Chapter 36

[p.376] after a few months’ residence in England, and ignorant of the English language, should pretend to a competent knowledge of the British character and constitution; not recollecting that it is much easier for a Frenchman to judge of a neighbouring European nation, than for any European to judge of Oriental nations, whose manners, ideas, and notions are so different from his own. For my own part, a long residence among Turks, Syrians, and Egyptians, justifies me in declaring that they are wholly deficient in virtue, honour, and justice; that they have little true piety, and still less charity or forbearance; and that honesty is only to be found in their paupers or idiots. Like the Athenians of old, a Turk may perhaps know what is right and praiseworthy, but he leaves the practice to others; though, with fine maxims on his lips, he endeavours to persuade himself that he acts as they direct. Thus he believes himself to be a good Muselman, because he does not omit the performance of certain prayers and ablutions, and frequently invokes the forgiveness of God.

At Medina several persons engage in small commercial transactions, chiefly concerning provisions; a lucrative branch of traffic, as the town depends for its support upon the caravans from Yembo, which are seldom regular, and this circumstance causes the prices of provisions continually to fluctuate. The evil consequence of this is, that the richer corn-dealers sometimes succeed in establishing a monopoly, no grain remaining but in their warehouses, the petty traders having been obliged to sell off. Whenever the caravans are delayed for any considerable time, corn rises to an enormous price; and as the chiefs of the town are thus interested, it can scarcely be supposed that the magistrates would interfere.

Next to the provision-trade, that with the neighbouring Bedouins is the most considerable: they provide the town with butter, honey, (a very essential article in Hedjaz cookery,) sheep, and charcoal; for which they take, in return, corn and clothing. Their arrival at Medina is likewise subject to great irregularity; and if two tribes happen to be at war, the town is kept for a month at the mercy of the few substantial merchants who happen to have a stock of those articles in hand. When I first reached Medina, no butter was to be had in

[p.377] the market, and corn was fifty per cent dearer than at Yembo; soon after, it was not to be had at all in the market: at another time salt failed; the same happened with charcoal; and in general the provision-market was very badly regulated. In other eastern towns, as at Mekka and Djidda, a public officer, called Mohteseb, is appointed to watch over the sale of provisions; to take care that they do not rise to immoderate prices, and fix a maximum to all the victualling traders, so that they may have a fair but not exorbitant profit. But this is not the case at Medina, because the Mohteseb is there without any authority. Corn is sold twenty per cent dearer in one part of the town than in another, and the same with every other article, so that foreigners unacquainted with the ways of the place are made to suffer materially. During my stay, the communication with Yembo was kept up by a caravan of about one hundred and fifty camels, which arrived at Medina every fortnight, and by small parties of Bedouin traders with from five to ten camels, which arrived every five or six days. The far greater part of the loads was destined for the army of Tousoun Pasha; the rest consisted of merchandize and provisions; but the latter were very inadequate to the wants of the town. I heard from a well-informed person, that the daily consumption of Medina was from thirty to forty erdebs, or twenty- five to thirty-five Hedjaz camel-loads. The produce of the fields which surround the town, is said to be barely sufficient for four months’ consumption; for the rest, therefore, it must depend upon Yembo, or imports from Egypt. In time of peace there is plenty: but lately, since the Turkish army has been stationed here, the Bedouins fear to trust their camels in the hands of the Turks, and the supply has fallen much below the wants of the town. The inhabitants were put to great inconvenience on that account, and had greatly reduced their consumption of corn, and eaten up the last of their stock on hand. Tousoun Pasha had very imprudently seized a great number of the Bedouins’ camels, and obliged them to accompany his army, which had so terrified them, that, previous to Mohammed Aly’s arrival, famine was apprehended from the want of beasts of transport. The Pasha endeavoured to restore confidence, and some of the Bedouins began to return with their beasts.

[p.378] In time of peace, corn caravans arrive also from Nedjed, principally from that district of it called Kasym; but these were altogether interrupted. I was informed that the transport trade in provisions from Yembo had been shut up for several years after the conquest of Medina by the Wahabys, whose chief, Saoud, wished to favour his own subjects of Nedjed; and that Medina in the mean time drew all its supplies from Nedjed, and its own fields. Provisions were now excessively dear: the lower class lived almost entirely upon dates, and very coarse barley bread; few could afford a little butter, much fewer meat. The fruit of the lotus, or Nebek, which ripened in the beginning of March, induced them to quit the dates, and became almost their sole nourishment for several months; large heaps of it were seen in the market, and a person might procure enough to satisfy himself for a pennyworth of corn, which was usually taken in exchange instead of money, by the Bedouins, who brought the fruit to the town. The vegetables cultivated in the gardens are chiefly for the use of foreigners, and are of very indifferent flavour. Arabs dislike them, and they are only used by those who have acquired the relish in foreign countries. Fresh onions, leeks, and garlic, are the only vegetables of which the Arabs are fond.

The prime article of food at Medina, as I have already stated, is dates. During the two or three months of the date-harvest, (for this fruit is not all ripe at the same time, each species having its season), from July till September, the lower classes feed on nothing else; and during the rest of the year dried dates continue to be their main nourishment. The date-harvest is here of the same importance as that of wheat in Europe, and its failure causes general distress. “What is the price of dates at Mekka or Medina?” is always the first question asked by a Bedouin who meets a passenger on the road. Of these dates a considerable part is brought to Medina from distant quarters, and especially from Fera, a fertile valley in the possession of the Beni Aamer tribe, where there are numerous date-groves: it is three or four days’ journey from Medina, and as many from Rabegh in the mountains. The dates are brought from thence in large baskets, in which they are pressed together into a paste, as I have already mentioned.

[p.379]Although commercial dealings are pretty universal, yet few of the inhabitants ostensibly follow them. Most of the people are either cultivators, or, in the higher classes, landed proprietors, and servants of the mosque. The possession of fields and gardens is much desired; to be a land-owner is considered honorable; and the rents of the fields, if the date-harvest be good, is very considerable. If I may judge from two instances reported to me, the fields are sold at such a rate, as to leave to the owner, in ordinary years, an income of from twelve to sixteen per cent upon his capital, after giving up, as is generally done, half the produce to the actual cultivators. Last year, however, it was calculated that their money yielded forty per cent. The middling classes cannot afford to lay out their small capital in gardens, because to them sixteen or twenty per cent would be an insufficient return; and, in the Hedjaz, no person who trades with a trifling fund is contented with less than fifty per cent annually; and in general they contrive, by cheating foreigners, to double their capital. Those, therefore, only are land-owners, who by trade, or by their income from the mosque, and from hadjys, have already acquired considerable wealth.

The chief support of Medina is from the mosque and the hadjys. I have already mentioned the Ferrashyn, or servants of the mosque, and their profits; to them must be added a vast number of people attached to the temple, whose offices are mere sinecures, and who share in the income of the Haram; a train of ciceroni or mezowars; and almost every householder, who lets out apartments to the pilgrims Besides the share in the income of the mosque, the servants of every class have their surra or annuity, which is brought from Constantinople and Cairo; and all the inhabitants besides enjoy similar yearly gifts, which also go by the name of surra. These stipends, it is true, are not always regularly distributed, and many of the poorest class, for whom they were originally destined, are now deprived of them; the sums, however, reach the town, and are brought into circulation. [Kayd Beg, Sultan of Egypt, after having, in A.H. 881, rebuilt the mosque, appropriated a yearly income of seven thousand five hundred erdebs for the inhabitants of the town, to be sent from Egypt; and Sultan Soleyman ibn Selim allowed five thousand erdebs for the same purpose. (See Kotobeddyn and Samhoudy.)] Many

[p.380] families are, in this manner, wholly supported by the surra, and receive as much as 100l. and 200l sterling per annum, without performing any duty whatever. The Medinans say, that without these surras the town would soon be abandoned to the land-owners and cultivators; and this consideration was certainly the original motive for establishing them, and the numerous wakfs, or pious foundations, which in all parts of the Turkish empire are annexed to the towns or mosques. At present the surra is misapplied, and serves only to feed a swarm of persons in a state of complete idleness, while the poor are left destitute, and not the smallest encouragement is given to industry. As to want of industry, Medina is still more remarkable than Mekka. It wants even the most indispensable mechanics; and the few that live here are foreigners, and only settle for a time. There is a single upholsterer, and only one locksmith in the town; carpenters and masons are so scarce, that to repair a house, they must be brought from Yembo. Whenever the mosque requires workmen, they are sent from Cairo, or even from Constantinople, as was the case during my stay, when a master-mason from the latter place was occupied in repairing the roof of the building. All the wants of the town, down to the most trifling articles, are supplied by Egypt. When I was here, not even earthen water jars were made. Some years ago a native of Damascus established a manufacture of this most indispensable article; but he had left the town, and the inhabitants were reduced to the necessity of drinking out of the half-broken jars yet left, or of importing others, at a great expense, from Mekka No dying, no woollen manufactures, no looms, no tanneries nor works in leather, no iron-works of any kind are seen; even nails and horse-shoes are brought from Egypt and Yembo. In my account of Mekka, I attributed the general aversion of the people of the Hedjaz from handicrafts, to their indolence and dislike of all manual labour. But the same remark is not applicable to Medina, where the cultivators and gardeners, though not very industrious in improving their land, are nevertheless a hard-working people, and

[p.381] might apply themselves to occupations in town, without undergoing greater bodily labour than they endure in their fields. I am inclined to think that the want of artisans here is to be attributed to the very low estimation in which they are held by the Arabians, whose pride often proves stronger than their cupidity, and prevents a father from educating his sons in any craft. This aversion they probably inherit from the ancient inhabitants, the Bedouins, who, as I have remarked, exclude, to this day, all handicraftsmen from their tribes, and consider those who settle in their encampment as of an inferior cast, with whom they neither associate nor intermarry. They are differently esteemed in other parts of the East, in Syria, and in Egypt, where the corporations of artisans are almost as much respected as they were in France and Germany during the middle ages. A master craftsman is fully equal in rank and consideration to a merchant of the second class; he can intermarry with the respectable families of the town, and is usually a man of more influence in his quarter, than a merchant who possesses three times more wealth than himself. The first Turkish emperors did every thing in their power to favour industry and the arts; and fifty years ago they still flourished in Syria and Egypt: in the former country they are now upon the decline, except, perhaps, at Damascus; in Egypt they are reduced to the lowest state: for, while Mohammed Aly entices English and Italian workmen into his service, who labour on his sole account, and none of whom prosper, he oppresses native industry, by monopolizing its produce, and by employing the greater part of the workmen himself, at a daily salary thirty per cent less than they might get, if they were permitted to work on their own account, or for private individuals.

The only industrious persons found in Medina are the destitute pilgrims, especially those from Syria, who abound here, and who endeavour by hard labour, during a few months, to earn money sufficient for the expenses of their journey homewards. They work only at intervals, and on their departure the town is often without any artisans for a considerable time. Whilst I resided in Medina, there was but one man who washed linen; when he went away, as the Arabian women will rarely condescend to be so employed, the foreign hadjys

[p.382] were all obliged to wash for themselves. Under these circumstances a traveller cannot expect to find here the most trifling comforts; and even money cannot supply his wants. Here is, however, one class of men, to whom I have already referred in describing Mekka, and who render themselves equally useful at Medina. I mean the black pilgrims from Soudan. Few negroes, or Tekayrne, as they are called, come to Mekka, without visiting Medina also, a town even more venerable in their estimation than Mekka. The orthodox sect of Málekites, to which they belong, carry, in general, their respect for Mohammed further than any of the three other sects; and the negroes, little instructed as they usually are, may be said to adore the Prophet, placing him, if not on a level with the Deity, at least very little below him. They approach his tomb with a terrified and appalled conscience, and with more intense feelings than when they visit the Kaaba; and they are fully persuaded, that the prayers which they utter while standing before the window of the Hedjra, will sooner or later obtain their object. A negro hadjy once asked me, after a short conversation with him in the mosque, if I knew what prayers he should recite to make Mohammed appear to him in his sleep, as he wished to ask him a particular question; and when I expressed my ignorance, he told me that the Prophet had here appeared to a great many of his countrymen. These people furnish Medina with fire- wood, which they collect in the neighbouring mountains, and sell to great advantage. If none, or only few of them, happen to be at Medina, no wood can be got even for money. They likewise serve as carriers or porters; and such of them as are not strong enough for hard work, make small mats and baskets of date-leaves. They usually live together in some of the huts of the public place called El Menakh, and remain till they have earned money enough for their journey home. Very few of them are beggars; of forty or fifty whom I saw here, only two or three resorted to mendicity, being unfit for any other vocation. In general beggars are much less numerous at Medina than at Mekka; and most of the foreign beggars, as at Mekka, are Indians. Few hadjys come here without either bringing the necessary funds, or being certain of gaining their livelihood by labour, the distance of Medina from the sea being much

[p.383] greater than that of Mekka, and the road through the Desert being dreaded by absolute paupers. It may be calculated that only one- third of the pilgrims who visit Mekka go also to Medina. The Egyptian caravan of pilgrims seldom passes by the town. [Whenever the Egyptian caravan passes by Medina, it is always on its return from Mekka, and then remains, like the Syrian, for three days only. In going from Cairo to Mekka, this caravan never visits Medina.] Medina has pilgrims during the whole year, there being no prescribed season for visiting the tomb; and they usually stay here about a fortnight or a month. They are in the greatest number during the months following the pilgrimage to Arafat, and likewise during the month of Rabya el Thany, on the 12th of which, the birth-day of Mohammed, or Mouled el Naby, is celebrated.

The Medinans make up for the paucity of beggars in their own town by going elsewhere to beg. It is a custom with those inhabitants of the town who have received some education, and can read and write, to make a mendicant journey in Turkey once or twice in their lives. They generally repair to Constantinople, where, by means of Turkish hadjys, whom they have known in their own town, they introduce themselves among the grandees, plead poverty, and receive considerable presents in clothes and money, being held in esteem as natives of Medina, and neighbours of the Prophet’s tomb. Some of these mendicants serve as Imáms in the houses of the great. After a residence of a couple of years, they invest the alms they have collected in merchandize, and thus return with a considerable capital. There are very few individuals of the above description at Medina, who have not once made the grand tour of Turkey: I have seen several of them at Cairo, where they quartered themselves upon people with whom their acquaintance at Medina had been very slight, and became extremely disagreeable by their incessant craving and impudence. There are few large cities in Syria, Anatolia, and European Turkey, where some of these people are not to be found. For their travelling purposes, and for the duties incumbent upon them as ciceroni in their own town, many individuals learn a little Turkish; and it is their pride to

[p.384] persuade the Turkish pilgrims, that they are Turks, and not Arabians, however little they may like the former.

The Medinans generally are of a less cheerful and lively disposition than the Mekkans. They display more gravity and austerity in their manners, but much less than the northern Turks. They outwardly appear more religious than their southern neighbours. They are much more rigid in the observance of their sacred rites, and public decorum is much more observed at Medina than at Mekka: the morals, however, of the inhabitants appear to be much upon the same level with those of the Mekkans; all means are adopted to cheat the hadjys. The vices which disgrace the Mekkans are also prevalent here; and their religious austerity has not been able to exclude the use of intoxicating liquors. These are prepared by the negroes, as well as date-wine, which is made by pouring water over dates, and leaving it to ferment. On the whole, I believe the Medinans to be as worthless as the Mekkans, and greater hypocrites. They, however, wish to approach nearer to the northern Turkish character; and, for that reason, abandon the few good qualities for which the Mekkans may be commended. In giving this general character of the Medinans, I do not found it merely on the short experience I had of them in their own town, but upon information acquired from many individuals, natives of Medina, whom I met in every part of the Hedjaz. They appear to be as expensive as the Mekkans. There were only two or three people in Medina reputed to be worth ten or twelve thousand pounds sterling, half of which might be invested in landed property, and the other half in trade. The family of Abd el Shekour was reckoned the richest. The other merchants have generally very small capitals, from four to five hundred pounds only; and most of the people attached to the mosque, or who derive their livelihood from stipends, and from pilgrims, spend, to the last farthing, their yearly income. They outwardly appear much richer than the Mekkans, because they dress better; but, not the slightest comparison can be made between the mass of property in this town and that in Mekka.

In their own houses, the people of Medina are said to live poorly, with regard to food; but their houses are well furnished, and their

[p.385] expense in dress is very considerable. Slaves are not so numerous here as at Mekka; many, however, from Abyssinia are found here, and some females are settled, as married women. The women of the cultivators, and of the inhabitants of the suburbs, serve in the families of the town’s-people, as domestics, principally to grind corn in the hand-mills. The Medina women behave with great decency, and have the general reputation of being much more virtuous than those of Mekka and Djidda.

The families that possess gardens go to great expense in entertaining their friends, by turns, at their country houses, where all the members, men and women, of the families invited assemble together. It is said that this fashion is carried to great excess in spring-time, and that the Medinans vie with each other in this respect, so that it becomes a matter of public notoriety, whether such a person has given more or less country parties, during the season, than his neighbours. A few families pass the whole year at their gardens; among these was the large family of a saint, established in a delightful little garden to the south of the town. This man is greatly renowned for his sanctity, so much so, that Tousoun Pasha himself once kissed his hands. I paid him a visit, like many other pilgrims, in the first days of my arrival, and found him seated in an arched recess or large niche adjoining the house, from whence he never moved. He was more polite than any saint I had ever seen, and was not averse to talk of worldly matters. I had heard that he possessed some historical books, which he would perhaps sell; but upon inquiry, I learnt from him that he did not trouble himself with any learning except that of the Law, the Koran, and his language. He gave me a nargyle to smoke, and treated me with a dish of dates, the produce of his own garden; and after I had put, on taking leave, a dollar under the carpet upon which I sat, (an act usual, as it was said, on such an occasion,) he accompanied me to the garden-gate, and begged me to repeat my visit.

Smoking nargyles, or the Persian pipe, is as general here as at Mekka; common pipes are more in use here than in other parts of the Hedjaz, the climate being colder. The use of coffee is immoderate. In the gardens fruit can be bought with coffee-beans as well as with

[p.386] money; and the fondness for tea in England and Holland is not equal to that of the Arabians for coffee.