Chapter 52

June 8th.—A caravan was to leave Suez this day, but its departure was delayed. As I knew that the plague had subsided at Cairo, and thought that the road was tolerably safe, I asked Hamd whether he would venture with me alone upon the journey; fear seemed to be quite unknown to this excellent young man, and he readily acquiesced in my proposal. We left Suez in the evening with some hopes of overtaking a caravan of Towaras, which we were informed had this day passed to the north of Suez, in their way to Cairo with charcoal. Towards sunset we came in sight of the castle of Adjeroud, when Hamd having descried from afar some Bedouins on foot, who, from the circumstance of their walking about in different directions in a place where no road passed, and where Bedouins never alight, appeared to him to be suspicious characters, we halted behind a hill till it was dark, and took our supper. After sunset we saw several fires at a distance, in the plain, which Hamd immediately concluded to be those of the Towara caravan. Taking advantage of the darkness, to avoid the observation of the suspected persons, we rode towards the fires, which, instead of being those of the Towara, proved to belong to a small party of Omran, encamped near the well in the Wady Emshash. Hamd was much alarmed when he perceived his mistake, for he was well acquainted with the bad character of the Omran,

CASTLE OF ADJEROUD

[p.627] and he dreaded them the more on account of the Arab of their tribe whom he had killed near Akaba. They looked very greedily at my travelling sack, but as I pretended to belong to the Pasha’s garrison at Suez, they did not make any attempt upon it. They told us that in coming here, they had found five Bedouins sitting near the well, who retired when they approached it, and who were probably the men we saw. As we thought it very likely that they would waylay us farther on, in the narrow pass of Montala, we deemed it prudent to retire to Adjeroud, and take shelter in the castle for the night. When we reached that place, it was with great difficulty that I persuaded the officer to open the gates and let us in; he was in no less fear of the robbers than ourselves; for two days they had driven back his people from the well of Emshash, where they were accustomed to fill their water skins, so that the garrison was reduced to great distress, as they had no provision of sweet water, and that of the castle well is scarcely drinkable. A Turkish officer, with his wife and son, and eight peasants from the Sherkieh, formed the whole garrison, and they trembled at the name and sight of the Bedouins as much as the monks of the Sinai convent.

June 9th.—This morning I proposed to the officer that we should go out in force and drive the robbers from the well, which was only half an hour distant; but this he refused to do, saying that he had no orders to leave the castle; he found it more convenient to seize my skins, which I had filled at Suez, and to make use of their contents for his family. Towards noon we saw several of the Bedouins hovering round the castle, no doubt expecting us to issue from it. In this difficulty, the Turkish officer having refused to lend his horse, I mounted Hamd in the evening upon the strongest of the camels, and told him to gallop to Suez, and acquaint the commander there with our situation, or else to hire some of his

[p.628] countrymen, who were there waiting for the departure of the caravan, and in their company to return to our relief, bringing with him a supply of water. He set out, but had not proceeded a mile before he saw the robbers running upon him from different quarters, and endeavouring to cut him off from the road. They fired at him, upon which he returned their fire, and gallopped back to the castle. The officer and his valiant garrison were now thrown into the greatest consternation, and could not devise any means of relief. I offered to ride to Suez, provided the officer would lend me his horse; but he appeared to be more afraid of losing the horse, than of dying from thirst. Being thus unable to effect any thing, I was under the necessity of waiting patiently till the great caravan from Suez should pass.

June 10th.—There was now not a drop of sweet water in the castle, and all that we could procure of the well-water of Adjeroud had been standing in the tank since it was filled from the well at the time of the last pilgrimage. The wheels of the well, which is two hundred and fifty feet in depth, are put in motion only at that time; during the rest of the year the building which encloses the well is shut up; and the person who keeps the key was now at Cairo. The water we were thus obliged to drink was saline, putrid, and of a yellow green colour, so that boiling produced no improvement in it, and our stomachs could not retain it.

June 11th.—A slight shower of rain fell, which the Turk ascribed to his prayers; but all the water we could collect in every vessel which the castle could furnish, scarcely afforded to each of us a draught. Hamd made a second attempt to night to go to Suez, but it being unfortunately moonlight, he was seen and again driven back.

June 12th.—After three days blockade, I had the pleasure of descrying the Suez caravan at a distance, on its way towards

WADY KHOUYFERA

[p.629] Cairo; we immediately got every thing ready, and when the caravan was opposite the castle, at about twenty minutes distance, Hamd and I hastily joined it. What became of the officer and his garrison, I never heard. I bought of the Bedouins of the caravan a supply of water, sufficient to last me to Cairo.

Although the passage of this desert is less dangerous than formerly, it is impossible to protect it effectually, without establishing a small body of horsemen or dromedaries at Adjeroud; and it is a discredit to the government of Egypt, that this is not done. The well of Emshash affords a seasonable supply of water to robbers, who lay in wait in the rocky country of Montala, where one of them stationed on the top of a hill gives notice of the approach of any enemy or object of plunder. The castle was undoubtedly intended as a look-out post against the Arabs. The French once had a garrison in it, and its walls have been repaired by Mohammed Ali Pasha, but the interior is in a very ruinous state, and few provisions are kept in the extensive store-houses within it.

On proceeding to Cairo, the caravan took, for the first stage from Adjeroud, a route somewhat to the southward of that by which I had gone to Sinai, and joined the latter at Dar el Hamra. Six hours and a half from Adjeroud we passed Wady Khoeyfera [Arabic], the bed of a torrent, with trees growing in it, a very little below the level of the surrounding plain. Here I saw the ruins of a small stone reservoir, and to a considerable distance round it, ruins of walls, and several wells, some built with brick and others with stone. They appear to have been surrounded by a wall, which now forms a circular enclosure of mounds almost wholly covered with sands. The existence of these ruins, which I do not remember to have seen mentioned by any traveller, confirms my belief, that in the most ancient times regular stations

CAIRO

[p.630] were established on this road, to which we must also attribute the date trees now found in a petrified state.

A road, called Derb el Ban [Arabic], leads from Adjeroud to Birket el Hadj, by the north side of the mountain El Oweybe; it is the most northern of all the routes to Suez, and is little frequented.

On the 13th of June, early in the morning, I entered Cairo; the plague had ceased, and had been less destructive, than it was last year.

[p.631] APPENDIX.

[p.633] APPENDIX. No. I.

An Account of the Ryhanlu Turkmans.

Aleppo, May 12, 1810.

THE district inhabited by the Ryhanlu Turkmans begins at about seven hours distance from Aleppo, to the north-westward. The intermediate plain is stony and almost deserted, but it is in many parts susceptible of culture, and contains a great number of villages in ruins. At five hours march from Aleppo to the W.N.W. upon the ridge of a low hill are some plantations of olive and fig trees; on the other side of the hill lies a valley of an oval shape about eighteen miles in circuit, called Khalaka [Arabic]; at the foot of the low hills which surround it, are the following villages: Termine, Tellade, Hoesre, Tellekberoun, Bab, Dana, and some others. The Fellahs or inhabitants of these villages live in half ruined houses, which indicate the opulence of their ancient possessors. The soil of the plain is a fine red mould, almost without a stone. In March, when I visited the Ryhanlu, it was sown with wheat, but it produces in another season the finest cotton. The whole plain is the property of Abbas Effendi of Aleppo, the heir of Tshelebi Effendi, who was in his time the first grandee of Aleppo[.] Having crossed the plain of Khalaka, and the rocky calcareous hills which border it on the western side, a very tedious passage for camels, the first Turkman tents are met with at about six hours and a half or seven hours distance from Aleppo. The Turkmans, who prfer living on the hills, erect their tents on the declivities, and cultivate the valleys below them. These hills extend in a N.W. direction, above forty miles, the mountain of St. Simon [Arabic], is in the midst of them. Their average breadth, including the numerous valleys which intersect them, may be estimated at fifteen or twenty miles. They lose themselves in the plain of Antioch, which is bounded on the opposite side by the chain of high mountains, extending along the southern coast of the gulf of Scanderoun. The river Afrin [Arabic] waters this plain; its course from the neighbourhood of Killis to where it empties itself into the lake of Antioch, is fifteen or twenty hours in length. At about seven hours above the lake, this river is about the size of the Cam near Cambridge; it regularly but moderately overflows in spring-time, and is full of carps and barbles; but the Turkmans have no implements of fishing. Besides the Afrin there are numerous smaller rivers and sources, which water the valleys. One of the must considerable of these is the river of Goul, which takes its rise near a Turkman encampment [p.634] of the same name, about six hours distant from St. Simon, to the W. by N. in a small lake, about one mile and a half in circumference, and joins the waters of the Afrin, eight miles from its source. This beautiful little lake is so full of fish, that the boys of Goul kill them by throwing stones at them. The river turns several mills near Goul, and five or six more at six miles distance, at a place called Tahoun Kash, near a spot where the chieftain of the Ryhanlu, Mursal Oglu Hayder Aga, has built a house for his winter residence, and has planted a garden. On the right bank of the Afrin, about three quarters of an hour distant from it, and at three hours ride to the N.-westward of the tent of Mohammed Ali, my Turkman host, are two warm springs at half an hour's walk from each other. I only saw the southernmost, which is strongly impregnated with sulphur, and made my thermometer rise to 102°; it constantly bubbles from a bottom of coarse gravel, in the middle of the bason, which is about twenty feet in circumference, and four feet deep. The sulphureous smell begins to be sensible at a distance of twenty-five yards from it, and I was told that the northern spring was still more sulphureous. The Turkmans hold the medicinal powers of these springs, as baths, in great estimation: women as well as men use them for the cure of violent headaches, which are very prevalent amongst them. The fields of the Turkmans are sown with wheat, barley, and several kinds of pulse. Their wheat was sown only a fortnight before my arrival, viz, about the twentieth of February. As it is only a short time since they have become agriculturists, they have not yet any plantations of fruit trees, although the olive, pomegranate, and fig would certainly prosper in their valleys. Thirty years ago the hills which they now inhabit were partly covered with wood; the trade of firewood with Aleppo, however, has entirely consumed these forests. At present they cut the wood for the Aleppo market, in the mountains of the Kurds on the northern side of the Afrin, and when that shall fail, Aleppo must depend for its fuel upon the coast of Caramania, from whence Egypt is now supplied. The Turkman hills are inhabited by vast numbers of jackals; wolves, and foxes are also numerous; and I saw flocks of Gazelles, to the number of twenty or thirty in each flock; among a great variety of birds is the Francoline, which the Syrian sportsmen esteem the choicest of all game. In the mountains of Badjazze, which borders on the Turkman plains, stags are sometimes killed. The Turkmans are passionately fond of hawking; they course the game with grey-hounds, or if in the plain, they run it down with their horses.

The population of the Ryhanlu Turkmans may be roughly calculated from the number of their tents, which amount to about three thousand; every tent contains from two or three to fifteen inmates. They can raise a military force of two or three thousand horsemen, and of as many infantry. They are divided into thirteen minor tribes: 1. The Serigialar, or tribe of the chief of the Ryhanlu Turkmans, Hayder Aga, has five hundred horsemen. 2. Coudanlut, six hundred. 3. Cheuslu, two hundred. 4. Leuklu, one hundred. 5. Kara Akhmetlu one hundred and fifty. 6. Kara Solimanlu, fifty. 7. Delikanlu, six hundred. 8. Toroun, sixty. 9. Bahaderlu, one hundred. 10. Hallalu, sixty. 11. Karken, twenty. 12. Aoutshar, twenty. 13. Okugu, fifty. The Serigialar derive their origin from Maaden, the Cheuslu from the [p.635] neighbourhood of Badjazze, the Babaderli from the mountains of St. Simon, the Halalis from Barak. Each tribe has its own chief, whose rank in the Divan is determined by the strength his tribe; Hayder Aga presides amongst them whenever it is found necessary to call together a common council. His authority over the Ryhanlus seems to be almost absolute, as he sometimes carries his motions in the Divan even against the opinion and will of the assembled chiefs. He settles the disputes, which occur between these chiefs, and which are often accompanied by hostile incursions into one another’s territory. The chiefs decide all disputes among their own followers according to the feeble knowledge which they possess of the Turkish laws; but appeals from their tribunal may be made to that of the grand chief. The whole Ryhanlu tribe is tributary to Tshapan Oglu, the powerful governor of the eastern part of Anatolia, who resides at Yuzgat. They pay him an annual tribute of six thousand two hundred and fifteen piastres, in horses, cattle, &c. He claims also the right of nominating to the vacant places of chieftains; but his influence over the Turkman Ryhanlu having of late much diminished, this right is at present merely nominal. The predecessors of Hayder Aga used to receive their Firmahn of nomination, or rather of confirmation, from the Porte. When the tribute for Tshapan Oglu is collected, Hayder Aga generally gives in an account of disbursements incurred during the preceding year for the public service, such as presents to officers of the Porte passing through the camp, expenses of entertaining strangers of rank, &c. &c. The tribute, as well as Hayder Aga’s demands, are levied from the tribes according to the repartition of the minor Agas; and each chief takes that opportunity of adding to the sum to which his tribe is assessed, four or five hundred piastres, which make up his only income as chief. The Turkmans do not pay any Miri, or general land tax to the Grand Signor, for the ground they occupy. Families, if disgusted with their chief, often pass from one tribe to another without any one daring to prevent their departure.

The Ryhanlu, like most of the larger Turkman nations, are a nomade people. They appear in their winter quarters in the plain of Antioch at the end of September, and depart from thence towards the middle of April, when the flies of the plain begin to torment their horses and cattle. They then direct their march towards Marash, and remain in the neighbourhood of that place about one month; from thence they reach the mountains of Gurun and Albostan. The mountains which they occupy are called Keukduli, Sungulu, and Kara Dorouk, (upon Kara Dorouk, they say, are some fine ruins). Here they pass the hottest summer months; in autumn they repass the plains of Albostan, and return by the same route towards Antioch.

The winter habitations of the Turkmans in the hilly districts are, as I have mentioned before, erected on the declivity of the hills, so as to be by their position somewhat sheltered from the northerly winds. Sometimes five or six families live together on one spot in as many tents, but for the greater part tents of single families are met with at one or two miles distance from each other. In proportion to the arable land, which the hilly parts contain, these districts are better peopled than the plain, where a thousand tents are scattered over an [p.636] extent, of the most fertile country, of at least five hundred square miles. The structure of the habitations of these nomades is of course extremely simple: an oblong square wall of loose stones, about four feet high, is covered over with a black cloth made of goats hair, which is supported by a dozen or more posts, so that in the middle of the tent the covering is elevated about nine feet from the ground. A stone partition is built across the tent, near the entrance: I found in every tent that the women had uniformly possession of the greater half to the left of the door; the smaller half to the right hand side is appropriated to the men, and there is also a partition at H [figure not included], which generally serves as a stable for a favourite horse of the master or of one of his sons. The rest of the horses and the cattle are kept in caverns, which abound in these calcareous hills, or in smaller huts built on purpose. Besides those who live in tents, many of the Turkmans, especially in the plain, live in large huts fifteen feet high, built and distributed like the tents, but having, instead of a tent covering, a roof of rushes, which grow in great abundance on the banks of the Afrin. The women’s room serves also as the kitchen; there they work at their looms, and strangers never enter: unless, when, as I was told, the Turkmans meaning to do great honour to a guest, allow him a corner of the Harem to sleep in quiet among the women. The men’s apartment is covered with carpets, which serve as beds to strangers and to the unmarried members of the family; the married people retire into the Harem. The Turkmans have also a kind of portable tent made of wood, like a round bird cage, which they cover with large carpets of white wool. The entrance may be shut up by a small door; it is the exclusive habitation of the ladies, and is only met with in families who are possessed of large property. The tent or hut of a Turkman is always surrounded by three or four others, in which the Fellah families live who cultivate his land. These Fellahs are the remaining peasants of abandoned villages, or some poor straggling Kurds. The Turkmans find the necessary seed, and receive in return half the produce, which is collected by a few of them who remain for this purpose in the winter quarters the whole year round. The Fellahs live wretchedly; whenever they are able to scrape together a small pittance, their masters take it from them under pretence of borrowing it; I was treated by several of them at dinner with the best dish they could afford: bad oil, with coarse bread; they never taste meat except when they kill a cow or an ox, disabled by sickness or age; the greater part of them live literally upon bread and water, neither fruits or vegetables being cultivated here; they are nevertheless, a cheerful good-natured people; the young men play, sing, and dance, every evening, and are infinitely better tempered [p.637] than their haughty masters. My host, Mohammed Ali, began a few years ago to plant a small garden of fruit trees near his tents; his example will probably be generally followed, because the Ryhanlu families, at every returning season, pitch their tents on the same spot. It is only about ten years, that the Ryhanlu have cultivated the land; like the other Turkman hordes they had always preferred the wandering life of feeders of cattle. Agriculture was introduced among them by the persuasion of Hayder Aga, whose daughter having married a chief of the neighbouring Kurds, an alliance took place, which enabled the Turkmans to perceive the advantages, derived by the Kurds from the cultivation of the soil. The principal riches of the Turkmans however still consist in cattle. Their horses are inferior to those of the Arabs of the desert, but are well adapted for the mountains. Their necks are shorter and thicker than those of the Arab horses, the head larger, the whole frame more clumsy: the price of a good Turkman horse at Aleppo is four or five hundred piastres, while twice that sum or more is paid for an Arab horse of a generous breed. Contrary to the practice of the Arabs, the Turkmans ride males exclusively. The family of my host possessed four horses, three mares, about five hundred sheep, one hundred and fifty goats, six cows, and eight camels; he is looked upon as a man in easy circumstances; there are few families whose property does not amount to half as much, and there are many who have three or four times as many cattle. I have heard of some who are possessed of property in cattle and cash to the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand piastres. Such sums are gained by the trade with Aleppo and by usury amongst themselves.