unattractive in every way and barren enough to be called a desert.
Palgrave’s pen-picture cannot be improved upon: “To have an idea of
Katar my readers must figure to themselves miles on miles of low barren
hills, bleak and sun-scorched, with hardly a single tree to vary the
dry monotonous outline; below these a muddy beach extends for a quarter
of a mile seaward in slimy quicksands, bordered by a rim of sludge and
seaweed. If we look landwards beyond the hills we see what by extreme
courtesy may be called pasture land, dreary downs with twenty pebbles
for every blade of grass; and over this melancholy ground scene,
but few and far between, little clusters of wretched, most wretched
earth cottages and palm-leaf huts, narrow, ugly and low; these are the
villages, or ‘towns’ (for so the inhabitants style them) of Katar. Yet
poor and naked as is the land it has evidently something still poorer
and nakeder behind it, something in short even more devoid of resources
than the coast itself, and the inhabitants of which seek here by
violence what they cannot find at home. For the villages of Katar are
each and all carefully walled in, while the downs beyond are lined with
towers and here and there a castle, huge and square with its little
windows and narrow portals.”
[Illustration: NEIBUHR’S MAP OF THE PERSIAN GULF.]
The population of Katar is not large; its principal town is Bedaa’.
All the inhabitants live from the sea by pearl-diving and fishing, and
in the season send out two hundred boats. The whole peninsula with
its wild Bedouin population is claimed by Turkey and is the dread of
the miserable soldiers who are sent there to preserve peace and draw
precarious pay while they shake with malaria and grow homesick for
Bagdad. The Arabs are always at feud with the government and it is very
unsafe outside the walls after sunset.
The usual route from Bahrein to the interior of Hassa is to cross over
by boat to Ojeir on the mainland, and thence to travel by caravan
to Hofhoof. In October, 1893, I took this route, returning from the
capital to Katif and thence back to Menamah. Embarking at sunset we
landed at Ojeir before dawn the next day and I found my way to a
Turkish custom-house officer to whom I had a friendly letter from a
Bahrein merchant. Ojeir, although it has neither a bazaar nor any
settled population, has a mud-fort, a dwarf flagstaff and an imposing
custom-house. The harbor although not deep is protected against
north and south winds and is therefore a good landing-place for the
immense quantity of rice and piece-goods shipped from Bahrein into
the interior. A caravan of from two to three hundred camels leaves
Ojeir every week. For although the Jebel Shammar country is probably
supplied overland from Busrah and Bagdad, the whole of Southern Nejd
receives piece-goods, coffee, rice, sugar and Birmingham wares by way
of Bahrein and Ojeir.
The whole plain in and about the custom-house was piled with bales
and boxes and the air filled with the noise of loading seven hundred
camels. I struck a bargain with Salih, a Nejdi, to travel in his party
and before noon-prayers we were off. The country for many hours was
bare desert, here and there a picturesque ridge of sand, and in one
place a vein of greenish limestone. When night came we all stretched
a blanket on the clean sand and slept in the open air; those who
had neglected their water-skins on starting now satisfied thirst by
scooping a well with their hands three or four feet deep and found a
supply of water. During the day the sun was hot and the breeze died
away; but at night, under the sparkling stars and with a north wind
it seemed, by contrast, bitterly cold. On the second day at noon we
sighted the palm-forests that surround Hofhoof and give it, Palgrave
says, “the general aspect of a white and yellow onyx chased in an
emerald rim” As we did not reach the “emerald rim” until afternoon I
concluded to remain at Jifr, one of the many suburb villages. Here
Salih had friends, and a delicious dinner of bread, butter, milk and
dates, all fresh, was one of many tokens of hospitality. At sunset we
went on to the next village, Menazeleh, a distance of about three miles
through gardens and rushing streams of tepid water. The next morning
early we again rode through gardens and date-orchards half visible in
the morning mist. At seven o’clock the mosques and walls of Hofhoof
appeared right before us as the sun lifted the veil; it was a beautiful
sight.
El Hofhoof can claim a considerable age. Under the name of Hajar, it
was next to Mobarrez, the citadel town of the celebrated Bni Kindi
and Abd El Kais (570 A.D.) Both of these towns, and in fact every
village of Hassa, owe their existence to the underground watercourses,
which are the chief characteristic of the province; everywhere there
is the same abundance of this great blessing. A land of streams and
fountains,—welling up in the midst of the salt sea, as at Bahrein;
flowing unknown and unsought under the dry desert at Ojeir; bubbling
up in perennial fountains as at Katif; or bursting out in seven hot
springs that flow, cooling, to bless wide fields of rice and wheat at
Mobarrez. The entire region is capable of rich cultivation, and yet now
more than half of it is desert. There is not a man to till the ground,
and paradise lies waste except near the villages. Elsewhere Bedouin
robbers and Turkish taxes prevent cultivation. _These two are the curse
of agriculture all over the Ottoman provinces of Arabia._
[Illustration: PALGRAVE’S PLAN OF HOFHOOF.]
Hofhoof itself is surrounded by gardens, and its plan gives a good idea
of the general character of the towns of Arabia. A castle or ruler’s
house; a bazaar with surrounding dwellings and a mud-wall built around
to protect the whole. The moat is now dry and half filled in with the
débris of the walls, which are not in good repair. The town is nearly a
mile and a-half across at its greater diameter, but the houses are not
built as close together as is the custom in most Oriental towns; here
is the pleasant feature of gardens _inside_ the walls. The date-palm
predominates, and indeed comes to wonderful perfection, but the nabak,
the papay, the fig and the pomegranate are also in evidence. Indigo is
cultivated, and also cotton, while all the region round about is green
with fields of rice and sugar-cane and vegetables,—onions, radishes,
beans, vetches, and maize.
The population of the city is entirely Moslem, except one Roman
Catholic Christian, who is the Turkish doctor, and a half dozen Jews.
The three Europeans who have previously visited and described Hofhoof
are, Captain Sadlier (1819), Palgrave (1863), and Colonel Pelly (1865).
The first gives the population at 15,000 and Palgrave speaks of 20,000
to 30,000. In 1871 when the Turkish expedition against Nejd took the
city, they reported it to have 15,000 houses and 200 suburb villages(!)
This shows the absolute uncertainty of most statistics in regard to
Arabia.
El Hassa (Hofhoof) is the first stage on the direct caravan route from
east Arabia to Mecca and Jiddah. Abd Er Rahman bin Salama, the Arab
Sheikh, under the Turkish governor of the Rifa’a quarter of the town
gave me the following information regarding this route. From Hassa to
Riad is six days by camel, from Riad to Jebel Shammar nine days; to
Wady Dauasir seven; and from Riad to Mecca eighteen days. That would be
_twenty-eight days_ to cross the peninsula, not including stops on the
road and travelling at the rate of an ordinary caravan, _i. e._, three
miles an hour
The Kaisariyeh or bazaar of Hofhoof is well supplied with all the
usual requirements and luxuries of the Levant; weapons, cloth, gold
embroidery, dates, vegetables, dried fish, wood, salted locusts, fruit,
sandals, tobacco, copper-ware and piece-goods—in irregular confusion as
enumerated. Public auctions are held frequently in the square or on
the plain outside the walls. Here, too, the barbers ply their trade,
and blacksmiths beat at their anvils under the shade of a date-hut.
The Rifa’a quarter has the _best_ houses, while the Na’athal has the
largest number; the “East-end” in Hofhoof being for the rich and the
“West-end” for the poor, as is proper in a land of paradoxes.
Hassa is celebrated for two sorts of manufacture; cloaks or _abbas_,
with rich embroidery in gold and colored thread, delicately wrought and
of elegant pattern, the gayest and costliest garments of Arabia; and
brass coffee-pots of curious shape and pretty form, which, with the
cloaks, are exported all over Eastern Arabia, even as far as Busrah
and Muscat. Once trade flourished and the merchants grew rich in this
land of easy agriculture and fertile soil. But intestine wars, Wahabi
fanaticism and Turkish indolence, extortion and taxation have taken
away prosperity, and Hassa’s capital is not what it was in the days of
old, when the Carmathians held the town.
One remnant of its former glory remains; a unique and entirely local
coinage called the _Toweelah_ or “long-bit.” It consists of a small
copper-bar, mixed with a small proportion of silver, about an inch in
length, split at one end and with a fissure slightly opened. Along
one or both of its flattened sides run a few Cufic characters, nearly
illegible in most specimens, but said to read: _Mohammed-al-Saood_,
_i.e._, “Mohammed of the Saood family.” The coin has neither date nor
motto, but was undoubtedly made by one of the Carmathian Princes about
the year 920 A. D. This Moslem sect owed its origin to a fanatic and
enthusiast born at Cufa, called Carmath, who first had a following
about the year 277 of the Hejira. He assumed the lofty titles, Guide,
Director, the Word, the Holy Ghost, the Herald of the Messiah, etc. His
interpretation of the Koran was very lax in the matters of ablution,
fasting, and pilgrimage, but he increased the number of prayers to
fifty daily. He had twelve apostles among the Bedouins, and his sect
grew so rapidly that they could muster in the field 107,000 fanatical
warriors. Cufa and Busrah were pillaged and Bagdad taken. In 929 Abu
Taher stormed the Holy City of Mecca and the Carmathians took away the
black stone in triumph to Katif. The centre of their power remained
at Hassa for some years. Here the coin was struck, which is the only
remnant of their power and fanaticism. And while the Carmathian
doctrines are held in abhorrence, their little bars of copper still
buy rice and dates and stick to the hands of the money-changer in the
bazaar.
In former days there were gold and silver coins of similar shape. Some
in silver can yet be found occasionally inscribed with the noble motto
in Arabic: “_Honor to the sober man, dishonor to the ambitious._” When
I was in Hofhoof that strange, two-tailed copper-bar was worth half an
anna and disputed its birthright in the market with rupees and Indian
paper and Maria Theresa dollars and Turkish coppers. But how changed
the bazaar itself would appear to the ghost of some Carmathian warrior
of the ninth century who first handled a “long-bit.” Even the Wahabis
have disappeared and tobacco, silk, music and wine are no longer
deadly sins. Of these Moslem Puritans many have left for Riad, and the
few that remain stroke their long white beards in horror at Turkish
Effendis in infidel breeches smoking cigarettes, while they sigh for
the golden days of the Arabian Reformer.
There is a military hospital at Hofhoof with a surgeon and doctor,
but at the time of my visit there was a dearth of medicines and
an abominable lack of sanitation. Few soldiers submit to hospital
treatment, preferring to desert or seek furlough elsewhere, and nothing
is done for the Arab population. Before my coming cholera raged here as
well as on the coast, and during my short visit smallpox was epidemic
and carried off many, many children. Thrice awful are such diseases in
a land where a practical fanaticism, under the pious cloak of religion,
scorns medicine or preventive measures.
The government of the province of Hassa is as follows. The _Sandjak_
(Turkish for administrative division) is divided into three _cazas_,
Nejd, Katar and Katif and a small garrison holds each of these
cazas; 600 men at Hofhoof, and 300 at Katar and Katif. The governor,
called Mutaserrif Pasha, resides at the capital and _kaimakams_ or
sub-governors at the other two centres. There are the usual Turkish
tribunals and each Arab tribe has a representative or go-between to
arrange its affairs with the governor. The principal tribes which at
present acknowledge Turkish occupation and submit to their rule are:
El Ajeman, El Morah, Bni Hajar, Bni Khaled, Bni Hassam, El Motter, El
Harb, and El Ja’afer. The Turkish government has opened three schools
in the province; the total number of pupils according to the Turkish
official report is 3,540. The same report puts the entire population
of the province at 250,000; this gives a fair idea of the backwardness
of education even in this province which has always been remarkable
for book-learning. The large mosque with its twenty-four arches and
porticoes, smooth-plastered and with a mat-spread floor is always
full of mischievous youth learning the mysteries of grammar and the
commonplaces of Moslem theology; but the days of poetry and writing of
commentaries on the Koran are in the past; even the Wahabi merchants
talk of Bombay and are glad to get hold of an English primer or an
atlas of the new world which is knocking at their door for admittance.
After four days spent in the city I accepted an opportunity to return
northward with a caravan; I was not allowed to go, however, until
after I had signed a paper, which, because of the unsafety of the road
disclaimed all responsibility on the part of the Government should I
come to lose life, limb or luggage. A copy of this document is in my
possession, but the only foe I met in the desert was—fever. On Tuesday
noon our small party set out, not going through the large town of
Mobarrez as I had hoped, but turning east and reaching Kilabeejeh at
two o’clock. We passed fountains and streams and fields of rice and
swamps,—everything very unlike Arabia of the school-geography. In four
hours, however, we were again in the midst of desert where the sun
proved too hot for me and I was taken with a fever which did not leave
me until I returned to Bahrein. The road continued desert all the way
to Katif. On Wednesday we rode all night under the stars (because of
a false alarm of robbers) until nine o’clock next morning. Then we
rested at a place called, with bitter irony, Um El Hammam; there are
no _baths_, no trees, no grass, only a shallow pit of dirty water and
small shrubbery of dates. Here we spent a hot day. On Friday morning
we came to the borders of Katif,—palm-groves, wells, and ancient
aqueducts with curious towers and air-holes at intervals. Through
gardens and around by the large square fort we came to the sea. At the
custom-house, again, I found rest and refreshment.
Katif has no good name among Hassa Arabs; its location is low
and marshy; “its inhabitants are mostly weak in frame, sallow in
complexion, and suffer continually from malaria. The town itself is
badly built, woefully filthy, damp and ill-favored in climate. Yet
it has a good population and brisk trade. The inhabitants are mostly
Shiahs of Persian origin and are held in abhorrence by the Wahabis and
the Turks alike as little better than infidels. The present location
of Katif corresponds to the very ancient settlement of the _Gerrha_ of
the Greek geographers but no exploration for ruins has ever been made.
A Portuguese castle marks _their_ occupation of this coast also during
their supremacy in the gulf. Katif was taken by the Turks in 1871 and
has been occupied by them ever since.
The Arabian coast north of Katif, all the way to Kuweit is without
a single large settlement. Mostly barren and in the hands of the
predatory and warlike tribe of Bni Hajar, it is very uninteresting and
entirely unproductive.
XII
THE RIVER-COUNTRY AND THE DATE-PALM
“The rich plains of Mesopotamia and Assyria which were once cultivated
by a populous nation and watered by surprising efforts of human
industry, are now inhabited, or rather ravaged by wandering Arabs. So
long as these fertile provinces shall remain under the government, or
rather anarchy of the Turks they must continue deserts in which nature
dies for want of the fostering care of man”—_Niebuhr_ (1792).
What changes of history have left their records in ruins and names and
legends on the great alluvial plains of Northeastern Arabia! The two
rivers still bear their Bible names, the Euphrates and _Dijleh_, or
Hiddekel, but nothing else is left which could be called paradise. What
impresses the traveller first and most is that so large an extent of
this fertile region lies waste and unproductive under an effete rule.
The splendor of the past can scarcely be believed because of the ruin
of the present. Everywhere are traces of ancient empires and yet it
seems incredible as we watch the half-naked Arabs ploughing through the
mud-banks with their wild cattle and primitive implements.
Was this the cradle of the human race? Babylon and Nineveh are here
for the archaeologist; Ctesiphon, Kufa and Zobeir for the historian;
Bagdad and Busrah (or Bassorah) for old Arabian romance; and Ur of
the Chaldees for the Bible student. Since Haroun Rashid went about in
disguise how many yet stranger Arabian nights has Bagdad seen! How
surprised Sinbad the sailor would be to see the decay of Busrah, yet
with a dozen “smoke-ships” in its harbor!
Mesopotamia, called by the Arabs _El Jezira_, was formerly limited to
the land lying between the two rivers and south of the old wall by
which they were connected above Bagdad. From this point to the Persian
Gulf the district was and is still known as Irak-Arabi, to distinguish
it from the Irak of Persia. Commonly, however, the name of Mesopotamia
(Mid-River-Country) is given to the whole northeastern part of Arabia.
It has a total area of 180,000 square miles and presents great
uniformity in its physical as well as its ethnical characteristics.
Arabs live and Arabic is spoken for three hundred miles beyond Bagdad
as far as Diarbekr and Mardin; but we limit our description to the
region between Busrah and Bagdad including the delta at the mouth of
the rivers.
Near Bagdad the two giant rivers, after draining Eastern Asia Minor,
Armenia and Kurdistan, approach quite near together; from thence
the main streams are connected by several channels and intermittent
watercourses, the chief of which is the Shatt-el Hai. At Kurna the two
rivers unite to form the Shatt-el-Arab which traverses a flat, fertile
plain dotted with villages and covered with artificially irrigated
meadow-lands and extensive date groves. As far up as Bagdad the river
is navigable throughout the year for steamers of considerable size.
It is entirely owing to the enterprise of English commerce and the
Bagdad-Busrah steamship line that the country, so gloomily described by
Niebuhr, in 1792, and even by Chesney in 1840, has been developed into
new life and prosperity. Even Turkish misrule and oppression cannot do
away utterly with natural fertility and productiveness; and if ever a
good government should hold this region it would regain its ancient
importance and double its present population.
Two features are prominent in the physical geography of this region.
First the flat almost level stretches of meadow without any rise or
fall except the artificial ancient mounds[36]. The second is the
date-palm. The whole length of the country from Fao and Mohammerah
to the country of the Montefik Arabs above Kurna is one large date
plantation, on both sides of the wide river. Everywhere the tall
shapely trees line the horizon and near the lower estuary of the
Shatt-el-Arab they are especially luxuriant and plentiful. Formerly
every palm-tree on the Nile, was registered and taxed; but to count
every such tree on the Shatt-el-Arab would be an unending task.
The proper coat-of-arms for all lower Mesopotamia would be a date-palm.
It is the “banner of the climate” and the wealth of the country. There
may be monotony in these long groves and rows of well-proportioned
columns with their tops hidden in foliage, but there certainly is
nothing wearisome. A date garden is a scene of exceeding beauty,
varying greatly according to the time of the day and the state of
the weather. At sunrise or sunset the gorgeous colors fall on the
gracefully pendant fronds or steal gently through the lighter foliage
and reflect a vivid green so beautiful that once seen, it can never
be forgotten. At high-noon the dark shadows and deep colors of the
date-forests refresh and rest the eye aching from the brazen glare of
sand and sky. But the forest is at its best, when on a dewy night the
full moon rises and makes a pearl glisten on every spiked leaf and the
shadows show black as night in contrast with the sheen of the upper
foliage.
It was an Arab poet who first sang the song of the date-palm so
beautifully interpreted by Bayard Taylor:
“Next to thee, O fair Gazelle!
O Bedowee girl, beloved so well,—
Next to the fearless Nejidee
Whose fleetness shall bear me again to thee—
Next to ye both I love the palm
With his leaves of beauty and fruit of balm.
Next to ye both, I love the tree
Whose fluttering shadows wrap us three
In love and silence and mystery.
Our tribe is many, our poets vie
With any under the Arab sky
Yet none can sing of the palm but I.
The noble minarets that begem
Cairo’s citadel diadem
Are not so light as his slender stem.
He lifts his leaves in the sunbeam glance
As the Almehs lift their arms in dance;
A slumberous motion, a passionate sigh
That works in the cells of the blood like wine.
O tree of love, by that love of thine
Teach me how I shall soften mine.”
Mark Twain compared the palm-tree to “a liberty-pole with a haycock”
on top of it. The truth lies between the poet and the “Innocent”
traveller, for the date-tree is both a poem and a commercial product;
to the Arab mind it is the perfection of beauty and utility.
The date palm-tree is found in Syria, Asia Minor, nearly all parts of
Arabia and the southern islands of the Mediterranean, but it attains to
its greatest perfection in upper Egypt and Mesopotamia.[37] Some idea
of the immense importance of this one crop in the wealth of Mesopotamia
may be gained from the statement of an old English merchant at Busrah,
that “the entire annual date-harvest of the River-country might
conservatively be put at 150,000 tons.”
The date-tree consists of a single stem or trunk about fifty to eighty
feet high, without a branch, and crowned at the summit by a cluster of
leaves or “palms” that drop somewhat in the shape of a huge umbrella.
Each of these palms has long lanceolate leaves spreading out like a
fan from the centre stem which often attains a length of ten or even
twelve feet. In a wild state the successive rows of palms, which mark
the annual growth of the tree, wither and contract but remain upon the
trunk, producing with every breath of wind the creaking sound so
often heard in the silence of the desert-night. But where the palms are
cultivated the old stems are cut away as fast as they dry and are put
to many different uses. The trunk of the palm-tree therefore presents
the appearance of scales which enable a man, whose body is held to the
tree by a rope noose, to climb to the top with ease and gather the
fruit. At a distance, these annual _rings_ of the date-palm appear as a
series of diagonal lines dividing the trunk. Palm-trees often reach the
age of a hundred years. The date-palm is diœcious; but in Mesopotamia
the pistilate-palms far exceed in number the staminate. Marriage of the
palms takes place every spring and is a busy time for the husbandman as
it is no small task to climb all the trees and sprinkle the pollen.
[Illustration: A DATE ORCHARD NEAR BUSRAH.]
[Illustration: DATES GROWING ON A DATE-PALM.]