A
Strong Caravan Usually Leaves Mekka On The 11th Of Moharrem,
(Corresponding This Year With The 2nd Of January, 1815,
) The day after
the opening of the Kaaba, which always takes place on the 10th of
Moharrem, or the day
Called Ashour. Towards the end of December, the
inhabitants were alarmed by a false report of the arrival of a Wahaby
force, by the way of the seacoast, from the south: soon after, in the
first days of January, 1815, Mohammed Aly set out from Mekka. He met the
Wahaby army, four days after, at Byssel, in the neighbourhood of Tayf,
where he gained
[p.289] the complete victory of which I have elsewhere given the
details; this was no sooner known at Mekka, than the caravan for Medina,
which had long been prepared, set out, on the 15th of January.
After the Syrian Hadj had departed, and the greater part of the other
pilgrims retired to Djidda, waiting for an opportunity to embark, Mekka
appeared like a deserted town. Of its brilliant shops, one-fourth only
remained; and in the streets, where a few weeks before it was necessary
to force one's way through the crowd, not a single hadjy was seen,
except solitary beggars, who raised their plaintive voices towards the
windows of the houses which they supposed to be still inhabited. Rubbish
and filth covered all the streets, and nobody appeared disposed to
remove it. The skirts of the town were crowded with the dead carcases of
camels, the smell from which rendered the air, even in the midst of the
town, offensive, and certainly contributed to the many diseases now
prevalent.
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