A Pilgrimage to Nejd Volume I Part 11

[Picture: Our house at Hal]

END OF VOL. I.

NOTES.

{xiii} Such at least is the family tradition of the Ibn Arks. Niebuhr writing in 1765 gives Arar as the name of the Beni Khaled Sheykhs.

{3} A truce only, I fear.

{11} One of the n.o.blest of the Roala families.

{18} Midhat's reign at Damascus lasted for twenty months, and is remarkable only for the intrigues in which it was spent. It began with an _action d'eclat_, the subjugation of the independent Druses of the Hauran, a prosperous and unoffending community whom Midhat with the help of the Welled Ali reduced to ruin. The rest of his time and resources were spent in an attempt to gain for himself the rank and t.i.tle of khedive, a scheme which ended in his recall. Of improvements, material or administrative, nothing at all has been heard, but it is worth recording that a series of fires during his term of office burnt down great part of the bazaars at Damascus, causing much loss of property, and that their place has been taken by a boulevard. Midhat has been now removed to Smyrna, where it is amusing to read the following account of him:-

MIDHAT PASHA-September 28:-'A private correspondent of the _Journal de Geneve_, writing ten days ago from Smyrna, says that Midhat Pasha, being convinced that he possessed the sympathy of the inhabitants and could count on their active co-operation, conceived a short time since vast schemes of improvement and reform for the benefit of the province which he has been called upon to administer. The first works he proposed to take in hand were the drainage of the great marshes of Halka-Bournar (the Baths of Diana of the ancients), the cleansing of the sewers of Smyrna, and the removal of the filth which c.u.mbers the streets, pollutes the air, and, as an eminent physician has told him, impairs the health of the city and threatens at no distant date to breed a pestilence. He next proposed, at the instance of a clever engineer Effendi, to repress the ravages of the river Hermus, which in winter overflows its banks and does immense damage in the plain of Menemen. Orders were given for the execution of engineering works on a great scale which, it was thought, would correct this evil and restore to agriculture a vast extent of fertile, albeit at present unproductive, land. Administrative reform was to be also seriously undertaken. The police were to be re-organized, and order and honesty enforced in the courts of justice. The scandal of gendarmes being constrained, owing to the insufficiency of their pay, to enter into an alliance, offensive and defensive, with all the thieves and cut-throats of the city-the disgrace of judges receiving bribes from rogues and other evil-doers-were to be promptly put down. It was ordered that every camacan, mudir, chief of police, and president of tribunal, guilty either of malfeasance or robbery, should be arrested and imprisoned. The munic.i.p.alities were to cease being the mere mouthpieces of the valis, and consider solely the interests of their const.i.tuencies.

The accounts of functionaries who, with nominal salaries of 800 francs a year, spend 10,000, were to be strictly investigated and their malversations severely punished; and many other measures, equally praiseworthy and desirable, were either projected or begun. But energy and goodwill in a reformer-whether he be a Midhat or a Hamid-are, unfortunately, not alone sufficient to accomplish reforms. To drain marshes, embank rivers, cleanse sewers, remove filth, pay magistrates and policemen, procure honest collectors of revenue, much money is necessary.

How was it to be obtained? Not from the revenues of the port or the province; these are sent regularly, to the last centime, to Constantinople, for the needs of the Government are urgent and admit of no delay. Midhat Pasha, not knowing which way to turn, called a _medjeless_ (council), but the members were able neither to suggest a solution of the difficulty nor to find any money. In this emergency it occurred to the Governor that there existed at Smyrna a branch of the Ottoman Bank, at the door of which are always stationed two superb nizams in gorgeous uniforms, who give it the appearance of a Government establishment. Why should not the bank provide the needful? The idea commended itself to the Pasha, and the manager was requested to call forthwith at the Konak on urgent public business. When he arrived there Midhat unfolded to him his plans of reform, and proved, with the eloquence of a new convert, that the public works he had in view could not fail to be an unspeakable benefit to the province and restore its waning prosperity. Never, he a.s.sured the wondering manager, could the bank have a finer opportunity of making a splendid investment than this of lending the Government a few million francs, to be strictly devoted to the purposes he had explained. The projected schemes, moreover, were to be so immediately profitable that the bank might reckon with the most implicit confidence on receiving back, in the course of a few years, both interest and princ.i.p.al. Unfortunately, however, all these arguments were lost on M. Heintze, the manager; and he had to explain to the Pasha that, although he, personally, would have been delighted to advance him the millions he required, his instructions allowed him no discretion. He was there to do ordinary banking business, and collect certain revenues which had been a.s.signed to the bank by way of security; but he had been strictly enjoined to make no loans whatever, however promising and profitable they might appear. And this was the end of Midhat Pasha's great schemes of public improvement and administrative reform. In these circ.u.mstances it would be the height of injustice to accuse him of not having kept the promises which he made on entering office; for n.o.body, not even a Turkish Governor-General, can be expected to achieve impossibilities.

{26} Daughter of Faria-el-Meziad, Sheykh of the Mesenneh.

{41} Sakhr, a stone-the real origin of their name.

{51} This is a mistake, as the battle was fought on the banks of the Orontes.

{56} The Hauran was among the first districts conquered by the Caliph Omar. It shared for some centuries the prosperity of the Arabian Empire, but suffered severely during the Crusades. There is no reason, however, to doubt that it continued to be well inhabited until the conquest of Tamerlane in 1400, when all the lands on the desert frontier were depopulated.

{84} The _Ithel_, a tree grown in every village of Central Arabia, but not, as far as I know, found there wild.

{85} A kind of tamarisk.

{89} We were told that this inscription related to hidden treasure, a common fancy among the Arabs who cannot read.

{110} Jebel el Tawil.

{162} A diagram, showing what a section of the Nefd would be like, is given in the geographical notes, Vol. ii., page 248.

{174} These were no doubt the Egyptians of Ibrahim Pasha's army, left behind at Aneyzeh.

{203a} Query.-May not these be the spiral markings noticed by Mr.

Palgrave, and attributed by him to the wind, in his description of a certain maelstrom in the Nefd?

{210} More probably a fanner.

{218} The danger to Mohammed is a personal one on account of the blood he has shed, not an official one, for, as Emir, he is adored by his subjects.

{221} The Nawab was in fact detained a prisoner at Hal for about two months. But this we did not at the time know; nor was any allusion made by Ibn Ras.h.i.+d to the circ.u.mstance.

{223} To travel with a hawk is a sign of n.o.bility.

{224} Oryx boatrix.

{233} I heard nothing of the fate of Obeyd's widow, and could not inquire.

{251} The Ibn Alis were formerly Sheykhs of the Shammar, but were displaced by the Ibn Ras.h.i.+ds fifty years ago.

{272} That Mohammed ibn Ras.h.i.+d does not limit his ambition to Nejd has been very recently proved. In the month of April last, 1880, he marched with an army of 5000 men from Hal, pa.s.sed up the Wady Sirhan, surprised Mohammed Dukhi ibn Smeyr in the Harra and sacked his camp, and then went on to the Hauran. The citizens of Damascus were not a little startled at learning one morning that the Emir was at Bozra not 60 miles from the capital of Syria, and there was much speculation as to his object in coming so far northwards, no army from Nejd having been seen in the Paahalik since the days of the Wahhabi Empire. Then it was whispered that he had made friends with Ibn Smeyr, that the quarrel between them had been a mistake, and that a Sherari guide, held responsible for the blunder, had been beheaded; lastly, that an enormous feast of reconciliation had been given by Ibn Ras.h.i.+d to the Northern tribes, at which 75 camels and 600 sheep had been slaughtered, and that after a stay of some weeks at Melakh the Emir had returned to Nejd.

Without pretending to know precisely what was in Mohammed's mind in making this ghazu, or all that really happened, it seems to me not difficult to guess its main object. Ibn Smeyr's success over Ibn Shaalan, already alluded to, had placed him in a leading position with the tribes of the North; and his raid against the Druses of the Hauran, a district once tributary to the Emirs of Nejd, pointed him out for Mohammed's resentment. It is part of the Ibn Ras.h.i.+d policy to strike a blow and then make peace; and by thus humbling their most successful chief, and becoming afterwards his host, Mohammed achieved exactly that sort of reputation he most valued with the Northern tribes. He has a.s.serted himself as supreme, where he chooses to be so, in the desert, and has moreover reminded the frontier population in Syria of the old Wahhabi pretensions to Eastern Syria. It is conceivable that having coerced or persuaded the anazeh to join his league, he may, in the coming break-up of the Ottoman Empire, succeed to that part of its inheritance, and be recognised as sovereign in all the lands beyond Jordan.