I Had Some
Difficulty To Keep The Peace, For It Did Not Suit My Interests That
They Should Quarrel.
But to do the Arabs justice, nothing is easier for
a man who knows them than to work upon their good feelings.
"He is a
stranger in your country-a guest!" acted as a charm; they listened
patiently to Mohammed's gross abuse, only promising to answer him when
in his land, that is to say, near Meccah. But what especially soured
our day was the report that Sa'ad, the great robber-chief, and his
brother were in the field; consequently that our march would be delayed
for some time: every half-hour some fresh tattle from the camp or the
coffee-house added fuel to the fire of our impatience.
A few particulars about this Schinderhans of Al-Hijaz[FN#26] may not be
unacceptable. He is the chief of the Sumaydah and the Mahamid, two
influential sub-families of the Hamidah, the principal family of the
Beni-Harb tribe of Badawin. He therefore aspired to rule all the
Hamidah, and through them the Beni-Harb, in which case he would have
been, de facto, monarch of the Holy Land. But the Sharif of Meccah, and
Ahmad Pasha,
[p.257] the Turkish governor of the chief city, for some political
reason degraded him, and raised up a rival in the person of Shaykh
Fahd, another ruffian of a similar stamp, who calls himself chief of
the Beni-Amr, the third sub-family of the Hamidah family.
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