They Are A Proud Race, And Though Their Pride Is Not
Founded Upon Innate Worth, It Is Infinitely Preferable To The Cringing
Servility Of The Other Levantines, Who Redeem Their Slavish Deference To
Superiors By The Most Overbearing Haughtiness Towards Those Below Them.
The Mekkawys Are Proud Of Being
[P.202] natives of the holy city, of being the countrymen of their
prophet; of having preserved, in some
Degree, his manners; of speaking
his pure language; of enjoying, in expectation, all the honours in the
next world, which are promised to the neighbours of the Kaaba; and of
being much freer men than any of the foreigners whom they see crowding
to their city. They exhibit this pride to their own superiors, whom they
have taught to treat them with great forbearance and circumspection; and
they look upon all other Mohammedan nations as people of an inferior
order, to whom their kindness and politeness are the effect of their
condescension. Many good consequences might result from this pride,
without which a people cannot expect to sustain its rank among nations.
It has prevented the people of Mekka from sinking so deep into slavery
as some of their neighbours; but it excites them to nothing laudable,
while its more immediate effects are seen in the contempt which they
entertain for foreigners. This contempt, as I have already remarked, in
speaking of Djidda, is chiefly displayed towards the Turks, whose
ignorance of the Arabic language, whose dress and manners, the meanness
of their conduct whenever they cannot talk as masters; their cowardice
exhibited whenever the Hadj has been assailed in its route across the
Desert, and the little respect that was shown to them by the Governors
of Mekka, as long as the Sherif's power was unbroken, have lowered them
so much in the estimation of the Arabians, that they are held in the
Hedjaz as little better than infidels; and although many of the Mekkawys
are of Turkish origin, they heartily join the rest of their townsmen in
vilifying the stock from which they sprang.
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