CHAPTER VI.

“Last scene of all . . . . . . A mere oblivion.”—SHAKESPEARE.

A last rush through the sun—We arrive at Dilam on the Persian Gulf—Politics of the Gulf—A journey “in extremis”—Bushire—The End.

THE rest of our journey was little better than a feverish dream of heat and flies. After a day spent at Bebahan, where we were hospitably entertained by the Shahzade, Ahtesham ed-Daulah, a Persian nobleman of real good breeding, we recommenced our weary march, thinking only now to get down to Bushire alive.

The kind invitations of our host could not detain us, nor the polite attentions of his wives, nor the amiable visits of merchants, calendars, and other idle persons, who thronged our lodgings from dawn to dusk. The truth is Bebahan was like a furnace, and we felt that it was more than our strength would stand, to prolong our sufferings over another week. The lowlands of Persia, bordering on the Persian Gulf, are one of the most oven-like regions of the world, and though Bebahan lies nearly 1400 feet above the sea, it shares the climate of the Gulf. We had now, besides, nothing further to fear in the way of robbers or marauders, and prepared ourselves for a last desperate rush through the sun to Bushire. The distance was hardly more than a hundred and twenty miles, but between Bebahan and Dilam there lay a region of hills, worse, according to report, than any we had yet passed, and absolutely impassable for camels. Still we had good reason to feel confident in the climbing powers of our beasts, and could not think of leaving them behind. Accordingly the next day we started, our courage well screwed to the sticking point of endurance, and under escort of three of the Shahzade’s horsemen.

We set off at six in the afternoon, making the best of what daylight yet remained to get well started on our road. The difficulties are almost always greater close to the town, and once fairly on the beaten track, our camels would have no temptation to wander. From Bebahan to Dilam there are two considerable lines of ridges or hills—steps, as it were, and extremely precipitous ones, down to the sea coast. At first it was easy going for the camels, but presently, about an hour after dark, we found ourselves in broken ground, where, after stumbling on till half-past nine, we were brought to a dead halt by finding ourselves at the brink of a deep gulf, in which the road seemed to disappear. This made it necessary we should wait till daylight, and we lay down with our camels on the road, and slept soundly till the first streak of dawn at half-past four. Then we discovered we had left the road, though only a few yards, and that the fissure before us was a sufficient reason for the halt we had made. The chief formation of these hills is not rock but clay, which being entirely without vegetation except in favoured spots, is furrowed into ravines and fissures by the action of the rain, making the district impassable except along the beaten track. We had risen some hundred feet from Bebahan, and so had nearly reached the summit of the first pass, where to our joy we saw something far away which we knew by instinct must be the sea. This raised our spirits, and we began our descent at once.

The path was very precipitous, and looking down from the edge it looked impossible that a camel should get down the thousand feet of zigzag which one could see plainly to the bottom. In some places rocks jutted out of the soil, making awkward narrow passes, and in others there were drops of three feet and more. Our horses of course made no difficulty, but watching the camels was nervous work, knowing as we did how little could be done to help them. Still we did what we could, going in front and calling them “Hao-hao,” according to Bedouin fashion, which they understand so well. They know us now and trust in us, and so came bravely on. Even the Mecca delúl and the Safra, the young and giddy ones, have learned sobriety. Three hours exactly it took to get down, and without accident. Another hour brought us to Zeytun, a pretty village on the river Zorah, with palm gardens and a good patch of cultivated land. At the river we stopped, exhausted already by the sun and overcome by the sight of the cool running water. Here we lay frizzling till the afternoon.

At four we crossed the river, as broad but a little less deep than the Kurdistan (both have gravelly bottoms), and resumed our march. A last cup of the ice-cold water was indulged in, but it could not slake my thirst, which nothing now can cure, though as a rule we drink nothing till the evening. Our march was a repetition of last night’s, a long stumble half asleep along a break-neck road ending as before in an “impasse,” and the rest of the night spent on the ground. We are plagued now, especially in these night halts, where we cannot see to choose a bed, with the horrible little spiked grass. Every bit of clothing we have is full of these points. These and the flies make it impossible to sleep by day, and we are both very weary, Wilfrid almost a skeleton.

_April_ 23.—At a quarter past three, we again went on, by the light of a false dawn, the Scorpion, still in front of us. We know exactly now the rising of these stars in the south-eastern sky. The ascent this time was longer and more gradual, and the descent shorter than the former one, but quite as difficult. This second ridge is considerably lower than the first, and at the foot of it our path followed a sort of valley in which we found a few pools of water. Then suddenly the gorge opened and we found ourselves at eight o’clock in the plain, with a village near us, and about eight miles away Dilam and the sea, simmering like melted lead to the horizon.

Eight miles, it sounds an easy march; but the heat, which now on the sea coast is more insufferable than ever, stopped us half way, and again we rigged up our tent on the plain, and lay under it till evening. Then we rode into Dilam. Our first question was for Captain Cameron, whose road should here have joined our own; but no Frank or stranger of any kind had passed that way. {227}

Dilam, like most maritime villages on the north-eastern shore of the Persian Gulf, is inhabited by people of Arab race, who have carried on a mixed trade of commerce and piracy there from time immemorial. Of the two, the piracy seems to have been the more profitable trade, for since its suppression by the English or rather Indian navy, the villages have languished. The Arab idea of piracy by sea, is exactly the same as that of ghazús by land. Any stranger not in alliance with the tribe, or under its protection, is held to be an enemy, and his goods to be lawful prize. The greater part, however, of the armed expeditions, formerly made in the Gulf were directed by one tribe or village against another tribe or village, and were called in Arabic ghazús no less than if they had been made by land. The British Government, however, naturally found these ideas antiquated and the practice inconvenient, and in the interests of its commerce undertook, thirty or forty years ago, to keep the police of the Gulf. It compelled the Sheykhs of the various towns and villages to enter into what is called the Truce of the Gulf, and piracy has disappeared. Expeditions henceforth, if made at all, were to be made by land, and armed vessels, if met by an English cruiser, were confiscated. This sealed the fate of the coast villages, for the commerce of the Gulf alone being insufficient to support them, their inhabitants took up new quarters further inland, and from sailors became cultivators of the soil. The sea-port villages, where ports there are, still live on but poorly, and where there are no ports, the coast is abandoned. Dilam possesses no regular port, except for small boats, but the anchorage is good, and I believe the roadstead is considered one of the best in the Gulf. It has been talked of as the terminus of an Indo-Mediterranean railway.

Dilam now is a poor place of perhaps two hundred houses, but there are a few well-to-do people in it who presently came out to pay us their respects. The English name is well known on the coast, and there was no danger now of any lack of courtesy. We were besieged at once with hospitable offers of entertainment for man and beast, but as usual preferred our camp outside the town. This we placed on a strip of sand dunes fronting the sea, and dividing it from the level plain which runs inland ten miles to the foot of the hills. This strip was scattered over with thorn bushes, in one of which a pair of cormorants were sitting. Our visitors remonstrated with us on choosing such a spot, assuring us that it was full of poisonous snakes, but this no doubt was nonsense. Among the rest came a wild-looking man with a gun, who told us he was a Beluch, and sent by the governor of Dilam as a guard, to protect us during the night. He had been in Turkish service, and was now in the Persian. This was our first meeting with anything Indian. We liked the man. In the evening, when it was dark and all were gone, Wilfrid gave himself the luxury of bathing in salt water.

We had now done what few if any Europeans had done before,—come all the way by land from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf: our journey had been over two thousand miles.

_April_ 24.—There was now a great debate whether we should go on still by land for the other hundred miles which remained to us before we could reach Bushire, or whether, selling our camels here at Dilam, we should hire a sefineh, or native boat, to convey us with our things by sea. Wilfrid was much taken with this last idea, thinking that the arrangement would save us from another week’s toil in the overwhelming heat; but to me the sight of the rickety boats in which we should have had to trust ourselves and our horses to the mercy of the winds and waves, was sufficient to make me rejoice that the negotiation about a sea journey failed. Then it was decided to march on as before. There seemed something sad, too, in abandoning our camels here, and taking to the ships of the sea where they could not follow us; and though we knew our parting from them was anyhow at hand, it was a respite to take them on. We had got, from our long care of them, to take great pride in their condition, and they were now fat and free from mange, a triumph of management which only those who have travelled far and loved their camels will understand.

On the afternoon of the 24th, having spent just twenty-four hours at Dilam, we struck our tents, and began our last march.

The country bordering the Persian Gulf is here a dead flat, little, if anything, raised above the level of the sea. It is very barren, and impregnated for the most part with saltpetre, while here and there broad tidal creeks intersect it, wherever a stream runs into it from the hills. These formed the only obstacle to our march, and we travelled more easily now by night, for there began to be a moon.

I hurry over these last days, indeed the heat and the march absorbed all our faculties and thought. Our plan was to start about three o’clock in the afternoon, when usually a light breeze sprang up from the south-east, and travel on till the moon set, or till some creek barred passage for the night; then sleep upon the ground till dawn, and on again till eight. By that hour the sun had become a fierce and importunate thing, beating as if with a weight upon our heads; and, choosing a place where there was some show of pasture, we unloaded and turned out our beasts to graze, and then rigged up the tent and lay gasping under it in the breathless air, supporting life with tea. Hajji Mohammed now was only capable of tea-making. In all things else he had become idiotic, sitting half back on his beast, or in the tent, ejaculating: “Allah kerim,” God is generous. Our tempers all were severely tried, and we could do little now to help each other. Ghada and Rahim, Arab and Persian, were at daggers drawn. The horses’ backs for the first time were getting sore, and the dogs were run nearly off the soles of their feet. Shiekha and Sayad in a course in which they killed a gazelle were injured, the former having cut her feet badly on the glazed edges of some dry cracked mud she had galloped over. Lastly, and this was a terrible grief, one of the camels being badly loaded had slipped its pack, and in the fall Rasham had been crushed. The falcon’s leg was broken, and for the last three days of our journey, it seemed impossible he should live, clinging as he was obliged to do by one leg to the saddle. It was all like a night-mare, with no redeeming feature but that we knew now the end was close at hand.

On the 25th we reached Gunawa, on the 26th Bender Rik and on the 27th, Rohalla, where we crossed the river, and then marching on without halting through the night, we forded a shallow arm of the sea, and found ourselves the next morning about dawn upon the edge of the Khor, or salt lake of Bushire. As the sun rose Bushire itself was before us, and our long march was at an end.

It was now necessary to abandon our nomadic life, and shipping all our goods in a “baggara,” and leaving the unloaded camels to be driven round at low tide to the neck of the Bushire peninsula, we put ourselves and our dogs and bird on board, and with a fresh breeze ran in two hours to the custom-house landing. There, taken for Arabs, we had long to wait, but in the end procuring porters, walked in procession through the streets to the Residency. When we arrived at the door of the Residency, the well-dressed Sepoys in their smart European uniforms, barred us the door with their muskets. They refused to believe that such vagabonds, blackened with the sun, and grimed with long sleeping on the ground, were English gentlefolks or honest people of any sort.

APPENDIX.

[Picture: Granite range of Jebel Shammar. Effect of mirage]

NOTES ON THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NORTHERN ARABIA.

Arabia between latitude 34° and latitude 29°, may be described in general terms as a plain of sand-stone grit, or gravel, unbroken by any considerable range of hills, or by any continuous watercourse, if we except the Wady Hauran, which traverses it in the extreme north and in rainy seasons forms a succession of pools from the Harra, east of Jebel Hauran, to the Euphrates. This stony plain is known to the Bedouins as the Hamád or “Plain” _par excellence_; and though for the most part destitute of perennial pasture, or of water above ground, there are certain districts in it better provided which form their winter quarters. Such are the above mentioned Wady Hauran, the resort of the Bisshr Ánazeh, and the Wady-er-Rothy, of the Daffir, and Shammar. A few wells would seem to exist on the line of certain ancient routes, traversing the Hamád from various points on the Euphrates, and these form centres of attraction to the tribes. But their immediate neighbourhood is invariably barren, having been pitilessly browsed down for centuries. Routes of this sort connect Kâf with Shedadi, Meskakeh with Suk-esh-Shiókh, and Jôf with Maan. But the best frequented of them and that best supplied with water is the great Haj road from Meshhed Ali to Jebel Shammar, called the road of Zobeydeh. On this wells and reservoirs were constructed in the 9th century, by the widow of Harun-el-Rashid, and kháns, for the convenience of pilgrims, the ruins of which still exist.

The _Hamád_, starting from the level of the Euphrates, rises rapidly for a few miles through a district much intersected by ravines, to an upper plateau, which thenceforward has a fairly regular slope upwards towards the west and south of 8 to 10 feet per mile. The drainage of the plain would not, however, seem to be continuous towards the river; but to terminate in certain sandy hollows, known by the name _Buttn Jôf_ or _Bekka_, all signifying belly or receptacle, which may in former times have been lakes or small inland seas. These do not now at any time of the year hold water above ground, but at the depth of a few feet below the surface it may be found in wells. Such are the Buttn on the Haj road, in which the Wady-er-Rothy terminates, the oases of Taibetism and Jobba in the south, and I believe that of Teyma in the west; but the most remarkable of them all is without comparison the so-called Wady and Jôf of Sirhan.

The _Wady Sirhan_ bisects northern Arabia in a line parallel with the Euphrates and with the coast lines of the Peninsula, that is to say, nearly from N.W. to S.E. Immediately east and north of it the Hamád reaches its highest level, 2,500 feet above the sea; and the cliffs bounding it on this side are rather abrupt, corresponding, as I am inclined to think, with the general formation of the plain. This consists of a series of shelves set one above the other, with their edges opposed to the general slope; a formation very evident on the Haj road, where the traveller from Nejd, though in reality descending at a general rate of more than eight feet to the mile, is tempted to fancy himself on an ascending road, owing to the frequent _Akabas_ or steep cliffs he has to climb. I am inclined, therefore, to believe that the Wady Sirhan and the Jôf receive their drainage principally from the west, and that there is a second great watershed to the plain in the volcanic region, which, according to Guarmani, continues the Hauran ridge southwards to Tabuk. East of the Wady Sirhan I was struck by the absence of large tributary wadys such as one would expect if the area drained was a wide one. The Wady Sirhan, however, in the days when it was an inland sea, must have received contributions from all sides. It lies as a trough between two watersheds in the plain, and may have been supplied from Jebel Aja in the south, as it is still supplied from Jebel Hauran in the north. Its general level below that of the adjacent plain eastwards, is about 500 feet, and the plain may rise again still higher to the west.

Be this as it may, one thing is clear, namely, that the Wady was and is the great central receptacle of the plain, and corresponds pretty closely with its neighbour, the still existing Dead Sea, while the Wady-er-Rajel entering it from the north, holds towards it the position of the Jordan. Water in the Wady Sirhan is found at a nearly uniform level of 1850 feet; and this rule applies to that part of it which is known as the Jôf as well as to the rest. The abundance of water obtainable from its wells along a line extending 300 miles from the frontier of Syria, to within 200 of the frontier of Nejd, points out Wady Sirhan as the natural high road of Northern Arabia, and such it must from the earliest times have been. It is probable that in the days when Arabia was more populous than now, villages existed in it at intervals from Ezrak to Jôf. At present, the wells of these only remain, if we except the twin oases of Kâf and Ithery, still preserved in life by the salt lakes which supply them with an article of trade. These are but poor places, and their population can hardly exceed two hundred souls.

Jôf and Meskakeh are still flourishing towns, but I have reason to think their population has been over estimated by Mr. Palgrave. I cannot put the total number of houses in Jôf at more than 500, nor in Meskakeh at more than 600, while 100 houses are an ample allowance for Kara and the other hamlets of the Jôf oasis. This would give us a census of hardly 8,000 souls, whereas Mr. Palgrave puts it at 40,000. I do not, however, pretend to accuracy on this point.

With regard to the geology of the Hamád and the adjacent districts north of the Nefûd, I believe that sandstone is throughout the principal element. In the extreme north, indeed, limestone takes its place or conglomerate; but, with the exception of a single district about 100 miles south of Meshhed Ali on the Haj road, I do not think our route crossed any true calcareous rock. The cliffs which form the eastern boundary of the Wady Sirhan are, I think, all of sandstone, south at any rate of Jebel Mizmeh, as are certainly the hills of Jôf and Meskakeh, the rocks of Aalem and Jobba, and all the outlying peaks and ridges north-west of Haïl. These have been described as basaltic or of dark granite, the mistake arising from their colour which, though very varied, is in many instances black. The particular form of sandstone in which iron occurs, seems indeed to acquire a dark weathering with exposure, and unless closely examined, has a volcanic look. I do not, however, believe that south of latitude 31° the volcanic stones of the Haura are really met with; unless indeed it be west of the Wady Sirhan. Jebel Mizmeh, the highest point east of it, is alone perhaps basaltic. The whole of the Jôf district reminded me geologically of the sandstone formation of Sinaï, both in the excentric outline of its rocks, which are often mushroom shaped, and in their colour, where purple, violet, dark red, orange, white and even blue and green are found, the harder rock assuming generally an upper weathering of black. I can state positively that nothing basaltic occurs on the road between Jôf and Jebel Aja. Of Jebel Mizmeh I am less certain, as I did not actually touch the stone, but, if volcanic it be, it is the extreme limit of the Harra southwards. The tells of Kâf I certainly took to be of basalt when I passed them. But I did not then consider how easily I might be mistaken. On the whole I am inclined to place latitude 31° as the boundary of the volcanic district east of the Wady.

The bed of the Wady Sirhan is principally of sand, though in some places there is a clayey deposit sufficient to form subbkhas, or salt lakes, notably at Kâf and Ithery. About three days’ journey E.S.E. of Ithery, I heard of quicksands, but did not myself cross any ground holding water. The sand of the Wady Sirhan, like that of all the hollows both of the Hamád and of northern Nejd, is nearly white, and has little to distinguish it from the ordinary sand of the sea shore, or of the Isthmus of Suez. It is far less fertile than the red sand of the Nefûd, and is more easily affected by the wind. The ghada is found growing wherever the sand is pure, and I noticed it as far north as Kâf. In some parts of the Wady which appear to hold water in rainy seasons, there is much saltpetre on the surface, and there the vegetation is rank, but of little value as pasture. In the pure white sand, little else but the ghada grows. Wady Sirhan is the summer quarters of the Sherarat.

The _Harra_ is a high region of black volcanic boulders too well known to need description. It begins as far north as the latitude of Damascus, and stretches from the foot of the Hauran hills eastward for some fifty miles, when it gives place to the Hamád. Southwards it extends to Kâf, and forms the water shed of the plain east of the Wady Sirhan. According to Guarmani, it is found again west of the Wady, as far south as Tebuk. The eastern watershed of the Harra would seem with the Jebel Hauran to feed the Wady-er-Rajel, a bed sometimes containing running water, and on its opposite slope the Wady Hauran which reaches the Euphrates. The Harra is more plentifully supplied with water than the Hamád, and has a reputation of fertility wherever the soil is uncovered by the boulders.

_The Nefûd_.—A little north of latitude 29′, the Hamád, which has to this point been a bare plain of gravel broken only by occasional hollows, the beds of ancient seas, suddenly becomes heaped over with high ridges of pure red sand. The transition from the smooth hard plain to the broken dunes of the Nefûd is very startling. The sand rises abruptly from the plain without any transition whatever; and it is easy to see that the plain is not really changed but only hidden from the eye by a super-incumbent mass. Its edge is so well defined that it is hardly an exaggeration to say that with one foot a man may stand upon the Hamád, and with the other on the Nefûd; nor is there much irregularity in its outline. The limit of the sand for several hundred miles runs almost evenly from east to west, and it is only at these extremities that it becomes broken and irregular. Such, at least, I believe to be the case; and if, as seems probable, the whole drift of sand has been shaped by prevailing easterly winds, the phenomenon is less strange than might be thought.

The great Nefûd of Northern Arabia extends from the wells of Lina in the east to Teyma in the west, and from the edge of the Jôf basin in the north to the foot of Jebel Aja in the south. In its greatest breadth it is 150 miles, and in its greatest length 400 miles, but the whole of this is not continuous sand. The extreme eastern portion (and perhaps also the extreme western) is but a series of long strips, from half a mile to five miles in breadth, running parallel to each other, and separated by intervening strips of solid plain. Nor is the sand everywhere of equal depth; the intermittent Nefûds are comparatively shallow, and would seem to bear a certain proportion in depth to the breadth of the strips. Thus the highest sand ridge crossed by the Haj road is barely eighty feet, while others are but fifty and twenty feet. The continuous Nefûd on the other hand, between Jôf and Haïl, has a depth of at least two hundred feet. The intermittent ridges may possibly suggest an explanation of the original formation of the mass. It would seem as if the wind acting upon the sand drove it at first into lines, and that, as these grew broader and deeper, they at last filled up the intervening space, and formed themselves into a continuous mass at their lee end. If this be the case, the intermittent ridges show the direction in which the solid mass of sand is advancing, the direction, that is, contrary to that of the wind. I leave this deduction, however, to more competent persons than myself to draw, contenting myself with recording the fact.

The red sand of the Nefûd is of a different texture from the ordinary white sand of the desert, and seems to obey mechanical laws of its own. It is coarser in texture and far less volatile, and I am inclined to think that the ordinary light winds which vary sandy surfaces elsewhere leave it very little affected. A strong wind alone, amounting to a gale, could raise it high in the air. It is remarkable that whereas the light white sand is generally found in low hollows, or on the lee side of hills, the red sand of the Nefûd has been heaped up into a lofty mass high above the highest part of the plain. The Hamád where the Nefûd begins is 2,200 feet above the sea. No traveller can see this desert of red sand for the first time without acknowledging its individuality. It is as little like the ordinary sand dunes of the desert, as a glacier is like an ordinary snow field in the Alps. It seems, like the glacier, to have a law of being peculiar to itself, a law of increase, of motion, almost of life. One is struck with these in traversing it, and one seems to recognise an organism.

[Picture: Horse-hoof shaped hollows]

The most remarkable phenomenon of the Nefûd are the long lines of horse-hoof shaped hollows, called _fuljes_, with which its surface is pitted; these are only observable where the sand has attained a depth of from 80 to 100 feet, and are consequently seldom found in the intermittent portion of the Nefûd; while it is remarkable that in the very centre of all, where it might be supposed the sand was deepest, the fuljes are less deep than towards the northern and southern edges, while the lines in which they run become more regular. Indeed, for some miles on either side of Aalem, which marks the centre of the Nefûd, there are no large fuljes; but their strings are so regular as to form, with the intervening spaces, a kind of shallow ridge and furrow running nearly east and west, and not altogether unlike, on a gigantic scale, those ridges in which meadows are sometimes laid down in England. From the top of Aalem this formation was very distinct.

The fuljes themselves are singularly uniform in shape, though varying in size. They represent very closely horse tracks on an enormous scale, that is to say a half-circle, deep at the curved end or toe, and shelving up to the level of the plain at the square end or heel. The sides of the former are as precipitous as it is in the nature of sand to be, and they terminate abruptly where they meet the floor of the fulj. This floor, sloping downwards towards the toe at an angle of about 70°, and scored with water-courses converging to a centre, roughly represents the frog, so that in plan the whole hollow would appear as in the woodcut A; while in section it would appear as in woodcut B. It is necessary, therefore, in entering a fulj on horseback, or with camels, to approach it from the east; but on foot one can slip down the sand at any point. I noticed that just west of the deep fuljes there is generally a high mound of sand, which adds considerably to their apparent depth and to the delusion of their being artificial in their origin, as though the sand scooped out has been thrown up by a digger.

[Picture: Plan view of hollow]

[Picture: Section view of hollow]

The size and depth of the fuljes varies greatly; some are, as it were, rudimentary only, while others attain a depth of 200 feet and more. The deepest of those I measured proved to be 280 feet, including the sand hill, which may have been 60 feet above the general level of the plain; its width seemed about a quarter of a mile. At the bottom of these deep fuljes, solid ground is reached, and there is generally a stony deposit there, such as I have often noticed in sandy places where water has stood. This bare space is seldom more than a few paces in diameter. I heard of, but did not see, one which contained a well. The wells of Shagik do not stand in a fulj, but in a valley clear of sand, and those of Jobba in a broad circular basin 400 feet below the level of the Nefûd. The fuljes, I have said, run in strings irregularly from east to west, corresponding in this with their individual direction. {244} They are most regularly placed in the neighbourhood of the rocks of Aalem, but their size there is less than either north or south of it. The shape of the fuljes seems unaffected by the solid ground beneath, for at the rocks of Ghota there is a large fulj pierced by the rocks, but which otherwise retains its semi-circular form.

The physical features of the Nefûd, whether they be ridges or mounds or fuljes, appear to be permanent in their character. The red sand of which they are composed is less volatile than the common sand of the desert and, except on the summits of the mounds and ridges, seems little affected by the wind. It is everywhere, except in such positions, sprinkled over with brushwood ghada trees and tufts of grass. The sides of the fuljes especially are well clothed, and this could hardly be the case if they were liable to change with a change of wind. In the Nefûd between Jobba and Igneh I noticed well defined sheep tracks ascending the steep slopes of the fuljes spirally, and these I was assured were by no means recent. Moreover, the levelled track made according to tradition by Abu Zeyd is still discernible in places where cuttings were originally made. Sticks and stones left in the Nefûd by travellers, the bones of camels and even their droppings, remain for years uncovered, and those who cross do so by the knowledge of landmarks constantly the same. I am inclined to think, then, that the Nefûds represent a state of comparative repose in Nature. Either the prevailing winds which heaped them up formerly are less violent now than then, or the fuljes are due to exceptional causes which have not occurred for many years. That wind in some form, and at some time, has been their cause I do not doubt, but the exact method of its action I will not affect to determine. Mr. Blandford, an authority on these subjects, suggests that the fuljes are spaces still unfilled with sand; and if this be so, the strings of fuljes may in reality mark the site of such bare strips as one finds in the intermittent Nefûds. It is conceivable that as the spaces between the sand ridges grew narrower, the wind blocked between them acquired such a rotatory motion as to have thrown bridges of sand across, and so, little by little, filled up all spaces but these. But to me no theory that has been suggested is quite satisfactory. What cause is it that keeps the floors of the deeper fuljes bare; floors so narrow that it would seem a single gale should obliterate them, or even the gradual slipping of the sand slopes above them? There must be some continuous cause to keep these bare. Yet where is the cause now in action sufficient to have heaped up such walls or dug out such pits?

Another strange phenomenon is that of such places as Jobba. There, in the middle of the Nefûd, without apparent reason, the sand is pushed high back on all sides from a low central plain of bare ground three or four miles across. North, south, east, and west the sand rises round it in mountains 400 and 500 feet high, but the plain itself is bare as a threshing-floor. It would seem as if this red sand could not rest in a hollow place, and that the fact of Jobba’s low level alone kept it free. Jobba, if cleared of sand all round, would, I have no doubt, present the same feature as Jôf or Taibetism. It would appear as a basin sunk in the plain, an ancient receptacle of the drainage from Mount Aja. Has it only in recent times been surrounded thus with sand? There is a tradition still extant there of running water.

_Jebel Shammar_.—A little north of latitude 29°, the Nefûd ceases as suddenly as it began. The stony plain reappears unchanged geologically, but more broken by the proximity of a lofty range of hills, the Jebel Aja. Between these, however, and the sand, there is an interval of at least five miles where the soil is of sandstone, mostly red, the material out of which the Nefûd sand was made, but mixed with a still coarser sand washed down from the granite range. This rises rapidly to the foot of the hills. There, with little preliminary warning, we come upon unmistakeable red granite cropping in huge rounded masses out of the plain, and rising to a height of 1000 and 1500 feet. The shape of these rocks is very fantastic, boulder being set on boulder in enormous pinnacles; and I noticed that many of them were pierced with those round holes one finds in granite. The texture of the rock is coarse, and precisely similar to that of Jebel Musa in the Sinaï peninsula, as is the scanty vegetation with which the wadys are clothed. There are the same thorny acacia, and the wild palm, and the caper plant as there, and I heard of the same animals inhabiting the hills.

The _Jebel Aja_ range has a main direction of E. by N. and W. by S. Of this I am convinced by the observations I was able to take when approaching it from the N.W. The weather was clear and I was able to see its peaks running for many miles in the direction mentioned. With regard to its length I should put it, by the accounts I heard, at something like 100 miles, and its average breadth may possibly be 10 or 15. In this I differ from the German geographers, who give Jebel Aja a direction of N.E. by S.W., on the authority I believe of Wallin. But as they also place Haïl on the southern slope of the hills, a gross error, I do not consider the discrepancy as of any importance.

Of _Jebel Selman_, I can only speak according to the distant view I had of it. But I should be much surprised to learn that any portion of it passed west of the latitude of Haïl. That portion of it visible from Haïl certainly lies to the S.E., and at an apparent distance of 30 miles, with no indication of its being continued westwards. It is by all accounts of the same rock (red granite) as Jebel Aja.

Between Jebel Selman and the Nefûd lie several isolated hills rising from broken ground. All these are of the sandstone formation of the Hamád, and have no geological connection with Aja or Selman. Such are Jebels Jildiyeh, Yatubb, and Jilfeh, Jildiyeh the tallest having a height of perhaps 3800 feet above the sea, or 300 above Haïl.

Haïl lies due east of the extreme eastern buttress of Jebel Aja, and not south of it as has been supposed. Both it and Kefar, as indeed all the towns and villages of the district, lie in a single broad wady, draining the south-eastern rocks of Aja, and sweeping round them northwards to the Nefûd. The height of Haïl is 3,500 feet above the sea, and the plain rises southwards behind it, almost imperceptibly. The small isolated hills close to the town, belong, I think, geologically to the granite range. The main drainage of the plain south of Haïl would seem to be received by the Wady Hannasy, whose course is north, so that the highest part of the plain is probably between Aja and Selman, and may be as much as 4,000 feet above the sea. This, I take it, is the highest plateau of Arabia—as Aja is its highest mountain, 5000 to 5600 feet,—an all sufficient reason for including Jebel Shammar in the term Nejd or Highland.

I feel that I am taking a very serious liberty with geographers in placing Haïl 60 miles farther south than where it is found in our modern maps. I consider, however, that until its position has been scientifically determined, I am justified in doing this by the fact, that my dead reckoning gave it this position, not only according to the out journey, but by the return one, measured from Meshhed Ali. I am so much in the habit of measuring distances by a rough computation of pace and time, that I doubt if I am much out in the present instance. On this, however, I forbear to dogmatise.

I had hoped to conclude this sketch with a list of plants found in the Nefûd. But our small collection has proved to be so pulverised by its journey, that Sir Joseph Hooker, who kindly undertook to look over it, has been able to identify hardly half-a-dozen specimens.

Of wild animals, I have ascertained the existence of the ostrich, the leopard, the wolf, the fox, the hyæna, the hare, the jerboa, the white antelope, and the gazelle in the Nefûd; and of the ibex and the marmot in Jebel Aja. Of these it may be remarked that the ostrich is the most valuable and perhaps the most rare; I had not the luck to see a single wild specimen, though once a fresh egg was brought me. Neither did I see, except in confinement, the white antelope (Oryx beatrix), which is the most important quadruped of the Nefûd. This antelope frequents every part of the red sand desert, and I found its track quite one hundred miles from any spring, so that the Arabs may be pardoned for affirming that it never drinks. The hare too is found and plentifully throughout; but the gazelle haunts only the outskirts within reach of the hills or of wells where the Arabs are accustomed to water their flocks. The same may be said of the wolf, the fox, and the hyæna, which seem fairly abundant. The tracks of these grew frequent as we approached Jebel Aja, and it may be assumed that it is there they have their lairs, making use of the Nefûd as a hunting ground. The Jebel Aja, a granite range not less than 5,500 feet above the sea, furnishes the water required by these animals, not indeed in streams, for none such are found in the range, but in springs and natural tanks where rain water is stored. These seem by all accounts to be fairly numerous; and if so, the ancient tradition of a wild horse having also been found in the Nefûd, may not be so improbable as at first sight it seems. There is certainly pasture and good pasture for the horse in every part of it. The sheep of the Nefûd requires water but once in a month, and the Nefûd horse may have required no more.

Of reptiles the Nefûd boasts by all accounts the horned viper and the cobra, besides the harmless grey snake called Suliman, which is common everywhere. There are also immense numbers of lizards.

Birds are less numerous, but I noticed the frilled bustard Houbara, and one or two hawks and buzzards. A large black buzzard was especially plentiful. The Bedouins of Nejd train the Lanner falcon, the only noble hawk they possess, to take hares and bustards. In the Nefûd, most of the common desert birds are found, the desert lark, the wheatear, and a kind of wren which inhabits the ghada and yerta bushes.

Of insects I noticed the dragon-fly, several beetles, the common house-fly, and ants, whose nests, made of some glutinous substance mixed with sand, may be seen under these bushes. I was also interested at finding, sunning itself on the rocks of Aalem, a specimen of the painted lady butterfly, so well known for its adventurous flights. This insect could not well have been bred at any nearer point than Syria or the Euphrates, respectively 400 and 300 miles distant. Fleas do not exist beyond the Nefûd, and our dogs became free of them as soon as we reached Haïl. Locusts were incredibly numerous everywhere, and formed the chief article of food for man, beast, and bird. They are of two colours, red and green, the latter being I believe the male, while the former is the female. They both are excellent eating, but the red locust is preferred.

Sand-storms are probably less common in the Nefûd than in deserts where the sand is white, for reasons already named; nor do the Bedouins seem much to dread them. They are only dangerous where they last long enough to delay travellers far from home beyond the time calculated on for their supplies. No tales are told of caravans overwhelmed or even single persons. Those who perish in the Nefûd perish of thirst. I made particular inquiries as to the simoom or poisonous wind mentioned by Mr. Palgrave, but could gain no information respecting it.

In the Jebel Aja an ibex is found, specimens of which I saw at Haïl, and a mountain gazelle, and I heard of a leopard, probably the same as that found in Sinaï. The only animal there, which may be new, is one described to me as the Webber, an animal of the size of the hare, which climbs the wild palms and eats the dates. It is described as sitting on its legs and whistling, and from the description I judged it to be a marmot or a coney (hierax). But Lord Lilford, whom I spoke to on the subject, assures me it is in all probability the Lophiomys Imhausii.

W. S. B.

[Picture: Lophiomys Imhausii]

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE RISE AND DECLINE OF WAHHABISM IN ARABIA.

COMPILED PRINCIPALLY FROM MATERIALS SUPPLIED BY LT.-COLONEL E. C. ROSS, H.M.’S RESIDENT AT BUSHIRE.

AT the beginning of last century, Nejd, and Arabia generally, with the exception of Oman, Yemen, and Hejaz, was divided into a number of independent districts or townships, each ruled by a tribal chief on the principle already explained of self-government under Bedouin protection. Religion, except in its primitive Arabian form, was almost forgotten by the townspeople, and little if any connection was kept up between them and the rest of the Mahometan world.

In 1691, however, Mohammed Ibn Abd-el-Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi sect, was born at Eiyanah in Aared, his father being of the Ibn Temim tribe, the same which till lately held power in Jebel Shammar. In his youth he went to Bussorah, and perhaps to Damascus, to study religious law, and after making the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina returned to his native country, and soon after married in the village of Horeylama near Deriyeh. There and at Eyaneh he began his preaching, and about the year 1742 succeeded in converting Mohammed Ibn Saoud, Emir of Deriyeh, the principal town of Aared.

The chief features of his teaching were:—

1st. The re-establishment of Mahometan beliefs as taught by the Koran, and the rejection of those other beliefs accepted by the Sunis on tradition.

2nd. A denial of all spiritual authority to the Ottoman or any other Caliph, and of all special respect due to sherifs, saints, dervishes, or other persons.

3rd. The restoration of discipline in the matter of prayer, fasting, and pilgrimage.

4th. A strict prohibition of wine, tobacco, games of chance, magic, silk and gold in dress, and of tombstones for the dead.

Ibn Abd-el-Wahhab lived to an advanced age at Deriyeh, and died in 1787.

Mohammed Ibn Saoud, the first Wahhabi Emir, belonged to the Mesalikh tribe of Ánazeh, itself an offshoot of the Welled Ali of western Nejd (deriving, according to the account of the Ibn Saouds themselves, from the Beni Bekr Wail, through Maane Ibn Rabiia, king of Nejd, Hasa and Oman in the 15th century). He embraced the tenets of Abd-el-Wahhab, as has been said, in the year 1742, and was followed in his conversion by many of the inhabitants of Deriyeh and the neighbouring districts, who at last so swelled the number of Ibn Saoud’s adherents, that he became the head of the reformed religion, and according to the Wahhabi pretensions the head of all Islam. Guided by the counsels of Ibn Abd-el-Wahhab, and carried forward on the wave of the new teaching, he gradually established his authority over all Aared and eventually over the greater part of Nejd. His hardest contests there were with the people of Riad, who, under their Sheykh, Mohammed Ibn Daus, long held out, and with the Ibn Ghureyr (Areyr or Aruk), Sheykhs of the Beni Khaled. These latter, who owned the districts of Hasa and Katif, though forced to tribute, have always been hostile to the Ibn Saouds, and are so at the present day. Another opponent, bitterly hostile to the new religion, was the Emir’s brother, Theniyan, whose descendants still belong to the anti-Wahhabi faction in Aared. Mohammed Ibn Saoud died in 1765 and was succeeded by his son Abdel Aziz.

Abd-el-Aziz Ibn Saoud, a man of energy and ambition, completed the subjugation of Nejd and Hasa, and carried the Wahhabi arms as far northwards as Bussorah, and even it would seem to Mesopotamia and the Sinjar Hills. These latter raids so greatly alarmed the government of the Sultan, that in 1798 a Turkish expeditionary force was sent by land from Bagdad into Hasa, under the command of one Ali Pasha, secretary to Suliman Pasha the Turkish Valy. It consisted of 4000 or 5000 regular infantry, with artillery, and a large contingent of Bedouin Arabs collected from the Montefik, Daffir, and other tribes hostile to the Wahhabi power. These marched down the coast and took possession of the greater part of Hasa, but having failed to reduce Hofhuf, a fortified town, were returning northwards when their retreat was intercepted by Saoud, the Emir’s son, who took up a position under the walls of Taj. A battle was then imminent, but it was averted by the mediation of the Arab Sheykhs, and Ali Pasha was allowed to continue his retreat to Bussorah, while Saoud retook possession of Hasa and punished those who had submitted to the Turks. This affair contributed much to the extension and renown of the Wahhabi power; and offers of submission came in from all sides. The Emir, nevertheless, thought it prudent to endeavour to conciliate the Turkish Valy, and despatched horses and other valuable presents to Bagdad.

The Wahhabi State was now become a regular Government, with a centralised administration, a system of tax instead of tribute, and a standing army which marched under the command of Saoud Ibn Saoud, the Emir’s eldest son. The Emir, Abd-el-Aziz himself, appears to have been a man of peace, simple in his dress and habits, and extremely devout. Saoud, however, was a warrior, and it was through him that the Wahhabis pushed their fortunes. There seems, nevertheless, to have been always a strong party of opposition in the desert, where the Bedouins clung to the traditions of their independence and chafed under the religious discipline imposed on them. Kasim and Jebel Shammar, both of them centres of Bedouin life, never accepted the Wahhabi tenets with any enthusiasm, and the people of Hasa, an industrious race standing in close commercial relations with Persia, accepted the rule of the Ibn Saouds only on compulsion. Southern Nejd alone seems to have been fanatically Wahhabi, but their fanaticism was their strength and long carried all before it.

In 1799, Saoud made his first pilgrimage to Mecca, at the head of 4000 armed followers, and in the following year he repeated the act of piety. Passage through Nejd, however, seems to have been forbidden to the Shiah pilgrims whom the Wahhabis regarded as infidels, and a violent feeling was roused against the Wahhabis in Persia and in the Pashalik of Bagdad, where most of the inhabitants are Shiahs. It ended in the assassination of the Emir Abd-el-Aziz by a Persian seyyid from Kerbela, in 1800, at the age of 82 years. (Colonel Ross gives 1803 as the date of this event, but, according to members of the Ibn Saoud family themselves, it happened three years earlier; a date which accords better with other events.)

In 1801, a first expedition was despatched against Oman under Selim-el-Hark, one of Saoud’s lieutenants; and in the same year Saoud himself, to avenge his father’s murder, marched northwards with 20,000 men to the Euphrates, and on the 20th of April sacked Kerbela, whence, having put all the male inhabitants to the sword and razed the tomb of Husseyn, he retired the same afternoon with an immense booty. The success of this attack, made in the name of a reformed Islam upon the stronghold of the Shiah heretics and within the nominal dominions of the Sultan, spread consternation throughout the Mussulman world.

In 1802 the island of Bahreyn was reduced to tribute, and the Wahhabi power extended down the Eastern coast as far as Batinah on the Sea of Oman, and several of the Oman tribes embraced the Wahhabi faith, and became tributary to Ibn Saoud.

In 1803, a quarrel having occurred between the Wahhabi Emir and Ghalib the Sherif of Mecca, Saoud marched into Hejaz with a large army, reduced Taif, and on the 1st of May entered Mecca, where he deposed the Sherif and appointed a Governor of his own. He did not, however, appear there as an enemy but as a pilgrim, and his troops were restrained from plunder, the only act of violence permitted being the destruction of the large tombs in the city, so that, as they themselves said, “there did not remain an idol in all that pure city.” Then they abolished the taxes and customs; destroyed all instruments for the use of tobacco and the dwellings of those who sold hashish or who lived in open wickedness. Saoud returned to Nejd, having received the submission of all Central Arabia, including the holy city of Medina. This may be considered as the zenith of the Wahhabi power. Law and order prevailed under a central government, and the Emir on his return to Deriyeh issued a proclamation promising strict protection of life, property, and commerce throughout his dominions. This fortunate state of things continued for several years.

In 1807 Saoud once more marched to the Euphrates and laid siege to Meshhed Ali, but failed to capture that walled town and was forced to retreat.

In 1809 he collected an army of 30,000 men with the intention of attacking Bagdad, but disturbances having broken out in Nejd he abandoned his intention and marched instead with his army on pilgrimage to Mecca, whence he returned home by Medina, now annexed to his empire.

In Oman the Wahhabi arms continued to gain ground, and their name seems first to have become known in India in connexion with piratical raids committed on the Indian Sea. This led to an expedition undertaken in 1809 by the English against Ras-el-Kheymah on the Persian Gulf. But in spite of this, the Wahhabis advanced next year to Mattrah, a few miles only from Muscat, and to Bahreyn, which was occupied by them and received a Wahhabi governor.

In 1810 Saoud invaded Irak, and in 1811 his son Abdallah arrived close to Bagdad on a plundering raid, while another Wahhabi army, under Abu Nocta, a slave of the Emir’s, invaded Syria and held Damascus to ransom. In Syria, indeed, for some years tribute had been paid by the desert towns of the Hauran and the districts east of Jordan to Nejd; and it seemed probable that the new Arabian Empire would extend itself to the Mediterranean, and Abd-el-Wahhabi’s reformation to all the Arab race. A coalition of the Northern Bedouins, however, under Eddrehi Ibn Shaalan, Sheykh of the Roala, saved Damascus from Abu Nocta, and after sustaining a defeat from them on the Orontes the Wahhabi army returned to Nejd.

The danger, however, to orthodox Islam was now recognized, and in the same year, 1811, the Ottoman Sultan, urged by his Suni subjects to recover the holy places of Arabia to orthodox keeping, resolved on serious measures against Nejd. Matters had been brought to a crisis the year before by an act of fanaticism on the part of Saoud which had roused the indignation of all sects in Islam against him. On the occasion of a fourth pilgrimage which he had then made, he had caused the tomb of the prophet to be opened at Medina and the rich jewels and precious relics it contained to be sold or distributed among his soldiers, an act of sacrilege which it was impossible to tolerate. The Sultan was reminded that one of the claims on which his ancestors of the House of Ottoman rested their tenure to the Caliphate was that they possessed the Holy Places, and he was called upon to assert his protectorate of Mecca and Medina by force. It is probable, indeed, that only the great interests at stake in Europe during the previous years of the century had delayed vigorous action. The invasion of Egypt by Napoleon, and the disorganisation of the Turkish Empire resulting from it, had contributed not a little to the Wahhabi successes. Now, however, Egypt was under the rule of Mehemet Ali, and to his vigorous hands the Sultan entrusted the duty of punishing the Ibn Saouds. The absence of the Emir’s armies in the north gave a favourable opportunity to the Egyptian arms, a force of 8000 men was despatched to Hejaz, and Mecca was occupied by Tusun Pasha without resistance. On advancing inland, however, beyond Taif, Tusun was met by Abdullah Ibn Saoud, and defeated in the desert with the loss of half his army; nor was he able to do more than hold his own in Mecca until relieved from Egypt.

In 1813, Mehemet Ali, impatient of his son’s failure, went in person to Arabia, and seized Ghalib the Sherif, whom he suspected of Wahhabism, at Mecca and sent him prisoner to Cairo. Tusun was again entrusted with the command of an expedition destined for Nejd, but was again met and defeated beyond Taif in the spring of 1814.

In April 1814, while preparations were being pressed for a renewal of the campaign, Saoud Ibn Saoud the Wahhabi Emir, died, and Abdallah, his son and recognized successor, was acknowledged without opposition, chief of the Wahhabis.

In January 1815, Mehemet Ali inflicted a first serious defeat on the Wahhabi army, and Tusun having occupied Medina advanced into Kasim, in northern Nejd, where he took possession of Ras, at that time capital of the district.

Negotiations were opened from that point with the Emir Abdallah who had retired with his army to Aneyzeh; and these resulted to the astonishment of every one (for Abdallah still had a powerful army) in the Emir’s submission.

It is probable that in thus yielding, Abdallah felt his position in Nejd insecure. The Bedouins though subdued had never accepted the Wahhabi rule but on compulsion, and many of them were openly siding with the Turks, while his late defeat had destroyed much of his soldier’s prestige. Be that as it may, the Emir agreed to the following stringent terms at Aneyzeh.

1st. He acknowledged as suzerain the Sultan of Turkey.

2nd. He agreed to give hostages for future conduct, and even, if required, to present himself in person at Constantinople.

3rd. He would deliver over Deriyeh, his capital, to a governor appointed by the Sultan; and

4th. He would restore the jewels plundered from Medina on the occasion of his father’s visit in 1810.

On these conditions peace was concluded between the Emir and Tusun, and Abdallah gave the hostages required. He did not, however, give over Deriyeh, but proceeded on the contrary to prepare it for a siege. Neither did Mehemet Ali, when he learned that Abdallah refused to come to Egypt in person, nullify the peace. Tusun was recalled, and Ibrahim, his second son, appointed commander of the army in Arabia in his stead.

In September 1816 Ibrahim Pasha left Egypt at the head of a considerable force and proceeded to the scene of action.

The first encounter seems to have taken place at Ma’ Wiyah, where Abdallah ibn Saoud attacked the Egyptian army and suffered a signal defeat. On this occasion Ibrahim Pasha put to death all prisoners taken. The pasha then advanced with 4000 infantry and 1200 cavalry, besides contingents of the friendly Arab tribes, Beni-Kháled, Muteyr, ’Oteybah, Harb, and Suhool against Ras, which was held by a Wahhabi garrison. Before this town Ibrahim Pasha suffered a serious check, and after besieging it for three and a half months, and losing 3000 men, he was obliged to agree to an armistice and abandon the siege. The Egyptian general, however, masking Ras, continued to advance eastwards on ’Aneyzah and the Emir retired south to Bereydah. After six days’ bombardments, the forts of ’Aneyzah surrendered, and the entire district of Kasim then submitted to the Egyptian commander. Abdallah retired on Shakrah, a town in the district of Woshem, and Ibrahim Pasha took Bereydah, where he halted two months for reinforcements. During this time the pasha succeeded in detaching from the Wahhabi cause many of those Bedouins who still remained faithful to Ibn Saoud. Among the first to join the Egyptians had been Feysul-el-Dawish, Sheikh of the Muteyr, who, animated by an ancient feud with the Ibn Saouds, was readily persuaded by Ibrahim with the promise of being installed Governor of Nejd, a promise which the pasha had no intention of fulfilling.

Having received at Bereydah a reinforcement of 800 men, and two guns, as well as supplies of provisions and ammunition, Ibrahim Pasha was able to continue his advance on Shakrah at the head of 4500 Turkish, Albanian, and Moorish troops in addition to Arab contingents. About 10,000 camels accompanied the force, and the infantry soldiers were usually mounted two and two on camels. The Emir Abdallah meantime retired on his capital, wasting the country before the enemy, and sending the surplus cattle and flocks to Hasa. This was in the latter part of December, 1817. In the following month the Turkish army appeared before Shakrah, which was regularly approached under the direction of a French engineer, M. Vaissière, and capitulated on the 22nd of January, 1818. The lives of the garrison were spared, but they were deprived of their arms, and had to engage not to serve again under the Wahhabi Emir. Some time after, when Deriyeh had fallen, Ibrahim Pasha caused the fortifications of Shakrah to be demolished.

Abdallah ibn Saoud had now retreated to Deriyeh and before following him up to the capital Ibrahim Pasha judged it advisable to turn aside from the direct route to take the town of Dhoramah. At that place he encountered a spirited resistance, several of his men being killed. In revenge for this, the male inhabitants were put to the sword, the town pillaged and destroyed, and the women given up to the brutality of the Turkish soldiery. Only the governor and his guard, who had shut themselves in a citadel, were suffered to escape with their lives.

Detained by rains, it was March before Ibrahim Pasha advanced on Deriyeh which town he invested in April with a force of 5500 horse and foot and twelve pieces of artillery, including two mortars and two howitzers. Shortly after, reinforcements and convoys of supplies reached the Turkish camp from Medina and Busrah. The siege operations were for some time conducted without any success to the Turkish arms, and in the latter part of the month of May an explosion having occurred by which the pasha lost all his spare ammunition, his position became extremely critical. Indeed, the indomitable personal courage and good example of Ibrahim alone saved the army from disaster. The troops suffered much from dysentery and ophthalmia, and the Wahhabis thought to overwhelm the besiegers by a sortie in force. The attack was however repulsed and the opportunity lost to the besieged; for soon after the engagement caravans with fresh supplies of ammunition and provisions reached the Egyptian camp, and then reinforcements of infantry and cavalry. News was also received of the approach of Khalil Pasha from Egypt with 3000 fresh troops. Early in September the Emir sent a flag of truce to request an audience of the pasha. This was accorded, and the Wahhabi chief was kindly received, but was informed that the first and indispensable condition of peace was the attendance of Abdallah in person at Cairo. The Emir asked twenty four hours for reflection, which delay was granted, and at the expiration of the time he returned to the pasha’s camp and intimated his willingness to fulfil the condition imposed, provided Ibrahim would guarantee that his life would be spared. Ibrahim Pasha replied that he had no authority himself to bind the Sultan and the Viceroy on that point, but that he thought both were too generous to put him to death. Abdallah then pleaded for his family and prayed that Deriyeh and his adherents there should be spared. These terms were conceded and a peace concluded. The ill-starred Emir at once set out on his journey under a strong escort, and on reaching Cairo, was courteously received by Mehemet Ali, who forwarded him to Constantinople with a strong appeal for his pardon. The government of the Porte was, however, implacable: Abdallah ibn Saoud was paraded ignominiously through the streets of the capital for three days, and then, with his companions in captivity, was publicly beheaded.

Thus ends the first epoch of the Wahhabi rule in Nejd. During the twenty-three years which followed the destruction of Deriyeh, Nejd continued to be a province of Egypt; sometimes occupied by Egyptian troops, sometimes tributary only. When Ibrahim Pasha first appeared in Nejd, he commanded the sympathies of a great part of the population, and especially in Jebel Shammar, Kasim, and Hasa, where he was received rather as a deliverer from the Wahhabi yoke, than as a foreign conqueror. No Turkish army had previously been seen in Central Arabia; and the Arabs of the interior, when not fanatically biased, had no special hatred of them. But the Turkish and Albanian troops left in garrison by Ibrahim soon excited by their cruelties the enmity of the people; and as early as 1822 a first massacre of a Turkish garrison occurred at Riad, the new capital of Nejd (for Deriyeh was never rebuilt). This was followed in 1823 and 1824 by a successful rising of the Arabs under Turki ibn Saoud (see pedigree), and the re-establishment of his family as sovereign in Aared. Turki seized Riad, drove out the Egyptian troops still remaining in Nejd, and as leader of a popular movement against the foreigner, was recognized Emir by most of the tribes of Central Arabia.

For ten years—1824 to 1834—Turki consolidated his power in Nejd, Hasa, and even Oman, the whole coast of the Persian Gulf to Ras-el-Had acknowledging him and paying tribute. He, however, himself paid tribute to the Government of Egypt, which accorded countenance to his action in Arabia.

In 1834, Turki ibn Saoud was assassinated by a relative, Meshari, who was in turn put to death by Turki’s son, Feysul, now recognised Emir in his father’s stead.

In 1838, Feysul, having neglected or refused to pay tribute to Egypt, Mehemet Ali sent a force under Jomail Bey to depose him, and to establish Khalid, a rival claimant of the Ibn Saoud family, as Emir at Riad. Feysul then fled to Hasa, and Khalid, supported by a portion of the people of Aared and by reinforcements from Egypt under Khurshid Pasha, usurped the throne, but was shortly set aside by the Egyptian commanders, who established Egyptian government throughout Nejd. Feysul meanwhile had surrendered to them, and been sent prisoner to Cairo. The second Egyptian occupation of Nejd lasted for two years. Then the greater part of the troops were recalled, and Khalid left as Valy for the Turkish government.

In 1842, Abdallah ibn Theneyan ibn Saoud headed a revolt against Khalid, who with his few remaining Egyptian troops was ejected from Riad; and Feysul, having escaped from his prison in Cairo, reappeared in Aared, and was everywhere acknowledged as Emir. From this time neither the Egyptian nor the Turkish government have exercised any authority in Nejd.

Under Feysul, whose reign lasted after his restoration for twenty-three years, nearly all the former territories of the Wahhabi empire were re-conquered. Oman in 1845 was reduced to tribute; Hasa was forced to accept Wahhabi governors, and in Feysul’s last years Kasim also was conquered. Jebel Shammar, which on the overthrow of the first Nejd empire by Ibrahim Pasha had reverted to independence under the Ibn Ali family of the Beni Temim, was now also annexed nominally to the Wahhabi state. With Feysul’s help, Abdallah ibn Rashid, Sheykh of the Shammar, established himself at Haïl, and paying tribute to the Emir acknowledged his sovereignty. Only in Bahreyn were his arms unsuccessful, and that owing to the support given to the Bahreyn sheykhs by England.

In the later years of his life Feysul became blind, and the management of affairs fell to his son Abdallah, who by his fanaticism and his cruelty alienated the Bedouin population from his standard, and prepared matters for a third intervention on the part of the Turks.

Before narrating, however, the last episode of Arabian misfortune and Turkish annexation, it will be necessary to explain briefly the views and pretensions of the Ottoman Sultans with respect to Arabia.

The first appearance of the Turks in the peninsula dates from 1524, when Selim I., having conquered Egypt and usurped the Caliphate, till then held by members of the Abbaside family, took military possession of the holy places, Mecca and Medina, and annexed Yemen to his dominions. Beyond the districts immediately bordering on the Red Sea, however, no part of Arabia proper was at that time claimed by the Sultans; and in the following century a national insurrection drove them even from these, so that with the exception of the pilgrim roads from Cairo and Damascus, the Turks made no pretension of being masters in the Peninsula.

Ibrahim Pasha’s expedition had been made not in assertion of a sovereign right, but as an act of chastisement and retaliation on a hostile sect; and once the Wahhabi government crushed, little care had been taken in retaining Nejd as a possession. The sultans were at that time far too anxiously occupied with their position in Europe to indulge in dreams of conquest in Asia, and were, from a military point of view, too weak for unprofitable enterprises not absolutely necessary. But at the close of the Crimean war the Turkish army was thoroughly reorganised, thanks to the English loan, which made its equipment with arms of precision possible; and the Sultan, finding himself in the possession of unaccustomed power, used it for the reduction first of the outlying districts of the Empire which had shaken off his yoke, and next of those tribes on its borders which appeared easiest of conquest. The frontier lands of Syria and Kurdistan were thus brought back into subjection, the Euphrates and Tigris valleys, independent since the days of Tamerlane, were occupied in force, and Irak was once more placed under the Imperial system of tax and conscription. The Suez Canal was opened, and Arabia, accessible hitherto by land only, was now for the first time within easy reach of Constantinople. With the sense of increased power, born of full coffers and an army ready and equipped for action, new dreams of conquest came to the Imperial government. The Sultan remembered what he seemed to have forgotten, that he was heir to the Arabian caliphate, and his Ministers of the day based on this fact a claim to all Arabia. The garrisons of Mecca and the Hejaz were increased, an expedition was despatched against Yemen, and Midhat Pasha, a man of a restless, unquiet temper, was appointed Governor of Bagdad, with orders to watch his time for extending the Sultan’s influence in any direction that might seem to him advisable. The opportunity soon came.

In 1865 Feysul ibn Saoud died, and the Wahhabi State which under him had regained so much of its former power, was once more weakened by internal dissension. Feysul left two sons, Abdallah and Saoud, the former a strict Wahhabi, but the latter holding liberal opinions, national rather than religious. Each put himself at the head of a party; Abdallah of the townsmen in Aared who were still fanatically attached to the reformed doctrine, and Saoud of the Bedouins. For a while they divided Feysul’s inheritance between them, but coming to blows the younger brother forced the elder to fly from Aared, and Saoud established himself there as sole Emir. Jebel Shammar meanwhile and Kasim became completely independent, and Hasa and the rest of the maritime districts refused any longer to pay tribute.

In 1871 Abdallah, turned out of Aared, made his way with a few followers to Jebel Shammar, where Metaab Ibn Rashid was then Emir, and from that asylum (for he was treated there as a guest) put himself into communication with Midhat at Bagdad. Midhat, who saw in this circumstance an opportunity such as he had been instructed to seek, readily responded; and at once issued a proclamation in which the sovereign power of the Sultan over Nejd was assumed, and Abdallah referred to as Caimakam or Deputy Governor of that province. It was notified, moreover, that a Turkish force would be despatched from Bagdad “to restore order, and to maintain the said Caimakam against his rebellious brother.”

After some opposition on the part of the Indian Government, which for many years had insisted upon absolute peace being maintained in the Persian gulf, a rule which had been agreed to by all the chiefs of the Arabian coast, including the people of Hasa and the Wahhabi government, and which had been attended with excellent results, a military expedition was despatched by sea to Hasa. It consisted of 4000 to 5000 Turkish regulars, under Nazfi Pasha, and disembarked at Katif in the month of June. Abdallah in the meantime had returned to Nejd, and having collected a body of adherents, in union with the Beni Kahtan tribe, attacked Saoud from the west; but was defeated and took refuge in the Turkish camp.

Dissensions nevertheless broke out in Riad and forced Saoud to take the field against a third rival, Abdallah ibn Turki, at whose hands he sustained a defeat, and he was in his turn forced to retire to Katr. The Turks had now occupied all the seaboard of Hasa, and the inland fort and town of Hofhuf, whence they entered into communication with this Abdallah ibn Turki, whom they named Mudir of Riad, “pending the arrival there of Abdallah ibn Feysul;” but before the end of the year, Midhat announced that in consequence of a petition received by the Sultan from the principal inhabitants of Nejd {266} the Ibn Saoud family had ceased to reign, and that the country should henceforth be administered by a Turkish Governor. Nafiz Pasha was appointed in the same announcement Muteserrif or Governor of Nejd, and Abdallah was entirely put aside. The Emir Abdallah thereupon fled from the Turkish camp in Hasa to Riad.

[Picture: Fortress of Agde]

In 1872 Raouf Pasha, who had succeeded Midhat at Bagdad, opened negotiations with Saoud, and induced him to send his brother Abderrahman to Bagdad, where he was retained a prisoner till 1874.

In the same year Saoud returned to Riad, and once more ejected his brother Abdallah, who retired to Queyt, leaving Saoud in undisturbed possession till his death in 1874.

In 1873, the Turkish regular troops were withdrawn, and Bizi ibn Aréar, Sheykh of the Beni Kháled and hereditary enemy of the Ibn Saouds, was left in Hasa as Ottoman Governor, with a garrison of zaptiehs.

In 1874, Abderrahman, brother of the Emir Saoud, having been released from Bagdad, raised a revolt in Hasa, and was joined by the Al Mowak, Ajman and other Bedouin tribes, with whom he marched on Hofhuf and besieged Bizi there with his garrison, many of whom were slain. Whereupon Nassr Pasha was sent from Bussora with a battalion of regulars, by sea to Hasa, at the news of whose approach Abderrahman retired to Riad. Nassr then marched on Hofhuf and relieved the garrison, which were shut up in the fort; but gave the town to pillage. For several days the Turkish soldiers and their auxiliaries indulged in indiscriminate massacre and plunder of the inhabitants; men, women and children were shot down, and women were openly treated with the brutality peculiar to such occasions. It is said in extenuation that the Turkish officers remonstrated with the Pasha, but that he replied that it was necessary to make an example.

Shortly after this the Emir Saoud died at Riad, it has been said of poison; and in 1875 Abdallah returned to Nejd, where he found Abderrahman, his half brother, established. The brothers, after some disputing, came to an amicable arrangement with respect to the chief power, Abdallah holding the title of Emir, and Abderrahman of chief minister. Such is now the state of things at Riad. Overtures from the Turkish Government have been lately opened with the Emir, on the basis of his becoming Governor of Nejd as Turkish nominee, but have met with no response. Abdallah, it would seem, exercises little authority out of Riad, and none whatever out of Aared. He represents the party of Wahhabi fanaticism there, which is rapidly declining, and there are schemes on foot among the Bedouins and certain members of the Ibn Saoud family, for starting a new pretender in the person of one of the sons of Saoud, and claiming the protection of England. The power of the Ibn Saoud family in Arabia may, however, be considered at an end.

Hasa and the seaboard from Katr to Queyt is now held by the Turks, under whose system of stirring up tribal feuds among the Arabs, the commercial prosperity of the coast is rapidly disappearing. Piracy, under the protection of the Ottoman flag, has once more become the mode of life with the coast villagers, and intrigues have been opened with the Sheykhs of the districts eastwards, to induce them to accept similar protection on the promise of similar license.

Meanwhile all that is truly national in thought and respectable in feeling in central Arabia, is grouping itself around Mohammed Ibn Rashid, the Emir of Jebel Shammar, and it is to Haïl that we must look for a restoration, if such be possible, of the ancient glories and prosperity of the Nejd Empire.

W. S. B.

[Picture: Pedigree of the Ibn Saouds, Emirs of Nejd]

[Picture: Pedigree of the Ibn Rashids, Emirs of Jebel Shammar]

MEMORANDUM ON THE EUPHRATES VALLEY RAILWAY,

AND ITS KINDRED SCHEMES OF RAILWAY COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE MEDITERRANEAN AND THE PERSIAN GULF.

HAVING now completed the whole journey by land between Alexandretta and Bushire, the extreme points usually mentioned as terminuses for a Perso-Mediterranean Railway, and being, in so far, capable of estimating the real resources of the countries such a railway would serve, I make no apology for the few remarks I here offer on the subject. I do so with the more confidence because I perceive that of the many advocates these railway schemes have had, not one has taken the trouble of thus travelling over the whole distance, and that nearly all calculations made regarding them, are based on a survey of a part only of the road. It is seldom indeed that those who write or speak about a Euphrates valley railway, have done more than cross that river at Bir, or that they carry their arguments much beyond a choice of the most suitable Mediterranean port for a terminus, a kind of reasoning sufficient, no doubt, for the purpose before them, but in reality misleading. I believe, that one and all of these schemes are based upon a deficient knowledge of the facts.

A railway of this sort, to Englishmen, is naturally attractive, and presents itself to them in a double aspect, political and commercial. Politically it has been represented as an alternative route for troops to India, more expeditious than that by Suez; commercially as a scheme that will open up a rich but neglected country to the operations of trade.

With regard to the first I would remark first that, having gone through the calculation carefully, I find that four days is the total saving between London and Calcutta which a line of railway from Scanderun or Tripoli to Bushire would effect, an advantage quite inadequate to the risk of transhipment, and the fatigue of a long desert journey; secondly that the Persian Gulf is both hotter and less healthy than the Red Sea, and that the Syrian ports of the Mediterranean are peculiarly liable to fever; and thirdly that such a line could be used for the conveyance of English troops, by permission only of whatever power might be in possession of Asia Minor.

When I was in India last summer I made acquaintance with a great number of British officials, and I was at some pains to learn from them their views on this “alternative route.” I will not say that their answers to my questions were invariably the same, but I think I am making no mistake in affirming, that the consensus of intelligent opinion among them is wholly adverse to the notion. “The Euphrates route,” say they, “would be of exceedingly little use to us. The mails, to be sure, would go that way, and we should get our letters from England three or four days sooner; but, politically speaking, the mails are a matter of less consequence than they were. Nowadays all official work of real importance is transacted by telegraph, and when the mails come in afterwards, their interest has been forestalled. It would matter little at Simla or Calcutta whether they had taken three weeks or a fortnight on the road. Trade would certainly benefit somewhat in this way, but Government very little. As regards the sending of troops overland, there could be no question of it, as long as the Suez route was open; and if England cannot keep the Suez route open, she had better give up India at once. No Secretary at War would be so ill-advised as to send troops, with the risk of cholera and over-fatigue, by the land journey as long as they could be marched on board at Plymouth, and landed fresh at Bombay.” “Not even in case of a new mutiny?” I asked. “Not even in a mutiny. People in England have no idea of the meaning of a thousand-mile railway journey in desert countries. For six months in the year no passengers would go that way, except, maybe, an occasional officer on a three months’ furlough. We should not take our wives and children there at any time. The extra trouble and expense have prevented most of us from making use of the Brindisi line, which really saves us a week and avoids the Bay of Biscay; so we certainly should not face the Persian Gulf for the sake of four days. The Persian Gulf is hotter than the Red Sea.” Lastly, as to the strategical importance of the Euphrates and Tigris districts to India, I found that these were considered, even by the extremest advocates of conquest, quite out of our line of march for many years to come. The veriest Russophobe could not be made to believe, that a modern army would attempt a march through any passes in Asia Minor, or down any Euphrates valley, on India.

It may therefore be dismissed from our calculations that India stands in need of a railway from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. The political advantage, if advantage there be, would lie solely with Turkey, or with whatever power may eventually become master of Armenia and Kurdistan.

As a commercial speculation, the Euphrates railway scheme is, I believe, equally delusive. The additional cost and risk of transhipment would be an effectual bar to through traffic; while local traffic alone, would be insufficient to secure the financial success of the line. The Euphrates and Tigris valleys are often represented as rich agricultural districts, waiting only the hand of the immigrant to become again what they were in classic and even mediæval times. It is argued that if, in the twelfth century, the Euphrates valley boasted such towns as Rakka, Karkesia, and Balis, such towns may exist again, and that a railway carried by that route to Bagdad, would surely revive the ancient wealth of a naturally wealthy district. But such an argument speedily vanishes on an examination of the facts.

1st. The Euphrates and Tigris valleys neither are nor ever were rich agriculturally. As corn-growing districts they cannot compare with the hill country immediately north of them, with northern Syria, the Taurus, or Kurdistan. They lie out of the reach of the regular winter rains, which cling to the hills, and for this reason are almost entirely dependent on irrigation for their fertility. At best, the Euphrates and Tigris valleys, through which a railway would pass, are inconsiderable strips of good land, hemmed in closely by a barren desert, and incapable of lateral extension or development. They are isolated, and have long ceased to lie on the track of commerce. At the present day they contain no place of importance, with the exception of the pilgrim shrines of Kerbela and Meshhed Ali, and the decayed city of Bagdad, nor along the greater part of their extent, more than a few villages, depending for their subsistence on the date-palm. They are, moreover, subject to the caprices of their great unmanageable rivers, which at flood time wreck half the valleys. The Euphrates for 150 miles, passes without alluvial belt of any kind, through a quite inhospitable desert, while lower down it loses itself in marshes at least as valueless. The Tigris, from Mosul to Bagdad, boasts but three inconsiderable villages, and from Bagdad to Bussorah, a poor half dozen. The Montefik country on the lower Euphrates, and the island enclosed within the Hindiyeh Canal, are the only important corn-growing districts now existing.

2nd. The great plain of Irak, the ancient Babylonia, is not only uncultivated now, but for the most part is uncultivable. A vast portion of it has been overflowed by the rivers, and converted into a swamp, while the rest is more absolutely barren than even the desert itself. It would seem that the water of the Tigris contains saltpetre in solution, and the plain below Bagdad, in the neighbourhood of the river, is in many places covered with a saltpetrous deposit, the result of over-irrigation in ancient days. The soil would seem to have been in some sort worked out. I believe, moreover, that from the denudation since ancient times of Armenia, from which the two rivers flow, their floods have become more sudden, and the water supply less calculable, and that the vast irrigation works from the Euphrates, which would be necessary before the fertility of Irak could be restored to what it then was, would still be liable to excessive flood and drought.

The ancient agricultural wealth of Babylonia was a purely artificial thing, depending upon a gigantic system of irrigation which has no parallel in anything now found in the world. When these vast works were begun is not known; but it must have been in an age of mankind when Asia was densely peopled and human labour cheap. Indeed, we may feel sure that only compulsory labour could have carried them out at all, for they would have ruined any treasury at any rate of wages. This can hardly be done again. There are no captive nations now to be impressed; no treasury capable of providing the funds. We see India, with its really great population, and its comparatively great wealth, sinking under the burden of irrigation works; and the miserable Arabs of Irak cannot be called on to square their shoulders and carry this far greater load. With all our knowledge, too, of engineering, there would still be some risk of failure; for the Euphrates and the Tigris are not rivers to be trifled with, as Midhat Pasha found to his cost. I think it more than probable that in the day of Babylonian greatness, the flooding of both rivers was more regular and less subject to disasters of drought and excess than now. As I have said, the denudation of Armenia accounts, perhaps, for the destruction of Irak. In any case it is certain, that at the present moment the full energies of the existing population are required to preserve their footing, not to make new conquests on the river. Now, as I am writing, Lower Mesopotamia is expecting famine from the failure of the Tigris, for not an acre of wheat can be sown without its flooding. Last year all hands were at work damming out the Euphrates. These matters are worth considering.

3rd. In treating this question of Euphrates Valley communication, it seems to be forgotten that not only the circumstances of the Valley itself are changed, but those of all the world of Asia adjoining it.

To understand the present position of Mesopotamia and its adjacent lands, we must consider the history of their ruin. In the days of ancient Rome, not only the shores of the Mediterranean, African as well as European, but also all Western Asia, were a densely peopled empire. Even the lands beyond Roman jurisdiction were full of great cities, from Armenia, through the central plateau of Asia, to the edge of China. Land was everywhere taken up and everywhere of value, while a great surplus population was constantly being pushed out into poorer and still poorer districts by the struggle of life, until hardly a habitable corner of the old world remained unoccupied.

It is not surprising, then, that, with such a necessity for elbow room, the Euphrates and Tigris Valleys were early seized upon, and that at a later date, even poorer regions of the desert were conquered from sterility, and forced into the work of producing food. As long as Babylonia, and the kingdoms which succeeded it, maintained their fertility, these valleys lay on the highway between them and Asia Minor. Even so lately as the twelfth century, Benjamin of Tudela, a Spanish Jew, found numerous large towns still flourishing in Upper Mesopotamia. Palmyra, at that day, was still a commercial city, containing with other inhabitants a population of two thousand Jews. On the Upper Euphrates he mentions five towns, and on the Tigris two or three. It must not, however, for a moment be supposed that these cities owed their wealth in any but a very small measure to agriculture. Palmyra and El Haddr, the two most important, never could have had more than a few cultivated acres attached to them, while the towns on the rivers, though making full use of the alluvial valleys, were essentially commercial. The high road between Aleppo and Bagdad then passed down the Euphrates as far as Kerkesia (Deyr?), whence striking across Mesopotamia to El Haddr, it joined the Tigris at Tekrit. Along this line cities were found at intervals, much as the posting-houses used to be found upon our own highways, and with the same reason for their existence. They gradually died, as these died, with the diversion of traffic from their route. Palmyra and El Haddr, which (to continue the posting-house metaphor) had no paddocks attached to them, were the first to disappear; and then one by one the river towns, which for a time had still struggled on with the aid of their fields, died too. In the thirteenth, and again in the sixteenth centuries, the terrible scourges of Mongul and Ottoman conquests passed over Asia, and swept the regions surrounding Mesopotamia clear of inhabitants. All Western Asia was at this time ruined; and the first result was the abandonment of outlying settlements, which only the stress of over-population elsewhere had ever brought into existence. The Tigris and Euphrates were gradually abandoned, and only the richest districts of Armenia, Kurdistan, and Syria retained. The Ottoman system of misgovernment has done the rest; and now at the present day there is no surplus population eastwards nearer than China, which could supply the deficiency. Until Persia and Armenia are fully occupied, it is idle to expect the comparatively waste lands of Mesopotamia and the river banks to invite immigration. Russia may some day assimilate Asia Minor, and Asia Minor may some day again become populous, but until that is done Mesopotamia must wait.

On the other hand, Europe is as little likely to send emigrants to the banks of the Euphrates. With such large tracts of good land on the southern shores of the Mediterranean and in Syria, unoccupied, there is nothing to tempt agriculturists to poorer lands so far away. Mesopotamia has hardly a climate suited to northern Europeans, while Italians and Maltese (the only southern nations with a surplus population) find openings nearer home. It is equally idle to talk of coolies from India, or coolies from China. These only emigrate, on the prospect of immediate high wages, to countries where labour commands its full price, and capital is there to employ it. As mere emigrants in search of land they will not come.

4th. Although South-western Persia, through which the last 400 miles of a railroad to Bushire might be made to pass, has not suffered from the same physical causes which have ruined Babylonia, its present condition as regards population, production, and existing wealth, are hardly less unfortunate. The government of Persia, which burlesques all that we most complain of in Turkey, has succeeded in reducing the production of a district, one of the wealthiest in natural advantages of all Asia, practically to nothing. With the single exception of a tract of cultivated land lying between Dizful and Shustar, and another between Dilam and Bushire, the railway would pass through a country at present uninhabited even by wandering tribes possessed of pastoral wealth. The policy of the Persian government in its dealings with Arabistan has been to depopulate, as the shortest and easiest mode of governing it, and the policy has been successful.

Still I consider, that a railway run along the edge of the Bactiari hills, would have a far better chance of attracting population towards it, than one in the Euphrates or Tigris valleys. The soil is naturally a very rich one, and the winter rainfall sufficient for agricultural purposes. Where-ever cultivation exists it is remunerative, and the soil has not been worked out, as is the case in the plains. The line would doubtless serve the better peopled districts of Shirazd and Luristan; and Bebaban, Shustar and Dizful, would become once more important _entrepôts_ for the wealth of the interior. With the security a railway would give, immigrants might even gradually arrive, and it is conceivable that the district might in the course of years be reclaimed, for it is well worth reclaiming, but the prospect is a distant one.

On the whole I would suggest that all calculations as to traffic should be based strictly on existing circumstances. It may be, that the present population and production are sufficient for the support of a railway, (I myself considerably doubt it), but investors should trust to these only. The future has only delusions in store for them. It is idle to quote the precedent of those American railways, carried through waste places, which have speedily attracted population, and through population, wealth. In Asia there is no surplus population anywhere to attract. Moreover there are existing circumstances of misgovernment, which no system of railways can cure, and till these are changed, it is idle to hope for other changes. Railways in Europe or in America, serve the interests of the people. In Turkey or in Persia they would serve the interests of their rulers only.

That readers may judge what the actual condition is, of the lands lying between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, I have put in tabular form the amount of cultivated and uncultivated land, of pasture and desert, afforded by the various lines of route which have been suggested for a railway. These are:

1.—_The Palmyra Route_, 555 miles. Miles. Tripoli to Homs, partial cultivation 70 Homs to Palmyra, a pastoral desert 120 Palmyra to Hitt, uninhabited desert 250 Hitt to Seglawieh, partial cultivation 65 Seglawieh to Bagdad, alluvial plain, uncultivated, for 50 the most part uninhabited Total under partial cultivation 135 ,, desert or pastoral 420 Total 555

This route has nothing to recommend it except its shortness. It would pass through but one considerable town, Homs; it would serve no important agricultural district, and could count upon no local traffic. The greater part of its course is without water, fuel, inhabitants, or possibility of development. It would require considerable cutting and bridging (for ravines), and would have little strategical value.

2.—_The Euphrates Valley Route_, 625 miles. Miles. Lattakia or Alexandretta to Aleppo, cultivation 100 Aleppo to Deyr, pastoral 210 Deyr to Abu Camal, pastoral, partly cultivated 70 Abu Camal to Hitt, desert, with palm oases 130 Hitt to Seglawieh, partial cultivation 65 Seglawieh to Bagdad, alluvial plain, uncultivated, and 50 mostly uninhabited Total cultivated and partly cultivated 235 ,, desert or pastoral 390 Total 625

This line passes through one town of eighty thousand inhabitants, Aleppo, and two small towns, Deyr and Ana, besides a few villages. It could count on very little local traffic; Deyr might export a little corn, Ana a few dates. Except in the northern portion it is not a sheep district. It has the advantages of water and fuel, but these would be to a certain extent neutralised if, as is probable, the line should have to pass along the desert above, instead of in the valley. In either case the construction would not be without expense, the river with its inundations causing constant obstruction below; while the desert above, is much broken with ravines. It could hardly pay the whole of its working expenses. Its principal advantage is, that in case of its being continued from Seglawieh to Bussorah, some miles would be saved, or a branch line might be made to Kerbela. The Euphrates line is strategically of advantage to Turkey, mainly as a check on the Bedouin tribes.

3.—_The Mesopotamian or Tigris Valley Route_, 700 miles. Miles. Alexandretta or Lattakia to Aleppo, cultivation 100 Aleppo to Orfa, cultivation 120 Orfa to Mosul, by Mardin, partial cultivation 250 Mosul to Bagdad by the right bank of the Tigris, pastoral 230 Total cultivated and partly cultivated 470 ,, pastoral 230 Total 700

This line has the advantage of passing through no absolutely desert district. It would be well watered throughout, and in the Tigris Valley would have a supply of fuel. It would, as far as Mosul, serve four large towns with an aggregate population of two hundred thousand inhabitants, besides numerous villages, and a nearly continuous agricultural population. Its stations would serve as depots for the produce of Upper Syria, Armenia, and Kurdistan from the north, and of a fairly prosperous pastoral district from the south. Below Mosul, however, there would be but two small towns, Samara, and Tekrit, and hardly a village. The engineering difficulties of this route, in spite of several small rivers besides the Euphrates (which all three lines would have to cross), would probably be less than in the others. Upper Mesopotamia is a more even plain than the Syrian Desert, and southwards is but little intersected with ravines. This route is strategically of immense importance to Turkey, and is perhaps the best. I would, however, suggest, that commercially, a better line would be from Mosul by Kerkuk to Bagdad. This would continue through cultivated lands, and is the route recommended by the very intelligent Polish engineer, who surveyed it some years ago.

Beyond Bagdad the routes to the Persian Gulf would be—

1. Bagdad to Queyt by right bank of Euphrates, serving Kerbela, Meshhed Ali, and the district of Suk-esh-Shiokh (460 miles) or to Bussorah (400 miles).

This could be continued from Seglawieh, thereby saving fifty miles. It would serve two fairly flourishing agricultural districts, and should pass along the edge of the desert where the ground is nearly level. Queyt is a good port as to anchorage, but has no commercial importance. Bussorah is a river port much circumscribed by marshes.

2. Bagdad to Mohamra by the left bank of the Tigris (320 miles).

This would be a difficult line to make, on account of the marshes, and would pass through a nearly uninhabited country. It has no advantage but its shortness.

3. Bagdad to Bushire, along the edge of the Hamrin Hills to Dizful, then by Shustar, Ram Hormuz, and Dilam (570 miles).

This line would be an expensive one, on account of the six large rivers it would have to cross, but it presents no other engineering difficulties. It should keep close under the Hamrin Hills to avoid marshy ground near the river. It is uninhabited as far as Dizful, though the soil is good and well watered. Dizful and Shustar are important commercial towns, being the principal markets of South Western Persia; the district between them is well cultivated. Beyond Shustar to Dilam there is but one inhabited place, Ram Hormuz (or Ramuz). There are a few villages along the shore of the Persian Gulf to Bushire, but very little cultivation. This route might be shortened by taking a direct line from Ali Ghurbi on the Tigris to Dilam, but it would then pass wholly through uninhabited country, swampy in places. On the whole I prefer the Dizful-Shustar route, as having better commercial prospects. These towns would supply no little traffic. Bushire is an important place, and would make the best terminus for a railway on the Gulf. I cannot, however, recommend any of these lines south of Bagdad as commercially promising for a railway.

W. S. B.

[Picture: Rock inscriptions and drawings in Jebel Shammar]

FOOTNOTES.

{7} Abbas Pasha’s Seglawieh is reported to have had two foals while in Egypt; one of them died, and the other was given to the late King of Italy, and left descendants, now in the possession of the present king.

{34} We measured one, a pollard, thirty-six feet round the trunk at five feet from the ground.

{41} Rassam, who has been digging at Babylon, informs me that these inscriptions are in the ancient Phœnician character. It would seem that the Phœnicians, who were a nation of shopkeepers, were in the habit of sending out commercial travellers with samples of goods all over Asia; and wherever they stopped on the road, if there was a convenient bit of soft rock, they scratched their names on it, and drew pictures of animals. The explanation may be the true one, but how does it come that these tradesmen should choose purely desert subjects for their artistic efforts—camels, ostriches, ibexes, and horsemen with lances. I should have fancied rather that these were the work of Arabs, or of whoever represented the Arabs, in days gone by, anyhow of people living in the country. But I am no archæologist.

{50} It was to Taybetism that Abdallah ibn Saoud fled ten years ago when he was driven by his brother out of Aared, and from it that he sent that treacherous message to Midhat Pasha at Bagdad which brought the Turks into Hasa and broke up the Wahhabi Empire.

{57} Red is said to be the female and green the male, but some say all are green at first and become red afterwards.

{59} Compare Mr. Palgrave’s account.

{63} Compare Fatalla’s account of the war between the Mesenneh and the Dafir near Tudmor at the beginning of the present century.

{65} Belkis is the name usually given by tradition to the Queen of Sheba.

{67} I have since been told by dentists that the fact of a third set of teeth being cut in old age is not unknown to science.

{75} Presents of honour always given to a sheykh.

{107} An incomplete account of this state of things is given in “Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates.”

{109} We heard nothing of Mohammed for nearly a year, and then heard that he was in prison. Prompted by a conscientious motive, of which those who have read thus far will need no explanation, he rendered himself liable to the action of Ottoman justice. A man of the Faris faction was found slain at Tudmur, and the relations of the deceased pointed out Mohammed’s as the hand which had fired the shot. The Turks had just re-occupied the town and were anxious to make an example, so Mohammed was put in chains and sent to Deyr. There he found means to send us news of his misfortune, and Wilfrid had the satisfaction of being able to fulfil his brotherly obligation by interceding with the Pasha, on his behalf, and eventually by procuring his release.

{119} Just a year afterwards, poor Captain Clements, being in command of the Kalifeh, was attacked off Korna by an Arab ghazú, and while gallantly defending his vessel, was shot through the lungs.

{128} What became of Ariel we shall never know. At first reports came to Bagdad that she was alive and recovering; then news that she was dead; and then, when someone was sent to inquire, it was discovered that Seyd Abbas and Bashaga and all the Arabs had deserted and were gone. We hope still she may be with them.

{152} This part of the journal was written at irregular moments when order was not possible. It has been pieced together since.

{154} We trust this duplicity may be pardoned us in consideration of the straits we were in.

{179} Christians of St. John, see “Bedouin Tribes.”

{227} Captain Cameron never started at all from Bagdad on the expedition planned between us. Letters received, after we had left, recalled him to India, and he went there by steamer down the Tigris and Persian gulf.

{244} The exact direction of these strings it is difficult to determine accurately; but perhaps E. by S. and W. by N. may be accepted as nearest the truth.

{266} This seems to have been a forgery.