The Most Frequent Of My Visitors Was Abdullah,
The Kabirah’S Eldest Son.
This melancholy Jacques had joined our caravan
at Al-Hamra, on the
[P.230] Yambu’ road, accompanied us to Al-Madinah, lived there, and
journeyed to Meccah with the Syrian pilgrimage; yet he had not once
come to visit me or to see his brother, the boy Mohammed. When gently
reproached for this omission, he declared it to be his way—that he never
called upon strangers until sent for. He was a perfect Saudawi
(melancholist) in mind, manners, and personal appearance, and this
class of humanity in the East is almost as uncomfortable to the
household as the idiot of Europe. I was frequently obliged to share my
meals with him, as his mother—though most filially and reverentially
entreated—would not supply him with breakfast two hours after the proper
time, or with a dinner served up forty minutes before the rest of the
household. Often, too, I had to curb, by polite deprecation, the
impetuosity of the fiery old Kabirah’s tongue. Thus Abdullah and I became
friends, after a fashion. He purchased several little articles
required, and never failed to pass hours in my closet, giving me much
information about the country; deploring the laxity of Meccan morals,
and lamenting that in these evil days his countrymen had forfeited
their name at Cairo and at Constantinople. His curiosity about the
English in India was great, and I satisfied it by praising, as a Moslem
would, their politike, their evenhanded justice, and their good star.
Then he would inquire into the truth of a fable extensively known on
the shores of the Mediterranean and of the Red Sea. The English, it is
said, sent a mission to Mohammed, inquiring into his doctrines, and
begging that the heroic Khalid bin Walid[FN#4] might be sent to
proselytise them. Unfortunately,
[p.231] the envoys arrived too late—the Prophet’s soul had winged its way
to Paradise. An abstract of the Moslem scheme was, however, sent to the
“Ingreez,” who declined, as the Founder of the New Faith was no more, to
abandon their own religion; but the refusal was accompanied with
expressions of regard. For this reason many Moslems in Barbary and
other countries hold the English to be of all “People of the Books” the
best inclined towards them. As regards the Prophet’s tradition concerning
the fall of his birthplace, “and the thin-calved from the Habash
(Abyssinians) shall destroy the Ka’abah,” I was informed that towards the
end of time a host will pass from Africa in such multitudes that a
stone shall be conveyed from hand to hand between Jeddah and Meccah.
This latter condition might easily be accomplished by sixty thousand
men, the distance being only forty-four miles, but the citizens
consider it to express a countless horde. Some pious Moslems have hoped
that in Abdullah bin Zubayr’s re-erection of the Ka’abah the prophecy was
fulfilled[FN#5]: the popular belief, however, remains that the fatal
event is still in the womb of time.
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