EL MEDINAH AND MECCAH1853

EL MEDINAH AND MECCAH1853

ITHE VISITATION OF EL MEDINAHTHE Moslem’s pilgrimage is a familiar word to the Christian’s ear, yet how few are acquainted with the nature or the signification of the rite! Unto the present day, learned men—​even those who make a pretence to some knowledge of the East—​still confound Meccah, the birthplace, with El Medinah, the burial-place, of Mohammed, the Arab law-giver. “The Prophet’s tomb at Meccah” is a mistake which even the best-informed of our journals do not disdain to make.Before, however, entering upon the journey which procured for me the title “haji,” it is necessary for me to dispose of a few preliminaries which must savour of the personal. The first question that suggests itself is, “What course of study enabled an Englishman to pass unsuspected through the Moslem’s exclusive and jealously guarded Holy Land?”I must premise that in the matter of assuming an Oriental nationality, Nature was somewhat propitious to me. Golden locks and blue eyes, howeverper sedesirable, would have been sad obstacles to progressin swarthy Arabia. And to what Nature had begun, art contributed by long years of laborious occupation.Finding Oxford, with its Greek and Latin, its mysteries ofδεandγαρ, and its theology and mathematics, exceedingly monotonous, I shipped myself for India and entered life in the 18th Sepoy Regiment of the Bombay Presidency. With sundry intervals of travel, my career between 1843 and 1849 was spent in Scinde. This newly conquered province was very Mohammedan, and the conquerors were compelled, during the work of organisation, to see more of the conquered than is usual in England’s East Indian possession. Sir Charles Napier, of gallant memory, our Governor and Commander-in-Chief, honoured me with a staff appointment, and humoured my whim by allowing me to wander about the new land as a canal engineer employed upon its intricate canal system. My days and nights were thus spent among the people, and within five years I was enabled to pass examinations in six Eastern languages.In 1849 (March 30th-September 5th) an obstinate rheumatic ophthalmia, the result of overwork, sent me back to Europe, where nearly three years were passed before I was pronounced cured. Then, thoroughly tired of civilisation and living “dully sluggardised at home,” and pining for the breath of the desert and the music of the date-palm, I volunteered in the autumn of 1852 to explore the great waste of Eastern and Central Arabia—​that huge white blot which still disgraces our best maps. But theCourt of Directors of the then Honourable East India Company, with their mild and amiable chairman, after deliberation, stoutly refused. They saw in me only another victim, like Stoddard Connolly and the brave brothers Wyburd, rushing on his own destruction and leaving behind him friends and family to trouble with their requisitions the peace and quiet of the India House.What remained to me but to prove that what might imperil others was to me safe? Supplied with the sinews of travel by the Royal Geographical Society, curious to see what men are mostly content to hear of only—​namely, Moslem inner life in a purely Mohammedan land—​and longing to set foot within the mysterious Meccah which no vacation tourist had ever yet measured, sketched, photographed, and described, I resolved,coûte qu’il coûte, to make the attempt in my old character of a dervish. The safest as well as the most interesting time would be during the pilgrimage season.The Moslem’s hajj, or pilgrimage, means, I must premise, “aspiration,” and expresses man’s conviction that he is but a wayfarer on earth wending towards a nobler world. This explains the general belief of the men in sandaled shoon that the greater their hardships, the sorer to travel the road to Jordan, the higher will be their reward in heaven. The pilgrim is urged by the voice of his soul—​“O thou, toiling so fiercely for worldly pleasure and for transitory profit, wilt thou endure nothing to win a more lasting boon?”Hence it is that pilgrimage is common to all ancient faiths. The Sabæans, or old Arabians, visited the Pyramids as the sepulchres of Seth and his son Sabi, the founder of their sect. The classical philosophers wandered through the Valley of the Nile. The Jews annually went up to Jerusalem. The Tartar Buddhists still journey to distant Lamaserais, and the Hindus to Egypt, to Tibet, to Gaya, on the Ganges, and to the inhospitable Caucasus. The spirit of pilgrimage animated mediæval Europe, and a learned Jesuit traveller considers the processions of the Roman Catholic Church modern vestiges of the olden rite.El Islam—​meaning the covenant in virtue of which men earn eternal life by good works in this world—​requires of all its votaries daily ablution and prayer, almsgiving on certain occasions, one month’s yearly fast, and at least one pilgrimage to the House of Allah at Meccah and the mountain of Ararat. This first, and often the single, visit is called Hajjat el Islam, or pilgrimage of being a Moslem, and all those subsequently performed are regarded as works of supererogation. The rite, however, is incumbent only upon those who possess a sufficiency of health or wealth. El Islam is a creed remarkable for common sense.The journey to El Medinah is not called hajj, but ziyarat, meaning a ceremonial visitation. Thus the difference between worship due to the Creator and homage rendered to the creature is steadily placedand kept before the Moslem’s eyes. Some sects—​the Wahhabi, or Arabian Puritans, for instance—​even condemn as impious all intercessions between man and his Maker, especially the prayers at the Prophet’s grave. The mass, however, of the Mohammedan Church, if such expression be applicable to a system which repudiates an ecclesiastical body, considers this visitation a “practice of the faith, and the most effectual way of drawing near to Allah through the Prophet Mohammed.”The Moslem’s literature has many a thick volume upon the minutiæ of pilgrimage and visitation. All four Sumni, or orthodox schools—​viz., Hunafi, Shafli, Maliki, and Hanbali—​differ in unimportant points one with the other. Usually pilgrims, especially those performing the rite for the first time, begin with Meccah and end with El Medinah. But there is no positive command on the subject. In these days pilgrims from the north countries—​Egypt and Syria, Damascus and Bagdad—​pass through the Prophet’s burial-place going to and coming from Meccah, making a visitation each time. Voyagers from the south—​as East Africa, India, and Java—​must often deny themselves, on account of danger and expense, the spiritual advantages of prayer at Mohammed’s tomb.I have often been asked if the pilgrim receives any written proof that he has performed his pilgrimage. Formerly the Sherif (descendant of Hasan), or Prince, of Meccah gave a certificate to those who could afford it, and early in the present century the namesof all who paid the fee were registered by a scribe. All that has passed. But the ceremonies are so complicated and the localities so peculiar that no book can thoroughly teach them. The pretended pilgrim would readily be detected after a short cross-questioning of the real Simon Pure. As facilities of travel increase, and the rite becomes more popular, no pilgrim, unless he comes from the edge of the Moslem world, cares to bind on the green turban which his grandfather affected. Few also style themselves haji, unless for an especial reason—​as an evidence of reformed life, for instance, or a sign of being a serious person.Some also have inquired if I was not the first “Christian” who ever visited the Moslem’s Holy Land. The learned Gibbon asserted—​“Our notions of Meccah must be drawn from the Arabians. As no unbeliever is permitted to enter the city, our travellers are silent.”[1]But Haji Yunus (Ludovico di Bartema) performed the pilgrimage inA.D.1503; Joseph Pitts, of Exeter, in 1680, Ali Bey el Abbasi (the Catalonian Badia) in 1807, Haji Mohammed (Giovanni Finati, of Ferrara) in 1811, and the excellent Swiss traveller Burckhardt in 1814, all passed safely through the Hejaz, or Holy Land. I mention those only who have written upon the subject. Those who have not must be far more numerous. In fact, any man may become a haji by prefacing his pilgrimage with a solemn and public profession of faith before the Kazi inCairo or Damascus; or, simpler still, by applying through his Consulate to be put under the protection of the Amir el Haji, or Commander of the Pilgrim Caravan.If I did anything new, it was this—​my pilgrimage was performed as by one of the people. El Islam theoretically encourages, but practically despises and distrusts, the burma, or renegade. Such a convert is allowed to see as little as possible, and is ever suspected of being a spy. He is carefully watched night and day, and in troublous times he finds it difficult to travel between Meccah and El Medinah. Far be it from me to disparage the labours of my predecessors. But Bartema travelled as a Mameluke in the days when Mamelukes were Christian slaves, Pitts was a captive carried to the pilgrimage by his Algerine master, Badia’s political position was known to all the authorities, Finati was an Albanian soldier, and Burckhardt revealed himself to the old Pacha Mohammed Ali.As regards the danger of pilgrimage in the case of the non-Moslem, little beyond the somewhat extensive chapter of accidents is to be apprehended by one conversant with Moslem prayers and formulæ, manners and customs, and who possesses a sufficient guarantee of orthodoxy. It is, however, absolutely indispensable to be a Mohammedan in externals. Neither the Koran nor the Sultan enjoins the killing of Hebrew or Christian intruders; nevertheless, in 1860, a Jew, who refused to repeat the Creed, was crucified by the Meccan populace, and in the eventof a pilgrim declaring himself to be an infidel the authorities would be powerless to protect him.The question ofCui bono?—​of what good I did to others or to myself by the adventure—​is not so easily answered. My account of El Medinah is somewhat fuller than that of Burckhardt, whose health was breaking when he visited it. And our caravan’s route between the Holy Cities was not the beaten track along the Red Sea, but the little-known eastern or desert road. Some critics certainly twitted me with having “turned Turk”; one might turn worse things. For the rest, man is ever most tempted by the useless and the impossible.To appear in character upon the scene of action many precautions were necessary. Egypt in those days was a land of passports and policemen; thehaute-policewas not inferior to that of any European country. By the advice of a brother-officer, Captain Grindley, I assumed the Eastern dress at my lodgings in London, and my friend accompanied me as interpreter to Southampton. On April 4th, 1853, a certain Shaykh Abdullah (to wit, myself) left home in the P. & O. Company’s steamerBengal, and before the end of the fortnight landed at Alexandria. It was not exactly pleasant for the said personage to speak broken English the whole way, and rigorously to refuse himself the pleasure of addressing the other sex; but under the circumstances it was necessary.Fortunately, on board theBengalwas John Larking, a well-known Alexandrian. He was in my secret,and I was received in his house, where he gave me a little detached pavilion and treated me as a munshi, or language-master. My profession among the people was that of a doctor. The Egyptians are a medico-ridden race; all are more or less unhealthy, and they could not look upon my phials and pill-boxes without yearning for their contents. An Indian doctor was a novelty to them; Franks they despised; but how resist a man who had come so far, from east and west? Men, women, and children besieged my door, by which means I could see the people face to face, especially that portion of which Europeans as a rule know only the worst. Even learned Alexandrians, after witnessing some of my experiments in mesmerism and the magic mirror, opined that the stranger was a manner of holy man gifted with preternatural powers. An old man sent to offer me his daughter in marriage—​my sanctity compelled me to decline the honour—​and a middle-aged lady offered me a hundred piastres (nearly one pound sterling) to stay at Alexandria and superintend the restoration of her blind left eye.After a month pleasantly spent in the little garden of roses, jasmine, and oleanders, I made in early June a move towards Cairo. The first thing was to procure a passport; I had neglected, through ignorance, to bring one from England. It was not without difficulty, involving much unclean dressing and expenditure of horrible English, that I obtained from H.B.M.’s Consul at Alexandria a certificate declaring me to be an Indo-British subject named Abdullah, by professiona doctor, and, to judge from frequent blanks in the document, not distinguished by any remarkable conformation of eyes, nose, or cheek. This paper, duly countersigned by the zabit, or police magistrate, would carry me anywhere within the Egyptian frontier.At Alexandria also I provided a few necessaries for the pilgrimage: item—​a change or two of clothing; a substantial leather money belt to carry my gold in; a little cotton bag for silver and small change, kept ready for use in the breast pocket; a zemzimiyah, or water-bag of goatskin; a huge cotton umbrella of Cairene make, brightly yellow, like an overgrown marigold; a coarse Persian rug, which acted as bed, table, chair, and oratory; a pea-green box, with red and yellow flowers, capable of standing falls from a camel twice a day, and therefore well fitted for a medicine chest; and, lastly, the only peculiar article—​viz., the shroud, without which no one sets outen routeto Meccah. Thismemento moriis a piece of cotton six feet long by five broad. It is useful, for instance, when a man is dangerously sick or wounded; the caravan, of course, cannot wait, and to loiter behind is destruction. The patient, therefore, is ceremonially washed, wrapped up in his kafan, partly covered with sand, and left to his fate. It is hard to think of such an end without horror; the torturing thirst of a wound, the sun heating the brain to madness, and, worst of all—​for they do not wait for death—​the attacks of the jackal, the vulture, and the ravens of the wilds. This shroud was duly sprinkled, as is the custom, with the holy waterof the Zemzem well at Meccah. It later came to a bad end amongst the villainous Somal in Eastern Africa.Equipped in a dervish’s frock, I took leave of my kind host and set out, a third-class passenger, upon a steamer facetiously known as theLittle Asthmatic. In those days the rail had not invaded Egypt. We had an unpleasant journey up the Mahmadiyah Canal and the Nile, which is connected by it with Alexandria. The usual time was thirty hours. We took three mortal days and nights. We were nearly wrecked at the then unfinished Barage, we saw nothing of the Pyramids but their tops, and it was with a real feeling of satisfaction that we moored alongside of the old tumble-down suburb, Bulak.My dervishhood was perfectly successful. I happened by chance to touch the elbow of an Anglo-Indian officer, and he publicly and forcibly condemned my organs of vision. And I made an acquaintance and a friend on board. The former was a shawl and cotton merchant, Meyan Khudabaksh Namdar, of Lahore, who, as the caravanserais were full of pilgrims, lodged me at his house for a fortnight. The conversations that passed between us were published two years later in 1855.[2]They clearly pointed to the mutiny which occurred two years afterwards, and this, together with my frankness about the Suez Canal,[3]did not tend to make me a favourite with the then effete Government of India.My friend was a Turkish trader, named HajiWali-el-din. He was then a man about forty-five, of middle stature, with a large round head closely shaven, a bull neck, limbs sturdy as a Saxon’s, a thin red beard, and handsome features beaming benevolence. A curious dry humour he had, delighting in “quizzing,” but in so quiet, quaint, and solemn a way that before you knew him you could scarce divine his drift. He presently found for me rooms next his own at the wakalah, or caravanserai, called Jemeliyah, in the Greek quarter, and I tried to repay his kindness by counselling him in an unpleasant Consular suit.When we lived under the same roof, the haji and I became inseparable. We walked together and dined together, and spent the evening at a mosque or other place of public pastime. Sometimes we sat among the dervishes; but they are a dangerous race, travelled and inquisitive. Meanwhile I continued to practise my profession—​the medical—​and devoted myself several hours a day to study in the Azhar Mosque, sitting under the learned Shaykh Mohammed Ali Attar. The better to study the “humours,” I also became a grocer and druggist, and my little shop, a mere hole in the wall, was a perfect gem of Nilotic groceries. But although I sold my wares under cost price to fair customers, my chief clients were small boys and girls, who came, halfpence in hand, to buy sugar and pepper; so one day, determining to sink the thirty shillings which my stock in trade had stood me, I locked the wooden shutter that defended my establishment and made it over to my shaykh.The haji and I fasted together during the month of Ramazan. That year it fell in the torrid June, and it always makes the Moslem unhealthy and unamiable. At the end preparations were to be made for departure Meccah-wards, and the event was hastened by a convivialséancewith a bacchanalian captain of Albanians, which made the gossips of the quarter wonder what manner of an Indian doctor had got amongst them.I was fortunate enough, however, to hire the services of Shaykh Nur, a quiet East Indian, whose black skin made society suppose him to be my slave. Never suspecting my nationality till after my return from Meccah, he behaved honestly enough; but when absolved by pilgrimage from his past sins, Haji Nur began to rob me so boldly that we were compelled to part. I also made acquaintance with certain sons of the Holy Cities—​seven men from El Medinah and Meccah—​who, after a begging-trip to Constantinople, were returning to their homes. Having doctored them and lent them some trifling sums, I was invited by Shaykh Hamid El Shamman to stay with him at El Medinah, and by the boy Mohammed El Basyuni to lodge at his mother’s house in Meccah.They enabled me to collect proper stores for the journey. These consisted of tea, coffee, loaf sugar, biscuits, oil, vinegar, tobacco, lanterns, cooking-pots, and a small bell-shaped tent costing twelve shillings. The provisions were placed in a kafas, or hamper, of palm sticks, my drugs and dress in a sahharah,or wooden box measuring some three and a half feet each way, covered with cowskin, and the lid fitting into the top. And finally, not wishing to travel by the vans then allotted to the overland passengers, I hired two dromedaries and their attendant Bedouins, who for the sum of ten shillings each agreed to carry me across the desert between Cairo and Suez.At last, after abundant trouble, all was ready. At 3 p.m., July 1st, 1853, my friend Haji Wali embraced me heartily, and so did my poor old shaykh, who, despite his decrepitude and my objections, insisted upon accompanying me to the city gate. I will not deny having felt a tightening of the heart as their honest faces and forms faded in the distance. All the bystanders ejaculated, “Allah bless thee, Y’all Hajj (O pilgrim!), and restore thee to thy family and thy friends.”We rode hard over the stretch of rock and hard clay which has since yielded to that monumental work, the Suez Canal. There was noennuiupon the road: to the traveller there was an interest in the wilderness—​Where love is liberty and Nature law—​unknown to Cape seas and Alpine glaciers and even the boundless prairie. I felt as if looking once more upon the face of a friend, and my two Bedouins—​though the old traveller described their forefathers as “folke full of all evylle condiciouns”—​were excellent company. At midnight we halted for a littlerest near the Central Station, and after dark on the next evening I passed through the tumble-down gateway of Suez and found a shelter in the Wakalah Tirjis—​the George Inn. My Meccan and Medinah friends were already installed there, and the boy Mohammed El Basyuni had joined me on the road.It was not so easy to embark at Suez. In those days the greater body of pilgrims marched round the head of the Red Sea. Steamers were rare, and in the spirit of protection the Bey, or Governor, had orders to obstruct us till near the end of the season. Most Egyptian high officials sent their boats laden with pious passengers up the Nile, whence they returned freighted with corn. They naturally did their best to force upon us the delays and discomforts of what is called the Kussayr (Cosseir) line. And as those who travelled by the land route spent their money fifteen days longer in Egyptian territory than they would have done if allowed to embark at Suez, the Bey assisted them in the former and obstructed them in the latter case.We were delayed in the George Inn four mortal days and nights amidst all the plagues of Egypt. At last we found a sambuk, or small-decked vessel, about to start, and for seven dollars each we took places upon the poop, the only possible part in the dreadful summer months. TheSilk El Zahab, orGolden Thread, was probably a lineal descendant from the ships of Solomon harboured in Ezion Geber. It was about fifty tons burden, and we found ninety-seven, insteadof sixty, the proper number of passengers. The farce of a quarter-deck ten feet by eight accommodated eighteen of us, and our companions were Magribis, men from North-Western Africa—​the most quarrelsome and vicious of pilgrims.We sailed on July 6th, and, as in an Irish packet of the olden time, the first preliminary to “shaking down” was a general fight. The rais (captain) naturally landed and left us to settle the matter, which ended in many a head being broken. I played my poor part in themêléeby pushing down a heavy jar of water upon the swarm of assailants. At last the Magribis, failing to dislodge us from the poop, made peace, and finding we were sons of the Holy Cities, became as civil as their unkindly natures permitted. We spent twelve days, instead of the normal five, in beating down the five hundred and fifty direct miles between Suez and Yambu.Every second day we managed to land and stretch our limbs. The mornings and evenings were mild and balmy, whilst the days were terrible. We felt as if a few more degrees of heat would be fatal to us. The celebrated coral reefs of the Red Sea, whence some authors derive its name, appeared like meadows of brilliant flowers resembling those of earth, only far brighter and more beautiful. The sunsets were magnificent; the zodiacal light, or after-glow, was a study; and the cold rays of the moon, falling upon a wilderness of white clay and pinnacle, suggested a wintry day in England.Illustration: Fight on the Silk El Zahab[See Page 18.THE FIGHT ON THESILK EL ZAHAB.At last, after slowly working up a narrow creek leading to the Yambu harbour, on July 17th we sprang into a shore-boat, and felt new life when bidding eternal adieu and “sweet bad luck” to theGolden Thread, which seemed determined to wreck itself about once per diem.Yambu, the port of El Medinah, lies S.S.W. of, and a little over a hundred and thirty miles from, its city. The road was infamous—​rocky, often waterless, alternately fiery and freezing, and infested with the Beni Harb, a villainous tribe of hill Bedouins. Their chief was one Saad, a brigand of the first water. He was described as a little brown man, contemptible in appearance but remarkable for courage and for a ready wit, which saved him from the poison and pistol of his enemies. Some called him the friend of the poor, and all knew him to be the foe of the rich.There was nothing to see at Yambu, where, however, we enjoyed the hammam and the drinking-water, which appeared deliciously sweet after the briny supplies of Suez. By dint of abundant bargaining we hired camels at the moderate rate of three dollars each—​half in ready money, the rest to be paid after arrival. I also bought a shugduf, or rude litter carrying two, and I chose the boy Mohammed as my companion. The journey is usually done in five days. We took eight, and we considered ourselves lucky fellows.On the evening of the next day (July 18th) we set out with all the gravity of men putting our headsinto the lion’s jaws. The moon rose fair and clear as we emerged from the shadowy streets. When we launched into the desert, the sweet, crisp air delightfully contrasted with the close, offensive atmosphere of the town.My companions all, as Arabs will do on such occasions, forgot to think of their precious boxes full of the plunder of Constantinople, and began to sing. We travelled till three o’clock in the morning (these people insist upon setting out in the afternoon and passing the night in travelling). And the Prophet informs us that the “calamities of earth,” meaning scorpions, serpents, and wild beasts, are least dangerous during the dark hours.After a pleasant sleep in the wilderness, we joined for the next day’s march a caravan of grain carriers, about two hundred camels escorted by seven Turkish Bashi Buzuk, or Irregular Cavalry. They confirmed the report that the Bedouins were “out,” and declared that Saad, the Old Man of the Mountain, had threatened to cut every throat venturing into his passes. That night the robbers gave us a mild taste of their quality, but soon ran away. The third march lay over an iron land and under a sky of brass to a long straggling village called, from its ruddy look, El Hamra (the Red); it is the middle station between Yambu and El Medinah. The fourth stage placed us on the Sultan’s high-road leading from Meccah to the Prophet’s burial-place, and we joined a company of pious persons bound on visitation.The Bedouins, hearing that we had an escort of two hundred troopers, manned a gorge and would not let us advance till the armed men retired. The fifth and sixth days were forced halts at a vile place called Bir Abbas, where we could hear the distant dropping of the musketry, a sign that the troops and the hill-men were settling some little dispute. Again my companions were in cold perspirations about their treasures, and passed the most of their time in sulking and quarrelling.About sunset on July 23rd, three or four caravans assembled at Bir Abbas, forming one large body for better defence against the dreaded Bedouins. We set out at 11 p.m., travelling without halting through the night, and at early dawn we found ourselves in an ill-famed narrow known as Shuab El Haji, or the Pilgrim’s Pass. The boldest looked apprehensive as we approached it. Presently, from the precipitous cliff on our left, thin puffs of blue smoke rose in the sultry morning air, and afterwards the sharp cracks of the hill-men’s matchlocks were echoed by the rocks on the right. A number of Bedouins could be seen swarming like hornets up the steeper slopes, carrying huge weapons and “spoiling for a fight.” They took up comfortable positions on the cut-throatembankmentand began practising upon us from behind their breastworks of piled stones with perfect convenience to themselves. We had nothing to do but to blaze away as much powder and to veil ourselves in as dense a smoke as possible. The result was that we losttwelve men, besides camels and other beasts of burden. My companions seemed to consider this questionable affair a most gallant exploit.The next night (July 24th) was severe. The path lay up rocky hill and down stony vale. A tripping and stumbling dromedary had been substituted for my better animal, and the consequences may be imagined.The sun had nearly risen before I shook off the lethargic effects of such a march. All around me were hurrying their beasts, regardless of rough ground, and not a soul spoke a word to his neighbour. “Are there robbers in sight?” was the natural question. “No,” responded the boy Mohammed. “They are walking with their eyes; they will presently sight their homes.”Half an hour afterwards we came to a huge mudarrij, or flight of steps, roughly cut in a line of black scoriaceous basalt. Arrived at the top, we passed through a lane of dark lava with steep banks on both sides, and in a few minutes a full view of the Holy City suddenly opened upon us. It was like a vision in “The Arabian Nights.” We halted our camels as if by word of command. All dismounted, in imitation of the pious of old, and sat down, jaded and hungry as we were, to feast our eyes on the “country of date-trees” which looked so passing fair after the “salt stony land.” As we looked eastward the sun rose out of the horizon of blue and pink hill, the frontier of Nejd staining the spacious plains withgold and purple. The site of El Medinah is in the western edge of the highlands which form the plateau of Central Arabia. On the left side, or north, was a tall grim pile of porphyritic rock, the celebrated Mount Ohod, with a clump of verdure and a dome or two nestling at its base. Round a whitewashed fortalice founded upon a rock clustered a walled city, irregularly oval, with tall minarets enclosing a conspicuous green dome. To the west and south lay a large suburb and long lines of brilliant vegetation piercing the tawny levels. I now understood the full value of a phrase in the Moslem ritual—​“And when the pilgrim’s eyes shall fall upon the trees of El Medinah, let him raise his voice and bless the Prophet with the choicest blessings.”In all the panorama before us nothing was more striking, after the desolation through which we had passed, than the gardens and orchards about the town. My companions obeyed the command with the most poetical exclamations, bidding the Prophet “live for ever whilst the west wind bloweth gently over the hills of Nejd and the lightning flasheth bright in the firmament of El Hejaz.”We then remounted and hurried through the Bab El Ambari, the gate of the western suburb. Crowded by relatives and friends, we passed down a broad, dusty street, pretty well supplied with ruins, into an open space called Barr El Manakhah, or “place where camels are made to kneel.” Straight forward a line leads directly into the Bab El Misri, the Egyptian gate ofthe city. But we turned off to the right, and after advancing a few yards we found ourselves at the entrance of our friend Shaykh Hamid’s house. He had preceded us to prepare for our reception.No delay is allowed in the ziyarat, or visitation of the haram, or holy place, which received the mortal remains of the Arab Prophet. We were barely allowed to breakfast, to perform the religious ablution, and to change our travel-soiled garments. We then mounted asses, passed through the Egyptian, or western, gate, and suddenly came upon the mosque. It is choked up with ignoble buildings, and as we entered the “Dove of Mercy” I was not impressed by the spectacle.The site of the Prophet’s mosque—​Masjid el Nabashi, as it is called—​was originally a graveyard shaded by date-trees. The first walls were of adobe, or unbaked brick, and the recently felled palm-trunks were made into pillars for the leaf-thatched roof. The present building, which is almost four centuries old, is of cut stone, forming an oblong of four hundred and twenty feet by three hundred and forty feet. In the centre is a spacious uncovered area containing the Garden of Our Lady Fatimah—​a railed plot of ground bearing a lote-tree and a dozen palms. At the south-east angle of this enclosure, under a wooden roof with columns, is the Prophet’s Well, whose water is hard and brackish. Near it meets the City Academy, where in the cool mornings and eveningsthe young idea is taught to shout rather than to shoot.Around the court are four riwaks, or porches, not unlike the cloisters of a monastery; they are arched to the front, backed by the wall and supported inside by pillars of different shape and material varying from dirty plaster to fine porphyry. When I made my visitation, the northern porch was being rebuilt; it was to be called after Abd El Majid, the then reigning Sultan, and it promised to be the most splendid. The main colonnade, however, the sanctum containing all that is venerable in the building, embraces the whole length of the southern short wall, and is deeper than the other three by nearly treble the number of columns. It is also paved with handsome slabs of white marble and marquetry work, here and there covered with coarse matting and above this by unclean carpets, well worn by faithful feet.To understand the tomb a few preliminary remarks are necessary. Mohammed, it must be remembered, died in the eleventh year of his mission and the sixty-third of his age, corresponding withA.D.623. He was accustomed to say, “In whatsoever spot a prophet departs this life, there also should he be buried.” Accordingly his successor ordered the grave to be dug in the house of the young widow Ayisha, who lived close to the original mosque. After her husband’s burial she occupied an adjoining room partitioned off from the tomb at which men were accustomed to pray. Another saying of the Prophet’sforbade tombs to be erected in mosques; it therefore became necessary so to contrive that the revered spot should be in, and yet not in, the place of worship.Accordingly they built a detached tower in the south-eastern corner of the mosque, and called it the hujrah, or chamber. It is from fifty to fifty-five feet square, with a passage all round, and it extends from floor to roof, where it is capped by the green dome which strikes the eyes on approaching the city. The external material of the closet, which also serves to protect the remains from infidels and schismatics, is metal filagree painted a vivid grey green, relieved by the brightly gilt or burnished brass-work forming the long and graceful Arabic characters. On the south side, for greater honour, the railing is plated over in parts with silver, and letters of the same metal are interlaced with it.Entering by the western Door of Safety, we paced slowly towards the tomb down a line of wall about the height of a man, and called the “illustrious fronting.” The barrier is painted with arabesques and pierced with small doors. There are two niches richly worked with various coloured marble, and near them is a pulpit, a graceful collection of slender columns, elegant tracery, and inscriptions admirably carved. Arrived at the western small door in the dwarf wall, we entered the famous spot called El Ranzah (the “Garden”), after a saying of Mohammed: “Between my grave and my pulpit is a garden of the gardens of Paradise.” On the north and west sides it isnot divided from the rest of the porch, to the south rises the dwarf wall, and eastward it is bounded by the west end of the filagree tower containing the tomb.The “Garden” is the most elaborate part of the mosque. It is a space of about eighty feet in length tawdrily decorated to resemble vegetation: the carpets are flowered, and the pediments of columns are cased with bright green tiles, and the shafts are adorned with gaudy and unnatural growths in arabesques. It is further disfigured by handsome branched candelabra of cut crystal, the work, I believe, of an English house. Its peculiar background, the filagree tower, looks more picturesque near than at a distance, where it suggests the idea of a gigantic birdcage. The one really fine feature of the scene is the light cast by the window of stained glass in the southern wall. Thus little can be said in praise of the “Garden” by day. But at night the eye, dazzled by oil lamps suspended from the roof, by huge wax candles, and by minor illuminations, whilst crowds of visitors in the brightest attire, with the richest and noblest of the citizens, sit in congregation to hear services, becomes far less critical.Entering the “Garden” we fronted towards Meccah, prayed, recited two chapters of the Koran, and gave alms to the poor in gratitude to Allah for making it our fate to visit so holy a spot. Then we repaired to the southern front of the chamber, where there are three dwarf windows, apertures half a foot square, and placed at eye’s height from the ground. The westernmost is supposed to be opposite to the faceof Mohammed, who lies on the right side, facing, as is still the Moslem custom, the House of Allah at Meccah. The central hill is that of Abubaki, the first Caliph, whose head is just behind the Prophet’s shoulder. The easternmost window is that of Omar, the second Caliph, who holds the same position with respect to Abubaki. In the same chamber, but decorously divided by a wall from the male tenants, reposes the Lady Fatimah, Mohammed’s favourite daughter. Osman, the fourth Caliph, was not buried after his assassination near his predecessors, but there is a vacant space for Isa bin Maryam when he shall return.We stood opposite these three windows, successively, beginning with that of the Prophet, recited the blessings, which we were directed to pronounce “with awe and fear and love.” The ritual is very complicated, and the stranger must engage a guide technically called a muzawwir, or visitation-maker. He is always a son of the Holy City, and Shaykh Hamid was mine. Many a piercing eye was upon me: the people probably supposed that I was an Ajemi or Persian, and these heretics have often attempted to defile the tombs of the two Caliphs.When the prayers were at an end, I was allowed to look through the Prophet’s window. After straining my eyes for a time, the oil lamps shedding but a dim light, I saw a narrow passage leading round the chamber. The inner wall is variously represented to be made of stone planking or unbaked bricks. Onesees nothing but thin coverings, a curtain of handsome silk and cotton brocade, green, with long white letters worked into it. Upon the hangings were three inscriptions in characters of gold, informing readers that behind there lie Allah’s Prophet and the two first Caliphs. The exact place of Mohammed’s tomb is, moreover, distinguished by a large pearl rosary and a peculiar ornament, the celebrated Kankab el Durri, or constellation of pearls; it is suspended breast high to the curtain. This is described to be a “brilliant star set in diamonds and pearls” placed in the dark that man’s eye may be able to endure its splendours; the vulgar believe it to be a “jewel of the jewels of Paradise.” To me it suggested the round glassy stoppers used for the humbler sort of decanters, but then I think the same of the Koh-i-Nur.I must allude to the vulgar story of Mohammed’s steel coffin suspended in mid-air between two magnets. The myth has won a world-wide reputation, yet Arabia has never heard of it. Travellers explain it in two ways. Niebuhr supposes it to have risen from the rude ground-plan drawings sold to strangers, and mistaken by them for elevations. William Banks believes that the work popularly described as hanging unsupported in the mosque of Omar at Jerusalem was confounded with the Prophet’s tomb at El Medinah by Christians, who until very lately could not have seen either of these Moslem shrines.A book which I published upon the subject of my pilgrimage gives in detail my reason for believingthat the site of Mohammed’s sepulture is doubtful as that of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.[4]They are, briefly, these four: From the earliest days the shape of the Prophet’s tomb has never been generally known in El Islam. The accounts of the grave given by the learned are discrepant. The guardianship of the spot was long in the hands of schismatics (the Beni Husayu). And lastly, I cannot but look upon the tale of the blinding light which surrounds the Prophet’s tomb, current for ages past, and still universally believed upon the authority of attendant eunuchs who must know its falsehood as a priestly glory intended to conceal a defect.To that book also I must refer my readers for a full description of the minor holy places at El Medinah. They are about fifty in number, and of these about a dozen are generally visited. The principal of these are, first, El Bakia (the Country of the Saints), to the east of the city; on the last day some seventy thousand, others say a hundred thousand, holy men with faces like moons shall arise from it; the second is the Apostle’s mosque at Kubas, the first temple built in El Islam; and the third is a visitation to the tomb of Mohammed’s paternal uncle, Hamzeh, the “Lord of Martyrs,” who was slain fighting for the faith inA.D.625.A few observations concerning the little-known capital of the Northern Hejaz may not be unacceptable.Medinah El Nahi (the City of the Prophet) is usuallycalled by Moslems, for brevity, El Medinah, or the City by Excellence. It lies between the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth degrees of north latitude, corresponding therefore with Central Mexico; and being high raised above the sea, it may be called atierra temprada. My predecessor, Burckhardt, found the water detestable. I thought it good. The winter is long and rigorous, hence partly the fair complexion of its inhabitants, who rival in turbulence and fanaticism their brethren of Meccah.El Medinah consists of three parts—​a town, a castle, and a large suburb. The population, when I visited it, ranged from sixteen thousand to eighteen thousand souls, whereas Meccah numbered forty-five thousand, and the garrison consisted of a half-battalion, or four hundred men. Mohammed’s last resting-place has some fifteen hundred hearths enclosed by a wall of granite and basalt in irregular layers cemented with lime. It is pierced with four gates: the Syrian, the Gate of Hospitality, the Friday, and the Egyptian. The two latter are fine massive buildings, with double towers like the old Norman portals, but painted with broad bands of red pillars and other flaring colours. Except the Prophet’s mosque, there are few public buildings. There are only four caravanserais, and the markets are long lines of sheds, thatched with scorched and blackened palm-leaves. The streets are what they should always be in torrid lands, dark, deep, narrow, and rarely paved; they are generally of black earth, well wateredand trodden to harden. The houses appear well built for the East, of square stone, flat roofed, double storied, and enclosing spacious courtyards and small gardens, where water basins and trees and sheds “cool the eye,” as Arabs say. Latticed balconies are here universal, and the windows are mere holes in the walls provided with broad shutters. The castle has stronger defences than the town, and inside it a tall donjon tower bears, proudly enough, the banner of the Crescent and the Star. Its whitewashed lines of wall render this fortalice a conspicuous object, and guns pointing in all directions, especially upon the town, make it appear a kind of Gibraltar to the Bedouins.For many reasons strangers become very much attached to El Medinah and there end their lives. My servant, Shaykh Nur, opined it to be a very “heavenly city.” Therefore the mass of the population is of foreign extraction.On August 28th arrived the great Damascus caravan, which sets out from Constantinople bringing the presents of the Sublime Porte. It is the main stream which absorbs all the small currents flowing at this season of general movement from Central Asia towards the great centre of the Islamitic world, and in 1853 it numbered about seven thousand souls. It was anxiously expected at El Medinah for several reasons. In the first place, it brought with it a new curtain for the Prophet’s chamber, the old one being in a tattered condition; secondly, it had charge of the annual stipends and pensions for the citizens; and thirdly,many families had members returning under its escort to their homes. The popular anxiety was greatly increased by the disordered state of the country round about, and moreover the great caravan was a day late. The Russian war had extended its excitement even into the bowels of Arabia, and to travel eastward according to my original intention was impossible.For a day or two we were doubtful about which road the caravan would take—​the easy coast line or the difficult and dangerous eastern, or desert, route. Presently Saad the robber shut his doors against us, and we were driven perforce to choose the worse. The distance between El Medinah and Meccah by the frontier way would be in round numbers two hundred and fifty (two hundred and forty-eight) miles, and in the month of September water promised to be exceedingly scarce and bad.I lost no time in patching up my water-skins, in laying in a store of provisions, and in hiring camels. Masad El Harbi, an old Bedouin, agreed to let me have two animals for the sum of twenty dollars. My host warned me against the treachery of the wild men, with whom it is necessary to eat salt once a day. Otherwise they may rob the traveller and plead that the salt is not in their stomachs.Towards evening time on August 30th, El Medinah became a scene of exceeding confusion in consequence of the departure of the pilgrims. About an hour after sunset all our preparations were concluded. Theevening was sultry; we therefore dined outside the house. I was told to repair to the shrine for the ziyarat el widoa, or the farewell visitation. My decided objection to this step was that we were all to part, and where to meet again we knew not. I therefore prayed a two-prostration prayer, and facing towards the haram recited the usual supplication. We sat up till 2 p.m. when, having heard no signal gun, we lay down to sleep through the hot remnant of the hours of darkness. Thus was spent my last night at the City of the Prophet.[1]“Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,”chap. i.[2]VideBurton’s “Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah,”chap. iii.[3]Ibid.,chap. vi.[4]“Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah,” by Richard F. Burton.

THE Moslem’s pilgrimage is a familiar word to the Christian’s ear, yet how few are acquainted with the nature or the signification of the rite! Unto the present day, learned men—​even those who make a pretence to some knowledge of the East—​still confound Meccah, the birthplace, with El Medinah, the burial-place, of Mohammed, the Arab law-giver. “The Prophet’s tomb at Meccah” is a mistake which even the best-informed of our journals do not disdain to make.

Before, however, entering upon the journey which procured for me the title “haji,” it is necessary for me to dispose of a few preliminaries which must savour of the personal. The first question that suggests itself is, “What course of study enabled an Englishman to pass unsuspected through the Moslem’s exclusive and jealously guarded Holy Land?”

I must premise that in the matter of assuming an Oriental nationality, Nature was somewhat propitious to me. Golden locks and blue eyes, howeverper sedesirable, would have been sad obstacles to progressin swarthy Arabia. And to what Nature had begun, art contributed by long years of laborious occupation.

Finding Oxford, with its Greek and Latin, its mysteries ofδεandγαρ, and its theology and mathematics, exceedingly monotonous, I shipped myself for India and entered life in the 18th Sepoy Regiment of the Bombay Presidency. With sundry intervals of travel, my career between 1843 and 1849 was spent in Scinde. This newly conquered province was very Mohammedan, and the conquerors were compelled, during the work of organisation, to see more of the conquered than is usual in England’s East Indian possession. Sir Charles Napier, of gallant memory, our Governor and Commander-in-Chief, honoured me with a staff appointment, and humoured my whim by allowing me to wander about the new land as a canal engineer employed upon its intricate canal system. My days and nights were thus spent among the people, and within five years I was enabled to pass examinations in six Eastern languages.

In 1849 (March 30th-September 5th) an obstinate rheumatic ophthalmia, the result of overwork, sent me back to Europe, where nearly three years were passed before I was pronounced cured. Then, thoroughly tired of civilisation and living “dully sluggardised at home,” and pining for the breath of the desert and the music of the date-palm, I volunteered in the autumn of 1852 to explore the great waste of Eastern and Central Arabia—​that huge white blot which still disgraces our best maps. But theCourt of Directors of the then Honourable East India Company, with their mild and amiable chairman, after deliberation, stoutly refused. They saw in me only another victim, like Stoddard Connolly and the brave brothers Wyburd, rushing on his own destruction and leaving behind him friends and family to trouble with their requisitions the peace and quiet of the India House.

What remained to me but to prove that what might imperil others was to me safe? Supplied with the sinews of travel by the Royal Geographical Society, curious to see what men are mostly content to hear of only—​namely, Moslem inner life in a purely Mohammedan land—​and longing to set foot within the mysterious Meccah which no vacation tourist had ever yet measured, sketched, photographed, and described, I resolved,coûte qu’il coûte, to make the attempt in my old character of a dervish. The safest as well as the most interesting time would be during the pilgrimage season.

The Moslem’s hajj, or pilgrimage, means, I must premise, “aspiration,” and expresses man’s conviction that he is but a wayfarer on earth wending towards a nobler world. This explains the general belief of the men in sandaled shoon that the greater their hardships, the sorer to travel the road to Jordan, the higher will be their reward in heaven. The pilgrim is urged by the voice of his soul—​“O thou, toiling so fiercely for worldly pleasure and for transitory profit, wilt thou endure nothing to win a more lasting boon?”Hence it is that pilgrimage is common to all ancient faiths. The Sabæans, or old Arabians, visited the Pyramids as the sepulchres of Seth and his son Sabi, the founder of their sect. The classical philosophers wandered through the Valley of the Nile. The Jews annually went up to Jerusalem. The Tartar Buddhists still journey to distant Lamaserais, and the Hindus to Egypt, to Tibet, to Gaya, on the Ganges, and to the inhospitable Caucasus. The spirit of pilgrimage animated mediæval Europe, and a learned Jesuit traveller considers the processions of the Roman Catholic Church modern vestiges of the olden rite.

El Islam—​meaning the covenant in virtue of which men earn eternal life by good works in this world—​requires of all its votaries daily ablution and prayer, almsgiving on certain occasions, one month’s yearly fast, and at least one pilgrimage to the House of Allah at Meccah and the mountain of Ararat. This first, and often the single, visit is called Hajjat el Islam, or pilgrimage of being a Moslem, and all those subsequently performed are regarded as works of supererogation. The rite, however, is incumbent only upon those who possess a sufficiency of health or wealth. El Islam is a creed remarkable for common sense.

The journey to El Medinah is not called hajj, but ziyarat, meaning a ceremonial visitation. Thus the difference between worship due to the Creator and homage rendered to the creature is steadily placedand kept before the Moslem’s eyes. Some sects—​the Wahhabi, or Arabian Puritans, for instance—​even condemn as impious all intercessions between man and his Maker, especially the prayers at the Prophet’s grave. The mass, however, of the Mohammedan Church, if such expression be applicable to a system which repudiates an ecclesiastical body, considers this visitation a “practice of the faith, and the most effectual way of drawing near to Allah through the Prophet Mohammed.”

The Moslem’s literature has many a thick volume upon the minutiæ of pilgrimage and visitation. All four Sumni, or orthodox schools—​viz., Hunafi, Shafli, Maliki, and Hanbali—​differ in unimportant points one with the other. Usually pilgrims, especially those performing the rite for the first time, begin with Meccah and end with El Medinah. But there is no positive command on the subject. In these days pilgrims from the north countries—​Egypt and Syria, Damascus and Bagdad—​pass through the Prophet’s burial-place going to and coming from Meccah, making a visitation each time. Voyagers from the south—​as East Africa, India, and Java—​must often deny themselves, on account of danger and expense, the spiritual advantages of prayer at Mohammed’s tomb.

I have often been asked if the pilgrim receives any written proof that he has performed his pilgrimage. Formerly the Sherif (descendant of Hasan), or Prince, of Meccah gave a certificate to those who could afford it, and early in the present century the namesof all who paid the fee were registered by a scribe. All that has passed. But the ceremonies are so complicated and the localities so peculiar that no book can thoroughly teach them. The pretended pilgrim would readily be detected after a short cross-questioning of the real Simon Pure. As facilities of travel increase, and the rite becomes more popular, no pilgrim, unless he comes from the edge of the Moslem world, cares to bind on the green turban which his grandfather affected. Few also style themselves haji, unless for an especial reason—​as an evidence of reformed life, for instance, or a sign of being a serious person.

Some also have inquired if I was not the first “Christian” who ever visited the Moslem’s Holy Land. The learned Gibbon asserted—​“Our notions of Meccah must be drawn from the Arabians. As no unbeliever is permitted to enter the city, our travellers are silent.”[1]But Haji Yunus (Ludovico di Bartema) performed the pilgrimage inA.D.1503; Joseph Pitts, of Exeter, in 1680, Ali Bey el Abbasi (the Catalonian Badia) in 1807, Haji Mohammed (Giovanni Finati, of Ferrara) in 1811, and the excellent Swiss traveller Burckhardt in 1814, all passed safely through the Hejaz, or Holy Land. I mention those only who have written upon the subject. Those who have not must be far more numerous. In fact, any man may become a haji by prefacing his pilgrimage with a solemn and public profession of faith before the Kazi inCairo or Damascus; or, simpler still, by applying through his Consulate to be put under the protection of the Amir el Haji, or Commander of the Pilgrim Caravan.

If I did anything new, it was this—​my pilgrimage was performed as by one of the people. El Islam theoretically encourages, but practically despises and distrusts, the burma, or renegade. Such a convert is allowed to see as little as possible, and is ever suspected of being a spy. He is carefully watched night and day, and in troublous times he finds it difficult to travel between Meccah and El Medinah. Far be it from me to disparage the labours of my predecessors. But Bartema travelled as a Mameluke in the days when Mamelukes were Christian slaves, Pitts was a captive carried to the pilgrimage by his Algerine master, Badia’s political position was known to all the authorities, Finati was an Albanian soldier, and Burckhardt revealed himself to the old Pacha Mohammed Ali.

As regards the danger of pilgrimage in the case of the non-Moslem, little beyond the somewhat extensive chapter of accidents is to be apprehended by one conversant with Moslem prayers and formulæ, manners and customs, and who possesses a sufficient guarantee of orthodoxy. It is, however, absolutely indispensable to be a Mohammedan in externals. Neither the Koran nor the Sultan enjoins the killing of Hebrew or Christian intruders; nevertheless, in 1860, a Jew, who refused to repeat the Creed, was crucified by the Meccan populace, and in the eventof a pilgrim declaring himself to be an infidel the authorities would be powerless to protect him.

The question ofCui bono?—​of what good I did to others or to myself by the adventure—​is not so easily answered. My account of El Medinah is somewhat fuller than that of Burckhardt, whose health was breaking when he visited it. And our caravan’s route between the Holy Cities was not the beaten track along the Red Sea, but the little-known eastern or desert road. Some critics certainly twitted me with having “turned Turk”; one might turn worse things. For the rest, man is ever most tempted by the useless and the impossible.

To appear in character upon the scene of action many precautions were necessary. Egypt in those days was a land of passports and policemen; thehaute-policewas not inferior to that of any European country. By the advice of a brother-officer, Captain Grindley, I assumed the Eastern dress at my lodgings in London, and my friend accompanied me as interpreter to Southampton. On April 4th, 1853, a certain Shaykh Abdullah (to wit, myself) left home in the P. & O. Company’s steamerBengal, and before the end of the fortnight landed at Alexandria. It was not exactly pleasant for the said personage to speak broken English the whole way, and rigorously to refuse himself the pleasure of addressing the other sex; but under the circumstances it was necessary.

Fortunately, on board theBengalwas John Larking, a well-known Alexandrian. He was in my secret,and I was received in his house, where he gave me a little detached pavilion and treated me as a munshi, or language-master. My profession among the people was that of a doctor. The Egyptians are a medico-ridden race; all are more or less unhealthy, and they could not look upon my phials and pill-boxes without yearning for their contents. An Indian doctor was a novelty to them; Franks they despised; but how resist a man who had come so far, from east and west? Men, women, and children besieged my door, by which means I could see the people face to face, especially that portion of which Europeans as a rule know only the worst. Even learned Alexandrians, after witnessing some of my experiments in mesmerism and the magic mirror, opined that the stranger was a manner of holy man gifted with preternatural powers. An old man sent to offer me his daughter in marriage—​my sanctity compelled me to decline the honour—​and a middle-aged lady offered me a hundred piastres (nearly one pound sterling) to stay at Alexandria and superintend the restoration of her blind left eye.

After a month pleasantly spent in the little garden of roses, jasmine, and oleanders, I made in early June a move towards Cairo. The first thing was to procure a passport; I had neglected, through ignorance, to bring one from England. It was not without difficulty, involving much unclean dressing and expenditure of horrible English, that I obtained from H.B.M.’s Consul at Alexandria a certificate declaring me to be an Indo-British subject named Abdullah, by professiona doctor, and, to judge from frequent blanks in the document, not distinguished by any remarkable conformation of eyes, nose, or cheek. This paper, duly countersigned by the zabit, or police magistrate, would carry me anywhere within the Egyptian frontier.

At Alexandria also I provided a few necessaries for the pilgrimage: item—​a change or two of clothing; a substantial leather money belt to carry my gold in; a little cotton bag for silver and small change, kept ready for use in the breast pocket; a zemzimiyah, or water-bag of goatskin; a huge cotton umbrella of Cairene make, brightly yellow, like an overgrown marigold; a coarse Persian rug, which acted as bed, table, chair, and oratory; a pea-green box, with red and yellow flowers, capable of standing falls from a camel twice a day, and therefore well fitted for a medicine chest; and, lastly, the only peculiar article—​viz., the shroud, without which no one sets outen routeto Meccah. Thismemento moriis a piece of cotton six feet long by five broad. It is useful, for instance, when a man is dangerously sick or wounded; the caravan, of course, cannot wait, and to loiter behind is destruction. The patient, therefore, is ceremonially washed, wrapped up in his kafan, partly covered with sand, and left to his fate. It is hard to think of such an end without horror; the torturing thirst of a wound, the sun heating the brain to madness, and, worst of all—​for they do not wait for death—​the attacks of the jackal, the vulture, and the ravens of the wilds. This shroud was duly sprinkled, as is the custom, with the holy waterof the Zemzem well at Meccah. It later came to a bad end amongst the villainous Somal in Eastern Africa.

Equipped in a dervish’s frock, I took leave of my kind host and set out, a third-class passenger, upon a steamer facetiously known as theLittle Asthmatic. In those days the rail had not invaded Egypt. We had an unpleasant journey up the Mahmadiyah Canal and the Nile, which is connected by it with Alexandria. The usual time was thirty hours. We took three mortal days and nights. We were nearly wrecked at the then unfinished Barage, we saw nothing of the Pyramids but their tops, and it was with a real feeling of satisfaction that we moored alongside of the old tumble-down suburb, Bulak.

My dervishhood was perfectly successful. I happened by chance to touch the elbow of an Anglo-Indian officer, and he publicly and forcibly condemned my organs of vision. And I made an acquaintance and a friend on board. The former was a shawl and cotton merchant, Meyan Khudabaksh Namdar, of Lahore, who, as the caravanserais were full of pilgrims, lodged me at his house for a fortnight. The conversations that passed between us were published two years later in 1855.[2]They clearly pointed to the mutiny which occurred two years afterwards, and this, together with my frankness about the Suez Canal,[3]did not tend to make me a favourite with the then effete Government of India.

My friend was a Turkish trader, named HajiWali-el-din. He was then a man about forty-five, of middle stature, with a large round head closely shaven, a bull neck, limbs sturdy as a Saxon’s, a thin red beard, and handsome features beaming benevolence. A curious dry humour he had, delighting in “quizzing,” but in so quiet, quaint, and solemn a way that before you knew him you could scarce divine his drift. He presently found for me rooms next his own at the wakalah, or caravanserai, called Jemeliyah, in the Greek quarter, and I tried to repay his kindness by counselling him in an unpleasant Consular suit.

When we lived under the same roof, the haji and I became inseparable. We walked together and dined together, and spent the evening at a mosque or other place of public pastime. Sometimes we sat among the dervishes; but they are a dangerous race, travelled and inquisitive. Meanwhile I continued to practise my profession—​the medical—​and devoted myself several hours a day to study in the Azhar Mosque, sitting under the learned Shaykh Mohammed Ali Attar. The better to study the “humours,” I also became a grocer and druggist, and my little shop, a mere hole in the wall, was a perfect gem of Nilotic groceries. But although I sold my wares under cost price to fair customers, my chief clients were small boys and girls, who came, halfpence in hand, to buy sugar and pepper; so one day, determining to sink the thirty shillings which my stock in trade had stood me, I locked the wooden shutter that defended my establishment and made it over to my shaykh.

The haji and I fasted together during the month of Ramazan. That year it fell in the torrid June, and it always makes the Moslem unhealthy and unamiable. At the end preparations were to be made for departure Meccah-wards, and the event was hastened by a convivialséancewith a bacchanalian captain of Albanians, which made the gossips of the quarter wonder what manner of an Indian doctor had got amongst them.

I was fortunate enough, however, to hire the services of Shaykh Nur, a quiet East Indian, whose black skin made society suppose him to be my slave. Never suspecting my nationality till after my return from Meccah, he behaved honestly enough; but when absolved by pilgrimage from his past sins, Haji Nur began to rob me so boldly that we were compelled to part. I also made acquaintance with certain sons of the Holy Cities—​seven men from El Medinah and Meccah—​who, after a begging-trip to Constantinople, were returning to their homes. Having doctored them and lent them some trifling sums, I was invited by Shaykh Hamid El Shamman to stay with him at El Medinah, and by the boy Mohammed El Basyuni to lodge at his mother’s house in Meccah.

They enabled me to collect proper stores for the journey. These consisted of tea, coffee, loaf sugar, biscuits, oil, vinegar, tobacco, lanterns, cooking-pots, and a small bell-shaped tent costing twelve shillings. The provisions were placed in a kafas, or hamper, of palm sticks, my drugs and dress in a sahharah,or wooden box measuring some three and a half feet each way, covered with cowskin, and the lid fitting into the top. And finally, not wishing to travel by the vans then allotted to the overland passengers, I hired two dromedaries and their attendant Bedouins, who for the sum of ten shillings each agreed to carry me across the desert between Cairo and Suez.

At last, after abundant trouble, all was ready. At 3 p.m., July 1st, 1853, my friend Haji Wali embraced me heartily, and so did my poor old shaykh, who, despite his decrepitude and my objections, insisted upon accompanying me to the city gate. I will not deny having felt a tightening of the heart as their honest faces and forms faded in the distance. All the bystanders ejaculated, “Allah bless thee, Y’all Hajj (O pilgrim!), and restore thee to thy family and thy friends.”

We rode hard over the stretch of rock and hard clay which has since yielded to that monumental work, the Suez Canal. There was noennuiupon the road: to the traveller there was an interest in the wilderness—​

Where love is liberty and Nature law—​

unknown to Cape seas and Alpine glaciers and even the boundless prairie. I felt as if looking once more upon the face of a friend, and my two Bedouins—​though the old traveller described their forefathers as “folke full of all evylle condiciouns”—​were excellent company. At midnight we halted for a littlerest near the Central Station, and after dark on the next evening I passed through the tumble-down gateway of Suez and found a shelter in the Wakalah Tirjis—​the George Inn. My Meccan and Medinah friends were already installed there, and the boy Mohammed El Basyuni had joined me on the road.

It was not so easy to embark at Suez. In those days the greater body of pilgrims marched round the head of the Red Sea. Steamers were rare, and in the spirit of protection the Bey, or Governor, had orders to obstruct us till near the end of the season. Most Egyptian high officials sent their boats laden with pious passengers up the Nile, whence they returned freighted with corn. They naturally did their best to force upon us the delays and discomforts of what is called the Kussayr (Cosseir) line. And as those who travelled by the land route spent their money fifteen days longer in Egyptian territory than they would have done if allowed to embark at Suez, the Bey assisted them in the former and obstructed them in the latter case.

We were delayed in the George Inn four mortal days and nights amidst all the plagues of Egypt. At last we found a sambuk, or small-decked vessel, about to start, and for seven dollars each we took places upon the poop, the only possible part in the dreadful summer months. TheSilk El Zahab, orGolden Thread, was probably a lineal descendant from the ships of Solomon harboured in Ezion Geber. It was about fifty tons burden, and we found ninety-seven, insteadof sixty, the proper number of passengers. The farce of a quarter-deck ten feet by eight accommodated eighteen of us, and our companions were Magribis, men from North-Western Africa—​the most quarrelsome and vicious of pilgrims.

We sailed on July 6th, and, as in an Irish packet of the olden time, the first preliminary to “shaking down” was a general fight. The rais (captain) naturally landed and left us to settle the matter, which ended in many a head being broken. I played my poor part in themêléeby pushing down a heavy jar of water upon the swarm of assailants. At last the Magribis, failing to dislodge us from the poop, made peace, and finding we were sons of the Holy Cities, became as civil as their unkindly natures permitted. We spent twelve days, instead of the normal five, in beating down the five hundred and fifty direct miles between Suez and Yambu.

Every second day we managed to land and stretch our limbs. The mornings and evenings were mild and balmy, whilst the days were terrible. We felt as if a few more degrees of heat would be fatal to us. The celebrated coral reefs of the Red Sea, whence some authors derive its name, appeared like meadows of brilliant flowers resembling those of earth, only far brighter and more beautiful. The sunsets were magnificent; the zodiacal light, or after-glow, was a study; and the cold rays of the moon, falling upon a wilderness of white clay and pinnacle, suggested a wintry day in England.

Illustration: Fight on the Silk El Zahab[See Page 18.THE FIGHT ON THESILK EL ZAHAB.

[See Page 18.

THE FIGHT ON THESILK EL ZAHAB.

At last, after slowly working up a narrow creek leading to the Yambu harbour, on July 17th we sprang into a shore-boat, and felt new life when bidding eternal adieu and “sweet bad luck” to theGolden Thread, which seemed determined to wreck itself about once per diem.

Yambu, the port of El Medinah, lies S.S.W. of, and a little over a hundred and thirty miles from, its city. The road was infamous—​rocky, often waterless, alternately fiery and freezing, and infested with the Beni Harb, a villainous tribe of hill Bedouins. Their chief was one Saad, a brigand of the first water. He was described as a little brown man, contemptible in appearance but remarkable for courage and for a ready wit, which saved him from the poison and pistol of his enemies. Some called him the friend of the poor, and all knew him to be the foe of the rich.

There was nothing to see at Yambu, where, however, we enjoyed the hammam and the drinking-water, which appeared deliciously sweet after the briny supplies of Suez. By dint of abundant bargaining we hired camels at the moderate rate of three dollars each—​half in ready money, the rest to be paid after arrival. I also bought a shugduf, or rude litter carrying two, and I chose the boy Mohammed as my companion. The journey is usually done in five days. We took eight, and we considered ourselves lucky fellows.

On the evening of the next day (July 18th) we set out with all the gravity of men putting our headsinto the lion’s jaws. The moon rose fair and clear as we emerged from the shadowy streets. When we launched into the desert, the sweet, crisp air delightfully contrasted with the close, offensive atmosphere of the town.

My companions all, as Arabs will do on such occasions, forgot to think of their precious boxes full of the plunder of Constantinople, and began to sing. We travelled till three o’clock in the morning (these people insist upon setting out in the afternoon and passing the night in travelling). And the Prophet informs us that the “calamities of earth,” meaning scorpions, serpents, and wild beasts, are least dangerous during the dark hours.

After a pleasant sleep in the wilderness, we joined for the next day’s march a caravan of grain carriers, about two hundred camels escorted by seven Turkish Bashi Buzuk, or Irregular Cavalry. They confirmed the report that the Bedouins were “out,” and declared that Saad, the Old Man of the Mountain, had threatened to cut every throat venturing into his passes. That night the robbers gave us a mild taste of their quality, but soon ran away. The third march lay over an iron land and under a sky of brass to a long straggling village called, from its ruddy look, El Hamra (the Red); it is the middle station between Yambu and El Medinah. The fourth stage placed us on the Sultan’s high-road leading from Meccah to the Prophet’s burial-place, and we joined a company of pious persons bound on visitation.

The Bedouins, hearing that we had an escort of two hundred troopers, manned a gorge and would not let us advance till the armed men retired. The fifth and sixth days were forced halts at a vile place called Bir Abbas, where we could hear the distant dropping of the musketry, a sign that the troops and the hill-men were settling some little dispute. Again my companions were in cold perspirations about their treasures, and passed the most of their time in sulking and quarrelling.

About sunset on July 23rd, three or four caravans assembled at Bir Abbas, forming one large body for better defence against the dreaded Bedouins. We set out at 11 p.m., travelling without halting through the night, and at early dawn we found ourselves in an ill-famed narrow known as Shuab El Haji, or the Pilgrim’s Pass. The boldest looked apprehensive as we approached it. Presently, from the precipitous cliff on our left, thin puffs of blue smoke rose in the sultry morning air, and afterwards the sharp cracks of the hill-men’s matchlocks were echoed by the rocks on the right. A number of Bedouins could be seen swarming like hornets up the steeper slopes, carrying huge weapons and “spoiling for a fight.” They took up comfortable positions on the cut-throatembankmentand began practising upon us from behind their breastworks of piled stones with perfect convenience to themselves. We had nothing to do but to blaze away as much powder and to veil ourselves in as dense a smoke as possible. The result was that we losttwelve men, besides camels and other beasts of burden. My companions seemed to consider this questionable affair a most gallant exploit.

The next night (July 24th) was severe. The path lay up rocky hill and down stony vale. A tripping and stumbling dromedary had been substituted for my better animal, and the consequences may be imagined.

The sun had nearly risen before I shook off the lethargic effects of such a march. All around me were hurrying their beasts, regardless of rough ground, and not a soul spoke a word to his neighbour. “Are there robbers in sight?” was the natural question. “No,” responded the boy Mohammed. “They are walking with their eyes; they will presently sight their homes.”

Half an hour afterwards we came to a huge mudarrij, or flight of steps, roughly cut in a line of black scoriaceous basalt. Arrived at the top, we passed through a lane of dark lava with steep banks on both sides, and in a few minutes a full view of the Holy City suddenly opened upon us. It was like a vision in “The Arabian Nights.” We halted our camels as if by word of command. All dismounted, in imitation of the pious of old, and sat down, jaded and hungry as we were, to feast our eyes on the “country of date-trees” which looked so passing fair after the “salt stony land.” As we looked eastward the sun rose out of the horizon of blue and pink hill, the frontier of Nejd staining the spacious plains withgold and purple. The site of El Medinah is in the western edge of the highlands which form the plateau of Central Arabia. On the left side, or north, was a tall grim pile of porphyritic rock, the celebrated Mount Ohod, with a clump of verdure and a dome or two nestling at its base. Round a whitewashed fortalice founded upon a rock clustered a walled city, irregularly oval, with tall minarets enclosing a conspicuous green dome. To the west and south lay a large suburb and long lines of brilliant vegetation piercing the tawny levels. I now understood the full value of a phrase in the Moslem ritual—​“And when the pilgrim’s eyes shall fall upon the trees of El Medinah, let him raise his voice and bless the Prophet with the choicest blessings.”

In all the panorama before us nothing was more striking, after the desolation through which we had passed, than the gardens and orchards about the town. My companions obeyed the command with the most poetical exclamations, bidding the Prophet “live for ever whilst the west wind bloweth gently over the hills of Nejd and the lightning flasheth bright in the firmament of El Hejaz.”

We then remounted and hurried through the Bab El Ambari, the gate of the western suburb. Crowded by relatives and friends, we passed down a broad, dusty street, pretty well supplied with ruins, into an open space called Barr El Manakhah, or “place where camels are made to kneel.” Straight forward a line leads directly into the Bab El Misri, the Egyptian gate ofthe city. But we turned off to the right, and after advancing a few yards we found ourselves at the entrance of our friend Shaykh Hamid’s house. He had preceded us to prepare for our reception.

No delay is allowed in the ziyarat, or visitation of the haram, or holy place, which received the mortal remains of the Arab Prophet. We were barely allowed to breakfast, to perform the religious ablution, and to change our travel-soiled garments. We then mounted asses, passed through the Egyptian, or western, gate, and suddenly came upon the mosque. It is choked up with ignoble buildings, and as we entered the “Dove of Mercy” I was not impressed by the spectacle.

The site of the Prophet’s mosque—​Masjid el Nabashi, as it is called—​was originally a graveyard shaded by date-trees. The first walls were of adobe, or unbaked brick, and the recently felled palm-trunks were made into pillars for the leaf-thatched roof. The present building, which is almost four centuries old, is of cut stone, forming an oblong of four hundred and twenty feet by three hundred and forty feet. In the centre is a spacious uncovered area containing the Garden of Our Lady Fatimah—​a railed plot of ground bearing a lote-tree and a dozen palms. At the south-east angle of this enclosure, under a wooden roof with columns, is the Prophet’s Well, whose water is hard and brackish. Near it meets the City Academy, where in the cool mornings and eveningsthe young idea is taught to shout rather than to shoot.

Around the court are four riwaks, or porches, not unlike the cloisters of a monastery; they are arched to the front, backed by the wall and supported inside by pillars of different shape and material varying from dirty plaster to fine porphyry. When I made my visitation, the northern porch was being rebuilt; it was to be called after Abd El Majid, the then reigning Sultan, and it promised to be the most splendid. The main colonnade, however, the sanctum containing all that is venerable in the building, embraces the whole length of the southern short wall, and is deeper than the other three by nearly treble the number of columns. It is also paved with handsome slabs of white marble and marquetry work, here and there covered with coarse matting and above this by unclean carpets, well worn by faithful feet.

To understand the tomb a few preliminary remarks are necessary. Mohammed, it must be remembered, died in the eleventh year of his mission and the sixty-third of his age, corresponding withA.D.623. He was accustomed to say, “In whatsoever spot a prophet departs this life, there also should he be buried.” Accordingly his successor ordered the grave to be dug in the house of the young widow Ayisha, who lived close to the original mosque. After her husband’s burial she occupied an adjoining room partitioned off from the tomb at which men were accustomed to pray. Another saying of the Prophet’sforbade tombs to be erected in mosques; it therefore became necessary so to contrive that the revered spot should be in, and yet not in, the place of worship.

Accordingly they built a detached tower in the south-eastern corner of the mosque, and called it the hujrah, or chamber. It is from fifty to fifty-five feet square, with a passage all round, and it extends from floor to roof, where it is capped by the green dome which strikes the eyes on approaching the city. The external material of the closet, which also serves to protect the remains from infidels and schismatics, is metal filagree painted a vivid grey green, relieved by the brightly gilt or burnished brass-work forming the long and graceful Arabic characters. On the south side, for greater honour, the railing is plated over in parts with silver, and letters of the same metal are interlaced with it.

Entering by the western Door of Safety, we paced slowly towards the tomb down a line of wall about the height of a man, and called the “illustrious fronting.” The barrier is painted with arabesques and pierced with small doors. There are two niches richly worked with various coloured marble, and near them is a pulpit, a graceful collection of slender columns, elegant tracery, and inscriptions admirably carved. Arrived at the western small door in the dwarf wall, we entered the famous spot called El Ranzah (the “Garden”), after a saying of Mohammed: “Between my grave and my pulpit is a garden of the gardens of Paradise.” On the north and west sides it isnot divided from the rest of the porch, to the south rises the dwarf wall, and eastward it is bounded by the west end of the filagree tower containing the tomb.

The “Garden” is the most elaborate part of the mosque. It is a space of about eighty feet in length tawdrily decorated to resemble vegetation: the carpets are flowered, and the pediments of columns are cased with bright green tiles, and the shafts are adorned with gaudy and unnatural growths in arabesques. It is further disfigured by handsome branched candelabra of cut crystal, the work, I believe, of an English house. Its peculiar background, the filagree tower, looks more picturesque near than at a distance, where it suggests the idea of a gigantic birdcage. The one really fine feature of the scene is the light cast by the window of stained glass in the southern wall. Thus little can be said in praise of the “Garden” by day. But at night the eye, dazzled by oil lamps suspended from the roof, by huge wax candles, and by minor illuminations, whilst crowds of visitors in the brightest attire, with the richest and noblest of the citizens, sit in congregation to hear services, becomes far less critical.

Entering the “Garden” we fronted towards Meccah, prayed, recited two chapters of the Koran, and gave alms to the poor in gratitude to Allah for making it our fate to visit so holy a spot. Then we repaired to the southern front of the chamber, where there are three dwarf windows, apertures half a foot square, and placed at eye’s height from the ground. The westernmost is supposed to be opposite to the faceof Mohammed, who lies on the right side, facing, as is still the Moslem custom, the House of Allah at Meccah. The central hill is that of Abubaki, the first Caliph, whose head is just behind the Prophet’s shoulder. The easternmost window is that of Omar, the second Caliph, who holds the same position with respect to Abubaki. In the same chamber, but decorously divided by a wall from the male tenants, reposes the Lady Fatimah, Mohammed’s favourite daughter. Osman, the fourth Caliph, was not buried after his assassination near his predecessors, but there is a vacant space for Isa bin Maryam when he shall return.

We stood opposite these three windows, successively, beginning with that of the Prophet, recited the blessings, which we were directed to pronounce “with awe and fear and love.” The ritual is very complicated, and the stranger must engage a guide technically called a muzawwir, or visitation-maker. He is always a son of the Holy City, and Shaykh Hamid was mine. Many a piercing eye was upon me: the people probably supposed that I was an Ajemi or Persian, and these heretics have often attempted to defile the tombs of the two Caliphs.

When the prayers were at an end, I was allowed to look through the Prophet’s window. After straining my eyes for a time, the oil lamps shedding but a dim light, I saw a narrow passage leading round the chamber. The inner wall is variously represented to be made of stone planking or unbaked bricks. Onesees nothing but thin coverings, a curtain of handsome silk and cotton brocade, green, with long white letters worked into it. Upon the hangings were three inscriptions in characters of gold, informing readers that behind there lie Allah’s Prophet and the two first Caliphs. The exact place of Mohammed’s tomb is, moreover, distinguished by a large pearl rosary and a peculiar ornament, the celebrated Kankab el Durri, or constellation of pearls; it is suspended breast high to the curtain. This is described to be a “brilliant star set in diamonds and pearls” placed in the dark that man’s eye may be able to endure its splendours; the vulgar believe it to be a “jewel of the jewels of Paradise.” To me it suggested the round glassy stoppers used for the humbler sort of decanters, but then I think the same of the Koh-i-Nur.

I must allude to the vulgar story of Mohammed’s steel coffin suspended in mid-air between two magnets. The myth has won a world-wide reputation, yet Arabia has never heard of it. Travellers explain it in two ways. Niebuhr supposes it to have risen from the rude ground-plan drawings sold to strangers, and mistaken by them for elevations. William Banks believes that the work popularly described as hanging unsupported in the mosque of Omar at Jerusalem was confounded with the Prophet’s tomb at El Medinah by Christians, who until very lately could not have seen either of these Moslem shrines.

A book which I published upon the subject of my pilgrimage gives in detail my reason for believingthat the site of Mohammed’s sepulture is doubtful as that of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.[4]They are, briefly, these four: From the earliest days the shape of the Prophet’s tomb has never been generally known in El Islam. The accounts of the grave given by the learned are discrepant. The guardianship of the spot was long in the hands of schismatics (the Beni Husayu). And lastly, I cannot but look upon the tale of the blinding light which surrounds the Prophet’s tomb, current for ages past, and still universally believed upon the authority of attendant eunuchs who must know its falsehood as a priestly glory intended to conceal a defect.

To that book also I must refer my readers for a full description of the minor holy places at El Medinah. They are about fifty in number, and of these about a dozen are generally visited. The principal of these are, first, El Bakia (the Country of the Saints), to the east of the city; on the last day some seventy thousand, others say a hundred thousand, holy men with faces like moons shall arise from it; the second is the Apostle’s mosque at Kubas, the first temple built in El Islam; and the third is a visitation to the tomb of Mohammed’s paternal uncle, Hamzeh, the “Lord of Martyrs,” who was slain fighting for the faith inA.D.625.

A few observations concerning the little-known capital of the Northern Hejaz may not be unacceptable.

Medinah El Nahi (the City of the Prophet) is usuallycalled by Moslems, for brevity, El Medinah, or the City by Excellence. It lies between the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth degrees of north latitude, corresponding therefore with Central Mexico; and being high raised above the sea, it may be called atierra temprada. My predecessor, Burckhardt, found the water detestable. I thought it good. The winter is long and rigorous, hence partly the fair complexion of its inhabitants, who rival in turbulence and fanaticism their brethren of Meccah.

El Medinah consists of three parts—​a town, a castle, and a large suburb. The population, when I visited it, ranged from sixteen thousand to eighteen thousand souls, whereas Meccah numbered forty-five thousand, and the garrison consisted of a half-battalion, or four hundred men. Mohammed’s last resting-place has some fifteen hundred hearths enclosed by a wall of granite and basalt in irregular layers cemented with lime. It is pierced with four gates: the Syrian, the Gate of Hospitality, the Friday, and the Egyptian. The two latter are fine massive buildings, with double towers like the old Norman portals, but painted with broad bands of red pillars and other flaring colours. Except the Prophet’s mosque, there are few public buildings. There are only four caravanserais, and the markets are long lines of sheds, thatched with scorched and blackened palm-leaves. The streets are what they should always be in torrid lands, dark, deep, narrow, and rarely paved; they are generally of black earth, well wateredand trodden to harden. The houses appear well built for the East, of square stone, flat roofed, double storied, and enclosing spacious courtyards and small gardens, where water basins and trees and sheds “cool the eye,” as Arabs say. Latticed balconies are here universal, and the windows are mere holes in the walls provided with broad shutters. The castle has stronger defences than the town, and inside it a tall donjon tower bears, proudly enough, the banner of the Crescent and the Star. Its whitewashed lines of wall render this fortalice a conspicuous object, and guns pointing in all directions, especially upon the town, make it appear a kind of Gibraltar to the Bedouins.

For many reasons strangers become very much attached to El Medinah and there end their lives. My servant, Shaykh Nur, opined it to be a very “heavenly city.” Therefore the mass of the population is of foreign extraction.

On August 28th arrived the great Damascus caravan, which sets out from Constantinople bringing the presents of the Sublime Porte. It is the main stream which absorbs all the small currents flowing at this season of general movement from Central Asia towards the great centre of the Islamitic world, and in 1853 it numbered about seven thousand souls. It was anxiously expected at El Medinah for several reasons. In the first place, it brought with it a new curtain for the Prophet’s chamber, the old one being in a tattered condition; secondly, it had charge of the annual stipends and pensions for the citizens; and thirdly,many families had members returning under its escort to their homes. The popular anxiety was greatly increased by the disordered state of the country round about, and moreover the great caravan was a day late. The Russian war had extended its excitement even into the bowels of Arabia, and to travel eastward according to my original intention was impossible.

For a day or two we were doubtful about which road the caravan would take—​the easy coast line or the difficult and dangerous eastern, or desert, route. Presently Saad the robber shut his doors against us, and we were driven perforce to choose the worse. The distance between El Medinah and Meccah by the frontier way would be in round numbers two hundred and fifty (two hundred and forty-eight) miles, and in the month of September water promised to be exceedingly scarce and bad.

I lost no time in patching up my water-skins, in laying in a store of provisions, and in hiring camels. Masad El Harbi, an old Bedouin, agreed to let me have two animals for the sum of twenty dollars. My host warned me against the treachery of the wild men, with whom it is necessary to eat salt once a day. Otherwise they may rob the traveller and plead that the salt is not in their stomachs.

Towards evening time on August 30th, El Medinah became a scene of exceeding confusion in consequence of the departure of the pilgrims. About an hour after sunset all our preparations were concluded. Theevening was sultry; we therefore dined outside the house. I was told to repair to the shrine for the ziyarat el widoa, or the farewell visitation. My decided objection to this step was that we were all to part, and where to meet again we knew not. I therefore prayed a two-prostration prayer, and facing towards the haram recited the usual supplication. We sat up till 2 p.m. when, having heard no signal gun, we lay down to sleep through the hot remnant of the hours of darkness. Thus was spent my last night at the City of the Prophet.

[1]“Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,”chap. i.

[2]VideBurton’s “Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah,”chap. iii.

[3]Ibid.,chap. vi.

[4]“Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah,” by Richard F. Burton.

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