Part 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We rode hard over the stretch of rock and hard clay which has since yielded to that monumental work, the Suez Canal. There was no _ennui_ upon the road: to the traveller there was an interest in the wilderness――

Where love is liberty and Nature law――

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Entering by the western Door of Safety, we paced slowly towards the tomb down a line of wall about the height of a man, and called the “illustrious fronting.” The barrier is painted with arabesques and pierced with small doors. There are two niches richly worked with various coloured marble, and near them is a pulpit, a graceful collection of slender columns, elegant tracery, and inscriptions admirably carved. Arrived at the western small door in the dwarf wall, we entered the famous spot called El Ranzah (the “Garden”), after a saying of Mohammed: “Between my grave and my pulpit is a garden of the gardens of Paradise.” On the north and west sides it is not divided from the rest of the porch, to the south rises the dwarf wall, and eastward it is bounded by the west end of the filagree tower containing the tomb.

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