyes than the gazelles, because man sees in this creature his whole welfare, in the khala. The good herding lads milked for us largely: we drunk deep and far into the night ; and of every sup' is made ere morning sweet blood, light flesh and stiff sinews. The rain beat on our backs as we sat about their watch-fire of sticks on the pure sand ofthe desert ; it lightened and thundered. When we were weary we went apart, where we had left our bags, and lay down in our cloaks, in the night wind and the rain, I lay so long musing of the morrow, that my companions might think me sleeping. They rested in the shelter of the next crag, where I heard them say — my quick hearing helping me in these dangers like the keen eyesight of the nomads — that later in the night they would lift their things on the theliil and be gone. I let them turn over to sleep : then I rose and went to the place where the fire had been. The herdsmen lay sleeping in the rain; and I thought I would tell the good lads my trouble. Their sister was herding with them, but in presence of strange menfolk she had sat all this evening obscurely in the rain, and far from the cheerful fire Now she was warming herself at the dying embers, and cast a little cry as she saw me coming, for all is fear in the desert. ' Peace ! I said to her, and I would speak with her brethren.' She took the elder by the shoulder, and rolling him, he wakened immediately, for in this weather he was not well asleep. They all sat up, and the young men, rubbing their faces asked, " Oh, what — ? and wherefore would not the stranger let them rest, and why was I not gone to sleep with NIGHT RAIN AND TROUBLE 111 my rafiks ? " These were manly lads but rude ; they had not discerned that I was so much a stranger, I told them, that those with me were Annezy, Ageylies, who had money to carry me to Kheybar; but their purpose was to forsake me, and perhaps they would abandon me this night," — " Look you (said they, holding their mouths for yawning), we are poor young serving men, and have not much understanding in such things ; but if we see them do thee a wrong, we will be for thee. Go now and lie down again, lest they miss thee ; and fear nothing, for we are nigh thee." About two hours before the day Eyad and Merjan rose, whispering, and they loaded the things on the couching theliil ; then with a little spurn they raised her silently. " Lead out (I heard Eyad whisper), and we will come again for the guns." 1 lay still, and when they were passed forth a few steps I rose to disappoint them : I went with their two matchlocks in my hands to the herdsmen's place, and awaked the lads. The treacherous rafiks returning in the dark could not find their arms : then they came over where I sat now with the herdsmen. — "Ah! said they, Khalil had of them an unjust suspicion; they did but remove a little to find shelter, for where they lay the wind and rain annoyed them." Their filed tongues pre vailed with the poor herding lads, whose careless stars were unused to these nice cases; and heartless in the rain, they consented with the stronger part, — that KhalU had misconstrued the others' simple meaning. "Well, take, they said, your matchlocks, and go sleep again, all of you ; and be content Khalil. And do ye give him no more occasion, said these upland judges : — and wellah we have not napped all this long night ! " I went forward with the Ageylies, when we saw the morning light ; Eyad rode. We had not gone a mile when he threatened to abandon me there in the khala ; he now threatened openly to shoot me, and raised his camel-stick to strike me ; but I laid hand on the theliil's bridle, and for such another word, I said, I would give him a fall. Merjan had no part in this violence ; he walked wide of us, for being of various humour, in the last hour he had fallen out with Eyad, [In their friendly discours ing, the asseverations of these Bishr clansmen (in every clause) were in such sort ; — Merjdn : Wellah, yd ibn ammy, of a truth, my cousin ! Bydd : Ullah hadik, the Lord direct thee ! — Wa hydt ruhbdtak, by the life of thy neck ! — Weysh aleyk, do as thou wUt, what hinders.] — "Well, Khalil, let be now, said Eyad, and I swear to thee a menzil of the Aarab is not far off, if the herding lads told us truly." 112 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA We marched au hour and found a troop of camels. Whilst their herdsmen milked for us, we met that Aly, who had enter tained us before at Gussa ! he was here again abroad to gather forage. He told us a wife of his lay sick with fever: "and have you not a remedy, Khalil, for the entha " (female) ? Bydd : " Khalil has kanaklna, the best of medicines for the fever, I have seen it at Medina, and if a man but drink a little he is well anon : what is the cost, Khalil ? " — " A real." Aly : "I thought you would give it me, what is a little medicine, it costs thee nothing, and I will give thee fourpence ; did I not that day regale you with dates ? " Yet because the young wife was dear to him, Aly said he would go on to the Beduins' menzil, and take up a grown lamb for the payment. We came to a ferij of Shamraar about nine in the morning. Eydd remembered some of those Aarab, and he was remembered by them : we heard also that Braitshan's booths were now at half an hour's distance from hence upon our right hand. This Shammar host brought us to breakfast the best dates of the Jebel villages, clear as cornelians, with a bowl of his spring 16ban. Leaving there our baggage, without any mistrust (as amongst Aarab), we went over to Braitshan's ferij, — my rafiks hoping there to drink kahwa. A few locusts were flying and alighting in this herbage. Sitting with Braitshan in the afternoon, when Eyad had walked to another booth, and Merjan was with the theliil, I spoke to him of my treacherous companions, and to Ferrah, an honest old man whom we had found here before, " What is, I asked, your counsel ? and I have entered to-day under your roof." They answered each other gravely, " Seeing that Khalil has required of us the protection, we ought to maintain his right." But within a while they repented of their good dis position, lest it should be said, that they had taken part with the Nasrany against a ' Mislim ' ; and they ended with these words, 'They could not go betwixt khuidn (companions in the journey).' They said to Eyad, when he arrived, ' That since he had carried only my light bags, and I was come down from Hayil upon my feet, and he had received five reals to convey me to Kheybar, and that in every place he threatened to abandon me ; let him render three reals, and leave me with the Aarab, and take the other two for his hire, and go his way.' Eyad answered, "If I am to blame, it is because of the feeble ness of my theliil." — " Then, why, I exclaimed, didst thou take five reals to carry a passenger upon the mangy carrion ? " The Beduins laughed; yet some said, I should not use so .sharp A SHAMMAR HOST 113 words with my wayfellow, — "KhalU, the Aarab love the fair speaking." I knew this was true, and that my plain right would seem less in their shallow eyes than the rafiks' smooth words. — Bydd: "Well, be it thus." "Thou hast heard his promise, said they, return with khUak, thy way-brother, and all shall be well." — Empty words of Arabs ! the sun set ; my rafiks departed, and I soon followed them. Our Shammar host had killed the sacrifice of hospitality : his mutton was served in a great trencher, upon temmn boiled in the broth. But the man sat aloof, and took no part in our evening talk ; whether displeased to see a kafir under his tent- cloth, or because he misliked my Annezy rafiks. I told Aly he might have the kanaklna, a gift, so he helped me to my right with Eyad; ' He would,' he answered.— I wondered to see him so much at his ease in the booths of the Aarab ! but his parents were Beduw, and Aly left an orphan at Gussa, had been bred up there. He bought of them on credit a good yearling ram to give me : they call it here tully, and the ewe lamb rdhhal. Aly brought me his tully on the morrow, when we were ready to depart; and said, " See, 0 Khalil, my present ! " — " I looked for the fulfilment of your last night's words ; and, since you make them void, I ought not to help him in a little thing, who recks not though I perish ! " The fellow, who weighed not my grief, held himself scorned by the Nasrany: my bags were laid upon the theliil, and he gazed after us and murmured. The dewless aurora was rising from those waste hills, without the voice of any living creature in a weary wUderness ; and I fol lowed forth the riders, Eyad and Merjan, The gravel stones were sharp ; the soil in the sun soon glowed as an hearth under my bare feet ; the naked pistol (hidden under my tunic) hanged heavily upon my panting chest ; the air was breathless, and we had nothing to drink. It was hard for me to follow on foot, notwithstanding the weak pace of their theliil : a little spurn of a rider's heel and she had trotted out of my seeing ! Hard is this human patience ! showing myself armed, I might compel them to deliver the dromedary ; but who would not afterward be afraid to become my rafik ? If I provoked them, they (supposing me unarmed), might come upon me with their weapons ; and must I then take their poor lives ? — but were that just ? — in this faintness of body and spirit I could not tell ; I thought that a man should forsake life rather than justice, and pollute his soul with outrage. I went training and bearing on my camel-stick, — a new fatigue —to leave a furrow in the hard gravel soil ; lest if those vUe VOL. n. H 114 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA spirited rafiks rode finally out of my sight, I should be lost in the khala, I thought that I might come again, upon this trace, to Braitshan's booths, and the Aarab I saw the sun mount to high noon ; and hoped from every new brow to descry pasturing camels, or some menzil of the Nomads, An hour further I saw camels that went up slowly through a hollow ground to the watering. There I came up to my rafiks: they had stayed to speak with the herdsmen, who asked of the desert behind us. The Nomads living in the open wilderness are greedy of tidings ; and if herdsmen see passengers go by peaceably in the desert they will run and cry after them, ' What news, ho ! — Tell us of the soil, that ye have passed through ? — Which Aarab be there ? — Where lodge they now ? — Of which waters drink they ? — And, the face of them is whitherward ? — Which herbs have ye seen ? and what is the soil betwixt them and us? found ye any bald places (mahal)? — With whom lodged ye last night ? — heard ye there any new thing, or as ye came by the way ? " Commonly the desert man delivers him self after this sort with a loud suddenness of tongue, as he is heated with running ; and then only (when he is nigher hand) will he say raore softly, 'Peace be with thee.' — The passengers are sure to receive him mildly ; and they condescend to all his asking, with Wellah Fuldn ! ' Indeed thou Such-an-one.' And at every meeting with herdmen, they say over, with a set face, the same things, in the same words, ending with the formal wa ent silim, ' and thou being iu peace,' — The tribesman hardly bids the strangers farewell, when he has turned the back ; or he stands off, erect and indifferent, and lets pass the tarkleh, I stayed now my hand upon the theliil ; and from the next high grounds we saw a green plain before us. Our thirst was great, and Eyad showed with his finger certain crags which lay beyond ; ' We should find pools in them, he said (after the late showers) : but I marked in the ground [better than the inept Beduin rafiks] that no rain had fallen here in these days. We found only red pond- water, — so foul that the thirsting theliil refused to drink. I saw there the forsaken site of a winter encampment : the signs are shallow trenching, and great stones laid about the old steads of their beyts. Now we espied camels, which had been hidden by the hollow soil, and then a worsted village ! My rafiks considered the low building of those tents, and said, " They must be of Harb ! " As we approached they exclaimed, " But see how their beyts be stretched nigh together ! they are certainly Heteym." We met with an herdsman of theirs driving his camels to water, and haUed him— "Peace ! and ho! what Aarab be those A HETEYM ENCAMPMENT 115 yonder ?" — The man answered with an unwonted frankness, "I (am an) Harby dwelling with this ferlj, and they are Heteym." — Eyad began to doubt ! for were they of Kasim's Heteym (enemies of the Dowla at Kheybar), he thought he were iu danger. Yet now they could not go back ; if he turned from them, his mangy theliil might be quickly overtaken. The Ageylies rode on therefore, with the formal countenance of guests that arrive at a nomad menzil. The loud dogs of the encamp ment leapt out against us with hideous affray ; and as we came marching by the beyts, the men and the hareem who sat within, only moving their eyes, silently regarded us passing strangers. We halted before the greater booth in the row, which was of ten or twelve tents. Eyad and Merjan alighted, set down the packs and tied up the knee of the theliil. Then we walked together, with the solemnity of guests, to the open half of the tent, which is the men's apartment ; here at the right hand looking forth : it is not always on the same side among the people of the desert. We entered, and this was the sheykh's beyt. Five or six men were sitting within on the sand, with an earnest demeanour (and that was because some of them knew rae) ! They rose to receive us, looking silently upon me, as if they would say, " Art not thou that Nasrany ? " The noraad guest — far frora his own — enters the strange beyt of hospitality, with demure looks ; in which should appear some gentle token of his own manly worth. We sat down in the booth, but these uncivil hosts — Heteymies— kept their uneasy silence. They made it strange with us ; and ray rafiks beat their camel-sticks upon the sand and looked down : the Heteyraies gazed side-long and lowering upon us. At length, despising their mumming, and inwardly burning with thirst, I said to the sly fellow who sat beside me, a comely ill-blooded Heteymy and the host's brother, " Bskiny md, give me a little water to drink," He rose unwillingly; and fetched a bowl of foul clay-water , When I only sipped this unwholesome bever : " Bueyht (he said maliciously), hast allayed thy thirst ? " My companions asked for the water, and the bowl was sent round. " Drink ! said the Heteymies, for there is water enough." At length there was set before us a bowl of mereesy shards and a little 16ban : then first they broke their unlucky silence. " I think we should know thee (quoth he of the puddle water) ; art not thou the Nasriny that came to Kasim's from Ibn Eashid ? " They had alighted yesterday : they call the ground Aul, of those crags with water. The (granitic) landscape is named Qhrdlfa; and Sfd, of a plutonic mountain, which appeared 116 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA eastward over the plain seven mUes distant; and they must send thither to fetch their water. The altitude was here 4600 feet. The flocks were driven in at the going down of the sun ; and bye and bye we saw Maatuk — that was our host's name — struggling to master a young ram. Eyad sent Merjan with the words of course, " Go and withhold him," Merjan made as though he would help the ram, saying, with the Arabs' smooth (effeminate) dissimulation, ' It should not be, nay by Ullah, we would never suffer it.' " Oho ! young man, let me alone, answered the Heteymy, may I not do as I please with mine own ? " and he drew his slaughter-sheep to the woman's side. — Two hours later Maatuk bore in the boiled ram brittled, upon a vast trencher of temmn. He staggered under the load and caught his breath, for the hospitable man was asthmatic, Eyad said when we were sitting alone, " Khalil we leave thee here, and el-Kasim lies behind yonder mountains; these are good folk, and they will send thee thither," — " But how may ye, having no water-skin, pass over to the Auajy ? " — " Well, we will put in to Thiirghrnd for a girby," — " Ullah re member your treachery, the Aarab -will blame you who abandon your rafik, also the Pasha will punish you ; and as you have robbed me of those few reals he may confiscate some of your arrears," — " Oh say not so, Khalil ! in this do not afflict me ; and at our departure complain not : let not the hosts hear your words, or they will not bring you forward upon your journey," When the rest were sleeping I saw Maatuk go forth; — I thought this host must be good, although an Heteymy, I went to him and said I would speak with him, — " Shall we sit down here then, and say on," — for the Arabs think they may the better take counsel in their weak heads when sitting easily upon the b6led, I told him how the rafiks had made rae journey hitherto on my feet (an hundred miles) from Hayil ; how often they had threatened in the midst of the khala to forsake me, and even to kill me : should I march any longer vrith them ? — ^no ! I was to-day a guest in his tent ; I asked him to judge between us, and after that to send me safely to el-Kaslm. — " AU this wiU I do ; though I cannot myself send thee to el-Kaslm, but to some Harb whose tents are not far from us, eastward ; and we may find there someone to carry thee thither. Now, when the morning is lii'lit and you see these fellows ready to set forward, then say to me, dakhilah, and we shall be for thee, and if they resist we wUl detain their theliil," — " Give thy hand, and swear to me,'|— " Ay, I swear, said he, wuUah, wuUah ! " but he drew back his hand^ for how should they keep touch with a Nasrany ! — But in the PARTING WITH THE FALSE RAFIKS 117 night time, whilst I slept, my companions also held their council with Maatuk: and that was as between men of the same religion, and Maatnk betrayed me for his pipeful of sweet hameydy tobacco. When it was day those rafiks laid my bags upon the theliil, and I saw Eyad give to Maatuk a little golden hameydy, for which the Heteymy thanked him benignly. Then, taking up their mantles and matchlocks, they raised the thelul with a spurn : Merjan having the bridle in his hand led forth, with nesellim dleyh. As they made the first steps, I said to Maatuk, " My host detain them, and ana dakhil-ah ! — do justly." — " Ugh ! go with them, answered Maatuk (making it strange), what justice wouldst thou have, Nasrany ? " — "Where be thy last night's promises ? Is there no keeping faith, Heteymy ? listen ! I will not go with them." But I saw that my contention would be vain ; for there was some intelligence between them. When Eyad and Merjan were almost out of sight, the men in the tent cried to me, "Hasten after them and your bags, or they will be quite gone." — " I am your dakhil, and you are for sworn ; but I -wUl remain here." — "No ! " — and now they began to thrust me (they were Heteyra). Maatuk caught up a tent- stake, and carae on against rae ; his brother, the sly villain, ran upon me from the backward with a cutlass. " Ha ! exclaimed Maatuk, I shall beat out his brains," — " Kill him — kill him ! " cried other frenetic voices (they were young men of Harb and Annezy dwelling in this ferlj), "Let me alone, cries his brother, and I will chop off the head of a cursed Nasrany," "I cannot, I said to them, contend with so many, though ye be but dastards; put down your weapons. And pray good woman ! [to Maatuk's wife who looked to me womanly over her curtain, and upbraided their violence] pour me out a little leban ; and let rae go from this cursed place." — " Ah ! what wrong, she said to thera, ye do to chase away the stranger ! it is harram, and, Maatuk, he is thy dakhil : " she hastened to pour me out to drink, " Drink ! said she, and handed over the bowl, drink ! and may it do thee good ; " and in this she murmured a sweet proverb of their dlra, widd el-ghrarii ahlhu, " the desire of the stranger is to his own people ; speed the stranger home," " Up, I said, Maatuk, and come with me to call the Agey lies back, my strength is lost, and alone I cannot overtake them." — "I come, and wellah will do thee right with them." — When we had gone hastily a mile, I said : " I can follow no further, and must sit down here ; go and call them if you will." Great is their natural humanity: this Heteymy, who was hiraself infirm, bade me rest ; and he limped as fast as he might go and shouted after them, — he beckoned to my late rafiks ! and they 118 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA tardily returned to us, " Maatuk, I said, this is the end of my journey to-day : Eyad shall give me here Aneybar's schedule of safe conduct, and he shall restore me three reals ; also, none of you chop words with me, for I am a weary man, whom ye have driven to extremities," — Maatuh (to Eyad): "What say you to this ? it seems your rafik is too weary to go any more, will ye carry him then on the thelul ? " — " We will not carry him ; we can only sometimes ride upon her ourselves • yet I will carry him— it is but half a day — to Thiirghrud, and leave him there ! " This I rejected. Maatuk : "Well, he shall stay with us ; and I wUl send Khalil forward to the Harb with Ibn Ndhal, for his money. Now then I say restore his monev, let it be two reals, and the paper from Ibn Rashid, — what, man ! it is his o-wn." — Bydd : " I am willing to give up the paper to Khalil, so he write me a discharge, which may acquit me before the Pasha ; but I will not restore a real of the silver, I have spent it, — what, man ! wouldst thou have my clothes ? " — Maatuk : " We shall not let thee depart so ! give Khalil one real, and lay down the schedule." — Bydd: "Well, I accept": he took out a crown, and " This is all I have left, said he ; let Khalil give rae fourpence, for this is fourpence more than the mejidie." — "You may think yourselves well escaped for fourpence, which is mine own : take that silver, Maatuk, arrabUn (earnest-money) of the three reals for conveying me as thou said'st to the Harb." He received it, but the distrustful wretch made me give him immediately the other two. I recovered thus Aneybar's safe-conduct, and that was much for my safety in the wild country. Eyad insisted for his written discharge, and I wrote, " Eyad, the Ageyly, of Bejaida, Bishr, bound for five reals by Abdullah Siruan, lieutenant at Kheybar, to con vey me to Hayil, and engaged there by Aneybar, Ibn Rashid's deputy, for which he received other five, to carry me again to Kheybar, here treacherously abandons me at Aul, under Sfa, in the Shammar dlra." The Ageylies took the seal from my hand, and set it to theraselves twenty times, to make this instru ment more sure : then Maatuk made them turn back to the menzil with my baggage. So Eyad and Merjan departed; yet not without some men's crying out upon them from the tents, for their untruth to the rafik. These Heteymies were heavy-hearted fanatics, without the urbanity of Beduins : and Maatuk had sold me for a little to bacco. For an hour or two he embalmed his brain with the reeking drug; after that he said, " Khalil, dakhil-ak, hast thou not, I beseech thee, a little dokhan ? ah ! say not that thou hast IBN NAHAL 119 none ; give me but a little, and I will restore to thee those three reals, and carry thee on my thelul to Ibn Nahal." — "I have no dokhan, though you cut off my head." — " Khalil, yet fill my galliiin once, and I will forgive thee all ! " — Had I bought a little tobacco at Hayil, I h-ad sped well. One Annezy and three Harb beyts were in this Heteymy ferlj. Some of those strangers asked me in the afternoon, what tribesmen were the rafiks that had forsaken me. I answered, "Auajy and Bejaijy of Bishr." — "Hadst thou said this before to us, they had not parted so ! we had seized their theliil, for they arj g6m, and we have not eaten with them," Said one : " Whilst they talked I thought the speech of the younger sounded thus, ay billah it was Bejaijy." — "You might overtake them."—" Which way went they ? "— " To Baitha NethU, and from thence they will cross to the Auajy." Eyad had this charge, froin Kheybar to fetch the Siruan's and the Bishy 's theliils. [Although those Beduw were enemies of the Dowla, the Ageyl dromedaries had been privately put out to pasture among them.] In that quarter of the wilderness was sprung (this year) a plentiful rabia, after the autumnal rains, " so that the camels might lie down with their fills at noonday." — " How now ? (said one to another) wilt thou be my rafik if the 'bil come home this evening ? shall we take our theluls and ride after thera : they will journey slowly with their mangy beast ; if the Lord -will we may overtake them, and cut their throats." — " Look (I said) I have told you their path, go and take the theliil if you be able, but you shall not do them any hurt." I was in thought of their riding till the nightfall : but the camels came not. Of Ibn Nahal's Aarab they had no late tidings. They spoke much in my hearing of Ibn Nahal ; and said the hareem — that were the best hearted in this encampment, " His tent is large, so large ! and he is rich, so rich, — ouf ! all there is liberality : and when thou comest to his tent say, ' Send me, 0 Ibn Nahal, to el-Kaslm ', and he will send thee." Maatuk and his evil-eyed brother were comely ; and their sister — she dwelt in Maatuk's beyt — was one of the goodliest works of nature ; only (such are commonly the Heteyman) not well coloured. She went freshly clad ; and her beauty could not be hid by the lurid face-clout : yet in these her flowering years of womanhood she remained unwedded ! The thin-witted young Annezy man of the North, who sat all day in the sheykh's beyt, fetched a long breath as oft as she appeared — as it were a dream of their religion — in our sight ; and plucking my mantle he would say, " Sawest thou the like ere now ! " This sheykhess. 120 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA when she heard their wonted ohs ! and ahs ! cast upon them her flagrant great eyes, and smiled, without any disdain, — She, being in stature as a goddess, yet would there no Beduwy match with her (an Heteymla) in the way of honourable marriage ! But dissolute Beduins will mingle their blood out of wedlock with the beautiful Heteymlas ; and I have heard the comely ribald Eyad mock on thus, making his voice small like a woman's, — " Then will she come and say humbly to the man, 'Marry me, for I am with child, and shield me from the blame,'" There was an Heteymy in this menzil who returned after an absence : I enquired, ' Where had he been in the meanwhile ?' — " Wellah, at el-Hayat : it is but one long day upon the theliil, and I have wedded there a (black) wife," — " Wherefore thus ? " — "Wellah I wished for her," — "And what was the bride money?"— "I have spent nothing." — " Or gave she thee any thing ? " — " Ay billah ! some palms." — " She has paid for thee ! " " Well, why not ? "— " WUl not thy chUdren be black like slaves, abid ? " — " She is blacMsh-red, her children will be reddish." — "And what hast thou to do with village wives?" — " Eigh ! I shall visit her now and then ; and when I come there go home to mine own house : " — and cries the half-witted nomad, "Read, KhalU, if this thing which I have done be lawful or unlawful ? " [The negro rillage el-Hayat is in the S.-E. borders of the (Kheybar) Harra ; and a journey from thence toward Medina is the palm hamlet Howeyat. The (Annezy) Beduin landlords in both settlements were finally ex- pulsed by Abeyd Ibn Rashid ; because not conforming them selves to the will of the Emir, they had received their Ateyba neighbours — who were his enemies — as their dakhils, and would have protected them against hira.] The camels were azab, Maatuk's thelul was with them ; and till their coming home we could not set out for Ibn Nahal, Some Solubba rode-in one morrow on their asses; and our people gave them pots and kettles (which are always of brass), to carry away, for tinning. I found two young Solubbies gelding an ass behind the tents ! — (the Aarab have only entire horses). The gipsies said laughing, ' This beast was an ass overmuch, and they had made him chaste ! ' I found an old Solubby sitting in Maatuk's tent, a sturdy greybeard ; his grim little eyes were fastened upon me, I said to him, " What wouldst thou ? " — " I was thinking, that if I met with thee alone in the khala, I would kUl thee."— "Wherefore, old tinker?''— " Por thy clothing and for any small things that might be with thee, Nasrany ; — li the wolf found thee in the wUderness, wert " SPEED THE STRANGER HOME " 121 thou not afraid ? " — The Solubba offend no man, and none do thera hurt, I enquired of these : " Is it true, that ye eat the sheep or camel which is dead of itself ? " — " We eat it, and how else might we that have no cattle eat meat in the menzils of the Aarab ! Wellah, KhalU, is this halal or harram ? " A day or two after Maatuk was for no more going to Ibn Nahal ; he said, " Shall I carry thee to el-Hayat ? or else I might leave thee at Semira or at Seleyma," But I answered, " To Ibn Nahal ; " and his good wife Noweyr, poor woman, looking over her tent cloth, spoke for me every day ; " Oh ! said she, ye are not good, and Maatuk, IMaatuk ! why hinder Khalil ? per form thy promise, and widd el-ghrarib beledhu aan el-djnaby : (it is a refrain of the Nomad maidens 'speed the stranger on his way to his own people ' ; or be it, ' the heart of the stranger is in his own country, and not in a strange land '.") The good hareem her neighbours answered with that pious word of fana tical Arabia, ' We have a religion, and they have a religion ; every man is justified in his own religion,' Noweyr was one of those good women that bring the blessing to an household, Soraetiraes I saw her clay-pale face in their tent, without the veil : though not in prosperous health, she was daily absent in the khala, frora the forenoon till the raid-afternoon ; and when I asked her wherefore she wearied herself thus ? she said, and sighed, "I must fetch water from the Sfa to-day, and to-raorrow visit the caraels ; and else Maatuk beats me," Maatuk's hospi tality was more than any Beduwy had showed me : Noweyr gave me to drink of her leban ; and he bade me reach up my hand when I was hungry to take of her new mereesy shards, which were spread to dry in the sun upon their worsted roof. If the camels came home he milked a great bowlful for the stranger, saying, it was his sadaka, or meritorious human kindness, for God's sake. In these evenings, I have seen the sporting goats skip and stand, often two and three together, upon the camels' steep chines : and the great beasts, that lay chawing the cud in the open moonlight, took no more heed of them than cattle in our fields, when crows or starlings light upon thera, Maatuk was afraid to further me, because of Ibn Eashid : and they told me a strange tale. A year or two ago, these Heteym carried on their caraels some strangers, whom they called " Nasara " ! — I know not whither. The Emir hearing of it, could hardly be entreated not to punish them cruelly, and take their cattle. — " Ay, this is true, 0 KhalU ! " added Noweyr, — "But what Nasranies! and from whence?" — "Wellah, tbey could not tell, the strangers were Nasara, as they heard," The Arabs are barren-minded in the emptiness of the desert life, and 122 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA retchless of all that pertains not to their living. " Nasara," might signify in their mouths no more than "aliens not ofthe orthodox belief." Maatuk: " Ibn Rashid is not thy friend, and the country is dangerous ; abide with me, KhalU, tiU the Haj come and return again, next spring." — " How might I live those many months ? is there food in the khala ? " — " You may keep my camels," — "But how under the flaming sun, in the long summer season ? " — " When it is hot thou canst sit in my booth, and drink leban ; and I will give thee a wife " — Hearing his words, I rejoiced, that the Aarab no longer looked upon me as some rich stranger amongst them ! When he pronounced ' wife,' the worthy man caught his breath ! — could he offer a bint of Heteym to so white a man ? so he said further, " I will give thee an Harbia." " Years ago, quoth Maatuk, there came into our parts a Moghreby [like Khalil], — wellah we told little by him ; but the man bought and sold, and within a while we saw him thriving. He lived with Harb, and took a wife of their daughters ; and the Moor had flocks and camels, all gotten at the first and increased of his traffic in samn and clothing. Now he is dead, his sons dwell with Harb, and they are well-faring," We sat in the tent, and they questioned me, ' Where is thy nation ? ' I shewed them the setting sun, and said we might sail thither in our shipping, sefn. — " Shipping (they said one to another) is zymdt ; but 0 Khalil, it is there, in the West, we have heard to be the Kafir Nation! and that from thence the great danger shall come upon el-Islam: beyond how many floods dwell ye, we heard seven ; and how many theliil journeys be ye behind the Sooltan ? " — Coffee-drinking, though the Heteyman be welfaring more than the neighbour Beduins, is hardly seen, even in sheykhs' tents, amongst them : there was none in Maatuk's ferlj Aarab of Ibn Rashid, their only enemies are the Ateyba ; and pointing to the eastward, " AU the peril, said Maatuk, is from thence ! " — These Heteym (unlike their kindred inhabiting nearer Medina) are never cheesemakers,. He is a free man that may carry all his worldly possession upon one of his shoulders : now I secretly cast away the super fluous weio-ht of my books, ere a final effort to pass out of Arabia, and (saving Die alte Geographie Arabiens, and Zehme's Arabien seit hunderl Jahren) gave them honourable burial in a th6b's hole ; heaped in sand, and laid thereon a great stone.— In this or another generation, some wallowing camel or the streaming winter rain may discover to them that dark work of the Nasrdny. Six days the Nomad tents « ere standing at Aul, to-morrow they SET OUT TO FIND IBN NAHAL 123 would dislodge ; and Maatuk now consented to carry the stranger to Ibn Nahal : for Noweyr, lifting her pale face above the woman's curtain, many times daily exhorted him, saying, " Eigh, Maatuk ! detain not Khalil against his liking ; speed the stranger home." Their caraels were corae ; and when the morning broke, ' Art thou ready, quoth Maatuk, and I will bring the theliil : but in faith I know not where Ibn Nahal may be found." Noweyr put a small skin of samn in her husband's wallet ; to be, she said, for the stranger. We mounted, Maatuk's sly brother brought us on our journey ; and his.sed his last counsels in my raflk's ear, which were not certainly to the advantage of the Nasrany : — " Aye ! aye ! " quoth Maatuk. We rode on a burr, or dromedary male (Uttle used in these countries), and which is somewhat rougher riding. By this the sun was an hour high ; and we held over the desert toward the Sfa mountain. After two hours we saw another menzil of Heteyra, sheykh Ibn Dammuk, and their camels pasturing in the plain, Maatuk called the herdsman to us to tell and take the news ; but they had heard nothing lately of Ibn Nahal, The waste beyond was nearly mahal : we rode by some granite blocks, disposed baywise, and the head laid south-east ward, as it were towards Mecca : it might be taken in these days for a praying place. But Maatuk answered, " Such works are of the ancients in these dlras, — the B, Taamir." We saw a very great thob's burrow, and my rafik alighted to know if the edible monster were ' at horae : ' and in that, singing cheerfully, he startled a troop of gazelles. Maatuk shrilled through his teeth, and the beautiful deer bounded easily before us ; then he yelled like a wUd man, and they bent themselves to their utmost flight. The scudding gazelles stood still anon, in the hard desert plain of gravel, and gazed back like timid damsels, to know what had made them afraid, — In Syria, I have seen mares, " that had out stripped gazelles" ; but whether this were spoken in the ordinary figure of their Oriental speech, which we call a falsehood, I have not ascertained. The noraads take the fawns with their grey hounds, which are so swift, that I have seen them overrun the small desert hare almost in a raoraent, I asked Maatuk, Where was his matchlock ? — He lost it, he answered, to a ghrazzu of Ateyba — that was a year ago ; and now he rode but with that short cutlass, wherewith his brother had once threatened the Nasrany. He sang in their braying-wise [which one of their ancient poets, Antara, compared to the hum of flies !] as we passed over the desert at a trot, and quavering his voice (i-l-i-i) to the wooden jolting of the theliil saddle. Maatuk 124 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA told me, (with a sheykh's pride), that those Beduin households in his ferij had been with him several years. In the midsummer time all the ferjan of the Ibn Barrak Heteym (under the sheykh Kasim,) assemble and pitch together, near the Wady er-Rummah, " where, said he, one may find water, under the sand, at the depth of this camel stick," — Wide we have seen to be the dispersion of the Heteym : there are some of the B, Rashid far in the North, near Kuweyt ! Now before us appeared a steep granite mountain, Genna ; and far upon our left hand lay the watering Bendna, between mountains. We came after mid-day to a great troop of Heteym camels : but here was the worst grazing ground (saving the Sinai country) that I ever beheld in the wilderness ; for there was nothing sprung besides a little wormwood. The herd boys milked their nagas for us ; bnt that milk with the froth was like wormwood for bitterness [and such is the goats' milk in this pasture]. The weleds enquired in their headlong manner, " Bl- khdbar ? weysh el-ellitm ? What tidings from your parts, what news is there?" — "Well, it may please Ullah," — "And such and such Aarab, beyond and beside you, where be they now ? where is such a sheykh encamped, and of what waters drink they ? is there word of any ghrazzus ? And the country which you have passed through ? — say is it bare and empty, or such that it may satisfy the cattle ? Which herbs saw ye in it, O Maatuk ? What is heard of the Emir ? and where left ye your households ? — auh ! and the ferjan and Aarab thou hast men tioned, what is reported of their pasture ? " — Maatuk : " And what tidings have ye for us, which Aarab are behind you? what is heard of any ghrazzus ? Where is Ibn Nahal ? where be your booths ? " An hour or two later we found another herd of Heteym camels: and only two children kept them! Maatuk made a gesture, stroking down his beard, when we rode from them ; aud said, " Thus we might have taken wellah every head of them, had they been our enemies' cattle ! " Yet aU this country lies very open to the inroads of Ateyba, who are beyond the W. er-Rummah, Not much later we carae to a menzil of Heteym, and alighted for that day.— These tent-dwellers knew me, and said to Maatuk, ' I had journeyed with a tribesman of theirs, Ghroceyb, my name was Khalil ; and Kasim's Aarab purchased medicines of me, which they found to be such as I had foretold them • I was one that deceived not the Aarab.' As for Ibn Nahal, they heard he was gone over "The Wady," into the Ateyba border, (forsaken by them of late years for dread of Ibn Rashid). The land height was here 4200 feet, shelving to the W. er-Rummah. MEET WITH THE HARB, NEAR SELEYMY 125 At daybreak we mounted, and came after an hour's riding to other Heteym tents. All the wilderness was barren, almost mahal, and yet, full of the nomads' worsted hamlets at this season, Maatuk found a half-brother in this menzil, with their old mother ; and we alighted to sit awhile with them. The man brought fresh goat milk and bade me drink, — making much of it, because his hospitality was whole milk ; ' The samn, he said, had not been taken.' Butter is the poor nomads' money, where with they raay buy themselves clothing and town wares ; there fore they use to pour out only buttermilk to the guest. — ^We rode further ; the (granite) desert was now sand soil, in which after winter rain there springs the best wild pasture, and we began to find good herbage. We espied a camel troop feeding under the mountain Genna, and crossed to them to enquire the herdsmen's tidings ; but Maatuk, who was timid, presently drew bridle, not certainly knowing what they were, " Yonder, I said, be only black camels, they are Harb ; " [the great cattle of the south and middle tribes, Harb, Meteyr, Ateyban, are commonly swarthy or black, and none of them dun-coloured]. Maatuk answered, it was God's truth, and wondered from whence had I this lore of the desert. We rode thither and found them to be Harb indeed. The young men told us that Ibn Nahal had aUghted by Seleymy to-day ; and they mUked for us. We rode from them, and saw the heads of the palms of the desert vUlage, and passed by a trap mountain, Chebdd. Before us, over a sandy descending plain, appeared a flat mountain Debby ; and far off behind Debby I saw the blue coast of some wide mountain, el-Alem. " Thereby, said Maatuk, lies the way to Medina, — four days' theliil riding," We went on in the hot noon ; and saw another camel troop go feeding under the jebel ; we rode to them and aUghted to drink more milk and enquire the herdsmen's tidings. They were Harb also, and shewed us a rocky passage in the mountain to go over to Ibn Nahal. But I heard of them an adverse tiding : ' The B. Aly (that is all the Harb N. aud E. from hence) were drawing south wards, and the country was left empty, before a ghrazzu of Ibn Saiid and the Ateyba ! ' — How now might I pass forward to el- Kaslm ? We saw a multitude of black booths pitched under Debby; 'They were yl4/'> answered the herdsmen, — come up hither from the perpetual desolation of their Hejaz marches, be tween the Harameyn ; for they heard that the rabla was in these parts, — El-AHf ! that is, we have seen, a name abhorred even among their brethren; for of Auf are the purse-cutters and piUers of the poor pilgrims. And here, then, according to a dis tich of the western tribes, I was come to the ends of the (known) world ! for says one of their thousand rhymed saws, ' El-Allf 126 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA warrahum mafi shuf nothing is seen beyond Auf.' I beheld indeed a desert world of new and dreadful aspect ! black camels, and uncouth hostUe mountains ; and a vast sand wilderness shelving towards the dire impostor's city ! Genna is a landmark of the Beduin herdsmen; in the head are pools of rain-water. Descending in the steep passage, we encountered a gaunt desert man riding upward on a tall theliil and leading a mare : he bore upon his shoulder the wavering horseman's shelfa. Maatuk shrank timidly m the saddle ; that witch-like armed man was a startling figure, and might be an Aiify. Roughly he challenged us, and the rocks resounded the magnanimous utterance of his leathern gullet: he seemed a manly soul who had fasted out his life in that place of torment which is the Hejaz between the Harameyn, so that nothing re mained of him but the terrific voice !— wonderfully stern and beetle-browed was his dark visage. He espied a booty in my bags ; and he beheld a stranger, " Tell me, he cries, what men be ye ? " — Maatuk made answer meekly, " Heteymy I, and thou ? " — " I Harby, and ugh ! cries the perilous anatomy, who he with thee ? " — "A Shamy trading among the Aarab." — "Aye well, and I see him to be a Shamy, by the guise of his clothing," He drew his mare to him, and in that I laid hand to the pistol in my bosom, lest this Death-on-a-horse should have lifted his long spear against us, Maatuk reined aside ; but the Harby struck his dromedary, and passed forth. We looked down from the mountain over a valley-like plain, and saw booths of the Aarab. " Khalil, quoth Maatuk, the people is ignorant, I shall not say to any of them, ' He is a Nasrany ' ; and say it not thyself. Wellah I may not go with thee to Ibn Nahal's beyt, but will briug thee to Aarab that are pitched by him," — " You shall carry me to Ibn Nahal himself. Are not these tribesmen very strait in religion ? I would not light at another tent ; and thou wilt not abandon thy rafik," — " But Khalil there is an old controversy betwixt us for camels ; and if I went thither he might seize this theliil." — " I know well thou speakest falsely." — " Nay, by Him who created this camel-stick ! " — But the nomad was forsworn ! The Nejumies had said to me at Kheybar, " It is well that KhalU never met with Harb ; they would certainly have cut his throat : " — ^they spoke of Harb tribesmen between the sacred cities, wretches black as slaves, that have no better trade than to run behind the caravans clamouring, bakshish ! Here I came to upland Harb, and they are tributaries of Ibn Rashid; but such distinctions cannot be enquired out in a day from the ignorant. In the Nejd Harb I have found the HARB WOMEN 127 ancient Arabian mind, more than iu Annezy tribesmen. Tiie best of the Ageyl at Kheybar was a young Harby, f;'entle aud magnanimous, of an ascetical humour ; he was seldom seen at Abdullah's coffee drinkiugs, and yet he came in soni' limes to Amm Mohammed, who was his half -tribesmen, though in another kindred. One day he said boasting, "We the B. Salem are better than ye ; for we have nothing Frenjy [of outlandish usage, or wares fetched in by Turks and foreign pilgrims to the Holy Places], saving this tobacco." — Now Maatuk held over to three or four booths, which stood apart in the valley-plain ; he alighted before them, and said he would leave rae there. An elder woraan came out to us, v/liere we sat on the sand beside the yet unloaded theliil ; and then a young wife from the beyt next us. Very cleanly-gay she seemed, amongst Aarab, iu her new calico kirtle of blue broidered with red worsted. — Was not this the bride, in her raarriage garment, of" some Beduin'a fortunate youth ? She approached with the grace of the desert, and, which is seldom seen, with some dewy freshness in her cheeks, — it might be of an amiable modesty; and she was a lovely human flower in that inhuman desolation. She asked, with a young woman's diffidence, 'What would we?' Maatuk responded to the daughter of Harb, " Salaam, and if ye have here any sick persons, this is an hakim from es-Sham ; one who travels about with his medicines among the Aarab, and is very well skilled , now he seeks v,'ho will convey him to el-Kaslm. I leave this Shamy at your bryt, for I cannot inyself carry him further; and ye will send him forward." She called the elder woraan to counsel ; and they answered, ' Look you ! the men are in the khala, and we are women alone. It were better that ye went over to Ibn Nahal ! — and see, that is his great booth standing yonder!' — Maatuk: "I will leave him here; and when they come home (at evening) your men can see to it." But I made him mount with me to ride to Ibn Nahal. We alighted at Ibn Nahal's great beyt : and entered with the solemnity and greeting of strangers. Ibn Nahal's son and a few young men were sitting on the sand, in this wide hanging-room of worsted. We sat down and they whispered among them, that ' I was some runaway soldier, of the Dowla' [from the Holy Cities or el-Yemen] : then I heard them whisper, ' Nay, I was that Nasrany ! ' — They would not question with us till we had drunk kahwa. A nomad woman of a grim stature stood upbraiding without Ibn Nahal's great booth ! she prophesied bitter words in the air, and no man regarded. Her burden was of the decay of hospi- taUty now-a-days ! and Ibn Nahal [a lean soul, under a sleek 128 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA skin], was gone over to another tent to be out of earshot of the wife-man's brawling. The Beduw commonly bear patiently the human anger, zaal, as it were trouble sent by the wUl of God upon them : the Aarab are light even in their ire, and there is httle weight in their vehement words If any Nomad tribesman revile his sheykh, he as a nobleman, wUl but shrink the shoulders and go further off, or abide till others cry down the injurious mouth. But evil tongues, where the Arabs dwell in towns, cannot so walk at their large : the common railer against the sheukh in HayU, or in Boreyda, would be beaten bv the sereeants of the Emir, ^ The coffee mortar rang out merrily for the guests in Ibn Nahal's^ booth : and now I saw the great man and his coffee companions approaching, with that (half feminine) wavering gait which is of their long clothing and unmuscular bodies. They were coffee lords, men of au elegant leisure in the desert life ; also the Harb go gallantly clad amongst Beduins, Khalaf ibn Nahal greeted us strangers with his easy smile, and the wary franchise of these mejlis politicians, and that ringing hoUow throat of the dry desert ; he proffered a distant hand : we all sat down to drink his kahwa, — and that was not very good. Khalaf whispered to his son, " What is he, a soldier ? " The young man smiling awaited that some other should speak : so one of the young companions said, " We think we should know thee," The son : " Art not thou the Nasrany that came last year to Hayil ? " — " I am he." — " I was at Hayil shortly after, and heard of thee there ; and when you entered, by the tokens, I knew thee," Khalaf answered among them, unmoved, " He had visited the Nasara, that time he traded with camels to Egypt ; and they were men of a singular probity, Wellah, in his reckoning with one of them, the Christian having received too much by five- pence, rode half a day after him to make restitution ! " He added, " Khalil travels among the Aarab ! — well, I say, why not ? he carries about these medicines, and they (the NasSra) have good remedies, Abu Faris before him, visited the Aarab ; and wellah the princes at Hayil favoured this KhalU ? Only a thing mis- likes me, which I saw in the manners of the Nasara, — Khalil, it is not honest ! Why do the men and hareem sit so nigh, as it were in the knees of each other ? " Now there carae in two young spokesmen of the Seleymy villagers, — although they seemed Beduw, They complained of the injury which Khalaf had done them to-day, sending hia camels to graze in their reserve of pasture; and threatened ' that they would mount and ride to HayU, to accuse him before the Emir ! ' Khalaf 's son called them out presently to eat in GALLANTS OF HARB 129 the inner apartment, made (such I had not seen before) in the midst of this very long and great Beduin tent : — that hidden dish is not rightly of the Nejd Aarab, but savours of the town life and Medina. The young men answered in their displeasure, they were not hungry, they came not hither to eat, and that they were here at horae. Klidlaf : "But go in and eat, and afterward we will speak together ? " They went unwillingly, and returned anon : and when he saw them again, Khalaf, because he did them wrong, began to scold : — " Do not they of Seleymy receive many benefits from us ? buy we not dates of you and corn also ? why are ye then ungrateful ? — Ullah, curse the fathers of them, fathers of settatdsher kelb (sixteen dogs)," Another said :, " Ullah, curse them, fathers of rfAwasAer Icdb (twelve dogs) ; " forms more liberal perhaps than the " sixty dogs " of the vulgar malice. These were gallants of Harb, bearing about, in their Beduin garments, the savour of Medina. Khalaf said, with only a little remaining bitterness, that to satisfy them, he would remove on the morrow, Seleymy (So- leyma) is a small Shammar settlement of twelve households, their wells are very deep. When the young men were gone, Khalaf, taking again his elated countenance gave an ear to our business. He led out Maatuk and, threatening the timid Heteymy with the dis pleasure of Ibn Eashid, enquired of him of my passing in the country, and of my coming to his menzil. I went to Khalaf, and said to thera, "Thou canst send me, as all the people say, to el-Kaslm : I alighted at your beyt, and have tasted of your hospitality, and would repose this day and to-morrow ; and then let some man of your trust accorapany rae, for his wages, to el- Kaslm." His voice was smooth, but Khalaf's dry heart was full of a politic dissimulation : " Md ickdar, I am not able ; and how, he answered, might we send thee to el-Kaslm ? — who would adventure thither ; the people of Aneyza are our enemies." — " Khalaf, no put-offs, you can help me if you will." — " Well, hearken ! become a Moslem, and I will send thee whithersoever thou would'st ; say, ' There is no God, beside Ullah,' and I will send thee to el-Kaslm freely." — " You promise this, before witnesses ? " — " Am I a man to belie my words," — " Hear then all of you ; There is none God but Ullah ! — let the theliil be brought round." — "Ay ! say also Mohammed is the messenger of Ullah ! " — " That was not in our covenant ; the theliil Khalaf j and let me be going." — " I knew not that the Nasranies could say so ; all my raeauing was that you should become a Moslem, Khalil, you may find some of the jemmamtl (camaleers, sing. iemmdl) of el-Kaslm, that come about, at this season, to sell VOL. II. I 130 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA clothing among the Aarab. Yesterday I heard of one of them in these parts [it was false] ; a jemmai would carry thee back with him for two reals. When you have supped and drunk the evening camel milk, mount again with this Heteymy ! and he will convey thee to him " ; — but I read in his looks, that it was a fable. He went aside with Maatuk again, — was long talking with him ; and required him, with words like threatenings, to carry rae from him. When we had supped, Maatuk called me to mount. I said to Ibn Nahal, " If I am forsaken in this wilderness, or there should no man receive me, and I return to thee, wilt thou then receive me ? "—Khalaf answered, ' he would receive me.' In the first darkness of the night we rode from him ; seek ing a ferlj which Maatuk had espied as we came down from Genna, After an hour, Maatuk said, " Here is sand, shall we alight and sleep ? " — for yet we saw not their watchfires — " Let us ride on : and if all fail tell me what shall become of me, my rafik ? " — " KhalU, I have said it already, that I will carry thee again to live with me in my ferlj," Then a hound barked from the dark valley side : we turned up thither, and came before three tents ; where a camel troop lay chawing the cud in the night's peace : their fires were out, and the Aarab were already sleeping. We alighted and set down our bags, and kneebound the theliil. I would now have advanced to the booths, but Maatuk withheld me, — " It were not well, he whispered ; but abide we here, and give them time, and see if there come not some to call us." Bye and bye a man approached, and " Ugh ! said he, as he heard our salaam, why come ye not into the beyt ? " This worthy bore in his hand a spear, and a huge scimitar in the other. We fo.und the host within, who sat up blowing the embers in the hearth ; and laid on fuel to give us light, _ He roused the housewife ; and she reached us over the curtain a bowl of old rotten leban, of which they make sour mereesy. We sipped their sorry night bever, and all should now be peace and confidence ; yet he of the spear and scimitar sat on, holding his weapons in his two hands, and lowered upon us, " How now, friend ! I said at last, is this that thou takest us for robbers, I and my rafik ? " — " Ugh ! a man cannot stand too much upon his guard, there is ever peril," Maatuk su'ld merrUy, " He has a sword and we have another ! " The host answered smiling, " He never quits that huge sword of his and the spear, waking or sleeping ! " So we perceived that the poor fellow was a knight of the moonshine, I said to our host, " I am a hakim from Damascus, and I go to el-Kaslm : my rafik leaves me THE HOST, MOTLOG 131 here, and will you send me thither for my money, four reals ? " He answered gently, " We will see to-morrow, and I think we may agree together, whether I myself shall convey thee, or I find another ; in the meantime, stay with us a day or two," When we would rest, the housemother, she of the rotten leban, said a thing to one of us, which made me think we were not well arrived : she was a forsaken wife of our host's brother, I asked Maatuk, " If such were the Harb manners ! " — ^He whis pered again, " As thou seest ; and say, Khalil, shall I leave thee here, or wilt thou return with rae ? " — When the day broke, Maatuk said to them, "I leave him with you, take care of him :" so he mounted and rode from us, Motlog (that was our host's name) : " Let us walk down to Ibn Nahal, and take counsel how we may send thee to el-Kaslm, but I have a chapped heel and may hardly go," I dressed the wound with ointment and gave him a sock ; and the Beduwy drew on a pair of old boots that he had bought in Medina, We had gone half a mile, when I saw a horseman, with his long lance, riding against us : a fierce-looking fanatical fellow, — It was he who alone, of all who sat at Khalaf's, had contraried me yesterday. This horseman was Tollog, my host's elder brother ! and it was his booth wherein we had passed the night ! his was also that honest forsaken housewife ! It were a jest worthy of the Arabs and their religion, to tell why the new wedded man chose to lie abroad at Ibn Nahal's. " How now ! " cries our horseman staring upon me like a man aghast. His brother responded simply of the Shamy hakim and the Heteymy, — " Akhs ! which way went that Heteymy ? " (and balancing his long lance, he sat up) I will gallop after hira and bring him again, — Ullah curse his father ! and knowest thou that this is a Nasrany?" Motlog stood a moment astonished ! then the poor man said nobly, " Wa low, and though it be so ... ? he is our guest and a stranger ; and that Heteymy is now too far gone to be overtaken." — Tollog rode further ; he was a shrew at horae and ungracious, but Motlog was a mild man We passed by some spring pasture, and Motlog cried to a child, who was keeping their sheep not far off, to run home and tell them to remove hither. When the boy was gone a furlong he waved him back and shouted ' No ! ' for he had changed his mind : he was a little broken headed, — and so is every third man in the desert life. I saw, where we passed under a granite headland, some ground courses of a dry-built round chamber such as those which, in the western dlras, I have supposed to be sepulchres. 1S2 Wanderings in arabia Khalaf had removed since yesterday : we found him in his tent stretched upon the sand to slumber — it was noon. The rest made it strange to see me again, but Motlog my host worthily defended me in all, Khalaf turning himself after a while and rising, for the fox was awake, said with easy looks, " Aha ! this is Khalil back again ; and how Khalil, that cursed Heteymy forsook thee ? " When he heard that Maatuk had taken wages of me he added : " Had I known this, I would have cut off his head, and seized his theliil ; — ho ! there, prepare the midday kahwa." His son answered, " We have made it already and drunk round. "^ — " Then make it again, and spare not for kahwa," Khalaf twenty days before had espoused a daughter of the village, and paid the bride money; and the Bednins whispered in mirth, that she was yet a maid. For this his heart was in bale : and the son, taking occasion to mock the Heteymy, sought in covert words his father's relief, from one called an hakim, Ibn Nahal said at last kindly, " Since Khalil has been left at your beyt, send him Motlog whither he desires of thee," * * * * * * There was here but the deadly semblance of hospitality; naught but buttermilk, and not so much as the quantity of a cup was set before me in the long day, Happy was I when each other evening their camels came home, and a short draught was brought me of the warm leban, Tollog, the gay horseman, was a glozing fanatical fellow ; in Motlog was some drivelling nobility of mind: the guest's raortal torment was here the miserable hand of ToUog's cast wife. Little of God's peace or blessing was in this wandering hamlet of three brethren ; the jarring con tention of their voices lasted from the day rising, till the stars shone above us. Though now their milk-skins overflowed with the spring milk, they were in the hands of the hareem, who boiled all to mereesy, to sell it later at Medina, The Beduw of high Nejd would contemn this ignoble traffic, and the decay of hospitality. Being without nourishment I fell into a day-long languishing trance. One morrow I saw a ferlj newly pitched upon the valley side, in face of us: when none observed me, I went thither under colour of selling medicines. Few men sat at home, and they questioned with me for my name of Nasrany; the women clamoured to know the kinds of my simples, but none poured me out a little 16ban. I left them and thought I saw other tents pitched beyond : when I had gone a mUe, they were but a row of bushes. Though out of sight of friends and A FUGITIVE OF METEYR 133 unarmed, I went on, hoping to espy some booths of the Aarab. I descried a black spot moving far off on the rising plain, and thought it might be an herd of goats , I would go to them and drink milk, I crossed to the thin shadow of an acacia tree ; for the sunbeaten soil burned my bare soles; and turning I saw a tall Beduwy issue from a broken ground and go by, upon his stalking dromedary ; he had not perceived the stranger : then I made forward a mile or two, to come to the goats. I found but a young woman with a child herding them. — ' Salaam ! and could she tell me where certain of the people were pitched, of such a name?' She answered a little affrighted, ' She knew them not, they were not of her Aarab,' — " 0 maiden railk for me ! " — " Min fen halib, milk from whence ? we milked thera early at the booths ; there is naught now in these goats' udders, and we have no vessel to draw in : " she said her tents stood yet far beyond. "And is there not hereby a ferlj, for which I go seeking all this raorrow?" — " Come a little upon the hill side, and I will shew it thee : lo there ! thou raayest see their beyts." My eyes were not so good ; but I marked where she shewed with her finger and went forward. Having marched half an hour, over wild and broken ground, I flrst saw the menzil, when I was nigh upon them ; and turned to go t'^^ greater booth in the circuit, wherein I espied men sitting. Their hounds leapt out against rae vrith open throat; the householder ran with an hatchet, to chase them away from the stranger (a guest) arriving. — As I sat amongst them, I perceived that these were not the Beduins I sought. I asked bye and bye, "Have ye any tamr?" — also to eat with them would be for ray security. The good man answered cheer fully, " We have nothing but cheese ; and that shall be fetched immediately." The host was a stranger, a fugitive of Meteyr, living with these Harb, for an homicide. He sat bruising green bark of the boughs of certain desert trees ; and of the bast he would twist well-ropes : " There are, said he, some very (ghra- 'mik, for 'amtk) deep golbdn (sing, jellib, a well) in these dlras." The poor people treated me honourably, asking mildly and answering questions. I said, " I came to seek who would carry me to el-Kaslm for his wages," The man answered, " He had a good theliil ; and could I pay five reals, he would carry me, and set me down wellah in the market-place of Aneyza ! " When I came again to my hosts — " Whither wentest thou ? exclaimed Motlog ; to go so far from our tents is a great danger for thee: there are waoy who finding thee alone would kiU 134 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA thee, the Beduw are kafirs, Khalil," When I told him the man's name, who would carry me to Aneyza, he added, '' Have nothing to do with him ! he is a Meteyry If he rode with thee (radlf), beware of his knife — a Meteyry cannot keep himself from treachery ; or elge he might kill thee sleeping : now canst thou ride four days to el-Kasim without sleeping ! " Such evil- speaking is common between neighbour tribes ; but I think the Meteyry would have honestly conveyed me to Aneyza, Motlog had in certain things the gentlest mind of any Arab of my acquaintance hitherto. When he saw that by moments, I fell asleep, as I sat, even in the flaming sun, and that I wandered from the (inhospitable) booths — ^it was but to seek some rock's shelter where, in this lethal somnolence and slowness of spirit, I might close the eyes — he said, ' He perceived that my breast was straitened (with grief) here among them : ' and since I had taken this journey to heart, and he could not carry me himself so far as Boreyda, he would seek for someone to-day to convey me thither ; — howbeit that for my sake, he had let pass the ghrazzu of Ibn Nahal, — for which he had obtained the loan of another horse. Besides him, a grim councUlor for my health was Aly, he of the spear and scimitar : that nntempered iron blade had been perchance the pompous side arm of some javelin man of the great officers of Medina, — a personage in the city bestowed the warlike toy upon the poor soul. "Ana sahibah, I am thy very friend," quoth Aly, in the husk voice of long-suffering misery. He was of the Harb el- Aly : they are next from hence in the N,-B and not of these Aarab. I asked him •¦ " Where leftest thou thy wife and thy children and thy camels ? " He answered, " I have naught besides this mantle and my tunic and my weapons : ana yatim ! I am an orphan ! " This fifty years' old poor Beduin soul was yet in his nonage; — what an hell were it of hunger and misery, to live over his age again ! He had inherited a possession of palms, with his brother, at Medina; but the stronger father's son put out his weak-headed brother : and, said Motlog, "The poor man (reckoned a fool) could have there no redress." — "And why are these weapons always in his hands?" — " He is afraid for a thing that happened years ago : Aly and a friend of his, rising from supper, said they would try a fall. They wrestled : Aly cast the other, and fell on him , — and it may be there had somewhat burst in him, for the fallen man lay dead ! None accused Aly ; nevertheless the mesquin fled for his life, and he has gone ever since thus armed, lest the kindred of the deceased finding him should kUl him." At evening there sat with us a young kinsman of ToUog's new TOLLOG'S BRIDE 135 wife. He was from another ferlj ; and having spoken many in juries of the Nasara, he said further, " Thou Tollog, and Motlog ! wellah, ye do not well to receive a kafir in your beyts ; " and taking for himself all the inner place at the fire, — unlike the gentle customs of the Beduins, he had quite thrust out the guest and the stranger into the evening wind ; for here was but a niche made with a lap of the tent cloth, to serve, like the rest of their inhospitality, for the men's sitting-place. I exclaimed, "This must be an Ageyly ! " — They answered, " Ay, he is an Ageyly ! a proud fellow, KhalU." — "I have found them hounds, Turks and traitors ; by my faith, I have seen of them the vilest of man kind."—" WeUah, KhalU, it is true."—" What Harby is he ? " — "He is Hdzimy." — "An Hdzimy ! then good friends, this ignoble proud fellow is a Solubby ! " — " It is sooth, Khalil, aha- ha-ha ! " and they laughed apace. The discomfited young man, when he found his tongue, could but answer, subbak, " The Lord rebuke thee." It seemed to them a marvellous thing that I should know this homely matter. — Hazim, an ancient fendy of Harb, are snibbed as Heteym ; and Beduins in their anger will cast against any Heteymy, Sherary or sany the reproach of Solubby. Room was now made, and this laughter had recon ciled the rest to the Nasrany. — ^I had wondered to see great part of ToUog's tent shut close : but on the morrow, when the old ribald housewife and mother of his children sat without boiling samn, there issued from the close booth a new face, — a fair young woman, clean and comely clad ! She was ToUog's (new) bright bird in bridal bower; and these were her love-days, without household charge. She came forth with dazing eyes in the burning sunlight. When the next sun rose, I saw that our three tents were be come four. These new comers were Seyadln, not Solubbies, not sanies but (as we have seen) packmen of poor Beduin kin, carry ing wares upon asses among the Aarab. I went to visit the strangers; — "Salaam!" — "Aleykom es-salaam; and come in Khalil ! art thou here ? " — " And who be ye ! " — " Rememberest thou not when thou camest with the Heteymies and drank coffee in our kasr, at Gofar ? " The poor woman added, " And I mended thy rent mantle." " Khalil, said the man, where is thy galliun? I will fill it with haraeydy," Beduin-born, ali the paths of the desert were known to him ; he had peddled as far as Kaslm and he answered me truly in all that I enquired of him : — they are not unkind to whom the world is unkind ! there was no spice in them of fanaticism. CHAPTER Vn JOURNEY TO EL-KASiM: BOREYDA The same morning came two Beduins with camel-loads of temmn ; which the men had brought down for Tollog and Mot log, frora el-Irak ! They were of Shammar and carriers in Ibn Rashid's Haj caravan. I wondered how after long journeying they had found our booths : they told me, that since passing Hayil they had enquired us out, in this sort, — ' Where is Ibn Nahal ? ' — Answer : ' We heard of him in the S.-B. country. — Some say he is gone over to the Ateyba marches. — When last we had word of him, he was in such part. — He went lately to wards Seleyma. — You shall find his Aarab between such and such landmarks, — He is grazing about Genna.' Whilst they were unloading, a Beduin stranger, but known in this ferlj, arrived upon his camel after an absence : he had lately ridden westward 130 miles, to visit Bishr, amongst whom he had been bred up ; but now he dwelt with Harb. The man was of Sham mar, and had a forsaken wife living as a widow in our menzil : he came to visit their little son. Motlog counselled me to en gage this honest man for the journey to Kasim. We called him: — He answered, ' WeUah, he feared to pass so open a country, where he might lose his camel to some foraying Ateyban ; ' but Motlog persuaded him, saying he could buy with his wages a load of dates (so cheap in el-Kaslm) to bring home to his household. He proffered to carry me to el-Buklcerieh : but we agreed for five reals that he should carry rae to Boreyda, " Mount, irkub ! " quoth the man, whose name was Hdmed ; he loaded my things, and climbed behind me, — and we rode forth, " Ullah bring thee to thy journey's end ! said Tollog ; Ullah, give that you see not the evil ! " The sun was three hours high : we passed over a basalt coast, and descended to another ferlj : in which was Hamed's beyt. There he took his water-skin, and a few handfuls of mereesy — all his provision for riding other 450 miles — and to his house- EL-KASIm 137 wife he said no more than this : " Woman, I go with the stranger to Boreyda," She obeyed silently ; and commonly a Beduwy in departing bids not his wife farewell: — "Hearest thou? (said Hamed again) follow with these Aarab until my coming home !" Then he took their little son in his arms and kissed him. — -We rode at first northward for dread of Ateyban : this wilderness is granite grit with many black basalt bergs. The marches be yond were now full of dispersed Aarab, B. Salem ; we saw their black booths upon every side. All these Harb were gathering towards Semira, in the Shammar dlra, to be taxed there, upon a day appointed, by the collectors of Ibn Rashid ; because there is much water for their multitude of cattle. We left the mountain landmark of Benany at half a day's distance, west ; and held forward evenly with the course of W. er-Rummah, — the great valley now lying at a few railes' distance upon the right hand. Some black basaltic raoimtains, not very far off, Hamed told me, were beyond the Wady : that great dry waterway bounds the dirat of Harb in Nejd ; all beyond is A-fceyba country. Twice as we rode we met with camel herds ; the men milked for us, and we enquired and told tidings. At sun-setting we were journey ing under a steep basalt jebel ; and saw a black spot, upon a raountain sand-drift, far before us, which was a booth of the nomads : then we saw their camels, and the thought of evening railk was pleasant to our hearts. " But seest thou ? said Hamed, they are all males ! for they are gaunt and have low humps ; — that is because they serve for carriage : the Aarab let the cows fatten, and load not upon them," * * * (Doughty passes with Hdmed throiigh the desert to Semira, meeting with Beny Aly and Harb Aarab.) * * * Now before us lay the Nefiid sand of Kaslm, which begins to be driven-up in long swelling waves, that trend some what N. and S. Four miles further we went by the oasis AyHn; embayed in the same sandstone train, which is before called sara. Upon a cliff by the Nefiid side is a clay-built lighthouse like watch-tower [the watch-tower is found in all the 138 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA viUages of Kaslm]. The watchman (who must be clear sighted) is paid by a coramon contribution : his duty is to look forth, in the spring months, from the day rising till the going down of the sun ; for this is the season, when the vUlagers who have called in their few milch goats from the Aarab, send them forth to pasture without the oasis. We saw the man stand ing unquietly in his gallery, at the tower head, in the flame of the sun ; and turning himself to every part, he watched, under the shadow of his hand, all the fiery waste of sand before him. Hamed said, the palms at Ayiin are about half the palms of Teyma ; and here might be 400 or 500 inhabitants, Ayiin stands at the crossing of the Kaslm cameleers' paths, to J. Shammar, to the land of the north, and to the Holy Cities. My rafik had been well content to leave me here ; where, he promised, I should meet with carriers to all parts, even to Kuweyt and Bosra, " wellah, more than in Boreyda." Some great cattle were feeding before us in the Nefud — they were not camels ; but, oh ! happy homely sight, the villagers kine at pasture in that uncheerful sand wilderness ! I said, " I would ride to them and seek a draught of cow-milk." Hamed answered, " Thou wilt ask it in vain, go not Khalil ! for these are not like the Beduw, but people of the gSria, not knowing hospitality: before us lies a good village, we shall soon see the watch-tower, and we will alight there to breakfast," I saw a distant clay steeple, over the Nefud southward. Hamed could not tell the name of that oasis : he said, " Wellah the geraieh (towns and villages) be so many in el-Kaslm ! " We came in two hours to Gassa, a palm village, with walls, and the greatest grown palms that I had seen since Teyma, — and this said Hamed, who knew Teyma. When I asked, what were the name Gassa, he answered, " There is a pumpkin so called : " but the Beduw are rude etymologers. Their watch-tower — mergdb or garra — is founded upon a rock above the village. The base is of rude stones laid in clay, the upper work is well built of clay bricks. We were now in Kaslm, the populous (and religious) nef-dd country of the caravaners. We did not enter the place, but halted at a solitary orchard house under the garra. It was the time of their barley harvest : this day was near the last in April, The land-height I found to be now only 2800 feet. We dismounted ; the householder came out of his yard, to lead us to the kahwa, and a child bore in my bags : Hamed brought away the head-stall and halter of our camel, for here, he said, was little assurance. The coffee-hall floor was deep Nefiid sand ! When we had drunk two cups, the host called us into his store room ; where he set before us a platter of dates — none of the THE NEFUD OF KASIM 139 best, and a bowl of water. The people of Kaslm are not lovers of hospitality : the poor Aarab (that are passengers without purses) say despitefuUy, ' There is nothing there but for thy penny ! ' — this is true. Kaslm resembles the border lands, and the inhabitants are become as townsmen: their deep sand country, in the midst of high Arabia, is hardly less settled than Syria. The Kusman are prudent and adventurous : there is in them much of the thick B. Temlm blood. Almost a third of the people are caravaners, to foreign provinces, to Medina and Mecca, to Kuweyt, Bosra, Bagdad, to the Wahaby country, to J, Shammar, And many of thera leave home in their youth to seek fortune abroad; where some (we have seen) serve the Ottoman government in arras: they were till lately the Ageyl at Bagdad, Damascus, and Medina. — All Nejd Arabia, east of Teyma, appertains to the Persian Gulf traffic, and not to Syria : and therefore the (foreign) colour of Nejd is Mesopotamian ! In those borderlands are most of the emigrated from el-Kaslm,— husband men and small salesmen ; and a few of them are become wealthy merchants. Arabians of other provinces viewing the many green villages of this country in their winding-sheet of sand, are wont to say half scornfully, ' Kaslm is all Nefiid,' The Nefiid of Kaslm is a sand country through whose midst passes the great Wady [er- Rummah], and everywhere the ground water is nigh at hand. Wells have been digged and palms planted in low grounds [ga, or kh6bra], with a loam soil not too brackish or bitter : and such is every oasis-village of el-Kaslm, The chief towns are of the later middle age. The old Kaslm settleraents, of which the early Mohammedan geographers make mention, are now, so far as I have enquired, ruined sites and names out of mind. The poor of Kasim and el- Weshm wander even in their own country ; young field labourers seek service from town to town, where they hear that el-urruk, the sweat of their brow, is likely to be well paid. Were el-Kasim laid waste, this sand country would be, like the lands beyond Jordan, a wilderness full of poor village ruins. Our host sat with a friend, and had sparred his yard door against any intrusion of loitering persons. These substantial men of Kaslm, wore the large silken Bagdad kerchief, cast negligently over the head and shoulders ; and under this head- gear the red Turkey cap, tarbHsJi, Our host asked me what countryman I was " I am a traveller, from Damascus." — " No, thou art not a Shamy, thy speech is better than so ; for I have been in ' Syria : tell me, art thou not from some of those vU lages in the Hauran ? I was there with the Ageyl. What art 140 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA thou ? thou art not of the Moslemln ; art thou then Yahudy, or of the Nasara ? " — " Yes, host, a Meslhy ; will ye therefore drive me away, and kUl me ? " — " No ! and fear nothing ; is not this el-Kaslm ? where the most part have travelled in foreign lands : they who have seen the world are not like the ignorant, they will treat thee civilly." — We heard from him that Ibn Saiid was come as far as Mejmad : but those rumours had been false of his riding in Kaslra, and in the Harb country ! Our host desired to buy quinine of the hakim ; I asked half a real ; he would pay but fourpence, and put me in mind of his in hospitable hospitality. — "Wilt thou then accompany me to Boreyda ? and I will give it thee." — " Wherefore should I pay for kanaklna ? in Ka^im thou wilt see it given away (by some charitable merchants)." — We rode over a salt-crusted bottom beyond the village : the well-water at Gassa has a taste of this mineral. In the oasis, which is greater than er-Rauth, may be three hundred souls. The dark weather was past, the sun shone ont in the afternoon ; and I felt as we journeyed here in the desert of el-Kaslm, such a stagnant sultry air, as we may commonly find in the deep Jordan plain below Jericho, At our left hand is still the low sandstone coast ; whereunder I could see palms and watch-towers of distant hamlets and villages. The soil is grit-sand with reefs of sand -rock ; beside our path are dunes of deep Nefiid sand. After five miles, we came before Shukk'dk, which is not far from Boreyda ; it stands (as I have not seen another Arabian settlement) without walls ! in the desert side. Here we drew bridle to enquire tidings, and drink of their sweet water. We heard that Hdsan, Emir of Boreyda, whom they coraraonly call Weled (child of) Mahanna, was with his armed band in the wilderness, ghrazzai. — Mahanna, a rich jemmdl or camel master at Boreyda, lent money at usury, till half the town were his debtors; and finally with the support of the Wahaby, he usurped the Emir's dignity ! — Hamed told me yet more strangely, that the sheykh of a gdria, Kdfer, near Kuseyby, in these parts, is a sany! he said the man's wealth had procured him the village sheykhship, [It is perhaps no free oasis, but under Boreyda or Hayil,] Now I saw the greater dunes of the Nefiid ; such are called tdus and nef'd (pi, anfdd) by Beduins : and adandt and kethib (pi. kethbdn) are words heard in Kaslm. "Not far beyond the dunes on our right hand (towards Aneyza) lies the W. er-Rummah," said Hamed. We journeyed an hour and a half, and came upon a brow of the Nefud, a,s the sun wa^ VIEW OF BOREYDA 141 going down. And from hence appeared a dream-like spectacle ! — a great clay town built in this waste sand with enclosing walls and towers and streets and houses ! and there beside a bluish dark wood of ethel trees, upon high dunes ! This is Boreyda ! and that square minaret, in the town, is of their great mesjid. I saw, as it were, Jerusalem in the desert! [as we look down from the Mount of Olives]. The last upshot sun-beams enlightened the dim clay city in glorious manner, and pierced into that dull pageant of tamarisk trees, I asked my rafik, " Where are their palms ? " He answered, " Not in this part, they lie behind yonder great dune towards the Wady (er-Rummah)." Hdmed : " And whilst we were in the way, if at any time I have displeased thee, forgive it me ; and say hast thou found me a good rafik? Khalil, thou seest Boreyda! and to-day I am to leave thee in this place. And when thou art in any of their villages, say not, ' I (am) a Nasrany,' for then they wiU utterly hate thee ; but pray as they, so long as thou shalt sojourn in the country, and in nothing let it be seen that thou art not of the Moslemln : do thus, that they may bear thee also goodwill, and further thee. Look not to find these town- lings mUd-hearted like the Beduw ! but conform thyself to them ; or they will not suffer thee to abide long time among thera, I do counsel thee for the best — I may not corapel thee ! say thou art a mudowwy, and tell them what remedies thou hast, and for which diseases : this also must be thine art to hve by. Thou hast suffered for this name of Nasrany, and what has that profited thee ? only say now, if thou canst, ' I (am a) Musslim.' " We met with some persons of the town, without their walls, taking the evening air ; and as we went by they questioned my Beduwy rafik : among them I noted a sinister Galla swordsman of the Emir. Hamed answered, ' We were going to the Emir's hostel.' They said, " It is far, and the sun is now set ; were it not better for you to alight at such an house ? that stands a little within the gate, and lodge there this night ; and you may go to the Emir in the morning," We rode from them and passed the town gate : their clay wall [vulg, ajjiddt] is new, and not two feet thick. We found no man in the glooming streets ; the people were gone home to sup, and the shops in the siik were shut for the night : their town houses of (sandy) clay are low-built and crumbling. The camel paced under us with shuffling steps in the silent and forsaken ways : we went by the unpaved pubUc place, mejlis ; which I saw worn hollow by 142 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA the townspeople's feet ! and there is the great clay mesjid and high-built minaret, Hamed drew bridle at the yard of the Emir's hostel, Mundkh es-Sheukh. The porter bore back the rude gates ; and we rode in and dismounted. The journey from er-Rauth had been nearly twenty-five miles. It was not long, before a kitchen lad bade us, " rise and say God's name ". He led through dim cloistered courts ; from whence we mounted by great clay stairs, to supper. The degrees were worn down in the midst, to a gutter, and we stumbled dangerously in the gloom. We passed by a gallery and terraces above, which put me in mind of our convent buildings : the boy brought us on without light to the end of a colonnade, where we felt a ruinous floor under us. And there he fetched our supper, a churlish wheaten mess, boiled in water (a sort of Arabian bUrghrol), without samn : we were guests of the peasant Emir of Boreyda. It is the evening meal in Kaslm, but should be prepared with a little milk and butter ; m good houses this burghrol, cooked in the broth and coraraonly mixed with temmn, is served with boiled mutton. — When we had eaten and washed, we must feel the way back in the dark, in danger of breaking our necks, which were more than the supper's worth.— And now Hamed bade me his short Beduin adieux : he mounted his camel ; and I was easy to see my rafik safely past the (tyrant's) gates. The moon was rising ; he would ride out of the town, and lodge in one of the villages. I asked now to visit " the Emir ", — Hasan's brother, whom he had left deputy in Boreyda ; it was answered, " The hour is late, and the Emir is in another part of the town ; — el-bdkir ! in the morning." The porter, the coffee server, a swordsman, and other servitors of the guest-house gathered about me : the yard gates were shut, and they would not suffer me to go forth. Whilst I sat upon a clay bench, in the little moonlight, I was startled from my weariness by the abhorred voice of their barbaric religion ! the raugthin crying from the minaret to the latter prayer. — ' Ah ! I mused, my little provident memory ! what a mischance ! why had I sat on thus late, and no Emir, and none here to deUver me, till the morning ? ' I asked quickly, ' Where was the sleeping place ? ' Those hyenas responded, vrith a sort of smothered derision, ' Would I not pray along with them, ere I went to rest ? ' — They shoved me to a room in the dark hostel buUding, which had been used for a small kahwa All was sUent within and sounding as a chapel I groped, and felt clay pillars, and trod on ashes of a hearth : and lay down there upon the hard earthen floor. My pistol was in the THE NASRANY IS ROBBED 143 bottom of my bags, which the porter had locked up in another place : I found ray pen-knife, and thought in my heart, they should not go away with whole skins, if any would do me a mischief; yet I hoped the night might pass quietly. I had not slumbered an hour when I heard footsteps, of some one feeling through the floor; "Up, said a voice, and follow me, thou art called before the sheykhs to the coffee hall : " — he went before, and I followed by the sound ; and found persons sitting at coffee, who seemed to be of the Emir's guard. They bade me be seated, and one reached me a cup : then they questioned me, " Art not thou the Nasrany that was lately at Hayil ? thou wast there with some of Annezy ; and Aneybar sent thee away upon their jurraba (mangy thel-ul) : they were to convey thee to Kheybar ? "— " I am he,"—" Why then didst thou not go to Kheybar ? " — " You have said it, — because the theliil was jurraba ; those Beduins could not carry rae thither, which Aneybar well knew, but the slave would not hear : — tell me, how knowest thou this ? " — " I was in Hayil, and I saw thee there. Did not Aneybar forbid thy going to Kaslm?" — "I heard his false words, that ye were enemies, his forbidding I did not hear ; how could the slave forbid me to travel beyond the borders of Ibn Eashid ? "¦ — At this they laughed and tossed their shallow heads, and I saw some of their teeth, — a good sign ! The inquisitors added, with their impatient tyranny, " What are the papers with thee, ha ! go and fetch them ; for those will we have instantly, and carry them to the Emir, — and (to a lad) go thou with the Nasrany." The porter unlocked a store-closet where my bags lay. I drew out the box of medicines ; but my weary hands seemed slow to the bird-witted wretches that had followed me. The worst of them, a Kahtany, struck me with his fist, and reviled and threatened the NasrAny, " Out, they cried, with all thy papers!" and snatched them from ray hands: "We go with these, they said now, to the Emir," They passed out ; the gates were shut after them : and I was left alone in the court. The scelerat remained who had struck me : he came to me presently with his hand on his sword, and murmured, " Thou kafir ! say La ilah ill' Ullah ; " and there came another and another, I sat upon the clay bench in the moonlight, and answered them, "To morrow I will hear you ; and not now, for I am most weary." Then they plucked at ray breast (for money) ! I rose, and they all swarmed about me. — The porter had said a word in my ear, " If thou hast any silver commit it to me, for these will rob thee : " but now I saw he was one of them himself ! All 144 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA the miscreants being upon me, I thought I might exclaim, Haramieh, thieves! ho! honest neighbours!" and see what came of it ; but the hour was late, and this part of the town solitary. — None answered to my voice, and if any heard me, doubtless their hearts would shrink within them ; for the Arabs [inhabiting a country weakly governed and full of alarms] are commonly dastards. When I cried thieves ! I saw my tor mentors stand a little aghast : " Shout not (they said hoarsely) or by Ullah — ! " So I understood that this assailing me was of their own ribald malice, and shouted on ; and when I began to move my arms, they were such cowards that, though I was infirm, I might, I perceived, with a short effort have delivered myself from them : yet this had been worse — for then they would return with weapons ; and I was enclosed by walls, and could not escape out of the town. Six were the vile crew struggling with me : I thought it best to shout on haramieh ! and make ever some little resistance, to delay the time. I hoped every moment that the officer would return from the Emir, Now my light purse was in their brutish hands ; and that which most troubled me, the aneroid barometer, — it seemed to them a watch in the starlight ! The Kahtany snatched and burst the cord by which the delicate instrument was suspended from my neck ; and ran away with it like a hound with a good bone in his mouth. They had plucked off my mantle and kerchief; and finally the villains left me standing alone in a pair of slops : then they hied all together to the door where my bags lay. But I thought they would not immediately find my pistol in the dark ; and so it was, — Now the Emir's man stood again at the gate, beating and calling loudly to be admitted : and the porter went like a truant to open. " What has happened ? " quoth the oSicer who entered, " They have stripped the Nasrany." — " Who has done this ? " " It was the Kahtany, in the beginning." " And this fellow, I answered, was one of the nimblest of them ! " The rest had fled into the hostel buUding, when the Emir's man came in, "Oh, the shame! (quoth the officer) that one is robbed in the Kasr of the Emir ; and he a man who bears letters from the Sooltan, what have you done ? the Lord curse you all to gether," " Let them, I said, bring my clothes, although they have rent them," — " Others shall be given thee by the Emir," The lurkers came forth at his call from their dark corners ; and he bade them, " Bring the stranger his clothes : — and aU, he said to rae, that they have robbed shaU be restored, upon pain of cutting off the hand ; wellah the hand of anyone with whom is found aught shall be laid in thy bags for the thing that THE EMIR'S OFFICER 145 was stolen I came to lead thee to a lodging prepared for thee; but I must now return to the Emir: — and (naming them) thou, aud thou, and thou, do no more thus, to bring on you the displeasure of the Emir." They answered, "We had not done it, but he refused to say. La ilah ill' Ullah." — " This is their falsehood ! — for to please them I said it four or five times ; and hearken ! I will say it again. La ilah, ill' Ullah." — Officer: " I go, and shall be back anon." — " Leave me no moro among robbers," — " Fear not, none of them will do anything further against you " ; and he bade the porter close the gates behind hira. He returned soon : and commanded those wretches, from the Emir, " upon pain of the hand," to restore all that they had robbed from the Nasrany ; he bade also the porter, make a fire in the porch, to give us light. The Kahtany swordsman, who had been the ringleader of thera — he was one of the Emir's band — adjured me to give a true account of the money which was in my purse ; ' for my words might endanger his hand ; and if I said but the sooth, the Lord would show me mercy.' — "Dost thou think. Miserable, that a Christian man should be such as thyself ! " — " Here is the purse, quoth the officer ; how much raoney should be therein ? take it, and count thy clerdhim [Spa^A*-]." I found their barbarous hands had been in it ; for there remained only a few pence ! " Such and such lacks." — Officer : " Oh ! ye who have taken the man's money, go and fetch it, and the Lord curse you." The swordsman went ; and came back with the money, — two French gold pieces of 20 francs : all that remained to me in this bitter world. Officer : " Say now, is this aU thy fuHs ? "— " That is aU."— " Is there any more ? " "No!" — The Kahtany showed me his thanks with a wonder ing brutish visage. Officer : " And what more ? " — " Such and such." The wretches went, and came again with the small things and what else they had time, after stripping me (it was by good fortune but a raoraent), to steal from my bags. Officer : " Look now, hast thou all, is there anything missing ? " — " Yes, my watch " (the aneroid, which after the pistol was ray raost care in Arabia) ; but they exclaimed, " What watch ! no, we have restored all to him already." Officer: "Oh, you liars, you cursed ones, you thieves, bring this man his watch ! or the (guilty) hand is forfeited to the Erair," It was fetched with delays ; and of this they made restitution with the most un- wUlingness : the metal gilt might seem to them fine gold. — To my comfort, I found on the morrow that the instru ment was uninju>"ed: I might yet mark in it the height of a fathom. VOL. II. K 146 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA He said now, ' It was late, and I should pass the night here.' — " Lend me a sword, if I must sleep in this cursed place ; and if any set upon me again, should I spare him ? " — " There is no more danger, and as for these they shall be locked in the coffee- hall till the morning : " and he led away the offenders. — The officer had brought my papers : only the safe-conduct of Aneybar was not among them ! When the day broke the Emir's officer — whose name was Jeyber — returned to me : I asked anew to visit the Emir. Jeyber answered, he must first go and speak with him. When he came again, he laid my bags on his infirm shoulders saying, he would bring me to my lodging. He led me through an out lying street ; and turned into a vast ruinous yard, before a great buUding — now old and crumbling, that had been the Emir's palace in former days : [the house walls here of loam may hardly stand above one hundred years]. We ascended by hollow clay stairs to a great hall above; where two women, his housewives, were sitting, Jeyber, tenant of all the rotten palace, was a tribesman of Khatan. In the end was a further room, which he gave me for my lodging. " I am weary, and thou more, said he; a cup of kahwa will do us both good : " Jeyber sat down at his hearth, to prepare the morrow's coffee. In that there came up some principal persons of the town ; clad in the (heavy) Mesopotamian wise. A great number of the well-faring sort in Boreyda are jemmamil, camel masters trad ing in the caravans. They are wheat carriers in Mesopotamia ; they bring down clothing and temmn to Nejd ; they load dates and com of Kaslm (when the prices serve,) for el-Medina. In autumn they carry samn, which they have taken up from the country Noraads, to Mecca; and frora thence they draw coffee. These burly Arabian citizens reserable peasants ! they were travelled men ; but I found in them an implacable fanaticism. Jeyber said when they were gone, " Now shall we visit the Emir ? " We went forth ; and he brought me through a street to a place, before the Prince's house, A sordid fellow was sitting there, like Job, in the dust of their street: two or three more sate with him, — he might be thuty-five years of age, I enquired, 'Where was Abdullah the EmU?' They said " He is the Emir ! "— " Jeyber (I whispered), is this the Emir ? " — " It is he." I asked the man, " Art thou Weled Mahanna ? " He answered, " Ay." " Is it (I said) a custom here, that strangers are robbed in the midst of your town ? I had eaten of your bread and salt ; and your servants set upon me in your yard" — "They were Beduw that robbed you,"— A COLD FANATICAL CONVENTICLE 147 " But I lived with the Beduw ; and was never robbed in a menzil : I never lost anything in a host's tent. Thou sayest they were Beduins; but they were the Emir's men ! " — Abdullah: "I say they were Kahtan all of them." He asked to see ray ' watch '. " That I have not with me ; but here is a telescope ! " He put this to his eyes and returned it. I said, "I give it thee; but thou wilt give me other clothing, for my clothing which the Emir's servants have rent." — He would not receive my gift, the peasant would not make the Nasrany amends ; and I had not money to buy more. " To-day, said he, you depart." — " Whither ? " — " To Aneyza ; and there are certain cameleers — they left us yesterday, that are going to Siddiis : they will con vey thee thither." — At Siddiis (which they suppose to have been a place of pilgrimage of the idolatrous people of the country, or "Christians", before Mohammed), is an antique "needle" or column, with some scoring or epigraph. But this was Abdullah's guile, he fabled with me of cameleers to Siddiis : and then he cries, " Min ycshtl, who will convey the Nasrany on his camel to el- Wady ? " — which I afterwards knew to signify the palms at the Wetdy er-Bummah : I said to him, ' I would rest this day, I was too weary for riding.' Abdullah granted (albeit unwillingly) ; for all the Arabians [inhabitants of a weary laud] tender human infirmities. — " V/ell, as thou wilt ; and that may suffice thee." — There carae a young man to bid me to coffee. " They call you, said Abdullah, and go with him." I followed the messenger and Jeyber: we carae to some principal house in the tov/n ; and there we entered a pleasant coffee-hall, I saw the walls par- getted with fret-work in gypsum ; and about the hearth were spread Persian carpets. The sw&et ghrottha firewood (a tamarisk kind of the Nefiid) glowed in the hearth, and more was laid up in a niche, ready to the coffee maker's hand : and such is the cleanly civil order of all the better citizen households in Kasim. Here sat a cold fanatical conventicle of well-clad persons ; and a young man was writing a letter, after an elder's words. But that did not hinder his casting some reproach, at every pause, upon the Christian stranger, blaspheming that which he called my impure relio-ion. — How crabbed seemed to me his young looks, moved by the bestial spirit within ! I took it to be of evil augury, that none blamed him. And contemptible to an European was the solemn sUence of these infantile greybeards, in whom was nothing more respectable than their apparel ! I heard no comfortable word among them ; and wondered why they had called me ! After the second cup, I left them sitting ; and returned to Jeyber's place, which is called the palace Hajellan : there a boy jnet me with two dry girdle-bjeads^ froin the guest-house. Such 148 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA sour town bread is crude and tough ; and I could not swallow it, even in the days of famine. The Kasr Hajelldn was built by Abdullah, son of Ahd-el- Aziz, princes of Boreyda. Abdullah was murdered by Mahanna, when he usurped the government with the countenance of the Wahaby. Mahanna was sheykh over the town for many years, and his children are Hasan (now emir) and Abdullah. The young sons of the Prince that was slain fled to the neighbour town of Aneyza — And after certain years, in a spring season, when the armed band was encamped with Hasan in the Nefiid, they stole over by night to Boreyda ; and lay hid in some of their friends' houses. And on the morrow, when the tyrant passed by, going to his mid-day prayers in the great raesjid, Abdullah's sons ran suddenly upon him with the knife ! aud they slew him thei'e, in the midst of the street. A horse man, one of the band that remained in the town, mounted and passed the gates, and rode headlong over the Nefiid ; till he found the ghrazzu and Hasan. — Ha.san hearing this heavy tiding gave the word to mount ; aud the band rode hastily homeward, to be in Boreyda that night. Abdullah in the meanwhile who, though he have a leg short, is nimble of his butcherly wit, held fast in the town. In all this fear and trouble, his was yet the stronger part ; and the townspeople, long daunted by the tyranny of Mahanna, were unready to favour the young homicides. And so well Abdullah wrought, that ere there was any sedition, he had enclosed the princelings in an house. It was nightfall when Abdullah, with his armed men, came before their door ; and to give light (to the horrid business), a bou-fire was kindled in the street. Abdullah's sons and a few who were their companions within, desperately defended their lives with matchlocks, upon the house head. — Some bolder spirits that came with Abdullah advanced to the gate, under a shield they had made them of a door (of rude palm boarding), with a thick layer of dates crammed upon it. And sheltered thus from weak musketry, they quickly opened a hole, poured-in powder and laid the train. A brand was fetched ! — and in the hideous blast every life within the walls perished, — besides one young- man, miserably wounded ; who (with a sword in his hand) would. have leapt down, as they entered, and escaped ; and he could not : but still flying hither and thither he cursed-on and detested them, tiU be fell by a shot. — Hasan arriving in the night, found the slayers of his father already slain, and the town in quiet: and he was Emir of Boreyda.— Others of the princely family of THE RUINOUS KASR 149 this town I saw afterward dwelling in exile at Aneyza ; and one of two old brethren, my patients, now poor and blind, was he who should have been by inheritance Emir of Boreyda ! I wandered in this waste Kasr, which, as a princely resi dence, might be compared with the Kasr at Hayil ; although less, as the principality of Boreyda is less. But if we compare the towns, Hayil is a half Beduin town-village, with a foreign siik ; Boreyda is a great civil township of the midland Nejd life. The palace court, large as a market place, is returned to the Nefiid sand ! Within the ruinous Kasr I found a coffee-hall having all the height of the one-storied building, with galleries above — in such resembling the halls of ancient England, and of goodly proportion : the walls of sandy clay were adorned with pargetting of jig. This silent and now (it seeras) time-worn Kasr, here in the midst of Desert Arabia, had been built in our fathers' days ! I admired the gypsum fretwork of their clay walls : such dedale work springs as a plant under the hands of the Semitic artificers, and is an imagery of their minds' vision of Nature ! — which they behold not as the Pythagoreans con tained in few pure lines, but all-adorned and unenclosed. And is their crust-work from India ? We find a skill in raw clay-work in Syria ; clay storing-jars, pans, hearths and corn- hutches are seen in all their cottages. In Lebanon the earthen walls and pillars, in some rich peasants' houses, are curiously crusted with clay fretwork, and stained in barbaric wise. — Admirable seemed the architecture of that clay palace! [the sufficiency of the poorest raeans, in the Arabs' hands, to a perfect end]. The cornice ornament of these builders is that we call the shark's-tooth, as in the Mothlf at Hayil. A rank of round-headed blind arches is turned for an appear ance of lightness in the outer walling, and painted in green and red ochre. Perchance the builder of Kasr' Hajellan was some Bagdad master, mudllcm — that which we may understand of some considerable buildings, standing far frora any civil soil in certain desert borders. Years before I had seen a kella among the ruins of 'Utherah in mount Seir, where is a great welling pool, a watering of the Howeytat : it was a rusty building but not ruinous ; and Mahmiid from Maan told me, ' The kella had been built in his time, by the Beduw ! ' I asked in great astonishment, " If Beduw had s-kill in masonry ? " — MahmUd: " Nay, but they fetched a muallem from Damascus ; who set them to draw the best stones frora the ruins, and as he showed thera so the Beduins wrought and laid the courses," In that Beduin kella were not a few loopholes and arches, and the 150 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA whole frame had been built by his rude prentices without mortar! In Beduins is an easy wit in any matter not too remote frora their minds ; and there are tribes that in a summer's day have become ploughmen, — Jeyber inhabited the crumbling walls of the eld Mothlf, The new peasant lords of Boreyda keep no public hospitality ; for which they are lightly esteeraed by the dwellers in the desert. I went out with Jeyber to buy somewhat in the siik, and see the town. We passed through a market for cattle forage, mostly vetches : and beyond were victuallers' shops, — in some of them I saw hanging huge (mutton — perhaps Mesopotaraian) sausages ! and in raany were baskets of parched locusts. Here are even cookshops — yet unknown in the Beduin-like Hayil — where one raay have a warm mess of rice and boiled mutton, or else camel flesh for his penny. A stranger might live at Boreyda, in the midst of Nomad Arabia, nearly as in Mesopotamia; saving that here are no coffee taverns. Some of those who sat selling green stuff in the stalls, were women ! — Damascus is not so civil! and there are only a few poor saleswomen at Aneyza Bor eyda.. a metropolis of Oasis Arabia, is joined to the northern settled countries by the trading caravans; and the B. Temlm townsmtn are not unlike the half-blooded Arabs of those border provinces. Elvish boys and loiterers in the street gaped upon the Nas rany stranger ; and they gathered as we went. Near the mejlis or market square there was sitting, on a clay bench, that Galla swordsman of the Emir, whose visage I had noted yester- evening, without the gate. The swarthy swordsman reproved Jeyber, for bringing rae out thus before the people ; then rising, with a stick, he laid load upon the dusty mantles of some of them, in the name of the Emir, Jeyber, liberal minded as a Beduwy but timid more than townsfolk, hearing this talk, led me back hastily by bye-streets : I would have gone about to visit another part of the town, but he brought me again by solitary ways to his place. He promised, that he would ride with rae on the raorrow to Aneyza ; " Aneyza, he said, is not far off," These towns were set down on maps with as much as a journey between them : but what was there heretofore to trust in maps of Arabia ! Jeyber, whose stature and manners showed the Beduin blood, was of those Kahtan Beduin strangers, who were now wandering in el-Kasim. Poor, among his tribes men, but of a sheykhly house, he had left the desert life, to be of the Emir's armed service in Boreyda. The old con trariety of fortune, was written in his meagre visage; he was little past the middle age, and his spirits half spent. The mUd TUMULT 151 Beduin nature sweetened in him his Kahtany fanaticism ; and I was to-day a thaif-uUah in his household : he maintained therefore my cause in the town, and was my advocate with the swine Abdullah, But the fanatical humour was not quenched in him; for some one saying, "This (man) could not go to er-Riath ; for they would kill him ! " Jeyber responded, half- smiling, " Ay, they are very austere there ; they might not suffer him amongst thera," He spoke also with rancour of the hetero dox Mohararaedanism of Nejran [whose inhabitants are in reli gion Bayddiyyeh, ' like the people of Mascat ']. Jeybar had passed his former life in those southern countries : Wady Dauasir, and Wady Bisha, he said, are full of good villages. The mid-day heat was come ; and he went to slumber in a further part ofthe waste building, I had reposed somewhile, in my chamber, wheu a creaking of the old door, painted in vermilion, startled me !^and a sluttish young woman entered. I asked, wherefore had she broken my rest ? Her answer was like some old biblical talk; Tehhdlliny andm fi hothnak? ' Suffer me to sleep in thy bosom.' — Who could have sent this lurid quean ? the Arabs are the basest of enemies, — hoped they to find an occasion to accuse the Nasrany ? But the kind damsel was not daunted ; for when I chided she stood to rate the stranger ; saying, with the loathly voice of raisery, ' Aha ! the cursed Nasrany ! and I was about to be slain, by faithful men ; that were in the way, sent from the Emir, to do it ! and I might not now escape them.' — I rose and put this baggage forth, and fastened the door. — But I wondered at her words, and mused that only for the name of a Religion", (0 Chirasera of human self-love, malice and fear !) I was fallen daily into such raischiefs, in Arabia. — Now Jeyber came again from nap ping ; and his hareem related to him the adventure : Jeyber left us saying, he must go to the Emir, Soon after this we heard people of the town flocking about our house, and clamouring under the casements, which opened backward upon a street, and throwing up stones ! and some noisy persons had broken into the great front yard ! — The stair was immediately full of them : and they bounced at our door which the women had barred, — "Alas, said the hareem, wring ing their hands, what can we do now ? for the riotous people will kill thee ; and Jeyber is away." One of them was a towns- woman, the other was a Beduwia : both were good towards the guest. I sat down saying to them, " My sisters, you must defend the house with your tongues." — They were ready; and the townswoman looking out backward chided them that made 152 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA this hubbub in the street, " Ha ! uncivil people ; who be they that throw up stones into the apartment of the hareem ? akhs ! what would ye ?— ye seek what ? God send a sorrow upon you ! —Oh ! ye seek KhalU the Nasrany ? but here is not Khalil ; ye fools, he is not here : away with you. Go ! I say, for shame, and Ullah curse you." — And she that kept the door cried to them that were without, "Aha! what is your wUl? — akhs! who are these that beat like to break our door ? 0 ye devil- sick and shameless young men ! Khalil is not here ; he went forth, go and seek the Nasrany, go ! We have told you Khalil went forth, we know not whither, — akhs ! [they knocked now on the door with stones.] Oh you .shameless fellows ! would ye break through folks' doors, to the hareem ? Ullah send a very pestilence upon you all ; and for this the Emir will punish you." WhUst she was speaking there was a confused thrusting and shuffling of feet without our door ; the strokes of their sticks and stones sounded hideously upon the wood. — The faithful women's tongues yet delayed them ! and I put ray hope in the stars, that Jeyber would return with speed. But if the besiegers burst in to rend rae in pieces, should I spare the foremost of them? The hareem cried on, "Why beat thus, ye cursed people ? — akhs ! will ye beat down our door indeed ? " At length came Jeyber again ; and in the name of the Emir he drove them all forth, and locked them out of his yard. — When he entered, he shrunk up his shoulders and said to me, " They are clamouring to the Emir for thy death ! ' No Nasrany, they say, ever entered Boreyda ' : there is this outcry in the town, and Abdullah is for favouring the people ! — I have now pleaded with hira. If, please Ullah, we may pass this night in safety, to-morrow when my theliil shall be come — and I have sent for her— I will convey thee by solitary lanes out of the place ; and bring thee to Aneyza." — As we were speaking, we heard those townspeople swarming anew in his court ! the foremost mounted again upon our stairs, — and the door was open. But Jeyber, threatening grievous punishments of the Emir, drove them down once more ; and out of his yard. When he returned, he asked his house-wives, with looks of mistrust, who it was had undone the gate (from within) ? which he had left barred ! He said, he must go out again, to speak with Abdullah ; but should not be long absent. I would not let hira pass, till he had promised me to lock his gates, and carry the (wooden) key with him. There remained only this poor soul, and the timber of an old door, betwixt rae, a lonely alien, and the fanatical wildness of this townspeople. When he carae again he said the town was quiet : Abdullah, at his intercession, had forbidden A FANATIC YOUNG SHEYKH 153 to make more ado, the riotous were gone home ; and he had left the gate open. After this there came up some other of the principal citizens, to visit me : they sat about the hearth in Bagdad gowns and loose kerchiefs and red caps ; whilst Jeyber made coffee. Amongst them appeared the great white (Medina) turban^ — yet spotless, though he slept in it — of that old vagabund issue of the n6by^ ! who a raonth before had been a consenting witness to my mischiefs at Hayil ! " Who art thou ? " I asked. — " Oh ! dost thou not remember the time, when we were together in Hayil ? " — " And returnest thou so soon from India ? " — " I saw the Emir, and ended my business ; also I go not to el-Hind, until after the Haj." There came in, on the heels of thera, a young sheykh, who arrived then from Hasan's camp ; which was at half a journey, in the Nefiid. He sat down among thera, and began to question with rae in lordly sort ; and I enquired of the absent Emir. I found in him a natural malice ; and an improbity of face which became the young man's injurious insolence. After these heavy words, he said further, " Art thou Nasi any or Musslim ? " — " Nasrany, which all this town knows ; now leave questioning me." — " Then the Moslemin will kill thee, please Ullah ! Hearest thou ? the Moslemln will kill thee ! " and the squalid young man opened a leathern raouth, that grinning on me to his misplaced lap ears, discovered vast red circles of mule's teeth. — Surely the fanatical condition in religion [ihough logical!] is never far from a radically ill nature ; and doubtless the javel was an offspring of generations of depraved Arab wretches. Jeyber, though I was to-day under his roof, smiled a withered half-smile of Kahtany fanaticism, hearing words which are honey to their ears, — ' a kafir to be slain bythe Moslemln ! ' Because the young man was a sheykh and Hasan's messenger, I sat in some thought of his venomous speaking. When they departed, I said to Jeyber my conceit of that base young fanatic ; who answered, shrinking the shoulders, that I had guessed well, for he was a bad one ! — My hap was to travel in Arabia in time of a great strife of the religion [ns they understood], with (God and His Apostle's enemies) the Nasara. And now the idle fanatical people cla- raoured to the Emir, 'Since Ullah had delivered a Nasrany into their hands, wherefore might they not put him to death ? ' At length the sun of this troubled day was at her going down. Then I went out to breathe the cooling air upon the terrace: and finding a broken ladder climbed to a higher part of our roof, to survey this great Arabian town. — But some townspeople in he street iramediately, espying me, cried out, " Come down ! 154 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA Come down ! a kafir should not overlook a beled of the Mos- leraln." Jeyber brought me a ration of boUed mutton and rice (which he had purchased in the siik) : when I had eaten he said we were brethren. He went out again to the Emir. Jeyber returned all doubtful and pensive! 'The people, he said, were clamouring again to Abdullah ; who answered them, that they might deal with rae as they would : he had told them already, that they might have slain the Nastany in the desert ; but it could not be done in the town,' Jeyber asked me now, ' Would I forsake my bags, and fiee secretly from Boreyda on foot?' I answered "No! — and tell me sooth, Jeyber! hast thou no mind to betray me ? " He promised as he was a faith ful man that he would not. " Well, what is the present danger ? " — " I hope no more, for this night, at least in my house," — " How may I pass the streets in the morning ? " — " We will pass them ; the peril is not so much in the town as of their pursuing." — " How many horsemen be there in Boreyda, a score ? " — " Ay, and raore." — " Go quickly and tell Abdullah, KhalU says I am rdjol Dowla, one who is safeguarded (my papers declare it) by the government of the Sooltan : if an evil betide me (a guest) among you, it might draw some trouble upon yourselves. For were it to be suffered that a traveller, under the imperial protection, and only passing by your town, should be done to death, for the name of a religion, which is tolerated by the Sooltan ? Neither let thera think themselves secure here, in the midst of deserts ; for ' long is the arm of the Dowla ! ' Remember Jidda, and Damascus ! and the guilty punished, by commandment of the Sooltan ! " Jeyber answered, ' He would go and speak these words to Abdullah,' Jeyber returned with better looks, saying that Abdullah allowed my words : and had commanded that none should any more raciest the Nasrany; and promised hira, that no evil should befaU me this night. Jeyber: "We be now in peace, blessed be the Lord ! go in and rest, KhalU ; to be ready be times," I was ready ere the break of day ; and thought it an hundred years till I should be out of Boreyda, At sunrise Jeyber sat down to prepare coffee ; and yet made no haste ! the promised thelul was not come. — " And when wUl thy theliil be here ? " — " At some time before noon." — " How then may we come to Aneyza to-night ? " — " I have told thee, that Aneyza is not far off." My host also asked for remedies for his old infirmities. "At Aneyza!" — "Nay, but now; for I would leave them EXPULSION OF THE NASrInY 155 here." When he had received his medicines, Jeyber began to make it strange of his theliil-riding to Aneyza. I thought an host would not forswear himself ; but all their life is passed in fraud and deceit. — In this came up the Kahtany who had been ring-leader in the former night's trouble; and sat down before his tribesman's hearth ; where he was wont to drink the mor row's cup. Jeyber would have nie believe that the fellow had been swinged yesterday before Abdullah : I saw no such signs in him. The wretch who had lately injured me, would now have maintained my cause ! I said to Jeyber's Beduin jara, who sat wilh us, " Tell rae, is not he possessed by a jin ? " The young man answered for himiself, " Ay, KhalU, I am somewhiles a little lunatic." He had come to ask the Nasrany for medicines, — in which surely he bad not trusted one of his own religion, — A limping footfall sounded on the palace stairs : it was the lame Emir Abdullah who entered ! leaning on his staff. Sordid was the (peasant) princeling's tunic and kerchief : he sat down at the hearth, and Jeyber prepared fresh coffee. Abdullah said, — showing me a poor raan standing by the door and that came in with him ; " This is he that will carry thee on his camel to Aneyza ; rise ! and bring out thy things." — " Jeyber promises to convey rae upon his theliil." But now my host (who had but fabled) excused himself, saying, 'he would follow us, when his theliil were come,' Abdullah gave the cameleer his wages, the quarter of a mejldy, eleven pence. — The man took my bags upon his shoulders, and brought me by a lonely street to a camel couched before his clay cottage. We mounted and rode by lanes out of the town. * * * CHAPTER VIII ANEYZA Now we came upon the open Nefiid, where I saw the sand ranging in long banks : adanat and kethib is said in this country speech of the light shifting Nefiid sand ; Jiirda is the sand- bank's weather side, the lee side or fold is Idghraf [Idhaf]. Jiirda or Jorda (in the pi. Jdrad and Jerdd) is said of a dune or hiUock, in which appear clay-seams, sand and stones, and whereon desert bushes raay be growing. The road to Aneyza is a deep-worn drift-way in the uneven Nefiid ; but in the sand (lately blotted with wind and rain,) I per ceived no footprint of man or cattle ! — Bye and bye my cam eleer Hasan turned our beast from the path, to go over the dunes : we were the less likely thus to meet with Beduins, not friends of Boreyda, The great tribes of these dlras, Meteyr and Ateyba, are the allies of Zdmil, Emir of Aneyza. — Zamil was already a pleasant name in my ears : I had heard, even amongst his old foes of Harb, that Zamil was a good gentleman, and that the " Child of Mahanna " (for whom, two years ago, they were in the field with Ibn Rashid, against Aneyza) was a tyrannical churl : it was because of the Harb enmity that I had not ridden from their menzils, to Aneyza. The Nefiid sand was here overgrown with a canker-weed which the Aarab reckon unwholesome ; and therefore I struck away our camel that put down his long neck to browse ; but Hasan said, " Nay; the town camels eat of this herb, for there is little else." We saw a noniad child keeping sheep: and I asked my rafik, 'When shonld we come to Aneyza?' — " By the sunsetting," I found the land-height to be not more than 2500 feet. When we had ridden slowly three hours, we fell again into the road, by some great-grown tamarisks, ' Negil, quoth Hasan, we will alight here and rest out the hot mid-day hours,' I saw trenches dug under those trees by A TREACHEROUS CAMELEER 157 locust hunters. I asked, " Is it far now ?" — " Aneyza is nut far off." — " Tell me truth rafik, art thou carrying me to Aneyza?" — "Thou believest not; — see here !" (he drew me out a bundle of letters — and yet they seemed worn and old). " All these, he said, are merchants' letters w^hich I am to deliver to-day in Aneyza ; and to fetch the goods from thence." — And had I not seen him accept a letter for Aneyza ! Hasan found somewhat in ray words, for he did not halt ; we might be come ten miles from Boreyda. The soil shelved before ns; and under the next tamarisks I saw a little oozing water. We were presently iu a wady bottom, not a stone-cast over ; and in crossing we plashed through trickling water ! I asked," What bed is this ? " — Answer : " El-Wady " — that is, we were in (the midst of) the Wady er-Eummah. We carae up by oozing (brack ish) water to a palm wood unenclosed, where are grave-like pits of a fathom digged beside young palm-sets to the ground water. The plants are watered by hand a year or two, till they have put down roots to the saltish ground moisture. It is nearly a mile to pass through this palm wood, where only few (older) stems are seen grown aloft above the rest ; because such outlying possessions are first to the destruc tion, in every warfare. I saw through the trees, an high-built; court-wall, wherein the husbandmen may shelter themselves in any alarms ; and Hasan showed rae, in an open ground, where Ibn Rashid's tents stood two years ago, when he came with Weled Mahanna against Aneyza. We met only two negro labourers; and beyond the palms the road is again in the Nefiid. Little further at our right hand, were some first enclosed properties; and we drew bridle at a stone trou^^di, a sebil, set by the landowner in his clay wall, with a channel from his suanies : the trough was dry, for none now passed by that way to or from Boreyda. We heard creaking of well-wheels, and voices of harvesters in a field. " Here, said Hasan, as he put down my bags, is the place of repose : rest in the shadow of this wall, whilst I go to water the camel. And where is the girby ? that I may bring thee to drink ; you might be thirsty before evening, when it will be time to enter the town, — thus says Abdullah ; and now open thy eyes, for fear of the Beduw." I let the man go, but made him leave his spear with me. When he came again with the waterskin, Hasan said he had loosed out the camel to pasture ; " and wellah Khalil I must go after her, for see ! the beast has strayed. Reach rae ray romh, and I will run to turn her, or she will be gone far out in the Nefud." — " Go, but the spear remains with rae." " Ullah ! 158 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA doubt not thy rafik, should I go unarmed? give me my lance, and I will be back to thee in a moment," I thought, that ii the man were faithless and I compelled him to carry me into Aneyza, he might have cried out to the fanatical townspeople : ' This is the Nasrany ! ' — " Our camel will be gone, do not delay me," — " Wilt thou then forsake me here ? " — " No wellah, by this beard ! " I cast his lance upon the sand, which taking up, he said, " Whilst I am out, if thou have need of anything, go about the corner of the wall yonder ; so thou wilt see a palm ground, and men working. Rest now in the shadow, and make thyself a little mereesy, for thou art fasting ; and cover these bags ! let no man see them, Aneyza is but a little beyond that ddan there ; thou mayest see the town from thence : I will run now, and return," I let him pass, and Hasan, hieing after his camel, was hidden by the sand billows, I thought soon, I would see what were become of him, and casting away my mantle I ran barefoot in the Nefiid ; and from a sand dune I espied Hasan riding forth upon his camel — for he had forsaken rae ! he fetched a circuit to go about the Wady palms homeward. I knew then that I was betrayed by the secret comraission of Abdullah, and remembered his word, " Who will carry the Nasrany to the Wady ? " This was the cruellest fortune which had befallen me in Arabia ! to be abandoned here without a chief town, iu the midst of fanatical Nejd. I had but eight reals left, which might hardly more than carry me in one course to the nearest coast. I returned and armed myself ; and rent ray raaps in small pieces, — lest for such I should be called in question, amongst lettered citizens. A negro man and wife carae then from the palms, carrying firewood towards Aneyza : they had seen us pass, and asked me simply, " Where is thy companion and the camel ? " — After this I went on under the clay walling towards the sound of suanies ; and saw a palm ground and an orchard house. The door was shut fast : I found another beyond ; and through the chinks I looked in, and espied the owner driving, — a plain-natured face. I pushed up his gate and entered at a venture with, " Peace be with thee ; " and called for a drink of water. The goodman stayed a little to see the stranger ! then he bade his young daughter fetch the bowl, and held up his camels to speak with me. " Drink if thou wilt, said he, but we have no good water." The taste was bitter and unwholesome ; but even this cup of water would be a bond between us. I asked him to lend me a camel or an ass, to carry my. things to the town, and I would pay the hire. I told further how I NO RIGHT MOSLEM 159 came hither, — with a cameleer from Boreyda; who whilst I rested in the heat, had forsaken me nigh his gate : that I was an hakim, and if there were any sick in this place I had raedicines to relieve them. — " Well, bide till my lad return with a camel : — I go (he said to his daughter) with this man ; here ! have my stick and drive, and let not the camels stand. — "What be they, 0 stranger, and where leftest thou thy things ? come ! thou shouldst not have left thera out of sight and unguarded; how, if we should not find thera — ? " — They were safe ; and taking the great bags on my shoulders, I tottered back over the Nefiid to the good man's gate ; rejoicing inwardly, that I might now bear all I possessed in the world. He bade me sit down there (without), whilst he went to fetch an ass. — "Wilt thou pay a piastre and a half (threepence) ? " There came now three or four grave elder men from the plantations, and they were going in at the next gate to drink their afternoon kahwa. The good- man stayed them and said, " This is a stranger, — he cannot remain here, aud we cannot receive him in our house ; he asks for carriage to the town." They answered, he should do well to fetch the ass and send me to Aneyza. " And what art thou ? (they said to me) — we go in now to coffee ; has anyone heard the Ithin ? " Another : " They have cried to prayers in the town, but we cannot always hear it ; — for is not the sun gone down to the assr ? then pray we here together," They took their stand devoutly, and my host joined himself to the row ; they" called me also, " Come and pray, come ! " — " I have prayed already." They marvelled at my words ; and so fell to their formal re citing and prostrations. When they rose, my host came to me with troubled looks: — "Thou dost not pray, hmra !" said he : and I saw by those grave men's countenance, they were persuaded that I could be no right Moslem. "Well send him forward," quoth the chief of them, and they entered the gate. My bags were laid now upon an ass. We departed : and little beyond the first ddan, as Hasan had foretold me, was the begin ning of cornfields ; and palms and fruit trees appeared, and some houses of outlying orchards. — My companion said [he was afraid !] " It is far to the town, and I cannot go there to-night ; but I will leave thee with one yonder who is ibnjudd, a son of bounty ; and in the morning he will send thee to Aneyza." — We carae on by a wide road and unwalled, till he drew up his ass at a rude gateway ; there was an orchard house, and he knocked loud and called, " Ibrahim ! " An old father came to the gate, who opened it to the half and stayed — seeing my clothes rent (by the thieves at Boreyda) ! and not knowing what strange 160 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA person I raight be : — but he guessed I was some runaway soldier from the Harameyn or el- Yemen, as there had certain passed by Aneyza of late. He of the ass spoke for rae ; and then that housefather received me. They brought in my bags, to his clay house ; and he locked them in a store closet : so without speaking he beckoned with the hand, and led rae out in his orchard, to the "diwan" (their clean sanded sitting-place in the field) ; and there left me. Pleasant was the sight of their tilled ground with corn stub bles and green plots of vetches, jet, the well-caraels' provender ; and borders of a dye-plant, whose yellow blossoms are used by the townswomen to stain the partings of their hair. When this sun was nigh setting, I remembered their unlucky prayer-hour ! and passed hastily to the further side of their palms; but I was not hidden by the clear-set rows of trees : when I came again in the twilight, they demanded of me, ' Why I prayed not ? and wherefore had I not been with them at the prayers ? ' Then they said over the names of the four orthodox sects of Islam, and questioned with me, " To which of them perfcainest thou ; or be'st thou (of some heterodox belief) a rdfittliy ?¦ " — a word which they pronounced with enmity. I made no answer, and they remained in some astonishment. They brought me, to sup, boiled wheat in a bowl and another of their well water ; there was no greater hospitality in that plain household. I feared the dampish (oasis) air and asked, where was the coffee chamber. Answer : " Here is no kahwa, and we drink none." They sat in silence, and looked heavily upon the stranger, who had not prayed. He who brought me the bowl (not one of thera) was a manly young raan, of no coramon behaviour ; and he showed in his words an excellent understanding, I bade him sup with me. — "I have supped," — "Yet eat a morsel, for the bread and salt between us : " he did so. After that, when the rest were away, I told him what I was, and asked him of the town, " Well, he said, thou art here to-night ; and little remains to Aneyza, where they will bring thee in the morning ; I think there is no danger — Zamil is a good man : besides thou art only passing by them. Say to the Emir to-morrow, in the people's hearing, ' I am a soldier from Biled el-Asir ' (a good province in el-Y6men, which the Turks had lately occupied)." — ^Whilst we were speaking, the last Ithin sounded from the town ! I rose hastily ; but the three or four young men, sons of Ibrahim, were come again, and began to range themselves to pray ! they called us, and they called to me the stranger with insistence, to take our places with them. I answered : " I am over-weary, I will go and ENTER ANEYZA 161 sleep." — Tlie bread-and-salt Friend : "Ay-ay, the stranger says well, he is come from a journey ; show him the place without more, where he may lie down." — " I would sleep in the house, and not here abroad," — " But first let him pray ; ho ! thou, come and pray, come ! " — TJie Friend : " Let him alone, and show the weary man to his rest," — "There is but the wood- house," — "Well then to the wood-house, and let him sleep immediately," One of them went with me, and brought me to a threshold : the fioor was sunk a foot or two, and I fell in a dark place full of sweet tamarisk boughs. After their praying carae all the brethren : they sat before the door in the feeble moonlight, and murmured, ' I had not prayed ! — and could this be a Musslim ? ' But I played the sleeper ; and after watching half an hour they left me. How new to us is this religiosity, in rude young men of the people ! but the Semitic religion — so cold, and a strange plant, in the (idolatrous) soil of Europe, is like to a blood passion, in the people of Moses and Mohammed. An hour before day I heard one of these brethren creeping in — it was to espy if the stranger would say the dawning prayers ! When the morrow was light all the brethren stood before the door; and they cried to me. Ma sulleyt, ' Thou didst not say the prayer ! ' — " Friends, I prayed," — "Where washed you then? " — This I had not considered, for I was not of the dissembler's craft. Another brother carae to call rae ; and he led me up the house stairs to a small, clean room : where he spread matting on the clay floor, and set before mea dish of very good dates, with a bowl of whey ; and bade me breakfast, with their homely word, filk er-rig ' Loose the fasting spittle ' : (the Bed, say rij, for riJc). " Drink ! " said he, and lifted to my hands his hospi table bowl, — After that he brought the ass and loaded my bags, to carry them into the town. We went on in the same walled road, and passed a ruinous open gate of Aneyza. Much of the towm wall was there in sight ; which is but a thin shell, with many wide breaches. Such clay walling might be repaired in a few days, and Aneyza can never be taken by famine ; for the wide town walls enclose their palm grounds : the people, at this time, were looking for war with Boreyda. We went by the first houses, which are of poor folk ; and the young man said he would leave me at one of the next doors, ' where lived a servant of (the Emir) Zdmil.' He knocked with the ring, which [as at Damascus] there is set upon all their doors, like a knocker ; and a young negro housewife opened : her goodman (of the butcher's craft,) was at this hour in the siik. He was bedel or public sergeant, for Zamil : and to such rude offices, negroes (men of a blunter metal) are commonly chosen, VOL, II. L 162 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA My baggage was set down in the little camel yard, of their poor but clean clay cottage, Aly, the negro householder, came home soon after ; and finding a stranger standing in his court, he approached and kissed the guest, and led me into his small kahwa ; where presently, to the pleasant note of the coffee pestle, a few persons assembled — mostly black men his neigh bours. And Aly made coffee, as coffee is made even in poor houses at Aneyza, After the cup, the poor man brought-in on a tray a good breakfast : large was the hospitality of his humble fortune, and he sat down to eat with me. — Homeborn negroes, out of their warmer hearts, do often make good earnest of the shallow Arabian customs I Before the cottage row I saw a waste place, el-Gd ; and some booth or two therein of the miserable Beduins : the plot, left open by the charity of the owner, was provided with a public pool of water running from his suanies. When later I knew them, and his son asked the Nasrany's counsel, ' What were best to do with the ground ? — because of the draffe cast there, it was noisome to the common health ' — I answered, " Make it a public garden : " but that was far from their Arabian understanding, I went abroad bye and bye with Aly, to seek Zamil ; though it were tow, too early, said my negro host : here is the beginning of the town streets, with a few poor open stalls ; the ways are cleanly. Two furlongs beyond is the siik, where (at these hours) is a busy concourse of the townspeople : they are all men, since maidens and wives come not openly abroad, — At a cross street, there met us two young gallants, "Ha! said one of them to Aly, this stranger with thee is a Nasrany ; " — and turning to rae, the coxcorabs bid rae, " Good raorrow, khawaja : " I answered them, " I am no khawaja, but an Engleysy ; and how am I of your acquaintance ? " — " Last night we had word of thy coming frora Boreyda : Aly, whither goest thou with him ? " That poor man, who began to be amazed, hearing his guest named Nasrany, answered, "- To Zamil." — " Zamil is not yet sitting ; then bring the Nasrany to drink coffee at my beyt. We are, said they, from Jidda and wont to see (there) all the kinds of Nasara," They led us upstairs in a great house, by the market-square, which they call in Kaslm el-Mejlis : their chamber was spread with Persian carpets. These young men were of the Aneyza merchants at Jidda. One of them showed me a Winchester (seventeen shooting) rifle ! * and there were flfty more (they pretended) in Aneyza : with such guns in their hands they were not in dread of warfare [which they thought likely to be renewed,] vrith Ibn ZAMIL, EMIR OF ANEYZA 163 Rashid : in the time of the Jehad they had exercised themselves as soldiers at Jidda.' They added maliciously, "And if we have war with Boreyda, wilt thou be our captain ? " We soon left them. Aly led me over the open market- square : and by happy adventure the Emir was now sitting in his place ; that is made under a small porch upon the Mejlis, at the street corner which leads to his own (clay) house, and in face of the clothiers' siik. In the Emir's porch are two clay banks ; upon one, bespread with a Persian carpet, sat Zamil, and his sword lay by him. Zamil is a small-grown man with a pleasant weerish visage, and great understanding eyes : as I approached he looked up mildly. When I stood before him, Zamil rose a little in his seat, and took me by the hand, and said kindly, " Be seated, be seated ! " so he made me sit beside him. I said, "I come now from Boreyda, and am a hakim, an Engleysy, a Nasrany ; I have these papers with me ; and it may please thee to send me to the coast." Zamil perused that which I put in his hand : — as he read, an uneasy cloud was on his face, for a moment ! But looking up pleasantly, " It is well, he re sponded ; in the meantime go not about publishing thyself to the people, ' I am a Nasrany ; ' say to them, ana asJtary, I am a (runaway Ottoman) soldier. Aly, return home with Khalil, and bring him after midday prayers to kahwa in my house : but walk not in the public places." We passed homewards through the clothiers' street, and by the butchers' market. The busy citizens hardly regarded us ; yet some raan took me bythe sleeve ; and turning, I saw one of those half-feminine slender figures of the Arabians, vrith painted eyes, and clad in the Bagdad wise. " 0 thou, min eyn, from whence ? quoth he, and art thou a Nasrany ? " I answered, " Ay : " yet if any asked, " Who is he with thee, Aly ? " the negro responded stoutly, " A stranger, one that is going to Kuweyt." — Aneyza seemed a pleasant town, and stored with all things needful to their civil life : we went on by a well-built mesjid; but the great mesjid is upon the public place, — all buUding is of clay in the Arabian city. In these days, the people's talk was of the debate and breach between the town and Boreyda : although lately Weled Ma hanna wrote to Zamil ana weled-ak, ' I am thy child (to serve and obey thee) ' ; and Zamil had written, " I ara thy friend." "Wellah, said Aly's gossips at the coffee hearth, there is no more passage to Boreyda : but in few days the allies of Zamil (will be come up from the east country, and from the south, as far as Wady Dauasir." Then, they told me, I should see the 164 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA passing continually through this street of a multitude of armed men. After the noon Ithin, we went down to ZamU's (homely) house, which is in a blind way out of the mejlis. His coffee room was spread with grass matting (only) ; and a few persons were sitting with him, ZamU's elder son, Abdullah, sat behind the hearth, to make coffee. Tidings were brought in, that some of the townspeople's asses had been reaved in the Nefud, by Ateyban (friendly Nomads)! — Zamil sent for one of his armed riders : and asked him, ' Was his dromedary in the town ? ' — " All ready." — " Then take some with you, and ride on their traces, that you may overtake them to-day ! " — " But if I lose the theliil— ? " (he might fall amongst enemies). Zamil answered, " The half loss shall be mine ; " and the man went out. zamil spoke demissly, he seemed not made to command ; but this is the mildness of the natural Arab sheykhs. — Aly, uncle of the Erair, entered hastUy ! Zamil some years ago appointed him executive Emir in the town ; and when Zamil takes the field, he leaves Aly his lieutenant in Aneyza. Aly is a dealer in caraels ; he has only few fanatical friends. All made him room, and the great man sat down in the highest place, Zamil, the Emir and host, sat leaning on a pillow in face of the company; and his son Abdullah sat drinking a pipe of tobacco, by the hearth ! — but this would not be tolerated in the street. The coffee was ready, and he who took up the pot and the cups went to pour out first for zamil ; but the Emir beckoned mildly to serve the Erair Aly, When the coffee had been poured round, Zamil said to his uncle, " This stranger is an hakim, a traveller frora es- Sham : and we will send hira, as he desires, to Kuweyt." — Aly full of the Wahaby fanaticism vouchsafed not so much as to cast an eye upon me. " Ugh ! quoth he, I heard say the man is a Nasrany : wouldst thou have a Nasrany in thy town ? " Zdmil : " He is a passenger ; he may stay a few days, and there can be no hurt ! " " Ugh ! " answered Aly ; and when he had swallowed his two cups he rose up crabbedly, and went forth. Even Zamil's son was of this Wahaby humour ; twenty years might be his age : bold faced was the young man, of little sheykhly proraise, and disposed, said the coramon speech, to be a niggard. Now making his voice big and hostile, he asked me — ^for his wit stretched no further, " What is thy name ? " When all were gone out, Zamil showed me his fore-arms corroded and inflamed by an itching malady which he had suffered these twenty years ! — I have seen the like in a few more persons at Aneyza. He said, like an Arab, " And if thou canst cure this, we will give theefuMs ! " ZAMIL'S DESCENT 165 Already some sick persons were come there, to seek the hakim, when I returned to Aly's ; and one of them offered me an empty dokdn, or little open shop in a side street by the siiks. — Aly found an ass to carry my bags : and ere the mid-after noon, I was sitting in my doctor's shop : and mused, should I here flnd rest in Arabia ? when the muethin cried to the assr prayers ; there was a trooping of feet, and neighbours went by to a mesjid in the end of the street. — Ay, at this day they go to prayers as hotly, as if they had been companions of the Neby ! I shut my shop with the rest, and sat close ; I thought this shutter would shield rae daily from their religious importunity. — " Ullahu ahhbar, Ullahu alclibar ! " chanted the muethins of the town. After vespers the town is at leisure ; and principal persons go home to drink the afternoon coffee with their friends. Some of the citizens returning by this street stayed to see the Nasrany, and enquire what were his medicines ; for nearly all the Arabs are diseased, or imagine themselves to be sick or else bewitched. How quiet was the behaviour of these towns folk, manyof them idle persons and children! but Zamil's word was that none should molest Haj KhalU, — so the good gentle man (who heard I had been many times in the " Holy " City) called me, because it made for my credit and safety among the people. The civil countenance of these midland Arabian citizens is unlike the (Beduish) aspect of the townsmen of HayU, that tremble in the sight of Ibn Rashid : here is a free township under the natural Prince, who converses as a private man, and rules, like a great sheykh of Aarab, amongst his brethren, Zamil's descent is from the Sbeya, first Beduin colonists of this loam-bottom in the Nefiid, At this day they are not many farailies in Aneyza; but theirs is the Emir ship, and therefore they say Jienna el-iimera, ' we are the Emirs,' More in number are the families of the Beny lOidlid, tribesmen of that ancient Beduin nation, whose name, before the Wahaby, was greatest in Nejd ; but above an half of the town are B. Temlm, There are in Aneyza (as in every Arabian place) several wards or parishes under hereditary sheykhs; but no malcontent factions, — they are all cheerfully subject to Zamil, The people living in unity, are in no dread of foreign enemies. Some principal persons went by again, returning from their friends' houses. — One of them approached me, and said, "Hast thou a knowledge of medicine ? " The tremulous figure of the speaker, with some drawing of his face, put me in mind of the Algerine Mohammed Aly, at Medain Salih ! But he that 166 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA stood here was a gentle son of Temlm, whose good star went before me from this day to the end of my voyage in Arabia ! Taking my hand in his hand, which is a kind manner of the Arabs, he said, " Wilt thou visit my sick mother ? " He led me to his house gate not far distant ; and entering himself by a side door he came round to open for me : I found within a large coffee-hall, spread vrith well-wrought grass mat ting, which is fetched hither from el-Hdsa. The walls were pargetted with fretwork of jis, such as I had seen at Boreyda, A Persian tapet spread before his fire-pit was the guests' sitting place; and he sat down himself behind the hearth to make me coffee. This was Abdullah el-Kenneyny, the fortunate son of a good but poor house. He had gone forth a young man from Aneyza ; and after the first hazards of fortune, was grown to be one of the most considerable foreign merchants. His traffic was in corn, at Bosra, and he lived willingly abroad; for his heart was not filled in Aneyza, where he despised the Wahaby straitness and fanaticism. In these days leaving his merchandise at Bosra to the care of a brother (Salih, who they told me little resembles him), Abdullah was come to pass a leisure year at home ; where he hoped to refresh his infirm health in the air of the Nefiid. When I looked in this man's face he smiled kindly. — " And art thou, said he, an Engleysy ? but wherefore tell the people so, in this vrild fanatical country ? I have spent many years in foreign lands, I have dwelt at Bombay, which is under government of the Engleys : thou canst say thus to me, but say it not to the ignorant and foolish people ; — what simplicity is this ! and incredible to me, in a man of Europa. For are we here in a government country ? no, but in land of the Aarab, where the name of the Nasara is an execration, A Nasrany they think to be a son of the EvU One, and (therefore) deserving of death : an half of this townspeople are Wahabies." — " Should I not speak truth, as well here as in mine own country?" Abdullah : " We have a tongue to further us and our friends, and to illude our enemies ; and indeed the more times the lie is better than the sooth. — Or dreadest thou, that Ullah would visit it upon thee, if thou assentedst to them in appearance? Is there not in everything the good and evil ? " [even in lieing and dissembling.] — " I am this second year, in a perilous country, and have no scathe. Thou hast heard the proverb, ' Truth may walk through the world unarmed '," — " But the Engleys are not thus ! nay, I have seen them full of policy : in the late warfare between Abdullah and Saud ibn Saiid, their Resident on the Gulf sent hundreds of sacks of rice. ABDULLAH'S HOUSE 167 secretly, to Saud [the wrongful part ; and for such Abdullah the Wahaby abhors the English name], — I see you will not be persuaded ! yet I hope that your life may be preserved : but they will not suffer you to dwell araongst them ! you will be driven from place to place," — " This seemed to me a good peaceable town, and are the people so illiberal ? " — " As many among them, as have travelled, are liberal ; but the rest no. Now shall we go to my mother ? " Abdullah led me into an inner room, from whence we as cended to the floor above. He had bought this great new (clay) house the year before, for a thousand reals, or nearly £200 sterling. The loam brickwork at Aneyza is good, and such house-walls may stand above one hundred years. His rent, for the same, had been (before) but fifteen reals ; house property being reckoned in the Arabian countries as raoney laid up, and not put out to usury, — a sure and lawful possession. The yearly fruit of 1000 dollars, lent out at Aneyza, were 120 ; the loss therefore to the merchant Abdullah, in buying this house, was each year 100 reals. But dwelling under their own roof, they think they enjoy some happy security of fortune : although the walls decay soon, it will not be in their children's time. In Abdullah's upper storey were many good chambers, but bare to our eyes, since they have few raore moveables than the Beduw : all the husbandry of his great town-house might have been carried on the backs of three camels ! In the Arabic countries the use of bed-furniture is unknown ; they lie on the floor, and the wellborn and welfaring have no more than some thin cotton quilt spread under them, and a coverlet : I saw only a few chests, in which they bestow their clothing. Their houses, in this land of sunny warmth, are lighted by open loopholes made high upon the lofty walls. But Abdullah was not so simply housed at Bosra ; for there — ^in the great world's side, tbe Arab merchants' halls are garnished with chairs : and the Aneyza tdjir sat (like the rest) upon a takht or carpeted settle in his counting-house. He brought me to a room where I saw his old mother, sitting on the floor ; and clad — so are all the Arabian women, only in a calico smock dipped in indigo. She covered her old visage, as we entered, with a veil ! Abdullah smiled to me, and looked to see " a man of Europa " smile. " My mother, said he, I bring thee el-hakim ; say what aileth thee, and let him see thine eyes : " and vrith a gentle hand he folded down her veil. " Oh ! said she, my head ; and all this side so aches that I cannot sleep, my son." Abdullah might be a man of forty ; yet his mother was abashed, that a strange man must look upon her 168 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA old blear eyes. — We returned to the coffee room perfect friends, " My mother, said he, is aged and suffering, and I suffer to see her: if thou canst help us, that wUl be a great comfort to me," Abdullah added, " I am even now in amazement ! that, in snch a conntry, you openly avow yourself to be an Englishman ; but how may you pass even one day in safety ! You have lived hitherto with the Beduw ; ay, but it is otherwise in the town ships," — " In such hazards there is nothing, I suppose, more prudent than a wise folly." — " Then, you wUl not follow better counsel I but here you may trust in me : I wiU watch for you, and warn yon of any alteration in the town." I asked, " And what of the Emir ? " — " Yon may also trust ZamU ; but even ZamU cannot at aU times refrain the unruly multitude." — In the clay-buUt chamber of the Arabs, with casements never closed, is a sweet dry air, as of the open field ; and the perfume of a serene and hospitable human Ufe, not knowing any churUsh superfluity : yet here is not whole hnman life, for bye and bye we are aware of the absence of women. And their bleak walling is an uncheerf ulness in our sight : pictures — those gracious images that adorn our poorest dweUings, were but of the things which are vain in the gross vision of their Mohammedan austerity. The Arabs, who sit on the floor, see the world more indolently than we : they must rise -vrith a double lifting of the body.- — In a waU-niche by the fire were Abdullah's books. We were now as brethren, and I took them down one by one : a great tome lay uppermost. I read the Arabic title' Bncyclopedia Busfdny, Beyr&t, — Bustany (bom of poor Christian folk in a Lebanon viUage), a printer, gazetteer, schoolmaster, and man of letters, at Beyrnt : every year he sends forth one great volume more, but so long an enterprise may hardly be ended. Abdullah's spectacles feU out at a place -which treated of artesian wells : he pored therein daUy, and looked to find some mean of raising water upon his thirsty acres, ¦without camel latonr. AbduUah enriched abroad, hid lately bought a palm and com ground at home; and not content with the old he had made in it a new well of eight camels' draught. I turned another leaf and found " Bumiog Mountain," and a picture of Etna. He was pleased to hear from me of the old Arab usurpers of Sicilian soU, and that this mountain is even now named after their words, Gil^'Jo (.Jebel). I turned to " Tele graph ", and AbduUah exclaimed, 'Oh! the inventions in Europa ! what a marveUous learned subtlety must have been in him who found it ! " When he asked farther of my profession of medidne; I said, "I am snch as your SoliMa smiths— BREAKFAST WITH THE EMIR 169 better than none, where you may not find a better." — Yet Abdullah always believed my skill to be greater than so, because nearly all my reasonable patients were relieved ; but especially his own mother. Whilst we were discussing, there came in two of the foreign- living Aneyza townsmen, a substantial citizen and his servant, clad in the Mesopotamian guise, with head-bands, great as turbans, of camel wool. The man had been jemindl, a camel carrier in the Irak traffic to Syria, — ^that is in the long trade- way about by Aleppo ; but after the loss of the caravan, before mentioned, having no more heart for these ventures, he sold his camels for fields and ploughshares. To-day he was a substantial farmer in the great new corn settlement, el-Amdra (upon the river a little north of Bosra), and a client of Kenneyny's — one of the principal grain merchants in the river city. The mer chant's dinner tray was presently bome in, and I rose to depart ; but Abdullah made me sit down again to eat with them, though I had been bidden in another place. — I passed this one good day in Arabia ; and all the rest were evil because of the people's fanaticism. At night I slept on the cottage terrace of a poor patient, Aly's neighbour ; not liking the unswept dokan for a lodging, and so far from friends. At sunrise came Aly, from Zamil, to bid me to breakfast — the bread and salt offered to the (Christian and Prankish) stranger by the gentle philosophic Emir. We drank the morn ing cup, at the hearth ; then his breakfast tray was served, and we sat down to it in the midst of the floor, the Emir, the Nasrany and Aly: for there is no such ignoble observing of degrees in their homely and religious life. — The breakfast fare in Aneyza is warm girdle-bread [somewhat bitter to our taste, yet they do not perceive the bitterness, ' which might be because a little salt is ground with the corn,' said Abdullah] : therewith we had dates, and a bowl of sweet (cow) butter. A bowl of (cow) buttermilk is set by ; that the breakfasters may drink of it after eating, when they rise to rinse the hands ; and for this there is a metal ewer and basin. The water is poured over the fingers ; and without more the breakfasters take leave : the day begins, I went to sit in my dokan, where Zamil sent me bye and bye, by Aly, a leg of mutton out of the butchers' siik, " that I might dine well." Mutton is good at Aneyza: and camel's flesh is sold to poor folk, A leg of their lean desert mutton, which might weigh five or six pounds, is sold for sixpence : this meat, with scotches made in it and hung one day to the ardent sun, will last good three days. Beduins bring live 170 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA gazeUe fawns into the town ; which are often bought by citizens to be fostered, for their children's pastime : these dearlings of the desert were valued at eightpence. I had not long been sitting in my dokan before one came to put me out of it ! he cried churlishly with averted face — so that I did not know him — to the negro Aly, who stood by, " Out ! with these things ! " The negro shouted again, " The NasrSny is here with Zamil's knowledge : wilt thou strive with Zamil ! " The other (who was Aly the second or executive emir) muttered between his teeth, " Zamil quoth he, ugh ! — the dokan is mine, and I say out ! ugh ! out of my dokan, out, out ! " But the negro cried as loud as he, " Zamil he is Emir of this town, and what art thou ? " — " I am Emir." The emir Aly respected my person — to me he spoke no word, and I was ready to content him ; the shop he said was his own. But my friends had not done well to settle me there : the violence of the Wahaby Aly, in contempt of the liberal Emir Zamil, would hearten the town fanatics against the Nasrany. — This was the comedy of the two Alyes. The white Aly spurned-to the door, and drew the bolt ; and the same day he had driven me out of the town, but Zamil would not hear of it. I remained with my bags in the street, and idle persons came to look on; but the negro Aly vehemently threatened, that ' Zamil would pluck out the eyes and the tongue of any that molested me ! ' The hot morning hours advanced to high noon ; and when the muethins chanted I was still sitting in the street by my things, in the sight of the malevolent people, who again flocked by me to the mesjid, — " Ullah ! this is one who prays not," quoth every passing man. After thera came a lad of the town, whose looks showed him to be of impure sinister conditions ! and bearing a long rod in his hand : therewith of his godly zeal — that is an inhuman envy and cruelty ! he had taken upon him to beat in late-lingerers to the prayers. Now he laid hands on the few lads, that loitered to gape upon the Nasrany, and cried, " Go pray, go pray ! may Ullah confound you ! " and he drove them before him. Then he threatened Aly, who remained with me ; and the poor man, hearing God named, could not choose but obey hira. The shallow dastard stood finally grinning upon me, — his rod was lifted ! and doubtless he tickled in every vein with the thought of smiting a kafir, for God's sake : but he presently vailed it again, — for are not the Nasara reputed to be great strikers ? In this time of their prayers, some Beduins [they were perhaps Kahtan] issued from a house near by, to load upon their kneeling camels, I went to talk with them and hear their loghra: but Beduins in a A NEGRO HOST 171 town are townsmen, and in a journey are hostile; and -with maledictions they bade me stand off, saying, " What have we to do with a kafir ? " Aly would have me speak in the matter of the dokan to zamil, I found Zamil in the afternoon at his house door : and he said, with mild voice, " We will not enter, because the kahwa is full of Beduw " [Meteyr sheykhs, come in to consult with the town, of their riding together against the Kahtan], We walked in his lane, and sat down under a shadowing wall, in the dust of the street, " Have you lost the dokan ? said Zamil, well, tell Aly to find you another," — Yesterday some Aneyza tradesmen to the nomads had been robbed on the Boreyda road, and three camel loads of samn were taken from them — nearly half a ton, worth 200 reals : the thieves were Kahtan. The intruded Kahtan in el-Kaslm were of the Boreyda alliance ; and Zamil sent a letter thither, complaining of this injury, to Abdullah. Abdullah wrote word again, " It was the wild Beduw : lay not their misdeed to our charge." zamil now sent out thirty young men of good houses, possess ing theliils in the town, to scour the Nefud — [they returned six days later to Aneyza, having seen nothing]. Zamil spoke not much hiraself in the town councils : but his mind was full of solicitude; and it was said of him in these days, that he could not eat. Aly found me so wretched a tenement, that my friends exclaimed, " It is an house of the rats ! it is not habitable," The negro answered them. He had sought up and down, but that everyone repulsed him saying, " Shall a Nasrany harbour in my beyt ? " The ruinous house was of a miserable old man, a patient of mine, who demanded an excessive daily hire, although he had received my medicines freely, Aly on the morrow persuaded a young negro neighbour, who had a small upper chamber, empty, to house the hakim ; promising him that the Nasrany should cure his purblind father. — I went to lodge there : the old father was a freed-man of Yahya's house (afterward my friends). The negro host was a pargetter ; it was his art to adorn the citizens' coffee-halls with chequered daubing and white fretwork, of gypsum. We may see, even in the rudest villages of Arabia, the fantasy they have for whitening ; their clay casements are commonly blanched about with jis : the white is to their sense light and cheerfulness, as black is balef ulness. ["A white day to thee ! " is said for " good-morrow " in the border countries : Syrian Moslems use to whiten their clay sepulchres, — Paul cries out, in this sense, "Thou whited walling! "] 172 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA " Now ! quoth the young negro, when I entered his dwelling, let them bibble-babble that will, sixty thousand bibble-bab- blings," — because for the love of his aged father, he had received the kafir. His narrow kahwa was presently full of town folk ; and some of them no inconsiderable persons. It was for the poor man's honour to serve them with coffee, of the best ; and that day it cost a shilling, which I was careful to restore to him. All these persons were come in to chat curiously of their maladies with the hakim, whose counsels should cost them nothing ; they hoped to defraud him of the medicines, and had determined in their iniquitous hearts to keep no good wUl for the Nasrany again. And I was vrilling to help them, in aught that I might, without other regard. At the next sunrise I went to breakfast with Kenneyny; this cheerful hour is not early in that sunny climate, where the light returns with a clear serenity ; and welfaring persons waken to renew the daily pleasures of prayers, coffee, and the friendly discourse of their easy lives. The meal times are commonly at hours when the Arabian people may honestly shun the burden of open hospitality. But the hours of the field labourers are those of the desert : breakfast is brought out to them at high noon, from the master's house, and they sup when the sun is going down. Every principal household possesses a milch cow in this town. Each morning as I walked in the siik, some that were sick persons' friends, drew me by the mantle, and led the hakim to their houses ; where they brought me forth a breakfast-tray of girdle-bread and leban. Thus I breakfasted twice or thrice daily, whilst the wonder lasted, and felt ray strength rerive. Their most diseases are of the eyes ; I saw indeed hundreds of such patients ! in the time of my being at Aneyza, The pupils are commonly clouded by night-chUl cataract and small-pox cataract : many lose the sight of one or even both their eyes in childhood by this scourge ; and there is a blindness, which comes upon them, after a cruel aching of years in the side of the forehead. — ^There is nothing feasible which the wit of some men will not stir them to attempt ; also we hear of eye-prickers in Arabia : but the people have little hope in them. An eye- salver with the needle, from Shuggera, had been the year before at Aneyza. Their other common diseases are rheums and the oasis fever, and the tdJml : I have seen the tetter among children. — The small-pox was in the town : the malady, which had not been seen here for seven years, spread lately from some slave children brought up in the returning pilgrim caravan. Some of the town caravaners, with the profit of their sales in Mecca, use THE TOWN MANNERS 173 to buy slave children in Jidda, to sell them again in el-Kaslm, or (with more advantage) in Mesopotamia. They win thus a few reals : but Aneyza lost thereby, in the time of my being there — chiefly I think by their inoculation! — "five hundred" of her free-born children ! Nevertheless the infection did not pass the Wady to Boreyda, nor to any of the Nefiid villages lying nigh about them, I was called to some of their small-pox houses, where I found the sick lying in the dark ; the custom is to give them no raedicines, " lest they should lose their eyesight," And thus I entered the dwellings of some of the most fanatical citizens : my other patients' diseases were commonly old and radical. — Very cleanly and pleasant are the most homes in this Arabian town, all of clay building. The tradesmen's shops are well furnished. The common food is cheaper at Boreyda ; at Aneyza is better cheap of " Mecca coffee " (from el-Y§men), and of Gulf clothing. Dates, which in Kaslm are valued by weight, are very good here ; and nearly 30 pounds were sold for one real. There is an appearance of welfare in the seemly clothing of this townsfolk — men coraraonly of elated looks and a coraely liberty of carriage. They salute one another in raany words, nearly as the Beduins, with a familiar grace ; for not a few of them, who live in distant orchard houses, come seldom into the town. But the streets are thronged on Fridays ; when all the townsmen, even the field labourers, come in at mid-day, to pray in the great mesjid, and hear the koran reading and preaching : it is as well their market day. The poorer townspeople go clad like the Aarab; and their kerchiefs are girded with the head-cord. These sober citizens cut the hair short — none wear the braided side-locks of the Beduw : the richer sort (as said) have upon their heads Fez caps, over which they loosely cast a gay kerchief; that they gird only when they ride abroad. As for the haggu or waist-band of slender leathern plait [it is called in Kasim lidgub or brtm] which is worn even by princes in Hayil, and by the (Arabian) inhabitants of Medina and Mecca, the only wearers of it here are the hareem. The substantial townsmen go training in black mantles of Ught Irak worsted: and the young patricians will spend as much as the cloth is worth, for a broidered collar in metal thread- work. The embroiderers are mostly women, in whom is a skill to set forth some careless grace of running lines, some flowery harmony in needlework — such as we see woven in the Oriental carpets. Gentle persons in the streets go balancing in their hands long rods which are brought from Mecca. 174 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA Hareem are unseen, and the men's manners are the more gracious and untroubled : it may be their Asiatic society is manlier, but less virile than the European. They live-on in a pious daily assurance : and little know they of stings which be in our unquiet emulations, and in our foreign religion, Mo hammed's sweet-blooded faith has redeemed them from the superfluous study of the world, from the sour-breathing in hospitable wine; and has purifled their bodies from nearly every excess of living : only they exceed here, and exceed all in the East, in coffee. Marriage is easy from every man's youth ; and there are no such rusty bonds in their wedlock, that any must bear an heavy countenance. The Moslem's breast is enlarged ; he finds few wild branches to prune of his life's vine, — a plant supine and rich in spirit, like the Arabic language. There is a nobility of the religious virtue among them, and nothing stern or rugged, but the hatred of the kafir : few have great hardness in their lives. — But the woman is in bondage, and her heart has little or no refreshment. Women are not seen passing by their streets, in the daytime ; but in the evening twilight (when the men sit at coffee) you shall see many veiled forms flitting to their gossips' houses : and they will hastily return, through an empty siik, in the time of the last prayers, whilst the men are praying in the mesjids, A day or two after my being in Aneyza a young man of the patricians came to bid me to dinner, from his father ; who was that good man Abdullah Abd er-Bahmdn, el-Bessdm, a mer chant at Jidda, and chief of the house of Bessam in Aneyza, Abdullah el-Bessam and Abdullah el-Kenneyny were entire friends, breakfasting and dining together, and going every day to coffee in each other's houses ; and they were filasHfs with zamil. Besides the Kenneyny I found there Sheykh Ndsir, es-Smiry, a very swarthy raan of elder years, of the Wahaby straitness in reUgion ; and who was of the Aneyza merchants at Jidda. He had lately returned — though not greatly enriched, to live in an hired house at home ; and was partner with the Kenneyny in buying every year a few young horses from the Nomads, which they shipped to Bombay for sale, * * * * * * Sheykh Nasir was of the B, Khalid families : there is a Beduishness in them more than in the Temlmies, Though stiff in opinions, he answered me better than any man, and with a natural frankness ; especially when I asked him of the history and topography of these countries : and he first traced for me, with his pen, the situation of the southern Harras, — AT THE ARABS' BOARD 175 B. Abdillah, Kesshdb, Turr'a, 'AsJiiry, 'Ajeyfa, (Bodwa, JeJieyna;) which, with the rest of the vulcanic train described in this work, before my voyage in Arabia, were not heard of in Europe, Not long before he had embarked some of the honest gain of his years of exile under the Red Sea climate, with two more Jidda merchants, in a lading to India, Tidings out of the caravan season may hardly pass the great desert ; but he had word in these days, by certain who came up by hap from Mecca, that their vessel had not been heard of since her sailing ! and now it was feared that the ship must be lost. These foreign mer chants at the ports do never cover their sea and fire risks by an assurance, — such were in their eyes a deed of unbelief ! In the meanwhile sheykh Nasir bore this incertitude of God's hand with the severe serenity of a right Moslem. — This was the best company in the town: the dinner-tray was set on a stool [the mess is served upon the floor in princes' houses in Hayil]; and we sat half-kneeling about it. The foreign raerchants' meal at Aneyza is more town-like than I had seen in Arabia : besides boiled mutton on temmn, Abdullah had his little dishes of carrots fried in butter, and bowls of custard messes or curded railk, — We sit at leisure at the European board, we chat cheerfully ; but such at the Arabs' dish would be a very inept and unreasonable behariour! — he were not a raan but an homicide, who is not speechless in that short battle of the teeth for a day's life of the body. And in what sort (forgive it me, 0 thrice good friends ! in the sacra ment of the bread and salt,) a dog or a cat laps up his meat, not taking breath, and is dispatched without any curiosity, and runs after to drink; even so do the Arabs endeavour, that they may come to an end with speed : for in their eyes it were not honest to linger at the dish ; whereunto other (humbler) persons look that should eat after them. The good Bessara, to show the European stranger the raore kindness, rent morsels of his mutton and laid them ready to my hand, — Yerhamak Ullah, " The Lord be merciful unto thee," say the town guests, every one, in rising from dinner, with a religious mildness and humiUty, Bessam himself, and his sons, held the towel to them, without the door, whilst they washed their hands. The company returned to their sitting before the hearth ; and hia elder son sat there already to make us coffee, El-Kenneyny bid me come to breakfast vrith him on the morrow ; and we should go out to see his orchard (which they call here jenlyny ' pleasure ground '), " AbduUah, quoth sheykh Nasir, would enquire of thee how water might be raised by some better mean than we now use at Aneyza, where a camel 176 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA walking fifteen paces draws but one bucket full ! [it may be nearly three pails, 200 pails in an hour, 1500 to 2000 pails in the day's labour.] And you, a man of Europa, might be able to help us ! for we suppose you have learned geometry ; and may have read in books which treat of machines, that are so wonderful in your countries." — Nasir's Wahaby malice would sow cockle in the clean corn of our friendship, and have made me see an interested kindness in the Kenneyny ! who answered with an ingenuous asperity, that he desired but to ask Khalil's opinion. He had imagined an artesian well flowing with water enough to irrigate some good part of Aneyza ! — I had seen to day a hand-cart on wheels, before a smith's forge ! a sight not less strange in an Arabian town, than the camel in Europe ; it was made here for the Kenneyny, The sany had fastened the ends of his tires unhandsomely, so that they overlapped : but his felloes, nave and spokes were very well wrought ; and in all Nejd (for the making of suany wheels — commonly a large yard of cross measure), there are perfect wheelwrights, Abd ullah's dates had been drawn home on this barrow, in the late harvest ; and the people marvelled to see how two men might wield the loads of two or three great camels ! The guests rise one after another and depart when the coffee is drunk, saying, Yunaam Ullah aleyk, ' The Lord be gracious unto thee ; ' and the host responds gently, Fi amdn illah, ' (go) in the peace of the Lord.' There are yet two summer hours of daylight ; and the townsmen landowners will walk abroad to breathe the freshing air, and visit their orchards, ~ As for the distribution of the day-time in Aneyza : the people purchase their provision at the market stalls, soon after the sunrising ; the shuttered shops are set open a little later, when the tradesmen (mostly easy-living persons and landowners) begin to arrive from breakfast. The running brokers now cry up and down in the clothiers' street, holding such things in their hands as are committed to them to sell for ready money, — long guns, spears, coffee-pots, mantles, fathoms of calico, and the like. They cry what silver is bidden ; and if any person call them they stay to show their wares. Clothing-pieces brought down by the caravaners from Bagdad, are often de livered by them to the dellals, to be sold out of hand. The tradesmen, in days when no Beduins come in, have little business : they sit an hour, till the hot forenoon, and then draw their shop shutters, and go homeward ; and bye and bye all the street will be empty ,-^At the mid-day Ithin the towns men come flocking forth in all the ways, to enter the mesjids. THE DAY IN ANEYZA 177 Few salesmen return from the mid-day prayers to the siik ; the most go (like the patricians,) to drink coffee in friends' houses : some, who have jenSynies in the town, withdraw then to sit in the shadows of their palms. At the half-afternoon Ithin, the coffee drinkers rise from the perfumed hearths, and go the third time a-praying to their mesjids. From the public prayers the tradesmen resort to the siik ; their stalls are set open, the dellals are again a-foot, and passengers in the bazaar. The patricians go home to dine ; and an hour later all the shops are shut for the day, — Citizens will wander then beyond the town walls, to return at the sun's going down, when the Ithin calls men a fourth time to pray in the mesjids ! From these fourth prayers, the people go home : and this is not an hour to visit friends ; for the masters are now sitting to account with the field labourers, in their coffee-halls ; where not seldom there is a warm mess of burghrol set ready for them. But husbandmen, in the far outlying palmsteads, remain there all night ; and needing no roof, they lie down in theii mantles under the stars to sleep. Another Ithin, after the sun setting hardly two hours, calls men to the fifth or last public prayers (sUlat el-aJchir). It is now night ; and many who are weary remain to pray, or not to pray, in their own houses. When they come again from the mesjids, the people have ended the day's religion : there is yet an hour of private friendship (but no more common assemblings) in the coffee-halls of the patricians and foreign merchants. — El-Kenneyny sent a poor kinsman of his, when we had breakfasted, to accompany me to his jendyny, half a league distant, within the furthest circuit of town walling : he being an infirm man would follow us upon an ass. [With this kins man of his, Sleyman, I have afterward passed the great desert southward to the Mecca country.] We went by long clay lanes with earthen walling, between fields and plantations, in the cool of the morning ; but (in this bitter sun) there springs not a green blade by the (unwatered) way side ! Their cornfields were now stubbles ; and I saw the lately reaped harvest gathered in great heaps, to the stamping places. * * * * * * Kenneyny's palm and corn-ground might be three and a half acres of sand soil. The farthest bay of the to-wn wall, which fenced him, was there fallen away, in wide breaches : and all without the siir is sand-sea of the Nefiid. The most had been corn-land, iu which he was now setting young palm plants VOL. II. M 178 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA from the Wady : for every one is paid a real. He had but forty stems of old palms, and they were of slender growth ; because of the former " weak " (empoverished) owner's insufficient water ing. And such are the most small-landed men in this country; for they and their portions of the dust of this world are devoured (hardly less than in Egypt and Syria,) by rich money-lenders : that is by the long rising over their heads of an insoluble usury. Abdullah's new double well-pit was six fathoms deep, sunk into the underlying crust of sand-rock ; and well steyned with dry courses of sandstone, which is hewn near Aneyza. All the cost had been 600 reals, or nearly £120 in silver : the same for four camels' draught would have cost 400 reals, Abdullah valued the ground with his well at about £600, that is above £100 an acre without the water : and this was some of their cheaper land, lying far from the town. They have thick-grown but light-eared harvests of wheat, sown year by year upon the same plots ; and corn is always dear in poor Arabia, Here four nagas — their camel cattle are black at Aneyza — wrought incessantly : a camel may water one acre nearly from wells of six or eight fathoras. He had opened this great well, hoping in time to purchase some piece more of his neighbour's ground, Abdullah, as all rich landed men, had two courses of well camels ; the beasts draw two months till they become lean, and they are two months at pasture in the wilderness. Every morrow Abdullah rode hither to take the air, and oversee his planting : and he had a thought to build himself here an orchard house, that he raight breathe the air of the Nefiid, — when he shonld be come again [but ah! that was not written in the book of life] to Aneyza. Abdullah asked, how could I, " a man of Europa," live in the khala ? and in journeying over so great deserts, had I never met with foot robbers, Jiensh4ly ! The summer before this, he and some friends had gone out with tents, to dwell nomad-viise in the Nefiid. Wel faring Aneyza citizens have canvas tents, for the yearly pil grimage and their often caravan passages, made like the booths of the Beduw, that is cottage- wise, and open in front, — the best, I can think, under this climate. These tilled grounds so far from the town are not fenced ; the bounds are marked by mere-stones, Abdullah looked with a provident eye upon this parcel of land, which he planted for his daughters' inheritance : he had purchased palms for his son at Bosra. He would not that the men (which might be) born of him should remain in Arabia ! and he said, with a sad pre sentiment, ' Oh ! that he might live over the few years of his children's nonage,' ABDULLAH'S FRIENDS 179 I found here some of his younger friends. These were Hdmed es-Sdfy, of Bagdad, and Abdullah Bessam, the younger, (nephew of the elder Abdullah el-Bessam) ; and a negro com panion of theirs, Sheykh ibn Ayith, a lettered sheykh or elder in the religion. After salaaras they all held me out their forearms, — that the hakim might take knowledge of their pulses ! Hamed and Abdullah, unlike their worthiness of soul, were slender gi-owths: their blood flowed in feeble streams, as their old spent fathers, and the air of great towns, had given them life, Ibn Ayith, of an (ox-like) African complexion, showed a pensive countenance, whilst I held his destiny in my hands ! — and required in a small negro voice, ' What did I deem of his remiss health ? ' The poor scholar believed himself to be always ailing ; though his was no lean and discoloured -risage ! nor the long neck, narrow breast, and pithless members of those chop-fallen men that live in the twilight of human life, growing only, since their pickerel youth, in their pike's heads, to die later in the world's cold. — The negro litterate was a new man from this day, wherein he heard the hakira's absolution ; and carried hiraself upright among his friends (thus they laughed to rae), whereas he had drooped formerly. And Ibn Ayith was no pedant fanatic ; but daily conversing with the foreign merchants, he had grown up liberal minded. Poor, he had not travelled, saving that — as all the religious Nejdians, not day-labourers — he had ridden once on pilgrimage (with his bountiful friends, who had entertained him) to Mecca ; " And if I were in thy company, quoth he, I would show thee all the historical places." His toward youth had been fostered in learning, by charitable sheykhs ; and they at this day main tained his scholar's leisure. He was now father of a family ; but besides the house wherein he dwelt, he had no worldly pos sessions. There was ever room for him at Abdullah el-Bessam's dish ; and he was ofttimes the good man's scrivener, for AbduUah was less clerk than honourable merchant; and it is the beginning of their school wisdom to write handsomely. But in Ibn Ayith was no subject behaviour ; I have heard him, with a manly roughness, say the kind AbduUah nay! to his beard. There is a pleasant civil liberty in Aneyza, and no lofty looks of their natural rulers in the town ; but many a poor man (in his anger) will contradict, to the face, and rail at the long- suffering prudence of Zamil ! — saying, Md b'aJt kheyr, there is not good in thee. When I came again, it was noon, the streets were empty, and the shops shut : the Ithin sounded, and the people came troop ing by to the mesjids. An old Ateyba sheykh passed lateward, 180 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA — he was in the town with some of his marketing tribesmen ; and hearing I was the hakim, he called to me, ' He would have a medicine for the rih.' One answered, " It might cost thee a real," — "And what though this medicine cost a real, 0 townling (hathery), if I have the silver ! " There came also some lingering truants, who stayed to smile at the loud and sudden-tongued old Beduwy ; and a merry fellow asked, amidst their laughter, were he well with his wives ? " Nay, cries the old heart, and I would, billah, that the hareem had not cause. — Oho ! have patience there ! " (because some zealots thrust on him). — " Heardest not thou the Ithin ? go pray ! " — " Ay, ay, I heard it, Ullah send you sorrow ! am I not talking with this mudowwy ? — well, I am coming presently." — A zealot woman went by us : the squalid creature stepped to the Beduin sheykh, and drew him by the mantle, " To the prayer ! cries she, old devil-sick Beduwy ; thou to stand here whilst the people pray ! — and is it to talk with this misbelieving person ? " — "Akhs ! do away thy hands ! let me go, woman ! — I tell thee I have said my prayers." Though he cried akhs-akhs ! she held him by the cloth ; and he durst not resist her : yet he said to me, " 0 thou the mudowwy ! where is thy remedy for the rheums ? — a wild fire on this woman ! that will not let me speak." I bade him return after prayers ; and the sheykh hearing some young children chide with " WaraJc, warak ! why goest thou not in to pray ? " he called to me as he was going, " 0 thou ! resist them not, but do as they do ; when a man is come to another country, let him observe the usage and not strive — that will be best for thee, and were it only to live in peace with them." Now the stripling with the rod was upon us ! — the kestrel would have laid hands on the sheykhly father of the desert, " Oh ! hold, and I go," quoth he, and they drove him before them. My medical practice was in good credit. Each daybreak a flock of miserable persons waited for the hakim, on the small terrace of my host (before they went to their labour): they impor tuned me for their sore eyes ; and all might freely use my eye washes. In that there commonly arrived some friendly messenger, to call the stranger to breakfast ; and I left my patients lying on their backs, with smarting eyeballs. The poorer citizens are many, in the general welfare of Aneyza, Such are the field labourers and well drivers, who receive an insufficient monthly wage. The impotent, and the forsaken in age, are destitute indeed ; they must go a-begging through the town, I sometimes met with a tottering and deadly crew in the still streets before midday ; old calamitous widows, childless aged men, indigent THE YOUNG MERCHANTS 181 divorced wives, and the misshapen and diseased ones of step- dame Nature that had none to relieve them. They creep abroad as a curse in the world, and must knock from door to door, to know if the Lord will send them any good ; and cry lamentably Yd ahl el-harim .' ' 0 ye of this bountiful household,' But I seldom saw the cheerful hand of bounty which beckoned to thera or opened. One morrow when I went to visit the Emir the mesquins were crouching and shuffling at his door ; and Zamil's son Abdullah came out with somewhat to give them : but I saw his dole was less than his outstretched hand full of dates ! " Go further! and here is for you," quoth the young niggard: he pushed the mesquins and made them turn their backs, I passed some pleasant evenings in the kahwas of the young friends and neighbours Hamed and Abdullah; and they called in Ibn Ayith, who entertained me with discourse of the Arabic letters, Hamed regaled us with Bagdad nargUies, and Abdullah made a sugared cooling drink of tdmr el-Hind (tamarind). To Abdullah's kahwa, in the daytime, resorted the best company in the town, — such were the honourable young Bessam's cheerful popular manners. His mortar rang out like a belief hospitality, when he prepared coffee. The Aneyza mortar is a little saucer like hollow in a marble block great as a font-stone : a well- ringing mortar is much esteemed among them. Their great coffee-mortar blocks are hewn not many hours from the town eastward (near el-Mith'nib, toward J. Tueyk), An ell long is every liberal man's pestle of marble in Aneyza : it is smitten in rhythm (and that we hear at all the coffee-hearths of the Arabs), A jealous or miserable householder, who would not have many pressing in to drink with him, raust muffle the musical note of his raarble or knelling brasswork. These were the best younger spirits of the (foreign) merchant houses in the town : they were readers in the Encyclopaedia, and of the spirituous poets of the Arabian antiquity, Abdullah, when the last of his evening friends had departed, sitting at his petroleum lamp, and forgetting the wife of his youth, would pore on his books and feed his gentle spirit almost till the day appearing, Hamed, bred at Bagdad, was incredulous of the world old and new ; but he leaned to the new studies. These young merchants sought counsels in medicine, and would learn of me some Prankish words, and our alphabet, — and this because their sea carriage is in the hands of European shippers, A few of these Arabians, dweUing in the trade ports, have learned to endorse their names upon Frankish bills which come to their hands, in Roman letters. AbduUah el-Bessam's eldest son — ^he was now in India, and a few more, had learned to read and to 182 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA speak too in English : yet that was, I can think, but lamely. Others, as the Kenneyny, who have lived in Bombay, can speak the Hindostani. Hamed wrote from my lips (in his Arabic letters) a long table of English words, — such as he thought might serve him in his Gulf passages. His father dwelt, since thirty years, in Bagdad ; and had never revisited Aneyza : — in which time the town is so increased, that one coming again after a long absence might hardly, they say, remember himself there. El-Kenneyny told me that Aneyza was now nearly double of the town fifteen years ago; and he thought the inhabitants must be to-day 15,000 ! My friends saw me a barefoot hakim, in rent clothing, aa I was come-in frora the khala, and had escaped ont of Boreyda, The younger Abdullah Bessara sent me sandals, and they would have put a long wand in my hand ; but I answered them, " He is not poor who hath no need : my poverty is honourable." Kenneyny said to rae on a morrow, when we were alone (and for the more kindness finding a Frankish word), " Mussu Khalil, if you lack money — were it an hundred or two hundred reals, you may have this here of rae : " but he knew not all my necessity, imagining that I went poorly for a disguise. I gave thanks for his generous words ; but which were thenceforth in my ears as if they had never been uttered. I heard also, that the good Bessam had taken upon himself to send me forward, to what part I would. I was often bidden to his house, and seldom to Kenneyny's, who (a new raan) dreaded over-rauch the crabbed speech of his Wahaby townspeople. The good Bessara, as oft as he raet with me, invited the stranger, benignly, to breakfast on the morrow : and at breakfast he bid me dine the same day with him, — an humanity which was much to thank God for, in these extremities. * * * CHAPTER IX LIFE IN ANEYZA One of these mornings word was brought to the town, that Beduins had fallen upon harvesters in the Wady, and carried away their asses : and in the next half hour I saw more than a hundred of the young townsmen hasten-by armed to the Boreyda gate. The poorer sort ran foremost on foot, with long lances ; and the well-faring trotted after upon theliils with their backriders. But an hour had passed; and the light-footed robbers were already two or three leagues distant ! There were yet rumours of warfare with Boreyda and the Kahtan, Were it war between the towns, Hasan and the Boreydians (less in arms and fewer in number) durst not adventure to rneet the men of Aneyza in the Nefiid ; but would shelter themselves within their (span-thick) clay wall, learing their fields and plantations in the power of the enemy, — as it has happened before-time. The adversaries, being neighbours, will no more than devour their fruits, whilst the orchards languish unwatered : they are not foreign enemies likely to lop the heads of the palms, whereby they should be ruined for many years. — This did Ibn Saiid's host in the warfare with Aneyza ; they destroyed the palms in the Wady : so pleasant is the sweet pith-wood to all the Arabians, and they desire to eat of it with a childish greediness. Kahtan tribesmen were suffered to come marketing to Aneyza ; till a hubt of theirs returning one evening with loaded camels, and finding some town chUdren not far from the gate, in the Nefiid, that were driving home their asses, and an dbd with them, took the beasts and let the children go : yet they carried away the negro, — and he was a slave of Zamil's ! A savage tiding was brought in from the north ; and all Aneyza was moved by it, for the persons were well known to them. A great camp of Meteyr Aarab, sad-Ah, or " friends-of- 184 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA trust to the town and Zamil ", (if any of the truthless nomads can be trusty !) had been set upon at four days' distance from hence by a strong ghrazzu of Kahtan, — for the pastures of Kaslm, their capital enemies. Leader of the raid was that Hayzan who, not regarding the rites of hospitality, had threatened me at Hayil. The nomads (fugitive foemen in every other cause), wUl fight to " the dark death " for their pastures and waters. The Meteyr were surprised in their tents and outnumbered ; and the Kahtan killed some of them. The rest saved themselves by flight, and their milch camels ; learing the slow-footed flocks, with the booths, and their household stuff in the power of their enemies ; who not regarding the religion of the desert pierced even women with their lances, and stripped them, and cut the wezands of three or four young chUdren ! Among the fallen of Meteyr was a principal sheykh well known at Aneyza, Hayzan had borne him through with his romh ! Those Aarab now withdrew towards Aneyza : where their sheykhs found the townsmen of a mind to partake with them, to rid the country of the common pestilence. In their gene alogies, el-Meteyr, Ishmaelites, are accounted in the descents from Keys, and from Anmdr, and Bubia : Rubla, Anmar, Miithur, and Eyad are brethren ; and Rubla is father of Wayil, patriarch of the Annezy, Meteyr are of old Ahl Gibly : and their home is in the great Harra which lies between the Harameyn, yet occupied by their tribesmen. Their ancient villages in that country, upon the Derb es-SJierhy or east Haj-road to Mecca, are JSl-Feriya, Hdthi, Sfeyna, es-Swergieh in the borders of the Harrat el-Kisshub ; and Hajjir : but the most villagers of the Swergieh valley are at this day ashraf, or of the " eminent " blood of the Neby. The Meteyr are now in part Ahl es-Shemal : for every sumraer these nomads journey upward to pasture their cattle in the northern wilderness : their borders are reckoned nearly to Kuweyt and Bosra ; and they are next in the North to the northern Shammar, Neither are tributary, but " friendly Aarab," to Ibn Rashid, The desert marches of the Meteyr are thus almost 200 leagues over ! [They are in multitude (among the middle Arabian tribes) next after the great Beduin nation 'Ateyba, and may be almost 5000 souls,] Their tents were more than two hundred in el-Kaslm, at this time. Each year they risit Aneyza ; and Zamil bestows a load or two of dates upon their great sheykh, that the town caravans may pass by them, unhindered. Other Beduin tribesmen resorting to Aneyza are the 'Ateybdn (also reckoned to the line of Keys) : neither the Meteyr nor THE CUSTODY OF THE PUBLIC PEACE 185 'Ateyba were friendly with Boreyda. The 'Ateyba marches are all that high wilderness, an hundred leagues over, which lies between el-Kaslm in the north, and the Mecca country : in that vast dlra, of the best desert pastures, there is no settle ment ! The 'Ateyba, one of the greatest of Arabian tribes, may be nearly 6000 souls ; they are of more stable mind than the most Beduw ; and have been allies (as said), in every for tune, of Abdullali ibn Saiid. There is less fanaticism in their religion than moderation : they dwell between the Wahaby and the Haram ; and boast themselves hereditary friends of the Sherlfs of Mecca. Zamil was all for quietness and peace, in which is the welfare of human life, and God is worshipped; but were it warfare, in his conduct, the people of Aneyza are confident. Now he sent out an hundred theliil riders of the citizens, in two bands, to scour the Nefiid ; and set over them the son of the Emir Aly, YaJiya ; a manly young man, but like his father of the strait Wahaby understanding, I saw a Kahtany arrested in the street ; the man had come marketing to Aneyza, bat being known by his speech, the by standers- laid hands on his theliil. Some would have drawn him from the saddle ; and an Arab overpowered will [his feline and chameleon nature] make no resistance, for that should en danger him. " Come thou with us afore Zamil," cried they. " Well, he answered, I am with you." They discharged his carael and tied up the beast's knee : the salesraen in the next shops sat on civilly incurious of this adventure. — At Hayil, in like case, or at Boreyda all had been done by men of the Emir's baud, with a tyrannous clamour ; but here is a free township, where the custody of the public peace is left in the hands of all the citizens, — As for the Kahtan Zamil had not yet proclaimed them enemies of Aneyza ; and nothing was alleged against this Beduwy, They bound him : but the righteous Emir gave judgment to let the man go. Persons accused of crimes at Aneyza (where is no prison), are bound, until the next sitting of the Emir, Kenneyny told me there had been in his time bnt one capital punishment, — this was fifteen years ago. The offender was a woman, sister of Mufarrij ! that worthy man whom we have seen steward of the prince's public hall at Hayil : it was after this misfortune to his house that he left Aneyza to seek some foreign service, — She had enticed to her yard a little maiden, the only daughter of a wealthy family, her neighbours ; and there she smothered the child for the (golden) ornaments of her pretty head, and buried the innocent body. The bereaved father sought to a 186 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA soothsayer, — in the time of whose "reading" they suppose that the belly of the guilty person should swell. The diviner led on to the woman's house ; and showing a place he bade them dig ! — There they took up the little corpse ! and it was borne to the burial, — The woman was brought forth to suffer, before the session of the people and elders (musheyikh) assembled with the execu tive Emir, — In these Arabian towns, the manslayer is bound by the sergeants of the Emir, and delivered to the kindred of the slain, to be dealt with at their list. — Aly bade the father, "Rise up and slay that wicked woman, the murderess of his child." But he who was a religious elder (muttoimva), and a mild and godly person, responded, " My little daughter is gone to the mercy of Ullah ; although I slay the woman, yet may not this bring again the life of my child ! — suffer. Sir, that I spare her : she that is gone, is gone." Aly : " But her crime cannot re main unpunished, for that were of too perilous example in the town ! Strike thou ! I say, and kill her." — Then the muttowwa drew a sword and slew her ! Common misdoers and thieves are beaten with palm-leaf rods that are to be green and not in the dry, which (they say) would break fell and bones. There is no cutting off the hand at Aneyza ; but any hardened felon is cast out of the township. After this Zamil sent his raessage to the sheykhs of Kahtan in the desert, 'that would they now restore all which had been reaved by their tribesraen, they raight return into friendship : and if no, he pronounced them adversaries.' Having thus dis charged their consciences, these (civil) townsfolk think they may commit their cause to the arbitrage of Ullah, and their hands shall be clean from blood : and (in general) they take no booty from their enemies ! for they say " it were unlawful," — notwithstanding, I have known to ray hurt, that there are raany sly thieves in their town ! But if a poor man in an expedition bestow some small thing in his saddle-bag, it is indulged, so that it do not appear openly. — And thus, having nothing to gain, the people of Aneyza only take arms to defend their liberties. One day when I went to visit Zamil, I found a great silent assembly in his coffee-hall: forty of the townspeople were sitting round by the walls. Then there came iu an old man who was sheykh of the religion ; and my neighbour told me in my ear, they were here for a Friday afternoon lecture ! Coffee was served round ; and they all drank out of the same cups. MUTTOWWA PREACH AGAINST THE NASRANY 187 The Arabs spare not to eat or drink out of the same vessel with any man. And Mohammed could not imagine in his (Arabian) religion, to forbid this earthly comraunion of the human life : but indeed their incurious custom of all hands dipping in one dish, and all lips kissing in one cup, is laudable rather than very wholesome. The Imam's mind was somewhat wasted by the desolate koran reading, I heard in his school discourse no word which sounded to moral edification ! He said finally — looking towards me ! " And to speak of Aysa bin Miriam, — Jesu was of a truth a Messenger of Ullah : but the Nasara walk not in the way of Jesu, — ^they be gone aside, in the perversity of their minds, unto idolatry." And so rising mildly, all the people rose ; and every one went to take his sandals. The townspeople tolerated me hitherto, — it was Zamil's will. But the Muttowwa, or public ministers of the religion, frora the first, stood contrary ; and this Iraam (a hale and venerable elder of threescore years and ten) had stirred the people, in his Friday noon preaching, in the great raesjid, against the Nasrany. ' It was, he said, of evil example, that certain principal persons favoured a misbeliering stranger : might they not in so doing provoke the Lord to anger ? and all might see that the season able rain was withheld!' — Cold is the outlaw's life; and I marked with a natural constraint of heart, an alienation of the street faces, a daily standing off of the faint-hearted, and of certain my seeming friends. I heard it chiefly alleged against me, that I greeted with Salaam aleyk ; which they will have to be a salutation of God's people only — the Moslemln. El- Kenneyny, Bessam, Zamil were not spirits to be raoved by the words of a dull raan in a pulpit ; in whom was but the (implac able) wisdom of the Wahabies of fifty years ago. I noted some alteration in es-Sralry ; and, among my younger friends, in the young Abdullah Bessam, whose nigh kindred were of the Nejd straitness and intolerance. There was a strife in his single mind, betwixt his hospitable human fellowship, and the duty he owed unto God and the religion : and when he found me alone he asked, " Wellah Khalil, do the Nasara hold thus and thus ? contrary to the faith of Islam ! "¦ — Not so Hamed es-Safy, the young Bagdady ; who was weary of the tedious Nejd religion : sometimes ere the Ithin sounded he shut his outer door ; but if I knocked it was opened (to " el-docteur "), when he heard my voice. These Aneyza merchant friends comraonly made tea when the Engleysy arrived : they had learned abroad to drink it in the Persian manner, * * * 188 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA # * * Though there is not a man of medicine in Nejd, yet some modest leech may be found : and I was called to another Bessam household to meet one who was of this town. That Bessam, a burly body, was the most travelled of the foreign merchants: by raUway he had sped through the breadth of India ; he had dwelt in the land, and in his mouth was the vulgar Hindostany, But no travel in other nations could amend his wooden head ; and like a tub which is shipped round the world he was come home never the better : there is no trans muting such metals ! His wit was thin ; and he had weakly thriven in the world. The salver sat at the Bessam's coffee hearth; awaiting me, with the respectable countenance of a village schoolmaster, — His little skill, he said -with humility, he had gathered of reading in his few books ; and those were hard to come by. He asked me many simple questions ; and bowed the head to all my answers ; and, glad in his heart to find me friendly, the poor man seemed to wonder that the learning of foreign professors were not more dark, and unattainable ! In these last days the honest soul had inoculated all the children in the town : he acknowledged, ' that there die many thus ! — but he had read, that in the cow-pox inoculation [el- 'atJiab] of the Nasara there die not any ' ! After hearing me he said, he would watch, mornings and evenings, at some of the town gates, when the kine are driven forth or would be return ing frora pasture ; if haply he raight find the pocks on some of their udders. [Already Amm Mohammed had looked for it in vain, at Kheybar.] — I counselled the sheykhs to send this worthy raan to the north, to learn the art for the public good ; and so he might vaccinate in these parts of Nejd. Worn as I was, I prof fered myself to ride to Bagdad, if they would find me the theliil, and return vrith the vaccine matter. But no desire nor hope of common advantage to come can move or unite Arabians : neither love they too well that safeguarding human forethought, which savours to them of untrust in an heavenly Providence. Their religion encourages them to seek medicines, — which God has created in the earth to the service of man ; but they may not flee from the pestilence. Certain of the foreign merchants have sometimes brought home the lymph, — so did Abdullah el- Bessam, the last year ; yet this hardly passes beyond the walls of their houses, — I heard a new word in that stolid Bessam's mouth (and perhaps he fetched it from India), " What dost thou, quoth he, in a land where is only didnat el-MoJiammedia, Mohammedan religion ? whereas they use to say din el-Islam." — India, el-Kenneyny called, " A great spectacle of religions ! " Amm Mohammed at Kheybar and the Beduw have told me. THE NASRANY IN NEED OF LODGING 189 there is a disease in camels like that which they understood from me to be the cow-pox. — The small-pox spread fast. One day at noon I found my young negro hostess sorrowing, — she had brought-in her child very sick, from playing in the Ga : and bye and bye their other babe sickened, — I would not remain in that narrow lodging to breathe an infected air: but, leaving there my things, I passed the next days in the streets : and often when the night fell I was yet fasting, and had not where to sleep. But I thought, that to be overtaken here by the disease, would exceed all present evils. None offered to receive me into their houses ; therefore beating in the evening — com monly they knock with an idle rhythm — at the rude door of some poor patient, upon whom I had bestowed medicines, and hearing responded from within, ugglot, ' approach ' ! I entered ; and asked leave to lie down on their cottage floor [of deep Nefiid sand] to sleep. The Kenneyny would not be marked to harbour a Nasrany : to Bessam I had not revealed my distress. And somewhat I reserved of these Arabian friends' kindness ; that I might take up all, in any extreme need. The deep sanded (open) terrace roof of the mesjid, by my old dokan, was a sleeping place for strangers in the town ; but what sanctity of the house of prayer would defend me slumbering ? for with the sword also worship they Ullah, — But now I found some relief, where I looked not for it : there was a man who used my medicines, of few words, sharp-set looks and painted eyes, but the son of a good mother, — a vridow woman, who held a small shop of all wares, where I sometimes bought bread. He was a salesman in the clothiers' siik, and of those few, beside the Emirs and their sons, who carried a sword in Aneyza ; for he was an officer of Zamil's. He said to me, "I am sorry, Khalil, to see thee without lodging ; there is an empty house nigh us, and shall we go to see it ? " — Though I found it to be an unswept clay chamber or two ; I went the same day to lodge there : and they were to me good neighbours. Every morrow his mother brought me girdle-bread with a little whey and butter, and filled my water-skin : at the sunsetting (when she knew that commonly^ — my incurable obliviousness — I had pro vided nothing; and now the siik was shut), she had some wheaten mess ready for the stranger in her house, for little money ; and for part she would receive no payment ! it must- have been secretly from Zamil. This aged woman sat before me open-faced, and she treated me as her son : hers was the only town-woman's face that I have seen in middle Nejd, — where only maiden children are not veiled. * * * 190 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA * * * My friends, when I enquired of the antiquity of the country, spoke to me of a ruined site el-Eyarieh, a little distance northward upon this side of the W, er-Rummah : and Kenneyny said " We can take horses and ride thither," I went one morning afterward vrith Haraud Assafy to borrow horses of a certain horse-broker Abdullah, surnamed [and thus they name every Abdullah, although he have no child] Abu Nejm: Abu Nejm was a horse-broker for the Indian market. There is no breeding or sale of horses at Boreyda or Aneyza, nor any town in Nejd ; but the horse-brokers take up young stallions in the Aarab tribes, whioh^unless it be some of not common excellence, are of no great price among them. Kenneyny would ride out to meet with us, from another horse-yard, which was nigh his own plantation. We found Abu Nejm's few sale horses, with other horses which he fed on some of his friends' account, in a fleld among the last palms north of the town. Two stallions feed head to head at a square clay bin ; and each horse is tethered by an hind foot to a peg driven in the ground. Their fodder is green vetches (jet) : and this is their diet since they were brought in lean from the desert, through the summer weeks ; until the time when the the Monsoon blows in the Indian seas. Then the broker's horse- droves pass the long northern wilderness, with camels, bearing their water, in seventeen marches to Kuweyt ; where they are shipped for Bombay, An European had smiled to see in this Arab's countenance the lively impression of his dealing in horses ! Abu Nejm, who lent me a horse, would ride in our company. Our saddles were pads without stirrups, for — like the Beduins, they use none here : yet these townsmen ride with the sharp bit of the border lands ; whereas the nomad horsemen mount without bit or rein, and sit upon their mares, as they sit on their dromedaries (that is somewhat rawly), and with a halter only. — I have never heard a horseman commended among Beduins for his fair riding, though certain sheykhs are praised as spearsmen. Abu Nejm went not himself to India ; and it was unknown to him that any Nasrany could ride : he called to me therefore, to hold fast to the pad-brim, and wrap the other hand in the horse's mane. Bye and bye I made my horse bound under me, and giving rein let him try his mettle over the sand-billows of the Nefiid, — " Ullah ! is the hakim hhayydl, a horseman ? " exclaimed the worthy man. We rode by a threshing-ground ; and I saw a team of well- camels driven in a row with ten kine and an ass inwardly (all the cattle of that homestead), about a stake, and treading knee- ARABIAN HORSES 191 deep upon the bruised corn-stalks. In that yard-side I saw many ant-hills; and drew bridle to consider the labour of certain indigent hareem that were sitting beside them. — I saw the emmets' last confusion (which they suffered as robbers), — their hill-colonies subverted, and caught up in the women's meal- sieves ! that (careful only of their desolate living) tossed sky- high the pismire nation, and mingled people and musheyilch in a homicide ruin of sand and grain. — And each needy wife had already some handfuls laid up in her spread kerchief, of this gleaning corn. We see a long high platform of sand-rock, Mergab er-Bdfa, upon this side of the town. There stone is hewed and squared for well building, and even for gate-posts, in Aneyza. — Kenneyny came riding to meet us ! and now we fell into an hollow ancient way through the Nefiid leading to the 'Eyarleh ; and my com panions said, there lies such another between el-'Eyarleh and el-Owshazieh ; that is likewise an ancient town site. How may these impressions abide in unstable sand ? — So far as I have seen there is little wind in these countries, Abdullah sat upon a beautiful young stallion of noble blood, that went sidling proudly under his fair handling : and seeing the stranger's eyes fixed upon his horse, " Ay, quoth my friend, this one is good in all." Kenneyny, who with Sheykh Nasir shipped three or four young Arabian horses every year to Bombay, told me that by some they gain ; but another horse may be valued there so low, that they have less by the sale-money than the first cost and expenses. Abu Nejm told us his winning or losing was ' as it pleased Ullah : the more whiles he gained, but sometimes no.' They buy the young desert horses in the winter time, that ere the next shipping season they may be grown in flesh, and strong ; and inured by the oasis' diet of sappy vetches, to the green climate of India. Between the wealthy ignorance of foreign buyers, and the Asiatic flattery of the Nejders of the Arab stables in Bombay, a distinction has been invented of Aneyza and Nejd horses ! — as well might we distinguish between London and Middlesex pheasants. We have seen that the sale-horses are collected by town dealers, min el-Aarab, from the nomad tribes ; and since there are few horses in the vast Arabian marches, they are oft- times fetched frora great distances. I have found "Aneyza" horses in the Bombay stables which were foaled in el- Yemen, Perhaps we may understand by Aneyza horses, the horses of Kasim dealers [of Aneyza and Boreyda] ; and by Nejd horses, the Jebel horses, or those sent to Bombay from Ibn Rashid's country. I heard that a Boreyda broker's horse-troop had been 192 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA sent out a few days before ray coming thither. — Boreyda is a town and small Arabian state ; the Emir governs the neighbour villages, but is not obeyed in the desert. It is likely therefore that the Aneyza horse-coursers' traffic may be the more con siderable. [The chief of the best Bombay stable is from Shuggera in el- Weshm. j As for the northern or " Gulf " horses, bred in the nomad dlras upon the river countries — although of good stature and swifter, they are not esteemed by the inner Arabians, Their flesh being only " of greenness and water " they could not endure in the sun-stricken languishing country. Their own daughters-of-the-desert, albe they less fairly shaped, are, in the same strains, worth flve of the other. — Even the sale-horses are not curried under the pure Arabian climate : they learn flrst to stand under the strigil in India. Hollow-necked, as the camel, are the Arabian horses : the lofty neck of our thick-blooded horses were a deformity in the eyes of all Arabs. The desert horses, nurtured in a droughty wilderness of hot plain lands beset with small mountains, are not leapers, but very sure of foot to climb in rocky ground. They are good weight carriers: I have heard nomads boast that their mares ' could carry four men ', The Arabians believe faithfully that Ullah created the horse-kind in their soil : el-asl, the root or spring of the horse is, they say, "in the landof the Aarab". Even Kenneyny was of this superstitious opinion ; although the horse can live only of man's hand in the droughty khala. [Bummaky, a mare, is a word often used in el-Kasim : Salih el-Rasheyd tells me they may say ghrdg for a horse ; but that is seldom heard,] We rode three miles and came upon a hill of hard loam, over looking the Wady er-Rummah, which might be there two miles over. In the further side appear a few outlying palm planta tions and granges : but that air breeds fever and the water is brackish, and they are tilled only by negro husbandmen. All the nigh valley grounds were white with subbakJia : in the midst of the Wady is much good loam, grown up with desert bushes and tamarisks ; but it cannot be husbanded because the ground water — there at the depth of ten feet — is saline and sterile. Below us I saw an enclosure of palms with plots of vetches and stubbles, and a clay cabin or two ; which were sheykh Nasir's. Here the shallow Rummah bottom reaches north-eastward and almost enfolds Aneyza : at ten hours' distance, or one easy theliil journey, lies a great rautha, Zighreybieh, with corn grounds, which are flooded m ith seyl-water in the winter raius : there is a salt bed, where salt is digged for%Aneyza, EL-'EYARIBH 193 The Wady descending through the northern wilderness [which lies waste for hundreds of mUes, without settlement] ia dammed in a place called eth-Thueyrdt ; that is a theliil journey or per haps fifty mUes distant from Aneyza, by great dunes of sand which are growp up, they say, in this age. From thence the hoUow Wady ground — wherein is the path of the northern cara vans — is naraed el-Bdtin ; and passengers ride by the ruined sites of two or three vUlages : there are few weljs by the way, and npt much water in them. That vast wUderness was anciently of the B. Taamir. The Wady banks are often cliffs of clay and gravel ; and from cliff to cliff the valley may he commonly an hour (nearly three miles) over, said Kenneyny. In the Nefiid plain of Kaslm, the course of the great Wady is sometimes hardly to be discerned by the eyes of strangers. A fe^y journeying together will not adventure to hold the valley way : they ride then, not far off, in the desert. AU the winding length of the Wady er-Rummah is, according to the vulgar opinion, forty-five days or camel marches (that were almost a thousand miles) : it lies through a land-breadth, measured frora the heads in the Harrat Kheybar to the outgoing near Bosra, of nearly five hundred miles. — What can we think of this great valley-ground, in a rainless land ? When the Wady is in flood — ^that is hardly twice or thrice in a century, the valley flows down as a river. The streaming tide is large ; and wher« not straitened may be forded, th.ey say, by a dromedary rider. No man of my time of Ufe had seen the seyl ; but the elder generation saw it forty years before, in a season when uncommon rains had fallen in all the high country toward Kheybar, The flood that passed Aneyza, being locked by the mole of sand at eth-Thueyrat, rose backward and became a wash, which was here at the 'Eyarleh two miles wide. And then was seen in Nejd the new spectacle of a lake indeed ! — there might be nigh an hundred mUes of standing water ; which remained two years and was the repair of all wandering wings of water-fowl not known heretofore, nor had their cries been heard in the air of these desert countries. After a seyhng of the great valley the water rises in the wells at Boreyda ^nd Aneyza ; and this continues for a year or more. We found upon this higher ground potsherds and broken glass — as in all iruined sites of ancient Arabia, and a few building atones, and bricks: but how far are they now -foom these arts of old settled countries in Nejd J — This is the site el-'Eyarleh or Memil ''Eydr ; where they see ' the plots of three or four ancieftt viUages and a space of old inhabited .soil greater than Aneyza ' : tihey*«ay, " It is better than the situaAion rf the VOL. II. N 194 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA (new) town." We dismounted, and Abdullah began to say, "Wellah, the Arabs (of our time) are degenerate from the ancients, in all ! — we see them live by inheriting their labours " (deep wells in the deserts and other public works) ! — The sword, they say, of Khdlid bin- Walid [that new Joshua of Islam, in the days of Omar] devoured idolatrous 'Eyarleh, a town of B, Temlm, The like is reported of Owshazieh, whose site is three hours eastward : there are now some palm-grounds and orchard houses of Aneyza, 'Eydr and Owshdz, in the Semitic tradition, are " brethren ". — " It is re membered in the old poets of those B. Temlm citizens (quoth my erudite companions) that they had much cattle ; and in the spring-time were wont to wander with their flocks and camels in the Nefiid, and dwell in booths like the nomads." — This is that we have seen in Edom and Moab where, from the enter ing of the spring, the villagers are tent-dwellers in the wilder ness about them, — ^for the summering of their cattle : I have seen poor famUies in GUead — which had no tent-cloth — dwelling under great oaks ! the leafy pavilions are a covert from the heat by day, and from the nightly dews. Their flocks were driven-in toward the sun-setting, and lay down round about them. Only the soil remains of the town of 'Eyar : what were the lives of those old generations more than the flickering leaves ! The works of their hands, the thoughts and intents of their hearts, — ' their love, their hatred and envy,' are utterly perished ! Their religion is forsaken ; their place is unvisited as the ceme teries of a former age : only in the autumn landed men of Aneyza, send their servants thither, with asses and panniers, to dig loam for a top-dressing. As we walked we saw white slags lying together ; where perhaps had been the workstead of some ancient artificer. When I asked ' had nothing been found here ?' Kenneyny told of some well-sinkers, that were hired to dig a well in a new ground by the 'Eyarleh [the water is nigh and good], " They beginning to open their pit, one of them lighted on a great earthen vessel ! — it was set in the earth mouth down ward [the head of an antique grave]. Then every well-digger cried out that the treasure was his own ! none would hear his fellows' reason — and all men have reason ! Prom quick words they fell to hand-strokes ; and laid so sharply about them with their mat tocks, that in the end but one man was left alive. This workman struck his vessel, with an eager heart ! — bnt in the shattered pot was no more than a clot of the common earth ! " — Abdullah said besides, ' that a wedge of fine gold had been taken up here, within their memories. The finder gave it, when he came into THE WAHABY RANCOim 195 the town, for two hundred reals, to one who afterward sold the metal in the North, for better than a thousand,' We returned : and Kenneyny at the end of a mile or two rode apart to his horse-yard ; where he said he had somewhat to show rae another day. — I saw it later, a blackish vein, more than a palm deep and three yards wide, in the yellow sides of a loam pit : plainly the ashes of an antique fire, and in this old hearth they had found potsherds ! thereabove lay a fathom of clay ; and upon that a drift of Nefiid sand. — Here had been a seyl-bed before the land was enclosed ; but potsherds so lying under a fathom of silt may be of an high antiquity. What was man then in the midst of Arabia ? Some part of the town of Aneyza, as the mejlis and clothiers' street, is built upon an old seyl-ground ; and has been twice wasted by land floods : the last was ninety years before. I went home with Hamed and there came-in the younger Abdullah el-Bessam, They spoke of the ancients, and (as litterates) contemned the vulgar opinion of giants in former ages : nevertheless they thought it appeared by old writings, that raen in their grandsires' time had been stronger than now ; for they found that a certain weight was then reckoned a raan's load at Aneyza ; which were now above the strength of comraon labourers : and that not a few of those old folk came to four score years and ten. There are many long-lived persons at Aneyza, and I saw more grey beards in this one town, than in all parts besides where I passed in Arabia, But our holiday on horseback to the 'Eyarleh bred talk, ' We had not ridden there, three or four together, upon a fool's errand ; the Nasrany in his books of secret science had sorae old record of this country,' Yet the liberal townsmen bade me daily, Not mind their foolish words ; and they added pro verbially, el-Arab, 'akl-hum ndkis, the Arabs are always short- witted. Yet their crabbed speech vexed the Kenneyny, a spirit so high above theirs, and unwont to suffer injuries, — I found him on the morrow sitting estranged from them and offended : " Ahks, he said, this despiteful people ! but my home is in Bosra, and God be thanked! I shall not be much longer with them. Oh ! Khalil, thou canst not think what they call me, — they say, el-Kenneyny bellowwy ! " — This is some outrageous villany, which is seldom heard amongst nomads ; and is only uttered of anyone when they would speak extremely. The Arabs — the most unclean and devout of lips, of mankind ! — curse all under heaven which contradicts their humour; and the Wahaby rancour was stirred against a townsman who was no partizan of their blind faction, but seemed to favour the Nasrany. I m WANDERINGS IN ARABIA wondered to see the good man so much moved in his philo sophy ! — but he quailed before the popular religion ; which is more than law and government, even in a free town. " A pang is in my heart, says an Oriental poet, because I am discsteeraed by the depraved multitude." Kenneyny was of those that have lived for the advancement of their people, and are dead before the time. May his eternal portion be rest and peace ! And seeing the daily darkening and averting of the Wahaby faces, I had a careful outlaw's heart under my bare shirt ; though to none of them had I done anything but good, — and this only for the name of the young prophet of GalUee and the Christian tradition ! The simpler sort of liberals were bye and bye afraid to converse with me ; and many of ray former acquaintance seemed now to shun, that I should be seen to enter their friendly houses. And I knew not that this came of the Mut towwa — that (in their Friday sermons) they raoved the people against rae ! ' It is not reason, said these divines, in a time when the Sooltan of Islam is busy in slaughtering the Nasara, that any misbelieving Nasrany should be harboured in a faith ful town : and they did contrary to their duties who in any wise favoured him.' — Kenneyny, though timid before the people, was resolute to save me : he and the good Bessam were also in the counsels of Zamil. — But why, I thought, should I longer trouble them with my religion ? I asked my friends, ' When would there be any caravan setting forth, that I might depart with them ? ' They answered, " Have patience awhile ; for there is none in these days." A fanatic sometimes threatened me as I returned by the narrow and lonely ways, near my house : "0 kafir ! if it please the Lord, thou wilt be slain this afternoon or night, or else to morrow's day. Ha ! son of mischief, how long dost thou refuse the religion of Islam ? We gave thee indeed a time to repent, with long sufferance and kindness ! — now die in thy blind way, for the Moslemln are weary of thee, Except thou say the testi mony, thou wilt be slain to-day : thou gettest no more grace, for many have determined to kill thee," Such deadly kind of arguments were become as they say familiar evils, in this long tribulation of Arabian travels ; yet I came no more home twice by the same way, in the still (prayer and coffee) hours of the day or evening ; and feeling any presentiment I went secretly armed : also when I returned (from friends' houses) by flight I folded tbe Arab cloak about jny lefit arm ; and confid^id, thai as I had lived to the second yetar a threatened man, I shpuld yet live and finaUy escape them, * * * CHAPTER X THE CHRISTIAN STRANGER DRIVEN FROM ANEYZA; AND RECALLED A PLEASANT afternoon resort to me out of the town was Yahya's walled homestead. If I knocked there, and any were within, I found a ready welcome ; and the sons of the old patriot sat down to make coffee. Sometimes they invited me out to sup ; and then, rather than return late in the stagnant heat, I have re mained to slumber under a palm-stem, in their orchard ; where a carpet was spread for me and I might rest in the peace of God, as in the booths of the Aarab. One evening I walked abroad with thera, as they went to say their prayers on the pure Nefiid sand. By their well Hamed showed me a peppermint plant, and asked if it were not medicine ? he brought the (wild) seed from es-Seyl [Kurn el-Mendzif\, an ancient station of the Nejd cara vans, in the high country before Mecca (whither I came three months later). — I saw one climb over the clay wall frora the next plantation ! to raeet us : it was the young raerchant of the rifle ! whom I had not since raet with, in any good company in the town. The young gallant's tongue was nimble : and he dis sembled the voice of an enemy. It was dusk when they rose from prayers ; then on a sudden we heard shrieks in the Nefud ! The rest ran to the cry : he lingered a moment, and bade me come to coffee on the morrow, in the town ; " Thou seest, he said, what are the incessant alarms of our home in the desert ! " — A company of northern (Annezy) Beduins entered the house at that time, with me ; the men were his guests. We sat about the hearth and there came-in a child tender and beautiful as a spring blossom ! he was slowly recovering from sickness. Goom hubb amm-ak ! Go, and kiss thine uncle Khalil, quoth the young man, who was his elder brother ; and the sweet boy — that seemed a flower too delicate for the common blasts of the world, kissed me ; and afterward he kissed the Beduins, and all the company ; this is the Arabs' home tenderness. I wondered 198 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA to hear that the tribesmen were fifteen years before of this (Kaslm) dira ! They had ridden from their menzU in Syria, by the water el-Hdzzel [a far way about, to turn the northern Nefiid], in a fortnight : and left their tents standing, they told me, by Tddmor [Palmyra] ! Their coming down was about some traffic in camels. The small camels of Arabia increase in stature in the northern wilderness, Hamed es-Safy sent his theliil to pasture one year with these Aarab ; and when she was brought in again, he hardly knew her, what for her bulk, and what for the shaggy thickness of her wool. This Annezy tribe, when yet in Kaslm, were very rich in cattle ; for sorae of the sheykhs had been owners of " a thousand camels " : until there carae year after year, upon all the country, raany rainless years. Then the desert bushes (patient of the yearly drought) were dried up and blackened, the Nomads' great cattle perished very fast ; and a thelul of the best blood might be purchased for two reals, — These Aarab for sook the country, and journeying to the north [now full of the tribes and half tribes of Annezy], they occupied a dirat, among their part friendly and partly hostUe kinsmen. One day when I returned to my lodging, I found that my watch had been stolen ! I left it lying with my medicines. This was a cruel loss, for my fortune was very low ; and by selling the watch I might have had a few reals : suspicion fell upon an infamous neighbour. The town is uncivil in comparison with the desert ! I was but one day in the dokan, and all my vaccina tion pons were purloined : they were of ivory and had cost ten reals ; — more than I gained (in twice ten months) by the practice of medicine, in Arabia, I thought again upon the Kenneyny's proffer, which I had passed over at that time ; and mused that he had not renewed it ! There are many shrewd haps in Arabia ; and even the daily piastre spent for bread divided me from the coast : and what would become of my life, if by any evil acci dent I were parted from the worthy persons who were now my friends ? — Handicraftsmen here in a raiddle Nejd town (of the sanies' caste), are armourers, tinkers, coppersmiths, goldsmiths ; and the workers in wood are turners of bowls, wooden locksmiths, makers of camel saddle-frames, well-wheel-wrights, and (very unhandsome) carpenters [for they are nearly without tools] ; the stone-workers are hewers, well-steyners and sinkers, besides marble-wrights, makers of coffee mortars and the like ; and house-builders and pargeters. We may go on to reckon those that work with the needle, seamsters and seamstresses, em- HANDICRAFTS 199 broiderers, sandal makers. The sewimg men and women are, so far as I have known them, of the libertine blood. The gold and silver smiths of Aneyza are exceUent artificers in filigrane or thread-work : and certain of them established at Mecca are said to excel all in the sacred town. El-Kenneyny promised that I should see something of this fine Arabian industry ; but the waves of their fanatical world soon cast me from him. The salesmen are clothiers in the siik, sellers of small wares [in which are raw drugs and camel medicines, sugar-loaves, spices, Syrian soap from Medina, coffee of the Mecca Caravans], and sellers of victual. In the outlying quarters are small general shops — some of them held by women, where are sold onions, eggs, iron nails, salt, (German) matches, girdle-bread [and certain of these poor wives will sell thee a little milk, if they have any]. On Fridays, you shall see veiled women sitting in the mejlis to sell chickens, and milk-skins and girbies that they have tanned and prepared. Ingenuous vocations are husbandry, and camel and horse dealing. All the welfaring families are land owners. — The substantial foreign merchants were fifteen persons. " Hazardry, banquetting, and many running sores and hideous sinks of our great towns are unknown to them. The Arabs, not less frugal than Spartans, are happy in the Epicurean moderation of their religion, Aneyza is a welfaring civil town more than other in Nomadic Arabia ; in her B. Temlm citizens, is a spirit of industry, with a good plain understanding — ^how beit somewhat soured by the rheum of the Wahaby religion. Seeing that few any more chided the children that cried after me in the street, I thought it an evil sign ; but the Kenneyny had not warned me, and Zamil was my friend : the days were toward the end of May, One of these forenoons, when I returned to my house, I saw filth cast before the thresh old ; and some knarish chUdren had flung stones as I passed by the lonely street. Whilst I sat -within, the little knaves came to batter the door ; there was a babel of their cries : the boldest climbed by the side walls to the house terrace ; and hurled down stones and clay bricks by the stair head. In this uproar, I heard a skritching of fanatical women, "Ya Nasrany! thou shalt be dead ! — they are in the way that will do it ! " I sat on an hour whilst the hurly-burly lasted : my door held, and for all their hooting, the knaves had no courage to come down where they must meet with the kafir. At this hour the respect able citizens were reposing at home, or drinking coffee in their friends' houses ; and it was a desolate quarter where I lodged. At length the siege was raised ; for some persons went by who 200 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA returned from the coffee companies ; and findiflg this ado about Khalil's door, they drove' siway the truants, — with those extfeme curses which are always ready in the mouths of Arabs, Later, when I would go again into the town, the lads ran together, with hue and cry : they waylaid the Nasrany ait the corners, and cast stones from the backward ; but if the kafif turned; the troop fled back hastily, I saw one coming — a burly man of the people, who was a patient of mine ; and called to him, to drive the children away. — " Complain to Zamil ! " muttered the uiigracious churl ; who to save himself from the stones, shrank through an open door-way and forsook me. We have seen there are none better at stone-casting than the gipsy like Arabs : their missiles sung about my head, as I walked forward, till I came where the lonely street gave upon the Boreyda road near the Ga : s6me citizens passed by. The next moment a heavy bat, hurled by some robust arm, flew by my face. Those townsfolk stayed, and cried " ho ! " — for the stones fell beyond them ; and orie, a manly young raan, shouted, " What is this, eyyai ? akhs ! God give yon confusion ; — there was a stone, that had Khalil turned raight have slain him, a guest in the town, and under the countenance of the sheykhs and Zamil," — No one thinks of calling them cowards. I found the negro Aly, and persuaded him to return with me ; and clear the lonely by-streets about my lodging. And this he did, chasing the ejykl ; ahd when his blood was warmed, fetching blows with his stick, which in their nimbleness of flies lighted oftener upoh the walls. Sonle neighbours accused the fanatical hareem, and Aly, showing his negro teeth, ran on the hags to have beaten them ; but they pitifully entreated, and promised for themselves. Yet holding his stick over one of these, ' Wellah, he criefe, the tongue of her, at the word of zamil, should be -plucked up by the roots ! ' After this Aly said, " All will now be peace, Khalil ! " Arid I took the way to the Mejlis ; to drink coffee at Bessam's house, Keflneyny was there : they sat at the hearth, though the stagnant air was sultry, — but the Arabians think they taste some refreshment when they rise from the summer fire. Because I found in these friends a cheerfulness of heart, which is the life of man — and that is so short ! — I did not reveal to them my trouble, which would have made them look sad. I trusted that these hubbubs would not be renewed in the town : so bye and bye wishing them God's speed, I rose to depart. They have afterward blamed me for sparing to speak, when they might have had recourse immediately to Zaiflil. — In returning I found the streets agaio beset High my house; and th^rt the eyyai had armed A FANATICAL TUMULT 201 themselves with brickbats and staves. So I went down to the siik, to Speak with my neighbour Rasheyd, Zamil's officer, — I saw in Rasheyd's shop some old shivers of Ibrahim Pasha's bombshells ; which are now used in poor households for mortars, to bray-in their salt, pepper, and the like. Rasheyd said, ' that Zamil had heard of the children's rioting in the town. He had sent also for the hags, and threatened them ; and Aly had beaten some of the lads : now there would be quietness, and I might go home ' ; — but I thought it was not so. I returned through the bazaar with the deyik es-siidr — for what heart is not straitened, being made an outlaw of the humanity about him? were it even of the lowest saVages! — as I marked how many in the shops and in the way now openly murmured when they saw me pass. Amongst the hard faces which went by me was Aly, the executive Emir, bearing his sword ; and Abdullah the grudging son of Zamil, who likewise (as a grown child of the Emir's house) carries a sword in the streets. Then Sheykh Nasir came sternly stalking by me, without regard or saluta tion ! — but welcome all the experience of hnman life. The sun was set, and the streets were empty, when I came again to the door of niy desolate house ; where weary and fasting, in this trouble, I lay down and slept immediately, I thought I had slumbered an hour, when the negro voice of Aly awakened rae ! crying at the gate, " KhalU ! — KhalU ! the Emir bids thee open," I went to undo for him, and looked out. It was dark night ; but I perceived, by the shuffling feet and murmur of voices, that there were many persons, Aly : "The Emir calls thee; he sits yonder (in the street)!" I wentj and sat down beside him : could Zamil, I mused, be corae at these hours ! then hearing his voice, which reserabled ZamU's, I knew it was another. "Whither, said the voice, would'st thou go, — to ZUfy ? " — " I am going shortly in the corapany of Abdullah el-Bessam's son to Jidda." " No, no ! and Jidda (he said, brutally laughing) is very far off : but where wilt thou go this night ? " — " Aly, what sheykh is this ? " — " It is Aly the Emir." Then a light was brought : I saw his face which, with a Wahaby brutishness, resembled ZamU's ; and with him were some of his ruffian rainisters, — " Emir Aly, Ullah lead thy parents into paradise ! Thou knowest that I am sick ; and I have certain debts for medicines here in the town ; and to-day I have tasted nothing. If I have deserved well of some of you, let me rest here until the morning; and then send me away in peace." — " Nay, thy camel is ready at the comer of the street; and this is thy cameleer: up! have out thy tHiiigs, and that quickly. Ho ! some of you, go in with Khalil, 202 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA to hasten him." — " And whither will ye send me, so suddenly ? and I have no money!" — "Ha-ha! what is that to us, I say come off " : as I regarded him fixedly, the villain struck me with his fist in the face. — If the angry instinct betray me, the rest (I thought) would fall with their weapons upon the Nasrany : — Aly had pulled his sword from the sheath to the half, " This, I said to him, you may put up again ; what need of violence ? " Rasheyd, Zamil's officer, whose house joined to mine from the backward — though by the doors it was a street about, had heard a rumour ; and he came round to visit me. Glad I was to see him enter, with the sword, which he wore for Zamil. I enquired, of him, if Aly's commandment were good ? for I could not think that my friends among the chief citizens were consent ing to it ; and that the philosophical Zamil would send by night to put me out of the town ! When I told Rasheyd that the Wahaby Aly had struck me ; he said to me apart, " Do not pro voke him, only make haste, and doubtless this word is from zamil: for Aly would not be come of himself to compel thee." Emir Aly called from without, " Tell Khalil to hasten ! is he not ready?" Then he came in himself; and Rasheyd helped me to lift the things into the bags, for I was feeble, " Whither, he said to the Emir Aly, art thou sending Khalil ? " " To Khub- bera." — "Bl-Heldlieh were better, or er-Buss ; for these Ue in the path of caravans," — " He goes to Khubbera." " Since, I said, you drive me away, you will pay the cameleer ; for I have little money," Emir Aly : " Pay the man his hire and make haste ; give him three reals, KhalU," — Basheyd : " Half a real is the hire to Khubbera : make it less. Emir Aly." — " Then be it two reals, I shall pay the other myself," — " But tell me, are there none the better for my medicines in your town?" — "We wish for no medicines," — "Have I not done well and honestly in Aneyza? answer rae, upon your conscience." Emir Aly : " Well, thou hast." — "Then what dealing is this ? " But he cried, "Art thou ready ? now mount ! " In the meanwhile, his ruffian ministers had stolen my sandals (left without the chamber door) ; and the honest negro Aly cried out for me, accusing thera of the theft, " 0 ye, give Khalil his sandals again ! " I spoke to the brutal Emir ; who answered, " There are no sandals : " and over this new mishap of the Nasrany [it is no small suffering to go bare foot on the desert soil glowing in the sun] he laughed apace. "Now, art thou ready? he cries, mount then, mount! but first pay the raan his hire." — After this, I had not five reals left ; my watch was stolen : and I was in the midst of Arabia. Rasheyd departed: the things were brought out and laid upon the couching camel ; and I mounted. The Emir Aly with THE NASRANY DRIVEN FROM ANEYZA 203 his crew followed me as far as the Mejlis. " Tell me, (I said to him) to whom shall I go at Khubbera ? "— " To the Emir, and remeraber his name is Abdullah el-Aly," — " Well, give me a letter for him," — "I wiU give thee none." I heard Aly talking in a low voice with the cameleer behind me ; — words (of an adversary), which doubtless boded me no good, or he had spoken openly : when I called to him again, he was gone home. The negro Aly, my old host, was yet with me ; he would see me friendly to the town's end. — But where, I mused, were now my friends ? The negro said, that ZamU gave the word for my departure at these hours, to avoid any further tumult in the town ; also the night passage were safer, in the desert. Perhaps the day's hubbub had been magnified to ZamU ; they themselves are always ready ! Aly told me, that a letter from the Muttowwa of Boreyda had been lately brought to Zamil and the sheykhs of Aneyza ; exhorting them, in the name of the common faith, to send away tJie Nasrdny ! — " Is this driver to trust ? and are they good people at Khubbera ? " Aly answered with ayes, and added, " Write back to rae ; and it is not far : you will be there about dawn, and in all this, believe me KhalU, I am sorry for thy sake," He promised to go himself early to Kenneyny, with a request from me, to send ' those few reals on account of medi cines ' : but he went not (as I afterward learned) ; for the negro had been bred among Arabs, whose promises are but words in the air, and forged to serve theraselves at the moment, — " Let this cameleer swear to keep faith with rae," Aly : Aj, come here thou Hasan! and Swear thus and thus." Hasan swore all that he would ; and at the town walls the negro departed. There we passed forth to the dark Nefud ; and a cool night air met us breathing from the open sand wilderness, which a little revived me to ride : we were now in the beginning of the stagnant summer heat of the lower Rummah country. After an hour's riding we went by a forsaken orchard and ruined buildings, — there are many such outlying homesteads. The night was dim and overcast so that we could not see ground under the camel's tread. We rode in a hollow way of the Nefiid ; but lost it after some miles. " It is well, said Hasan ; for so we shall be in less danger of any lurking Beduins." We descended at the right hand, and rode on by a firmer plain- ground — the Wady er-Rummah ; and there I saw plashes of ponded water, which remained from the last days' showers at Aneyza, The early summer in Kasim enters with sweet April showers : the season was already sultry, with heavy skies, from which some days there fell light rain ; and they looked that this 204 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA \*^eather should continue till June. Last year, I had seen, in the khala, a hundred leagues to the westward, only barren heat and drought at this season ; and (some afternoons) dust-driving gusts and winds. We felt our camel tread again upon the deep Nefiid; and riding on with a little starlight above us, to the middle night we went by a grove of their bushy fuel-tree, ghrotha. The excellence of this firewood, which is of tamarisk kind, has been vaunted — my friends told me, by sorae of their (elder) poets ; " ardent, and enduring fire (they say,) as the huvniug ghrotha : " and, according to sheykh Nasir, " a covered fire of this timber may last months long, slowly burning : which has been oft proved in their time ; for Aneyza caravans returning over the deserts have found embers of their former fires remaining as much as thirty days afterward," The sere wood glows with a clear red flame ; and a brand will burn as a torch : they prefer it to the sammara fuel, — that we have seen in so much estima tion at Kheybar, Hasan my back-rider, was of the woodman's trade. He mounted from his cottage in the night time ; at dawn he came to the trees, and broke sere boughs, and loaded ; and could be at home again in Aneyza by the half-afternoon. He was partner in the wooden beast under us — an unbroken dromedary, with zamil, who had advanced half the price, fifteen reals. Small were his gains in this painful and perilous industry ; and yet the fellow had been good for nothing else. I asked him where fore he took of me for this night's journey as much as he gained, doing the like, in eight or nine days ? ' The Nefud, he answered, was now full of unfriendly Aarab, and he feared to lose the theliil; he would not otherwise have adventured, although he had disobeyed ZaraU. — He told me, this sending me away was determined to-night, in a council of the sheykhs ; he said over their names, and among them were none of my acquaintance. Ha'san had heard their talk ; for Zamil sent early to call him, and bade him be ready to carry Haj Khalil : the Emir said at first, to el-B4kerieh — for the better opportunity of passing caravans ; but the rest were for Khiibbera, — Hasan dismounted about a thing I had not seen hitherto used in the Arab countries, although night passengers and Beduins are not seldom betrayed by the braying of their theliils: he whipped his halter about the great sheep-like brute's muzzle! which cut off further complainings, I was never racked by camel riding as in this night's work, seated on a sharp pack-saddle: the snatching gait of theuntaught theliil, wont only to carry firewood, was through the long hours of darkness, JL\.J.JU \J -i-r j^3->^*.... 205 an agony. What could I think of Zdmil ?— -was I heretofore so much mistaken in the man ? Hasan at length drew bridle ; I opened my eyes and saw the new sun looking over the shoulder of the Nefiid : the fellow alighted to say his prayer ; also the light revealed to me the squalid ape-like visage of this companion of the way. We were. gone somewhat wide in the night time ; and Hasan, who might be thirty years of age, had not passed the Nefiid to Khubbera since his childhood. From the jiext dune we saw the heads of the palms of el-Helalleh, The sand sea lay ip great banks and troughs : over these, we were now riding ; and when the sun was risen from the earth, the clay-built town of Khubbera [or Kh6bra] appeared before us, without palms or greenness. The tilled lands are not in sight ; they lie, five miles long, in the bottom of the Wady er-Rummah, and thereof is the name of their ^^rw. Amidst the low-built Nefiid town, stands a high clay watch-tower, Hdsan : " Say not when thou comest to the place, 'I ara a Nasrany,' because they might not receive thee." — "Have they not heard of the Nasrany, from Aneyza?" — "It may be ; for at this time there is much carriage of grain to the Bessams, who are lenders there also," We saw plashes, a little beside our way, "Let us to th© water," quoth Hasan. — "There is water in the girby, and we are come to the inhabited." — "But I am to set thee down there ; for thus the Emir Aly bade me."— ^ Again I saw my life betrayed ! and this would be worse than when the Boreyda cameleer (of the same name) forsook me nigh Aneyza; for in Aneyza was the hope of Zamil : Khubbera, a poor town of peasant folk, and ancient colony of Kahtan, is under Boreyda ; the place was yet a mile distant. — "Thou shalt set me down in the midst of the town ; for this thou hast received my reals." Hasan notwithstanding made his beast kneel under us; I alighted, and he came to unload my bags, I put him away, and taking out a bundle in which was my pistol, the wretch saw the naked steel in my hands ! — " Rafik, if thou art afraid to enter, I shall ride alone to the town gate, and unload ; and so come thou and take thy theliil again : but make me no resistance, lest I shoot her ; because thou betrayest my Ufe," " I carry this romh, answered the javel, to help me against any who would take my theliil." — I went to unmuzzle the brute ; that with the halter in my hand I might lead her to Khubbera, A (man of the town was ,at some S;tore-houses not far off ; he had marked, our contention, m.d came running : " Oh ! what is 206 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA it ? (he asked) ; peace be with you." I told him the matter, and so did Hasan, who said no word of my being a Nasrdny : nor had the other seen me armed. The townsman gave it that the stranger had reason ; so we mounted and rode to the walls. But the untrained theliil refused to pass the gates : alighting therefore we shackled her legs with a cord, and left her ; and I compelled Hasan to take my bags upon his shoulders, and carry them in before me. — So we carae to the wide public place ; and he cast them down there and would have forsaken me ; but I would not suffer it. Some townspeople who came to us ruled. That I had right, and Hasan must bear the things to the kahwat of the emir. I heard said behind me, " It is some stranger ; " and as so many of these townspeople are cameleers and almost yearly pilgrims to the holy places, they have seen many strangers. — We entered the coffee hall ; where an old blind man was sitting alone — Aly, father of the Emir ; who rising as he heard this concourse, and feeling by the walls, went about to prepare coffee. The men that entered after me sat down each one after his age and condition, under the walls, on three sides of their small coffee-chamber. Not much after them there carae in the Emir himself, who returned from the fields , a well- disposed and manly fellah. They sent out to call my rafik to coffee ; but Hasan having put down my things was stolen out of their gate again. The company sat silent, till the coffee should be ready ; and when some of them would have questioned me the rest answered, "But not yet," Certain of the young men already laid their heads together, and looking up between their whispers they gazed upon me. I saw they were bye and bye persuaded, that I could be none other than that stranger who had passed by Boreyda — the wandering Nasrany, Driven thus from Aneyza, I was in great weariness; and being here without money in the midst of Arabia, I mused of the Kenneyny, and the Bessam, so lately my good friends ! — Could they have forsaken me ? Would Kenneyny not send me money ? and how long would this people suffer me to continue araongst them ? Which of them would carry me any whither, but for payment? and that I must begin to require for my remedies, from all who were not poor : it might suffice me to purchase bread, — ^lodging I could obtain freely, I perceived by the grave looking of the better sort, and the side glances of the rest, when I told my name, that they all knew me. One asked already, ' Had I not medicines ? ' but others responded for me, " To-morrow wUl be time for these enquiries." I heard the BLIND ALY 207 emir himself say under his breath, ' they would send me to the Helalleh, or the Btikerieh.' — Their coffee was of the worst : my Khubbera hosts seemed to be poor householders. When the coffee-server had poured out a second time the company rose to depart. Only old Aly remained. He crept over where I was, and let himself down on his hands beside the hakim ; and gazing with his squalid eyeballs enquired, if with sorae medicine I could not help his sight ? I saw that the eyes were not perished. " Ay, help my father ! said the emir, coraing in again ; and though it were but a little yet that would be dear to rae." I asked the emir, " Am I in safety here ? " — " I answer for it; stay some days and cure my father, also we shaU see how it will be." Old Aly promised that he would send me freely to er-Russ — few miles distant ; from whence I might ride in the next (Mecca) samn kafily, to Jidda, The men of er-Russ [pronounce dr-Buss] are nearly all caravaners, I enquired when the caravan would set forth ? " It may be some time yet ; but we will ascertain for thee," — " I have not fully five reals [20s,] and these bags ; may that suffice? " — "Ay, responded the old man, I think we may find sorae one to raount thee for that money." Whilst we were speaking, there came in, with bully voices and a clanking of swords and long guns, some strangers ; who were theliil troopers of the Boreyda Prince's band, and such as we have seen the rajajil at Hayil. The honest swaggerers had ridden in the night time ; the desert being now full of thieves. They leaned up matchlocks to the wall, hanged their swords on the tenters, and sat down before the hearth with ruffling smiles ; and they saluted me also : but I saw these rude men with apprehension ; lest they should have a commission from Hasan to molest me : after coffee they mounted to an upper room to sleep. And on the morrow I was easy to hear that the riders had departed very early, for er-Russ: these messengers of Weled Mahanna were riding round to the oases in the princi- paUty [of Boreyda], to summon the village sheykhs to a common councU. Old Aly gave me an empty house next him, for my lodging, and had my bags carried thither. At noon the blind sire led me himself, upon his clay stairs, to an upper room ; where I found a slender repast prepared for me, dates and girdle-bread and water. He had been erair, or we might say mayor of Khubbera under Boreyda, until his blindness ; when his son succeeded him, a man now of the middle age ; of whom the old man spoke to all as ' the emir '. The ancient had taken to him self a young wife of late ; and when strange man-folk were not 208 WANDERINGS IN ARABIA there, she sat always beside her old lopd ; and seem.ed to love him well. They had between them a little son ; but the chU4 was blear-eyed, with a running ophthalmia. The grey-beard bade the young mother sit down with the child, by the hdkim ; and cherishing their little son, with his aged hands, he drew him before me. Old Aly began to discourse with me of religion ; enforcing himself to be tolerant the while. He joyed devojitly to hear, there was an holy rule of men's lives also in the Christians' re ligion, — " Eigh me ! ye be good people, but not in the right way, that is pleasing unto UUah ; and therefore it pr^fitetjh nothing. The Lord give thee to know the truth and say. There is none God but the Lord, and Mohammed is the apostle of the Lord," — A deaf man entering siiddenly, troubled our talk ; demanding ere he S9,t down, would I cure his malady ? " And what, I asked, woulilst thou give the hakim, if he show thee a remedy ? " The fellow answered, " Nothing surely ! Wouldst thou be paid for only telling a man, — wilt thou ijot tell me? eighj" and his wratji began to rise. 4-ly '¦ " Young man, guch be not words to speak to the hakim, who will help thee if he may." — "Well tell him, I said, to make a horjn of paper, wide in the mouth, and lay the little end to his eap ; and he shall hear the better," — The fellow, who deemed the Nasrany put a scorn upon him, bore my saying hardly, " Nay, if the thing be rightly cojisidered, quoth the ancient sheykh, it may seem reasonable ; only do thou after Khalil's bidding." But the deaf would sit ij-o longer. 'The cursed Nasrany, whose life (he murraured) was in their hand, to deride hira thus ! ' and with baleful looks he flung out from us. — A young man, who had come in, lamented to m© the natiiiral misery of his country ; " where there is nothing, ^ aid he, be sides the incessajit hugger-mugger of th-e suapies, I have a brother settled, and welfaring in the north ; and if I jjije,w where I might likewise speed, wellah I would go tbither, and return no raore,"-^-" A^d leave thy old father and njtOthep to die ! and forget thine acquaintance ? " — " But my friends WiOuld be of them among whom I sojoiigrned," — Siich is the min