A Personal Narrative of a Year's Journey Through Central and Eastern Arabia 18621863 by William Gifford Palgrave

Front matter

NAZIONALE

'Jtro . A -A - vT C 17, 33

PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY

Preface

A JOURNEY undertaken through Central and Eastern Arabia, with the purpose of observing rather than of publishing, put me in possession of certain details upon those parts of the great Peninsula, which may be worth recording. It is true that the circumstances of my visit, and the restraints inseparable from native disguise, abridged antiquarian research, impeded botanical or geological enquiry, and deprived me of the means for exact and scientific investigation ; for instance, of the customary requisites for verifying longitudes and latitudes, or determining the degrees of heat and cold, of moisture and aridity. Worse yet ! I was at times unable to take down a single note, much less could I display a sketching book or photographic apparatus, however fair the landscape and tempting the sun ; and hence my pen must unaided do the work of the pencil as well as its own, while my reader’s imagination may help to supply the rest. Why this was so, a few pages of the narrative will make clear. On the other hand long years, the best part of my life indeed, passed in the East, familiarity with the Arabic language till it became to me almost a mother tongue, and experience in the ways and manners of “ Semitic ” nations, to give them their general or symbolic name, supplied me with advantages counterbalancing in some degree the drawbacks enumerated above. Besides, the men of the land,

VI

Preface rather than the land of the men, were my main object of research and principal study. My attention was directed to the moral, intellectual, and political conditions of living Arabia, rather than to the physical phenomena of the country, — of great indeed, but, to me, of inferior interest. Meanwhile whatever observations on antiquity and science, on plants and stones, geography and meteorology I was able to make, I shall give, regretting only their inevitable imperfection.

In the hard attempt to render Arab orthography by English letters, I have for the most part followed the system adopted by Lane in his delightful “ Modern Egyptians,” as the nearest approximation intelligible to English readers. However, in representing the initial “ Jeem ” by “ Dj ” rather than by “ j ” (as in the middle or at the end of a word), I have quitted our countryman for the universal foreign method ; nor have I generally thought it necessary to accent vowels, contenting myself with an occasional mark (") of length, where uniformity of pronunciation appeared to require it The few maps annexed, though without pretension to that exact nicety which sextants and measuring-lines can alone afford, may serve in some measure to illustrate the leading features and divisions of the principal provinces, towns, and country in general.

In the present volume, my aim has been to offer the reader the personal narration of my adventures in Arabia. For fuller details on the religion, politics, and customs of the inhabitants, he is referred to the original work.

Trebjzond : April 29, 1867

Contents

CHAP.

I

PAGE

I

II 3°

in

THE NEFOOD AND DJEBEL SHOMER iv

V

JOURNEY FROM HA’YEL TO BEREYDAH .

VI

VII

FROM BEREYDAH TO Rl’AD

VIII

ri’ad

IX

LIFE AT Rl’AD — THE WAHHABEE DYNASTY

X

COURT OF Rl’AD — JOURNEY TO HOFHOOF

XI

FROM HOFHOOF TO KATEEF .

XII

BAHREYN, IjJATAR, AND ’OMAN

XIII

THE COASTS OF ’OMAN — A SHIPWRECK .

•

“H

MAP and PLANS

PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR MAP OF ARABIA PLAN OF HA’VEL „ ri’ad „ THE PALACE „ HOFHOOF .

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JOURNEY AND RESIDENCE

IN

CENTRAL AND EASTERN ARABIA

Chapter I

But I hold the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child. — A. Tennyson

Departure from Ala' art — Our Bedouin Companions — Our own Equipment and Disguise — Wells of Wokba — Five days of Stony Desert — Mode of Travelling — First News of Teldl-ebn-Rasheed — Wells — Approach to Wadi Serhan — Hills — Semoom — View of the Desert — Its Change at Wadi Serhan — Sherarat Encampment — Bedouin Hospitality and Conversation— Their Social Condition— Samh. and Mcfaa' — Bedouin Wars — Route of Wadi Serhan: Sand-hills and Ghada— Remarks on the Camel — 'Azzdm Sherarat of Ma'gooa' — Change of Guides — Route to Djowf: Ostriches, Scorpions — Djebal-el-Djouf : Village of Djoon — First Aleeting ■with the Men of Djowf— Gorges of the Valley.

_ “ Once for all let us attempt to acquire a fairly correct and a comprehensive knowledge of the Arabian Peninsula. With its coasts we are already in great measure acquainted ; several of its maritime provinces have been, if not thoroughly, at least sufficiently, explored ; Yemen and Hejaz, Mecca and Medinah, are no longer mysteries to us, nor are we wholly without information on the districts of Hadramaut and ’Oman. But of the interior of the vast region, of its plains and mountains, its tribes and cities, of its governments and institutions, of its inhabitants, their ways and customs, of their social condition, how far advanced in civilization or sunk in barbarism, what do we as yet really know, save from accounts necessarily wanting in fulness and precision 1 It is time to fill up this blank in the map of Asia, and this, at whatever risks, we will now endeavour; either the land before us shall be our tomb, or we will traverse

B

The Desert ami its Inhabitants it in its fullest breadth, and know what it contains from shore to shore. Vestigia nulla rctrorsum."

Such were my thoughts, and such, more or less, I should suppose, those of my companion, when we found ourselves at fall of night without the eastern gate of Ma’an, while the Arabs, our guides and fellow-travellers, filled their water-skins from a gushing source hard by the town walls, and adjusted the saddles and the burdens of their camels, in preparation for the long journey that Lay before us and them. It was the evening of the 16th June 1862 ; the largest stars were already visible in the deep blue depths of a cloudless sky, while the crescent moon, high to the west, shone as she shines in those heavens, and promised us assistance for some hours of our night march. We were soon mounted on our meagre long-necked beasts, “as if,” according to the expression of an Arab poet, “ we and our men were at mast-heads,” and now we set our faces to the east. Behind us lay, in a mass of dark outline, the walls and castle of Ma’an, its houses and gardens, and farther back in the distance the high and barren range of the Sheraa’ mountains, merging into the coast chain of Ilejaz. Before and around us extended a wide and level plain, blackened over with countless pebbles of basalt and flint, except where the moonbeams gleamed white on little intervening patches of clear sand, or on yellowish streaks of withered grass, the scanty product of the winter rains, and now dried into hay. Over all a deep silence, which even our Arab companions seemed fearful of breaking ; when they spoke it was in a half whisper and in few words, while the noiseless tread of our camels sped stealthily but rapidly through the gloom, without disturbing its stillness.

Some precaution was not indeed wholly out of place, for that stage of the journey on which we were now entering was anything but safe. We were bound for the Djowf, the nearest inhabited district of Central Arabia, its outlying station, in fact. Now the intervening tract offered for the most part the double danger of robbers and of thirst, of marauding bands and of the summer season. The distance itself to be traversed was near two hundred miles in a straight line, and unavoidable circumstances were likely to render it much longer. For the wells, the landmarks of the traveller, and according to which he needs must shape his course, are not ordinarily arranged in

Ma'att to the Djouf lines of mathematical straightness ; and, besides, the necessity of avoiding districts frequented by hostile or suspected tribes often obliges the Bedouin to adopt some unaccustomed and circuitous route.

Nor was the society itself that we were actually in of a nature much to reassure the mind, especially at the outset of such a journey. On my own comrade, indeed — a native of the village of Zahleh, in the plains of Coelo-Syria — I could fully rely. Hardy, young, and enterprising, he belonged to a locality whose inhabitants are accustomed to danger, while the contempt with which they look down on the neighbouring populations renders them habitually less susceptible than most of their countrymen to the ordinary impressions of fear in a strange land. But our Bedouin companions were a strange set : they were three in number; their leader, Salim-el-’Atneh, belonged to the Howeytat Arabs, a numerous and energetic tribe inhabiting the mountain district from Kerak on the Dead Sea shore to Ma'an. Our friend himself was a member of a powerful family among them, and near akin to the chiefs of the clan ; but he had rendered himself so unfortunately conspicuous by repeated acts of robbery and pillage, with a supplementary murder now and then, that his position was at present hardly better than that of an outlaw. Lean in make- and swarthy of features, his thin compressed lips implied settled resolution and daring purpose, while the calmness of his grey eye showed a cool and thoughtful disposition, not without some possible intimation of treachery.

However, whatever drawbacks might exist in his outward appearance, or in his too well known personal history, his good sense and manly character afforded some ground of confidence in his present fidelity ; a brave and foresighted man, however unprincipled, may always be trusted to a certain extent. But I can hardly say so much for his two companions, ’Alee and Djordee, Sherarat Bedouins, and utter barbarians in appearance no less than in character, wild, fickle, reckless, and the capacity of whose intellect was as scanty as its cultivation. Indeed, Salim himself more than once advised us to avoid all familiarity with them, lest it should diminish the involuntary awe of the savage for civilized man.

A long and very dirty shirt, reaching nearly to the ankles, a

B 2 black cotton handkerchief over the head, fastened on by a twist of camel’s hair, a tattered cloak, striped white and brown, a leather girdle, much the worse for wear, from which dangled a rusty knife, a long-barrelled and cumbrous matchlock, a yet longer sharp-pointed spear, a cartouche-belt, broken and coarsely patched up with thread — such was the accoutrement of these worthies, and such, indeed, is the ordinary Bedouin guise on a journey. Salim’s own rigging out was of the same description, only the respective items were of a somewhat better quality.

Myself and my companion were dressed like ordinary middle-class travellers of inner Syria ; an equipment in which we had already made our way from Gaza on the sea-coast to Ma’an without much remark or unseasonable questioning from those whom we fell in with, while we traversed a country so often described already by Pococke, Laborde, and downwards, under the name of Arabia Petraea, that it would be superfluous for me to enter into any new account of it in the present work. Our dress then consisted partly of a long stout blouse of Egyptian hemp, under which, unlike our Bedouin fellow-travellers, we indulged in the luxury of the loose cotton drawers common in the East, while our coloured head-kerchiefs, though simple enough, were girt by ’akkals or head-bands of some pretension to elegance ; the loose red leather boots of the country completed our toilet.

But in the large travelling-sacks at our camels’ sides were contained suits of a more elegant appearance, carefully concealed from Bedouin gaze, but destined for appearance when we should reach better inhabited and more civilized districts. This reserve toilet numbered articles like the following : coloured overdresses, the Syrian combaz, handkerchiefs where silk stripes relieved the plebeian cotton, and girdles of good material and tasteful colouring ; such clothes being absolutely requisite to maintain our assumed character. Mine was that of a native travelling doctor, a quack if you will ; and accordingly a tolerable dress was indispensable for the credit of my medical practice. My comrade, who in a general way passed for my brother-in-law, appeared sometimes as a retail merchant, such as not unfrequently visit these countries, and sometimes as pupil or associate in my assumed profession.

Ma'an to the Djowf

Our pharmacopoeia consisted of a few but well selected and efficacious drugs, inclosed in small tight-fitting tin boxes, stowed away for the present in the ample recesses of our travellingbags ; about fifty of these little cases contained wherewithal to kill or cure half the sick men of Arabia. Medicines of a liquid form had been as much as possible omitted, not only from the difficulty of ensuring them a safe transport amid so rough a mode of journeying, but also on account of the rapid evaporation unavoidable in this dry and burning climate. In fact two or three small bottles, whose contents had seemed to me of absolute necessity, soon retained nothing save their labels to indicate what they had held, in spite of air-tight stoppers and double coverings. I record this, because the hint may be useful to any one who should be inclined to embark in similar guise on the same adventures.

Some other objects requisite in medical practice, two or three European books for my own private use, and kept carefully secret from Arab curiosity, with a couple of Esculapian treatises in good Arabic, intended for professional ostentation, completed this part of our fitting-out. But besides these, an ample provision of cloth, handkerchiefs, glass necklaces, pipe-bowls, and the like, for sale in whatever localities might not offer sufficient facility for the healing art, filled up our saddle-bags well nigh to bursting. Last, but not least, two large sacks of coffee, the sheet-anchor and main hope of our commerce, formed alone a sufficient load for a vigorous camel. And now to our march once more.

Several hours of a rapid trot had already borne us far from Ma’an, and the reddening moonlight was almost faded from the west, when our guides halted on a little patch of dry grass amid the black and stony plain, and after interchanging a few words, made the camels kneel down, discharged them of their burdens, and then turned them loose to graze at will, while one of the band kept watch, and the rest lay down for a few hours’ sleep near the baggage, which we had piled up close by ; it was, however, a mere nap, and the first clear streak of light had hardly appeared in the east below the silvery morning star, when we were aroused to relade our beasts, and remount for our onward journey.

We had ridden many a weary mile ; it was now about two hours before noon, and the heat was most oppressive, when we saw before us some scattered and dwarfish trees, indications of the waters of Wokba, towards which our course had been directed. While we were yet at some distance from the spot, one of our Bedouins urged forward his camel to a sort of canter, and set off in a circuitous line to assure himself that no individuals of a hostile tribe were lurking in the neighbourhood of the wells. But friend or enemy, nobody was there, all was silent ; and the ruined walls of an abandoned village, scattered up and down on the gravelly slopes and by the dry bed of a winter torrent, looked hopelessly desolate in the steady glare of noon. Here several shallow pits, some half choked with stones, others offering a scanty supply of muddy and rather brackish water, presented themselves close by the thorny trees. From these wells we now filled the water-skins, an operation performed all the more carefully and thoroughly, since no other water whatever was to be had for five full days’ journey ahead, put to it what speed we might ; a serious consideration, especially in the latter days of June.

When all this was finished, we remounted, and set our camels’ heads once more due east, while I turned to look round on the wide landscape. The blue range of Sheraa’ was yet visible, though fast sinking in the distance, while before us and on either hand extended one weary plain in a black monotony of lifelessness. Only on all sides lakes of mirage lay mocking the eye with their clear and deceptive outline, whilst here and there some dark basaltic rock, cropping up at random through the level, was magnified by the refraction of the heated atmosphere into the semblance of a fantastic crag or overhanging mountain. Dreary land of death, in which even the face of an enemy were almost a relief amid such utter solitude. But for five whole days the little dried-up lizard of the plain, that looks as if he had never a drop of moisture in his ugly body, and the jerboaa’, or field-rat of Arabia, were the only living creatures to console our view.

It was a march during which we might have almost repented of our enterprise, had such a sentiment been any longer possible or availing. Day after day found us urging our camels to their utmost pace, for fifteen or sixteen hours together out of the twenty-four, under a well-nigh vertical sun, which the Ethiopians of Herodotus might reasonably be excused for

Matin to the Djowf cursing, with nothing either in the landscape around or in the companions of our way to relieve for a moment the eye or the mind. Then an insufficient halt for rest or sleep, at most of two or three hours, soon interrupted by the oft-repeated admonition, “ if we linger here we all die of thirst,” sounding in our ears ; and then to remount our jaded beasts and push them on through the dark night, amid the constant probability of attack and plunder from roving marauders. For myself, I was, to mend matters, under the depressing influence of a tertian fever contracted at Ma’an, and what between weariness and low spirits, began to imagine seriously that no waters remained before us except the waters of death for us and of oblivion for our friends. The days wore by like a delirious dream, till we were often almost unconscious of the ground we travelled over and of the journey on which we were engaged. One only herb appeared at our feet to give some appearance of variety and life ; it was the bitter and poisonous colocynth of the desert.

Our order of road was this. Long before dawn we were on our way, and paced it till the sun, having attained about half-way between the horizon and the zenith, assigned the moment of alighting for our morning meal. This our Bedouins always took good care should be in some hollow or low ground, for concealment’s sake ; in every other respect we had ample liberty of choice, for one patch of black pebbles with a little sand and withered grass between was just like another ; shade or shelter, or anything like them, was wholly out of the question in such “ nakedness of the land.” We then alighted, and my companion and myself would pile up the baggage into a sort of wall, to afford a half-screen from the scorching sun-rays, and here recline awhile. Next came the culinary preparations, in perfect accordance with our provisions, which were simple enough ; namely, a bag of coarse flour mixed with salt, and a few dried dates ; there was no third item on the bill of fare. We now took a few handfuls of flour, and one of the Bedouins kneaded it with his unwashed hands or dirty bit of leather, pouring over it a little of the dingy water contained in the skins, and then patted- out this exquisite paste into a large round cake, about an inch thick, and five or six inches across. Meanwhile another had lighted a fire of dry grass, colocynth roots, and dried camel’s dung, till he had prepared a lied of glowing embers ; among these the cake was now cast, and immediately covered up with hot ashes, and so left for a few minutes, then taken out, turned, and covered again, till at last half-kneaded, half-raw, half-roasted, and burnt all round, it was taken out to be broken up between the hungry band, and eaten scalding hot, before it should cool into an indescribable leathery substance, capable of defying the keenest appetite. A draught of dingy water was its sole but suitable accompaniment.

The meal ended, we had again without loss of time to resume our way from mirage to mirage, till “ slowly flaming over all, from heat to heat, the day decreased,” and about an hour before sunset we would stagger off our camels as best we might, to prepare an evening feast of precisely the same description as that of the forenoon, or more often, for fear lest the smoke of our fire should give notice to some distant rover, to content ourselves with dry dates, and half an hour’s rest on the sand. At last our dates, like Esop’s bread sack, or that of Beyhas, his Arab prototype, came to an end ; and then our supper was a soldier’s one ; what that is my military friends will know ; but grit and pebbles excepted, there was no bed in our case. After which, to remount, and travel on by moon or star light, till a little before midnight we would lie down for just enough sleep to tantalize, not refresh.

“ Wilt thou go on with me ?” gentle reader, for an Arab trip! For myself, I confess that the remembrance of that exquisite little tale entitled the “ Sleeping Beauty,” by a friend, if he will allow me so to call him, whom to quote is to name, and of the moral therein contained — though its author archly denies its having any — did much to invigorate me on this and on similar occasions ; it’s “ the many fail, the one succeeds,” and the “ trust to light on something fair,” kept up my courage, and thus may be fairly said to have “ hooked it to some useful end,” though perhaps not precisely the one intended by Mr. Tennyson. But my reader, like myself, must labour yet awhile through the difficulties of this desert “hedge,” till he breaks in on the fair one in all her beauty, if, like the prince, his courage does not fail him ; better things lie before us in the next chapter.

But in addition to what encouragement my comrade and myself could gather from memory and inner thought, our

Chat. I]

Met an to the Djowf

Bedouin companions too cheered us ever and anon, by assuring us that although this hasty manner of travelling was absolutely necessary in a land alike beset by drought and danger, w r e might hope for easier marches and lighter privations so soon as we should have reached the boundary frontier of Telal-ebn- Rasheed, the sovereign of Djebel Shomer. These desirable limits, said they, commenced at Wadi Serhan, or the Valley of Serhan, which we were fast approaching, and where water was good and copious, while the mighty name of Telal protected the region far and wide from fear of enemies and marauders by night and by day.

Much did our Bedouins talk of Telal, and much extol his vigour, his equity, his active vigilance, his military prowess, though at the same time they repined at his unwarrantable repression of Bedouin liberty, and the restraints he imposed on the innate rights of nomades to plunder, rob, and murder at their own free discretion — complaints which, contrary to the intention of our informants, rather raised than diminished our esteem for this ruler, be he who he might. We could, however, as yet obtain but little exact information about the personal history or the political position of this prince. Whether he was of supreme or of subaltern power, whether founder of his kingdom, or heir, what might be the extent or character of the kingdom itself, and much else, we would fain have leamt, and tried to gather from Salim, ’Alee, and Djordee, but to no end : their ideas and language on a matter so far above them were alike confused. All that we could for the moment know with certainty, was that this chief resided in a town called Ha’yel, situated in Djebel Shomer, somewhere to the south-east ; that he was very powerful ; that in his dominions neither plunder nor other violation of public order was permitted; and that from Wadi Serhan, south and east, his word was law. With such information we were obliged to content ourselves for the present, in hope that nearer approach would make all clear.

It was now the 22nd of June, and the fifth day since our departure from the wells of Wokba. The water in the skins had little more to offer to our thirst than muddy dregs, and as yet no sign appeared of a fresh supply. At last about noon we drew near some hillocks of loose gravel and sandstone a little on our right ; our Bedouins conversed together awhile, and then

I o The Desert and its Inhabitants [Chap, i

turned their course and ours in that direction. “ Hold fast on your camels, for they are going to be startled and jump about,” said Salim to us. Why the camels should be startled I could not understand ; when on crossing the mounds just mentioned, we suddenly came on five or six black tents, of the very poorest description, pitched near some wells excavated in the gravelly hollow below. The reason of Salim’s precautionary hint now became evident, for our silly beasts started at first sight of the tents, as though they had never seen the like before, and then scampered about, bounding friskily here and there, till what between their jolting (for a camel’s run much resembles that of a cow) and our own laughing, we could hardly keep on their backs. However, thirst soon prevailed over timidity, and they left off their pranks to approach the well’s edge, and sniff at the water below.

We alighted. Immediately the denizens of the tents, a few women and one or two old men belonging to the Sherarat tribe, which is scattered over the whole of this desert, approached to give their “ Marhaba,” “Ya’hla,” i.e., “welcome,” “honoured guests,” and so forth, and to ask many questions why and whence our journey. Nor was their curiosity without reason; the route which had brought us was one little travelled at any time, especially by men from Damascus or its neighbourhood, and for such our dress and accent gave us out to be ; and still less at this period of the year, in the very height of summer. But we were too tired for much discourse, and far more desirous to get into a little shade after so long a running, than to hold protracted parley. So we left our Bedouins, themselves, too, well nigh worn out with fatigue, to draw water as they could from the wells and pour it into the little hollows close by for the benefit of their camels, an operation in which we should have been more of a hindrance than a help ; and, after due permission asked and granted, we crept into a low and narrow tent, whose black coverings were admirably calculated for the exclusion of the luminous and transmission of the caloriferous rays of the mid-day sun. Here we lay stretched out on the sand till it should please our companions to come and force us to rise. This the wretches attempted to do after a very short interval; but we answered, that as we had now got a good supply of water, 'and had reached, or nearly so, the boundary

Chat. I] Mdatl to the Djowf I I

limits of Ebn-Rasheed, they could have no sufficient motive for being in such tremendous haste. Salim, arch-weary as he was, admitted the force of our argument, and we remained under cover till the declining sun and cooler air. Meanwhile the mistress of the tent, an ugly good-natured looking hag, like most Bedouin dames, entertained us with a long diatribe on the tyranny of Ebn-Rasheed, and the coercion he exercised over her countrymen, from which we concluded that he was probably doing the duty of an order-loving king, and esteemed him accordingly.

When in the afternoon we resumed our way once more, we found the general appearance of the desert somewhat modified by larger patches of sand or grass on its black surface, and these continued to increase in number and size as we went on. Next day, the 23rd of the month, yet clearer signs of our approach to Wadi Sirhan became visible, and as we took a somewhat northerly direction in order to join in with that valley, we sighted far off in the extreme distance a blue range of hills, running from west to east, and belonging to the Syro- Arabic waste, though unnoticed, to the best of my knowledge, in European maps. Meanwhile the sand-patches continued to increase and deepen on all sides, and our Bedouins flattered themselves with reaching Wadi Sirhan before nightfall.