I Heard Of Only Four Respectable Houses,
Al-Isawi, Al-Sha’Ab, Abd Al-Jawwad, And A Family From Al-Shark (The
Eastern Region).[FN#16] They All Deal In Grain, Cloth, And Provisions,
And Perhaps The Richest Have A Capital Of Twenty Thousand Dollars.
Caravans In
[P.9]the cold weather are constantly passing between Al-Madinah and
Egypt, but they are rather bodies of visitors to Constantinople than
traders travelling for gain.
Corn is brought from Jeddah by land, and
imported into Yambu’ or via Al-Rais, a port on the Red Sea, one day and a
half’s journey from Safra. There is an active provision trade with the
neighbouring Badawin, and the Syrian Hajj supplies the citizens with
apparel and articles of luxury—tobacco, dried fruits, sweetmeats, knives,
and all that is included under the word “notions.” There are few
store-keepers, and their dealings are petty, because articles of every
kind are brought from Egypt, Syria, and Constantinople. As a general
rule, labour is exceedingly expensive,[FN#17] and at the Visitation
time a man will demand fifteen or twenty piastres from a stranger for
such a trifling job as mending an umbrella. Handicraftsmen and
artisans—carpenters, masons, locksmiths, potters, and others—are either
slaves or foreigners, mostly Egyptians.[FN#18] This proceeds partly
from the pride of the people. They are taught from their childhood that
the Madani is a favoured being, to be respected however vile or
schismatic; and that the vengeance of Allah will fall upon any one who
ventures to abuse, much more to strike him.[FN#19] They receive a
stranger at the shop window with the haughtiness of Pashas, and take
pains to show him, by words as well as by looks, that they consider
themselves as
[p.10]“good gentlemen as the king, only not so rich.” Added to this pride
are indolence, and the true Arab prejudice, which, even in the present
day, prevents a Badawi from marrying the daughter of an artisan. Like
Castilians, they consider labour humiliating to any but a slave; nor is
this, as a clever French author remarks, by any means an unreasonable
idea, since Heaven, to punish man for disobedience, caused him to eat
daily bread by the sweat of his brow. Besides, there is degradation,
moral and physical, in handiwork compared with the freedom of the
Desert. The loom and the file do not conserve courtesy and chivalry
like the sword and spear; man “extends his tongue,” to use an Arab phrase,
when a cuff and not a stab is to be the consequence of an injurious
expression. Even the ruffian becomes polite in California, where his
brother-ruffian carries his revolver, and those European nations who
were most polished when every gentleman wore a rapier, have become the
rudest since Civilisation disarmed them.
By the tariff quoted below it will be evident that Al-Madinah is not a
cheap place.[FN#20] Yet the citizens,
[p.11]despite their being generally in debt, manage to live well. Their
cookery, like that of Meccah, has borrowed something from Egypt,
Turkey, Syria, Persia, and India: as all Orientals, they are
exceedingly fond of clarified butter.[FN#21]
[p.12]I have seen the boy Mohammed drink off nearly a tumbler-full,
although his friends warned him that it would make him as fat as an
elephant. When a man cannot enjoy clarified butter in these countries,
it is considered a sign that his stomach is out of order, and all my
excuses of a melancholic temperament were required to be in full play
to prevent the infliction of fried meat swimming in grease, or that
guest-dish,[FN#22] rice saturated with melted—perhaps I should say—rancid
butter. The “Samn” of Al-Hijaz, however, is often fresh, being brought in
by the Badawin; it has not therefore the foul flavour derived from the
old and impregnated skin-bag which distinguishes the “ghi” of India.[FN#23]
The house of a Madani in good circumstances is comfortable, for the
building is substantial, and the attendance respectable. Black
slave-girls here perform the complicated duties of servant-maids in
England; they are taught to sew, to cook, and to wash, besides sweeping
the house and drawing water for domestic use. Hasinah (the “Charmer,” a
decided misnomer) costs from $40 to $50; if she be a mother, her value
is less; but neat-handedness, propriety of demeanour, and skill in
feminine accomplishments, raise her to $100=£25. A little black boy,
perfect in all his points, and tolerably intelligent, costs about a
thousand piastres; girls are dearer, and eunuchs fetch double that sum.
The older the children become, the
[p.13]more their value diminishes; and no one would purchase[,] save
under exceptional circumstances, an adult slave, because he is never
parted with but for some incurable vice. The Abyssinian, mostly Galla,
girls, so much prized because their skins are always cool in the
hottest weather, are here rare; they seldom sell for less than £20, and
they often fetch £60. I never heard of a Jariyah Bayza, a white slave
girl, being in the market at Al-Madinah: in Circassia they fetch from
£100 to £400 prime cost, and few men in Al-Hijaz could afford so expensive
a luxury. The Bazar at Al-Madinah is poor, and as almost all the slaves
are brought from Meccah by the Jallabs, or drivers, after exporting the
best to Egypt, the town receives only the refuse.[FN#24]
The personal appearance of the Madani makes the stranger wonder how
this mongrel population of settlers has acquired a peculiar and almost
an Arab physiognomy. They are remarkably fair, the effect of a cold
climate; sometimes the cheeks are lighted up with red, and the hair is
a dark chestnut—at Al-Madinah I was not stared at as a white man. The
cheeks and different parts of the children’s bodies are sometimes marked
with Mashali or Tashrih, not the three long stripes of the
Meccans,[FN#25] but little scars generally in threes.
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