“Rafi ran after her with his sword drawn, and was just about to
strike off her head, when she cried ‘quarter.’”—ABULFEDA.
Kâf and Itheri—More relations—The Wady Sirhán—Locust hunting—Hanna sits
down to die—Tales of robbery and violence—We are surprised by a ghazú and
made prisoners—Sherarât statistics—Jôf.
_December_ 28.—Kâf is a pretty little village, with a character of its
own, quite distinct from anything one sees in Syria. All is in
miniature, the sixteen little square houses, the little battlemented
towers and battlemented walls seven feet high—seventy or eighty palm
trees in a garden watered from wells, and some trees I took at first for
cypresses, but which turned out to be a very delicate kind of tamarisk.
{84} Though so small a place, Kâf has a singularly flourishing look, all
is neat there and in good repair, not a battlement broken or a door off
its hinges, as would certainly have been the case in Syria. There are
also a good many young palms planted in among the older ones, and young
fig trees and vines, things hardly ever found in the North. The people
are nice looking and well behaved, though at first they startled us a
little by going about all of them with swords in their hands. These they
hold either sloped over their shoulders or grasped in both hands by the
scabbard, much as one sees in the old stone figures of mediæval martyrs,
or in the effigies of crusaders.
Abdallah el-Kamis, Sheykh of the village, to whom we had letters from
Huseyn, received us with great politeness; and a room in his house was
swept out for our use. Like all the other rooms, it opened on to the
court-yard, in the middle of which was tethered a two-year-old colt. Our
room had been a storing place for wood, and was without furniture of any
sort, but we were delighted to find also without inhabitants. The
architecture here is very simple, plain mud walls with no windows or
openings of any kind except a few square holes near the roof. The roof
was of _ithel_ beams with cross rafters of palm, thatched in with palm
branches. The principal room is called the kahwah or coffee room; and in
it there is a square hearth at the side or in the middle for
coffee-making. There is no chimney, and the smoke escapes as it can; but
this is not so uncomfortable as it sounds, for the wood burnt here burns
with a beautiful bright flame, giving out a maximum of heat to a minimum
of smoke. It is the _ratha_ or _ghada_. {85} People sit round the
hearth while coffee is being made, a solemn process occupying nearly half
an hour.
As soon as we arrived, a trencher of dates was brought, dates of the last
year’s crop, all sticky and mashed up, but good; and later in the
evening, we had a more regular dinner of burghul and boiled fowls. We
are much struck with the politeness of everybody. Abdallah, our host,
asked us at least twenty times after our health before he would go on to
anything else; and it was not easy to find appropriate compliments in
return. Everything of course is very poor and very simple, but one
cannot help feeling that one is among civilized people. They have been
making a great fuss with Mohammed, who is treated as a sheykh. Tudmur is
well known by name, and at this distance is considered an important town.
Much surprise was expressed at finding a man of his rank in the
semi-menial position Mohammed holds with us, and he was put to some
polite cross-questioning in the evening as to the motive of his journey.
No Franjis have ever been seen at Kâf before, so the people say; and they
do not understand the respect in which Europeans are held elsewhere.
Mohammed, however, has explained his “brotherhood with the Beg,” and
protested that his journey is one of honour, not of profit; so that we
are treated with as much courtesy as if we were Arabs born. Awwad the
Shammar has been of great use to us, as he is well known here, and he
serves as an introduction.
Kâf is quite independent of the Sultan, though it has twice been sacked
by Turkish soldiers, once under Ibrahim Pasha in 1834, and again only a
few years ago, when the Government of Damascus sent a military expedition
down the Wady Sirhán. We were shown the ruins of a castle, Kasr es-Saïd,
on a hill above the town which the former destroyed, and we heard much
lamentation over the proceedings of the latter. The inhabitants of Kâf
acknowledge themselves subjects of Ibn Rashid, the Jebel Shammar chief,
some of whose people were here only a few days since, taking the annual
tribute, a very small sum, twenty mejidies (£4), which they are glad to
pay in return for his protection. They are very enthusiastic about “the
Emir,” as they call him, and certainly have no reason to wish for
annexation to Syria. The little town of Kâf and its neighbour Itheri,
where we now are, have commercially more connection with the north than
with the south, for their principal wealth, such as it is, arises from
the salt trade with Bozra. Abdallah el-Kamis seems to be well off, for
he possesses several slaves, and has more than one wife. But the colt I
have mentioned is his only four-footed possession; he would have come
with us, he said, if he had owned a delúl. I noticed a few camels and
donkeys and goats about the village.
Makbul, the Kreysheh, has gone back, and we now want to find a Sherári to
take us on to Jôf. We have come on to Itheri, Kâf’s twin oasis, two and
a half hours east of it, also in the Wady Sirhán. This is not marked on
many of the modern maps, though Chesney has it incorrectly placed on his.
We find by the barometer that they are both on the same level, so that
our conjecture seems confirmed, about the Wady Sirhán having no slope.
The Wady Sirhán is a curious chaotic depression, probably the bed of some
ancient sea like the Dead Sea, and is here about twelve miles broad if we
can judge by the hills we see beyond it, and which are no doubt the
opposite cliffs of the basin. There are numerous wells both here and at
Kâf, wide and shallow, for the water is only eight feet below the surface
of the ground. From these the palm gardens are irrigated. There are
wells too outside, all lying low and at the same level. The water is
drinkable, by no means excellent. We crossed a large salt lake, now dry,
where the salt is gathered for the caravans.
On our road Mohammed entertained us with tales of his birth and ancestry.
The people of Kâf have heard of the Ibn Arûks, and have told Mohammed
that he will find relations in many parts of Arabia besides Jôf. They
say there is somebody at Bereydeh, and a certain Ibn Homeydi, whom
Mohammed has heard of as a cousin. Then here at Itheri, the Sheykh’s
wife is a member of the Jôf family. Everything in fact seems going just
as we expected it.
Itheri is a still smaller place than Kâf but it boasts of an ancient
building and miniature castle inside the walls, something after the
fashion of the Hauran houses. This, instead of mud, the common Arab
material, is built of black stones, well squared and regularly placed.
On the lintel of the doorway there is or rather has been, an inscription
in some ancient character, perhaps Himyaritic, which we would have copied
had it been legible, but the weather has almost effaced it. {89} Here we
are being entertained by Jeruan, an untidy half-witted young man, with
long hair in plaits and a face like a Scotch terrier, who is the son of
Merzuga, Mohammed’s cousin, and consequently a cousin himself. Though
nothing much to be proud of as a relation, we find him an attentive host.
His mother is an intelligent and well-bred woman, and it seems strange
that she should have so inferior a son. Her other three sons, for Jeruan
is the eldest of four, have their wits like other people, but they are
kept in the background. Merzuga came to see me just now with a large
dish of dates in her hand, and stopped to talk. Her face is still
attractive, and she must have once been extremely beautiful. I notice
that she wears a number of silver rings on her fingers like wedding
rings.
Merzuga tells us we shall find plenty of Ibn Arûk relations at Jôf. She
herself left it young and talks of it as an earthly paradise from which
she has been torn to live in this wretched little oasis. Itheri is
indeed a forlorn place, all except Jeruan’s palm garden. After a walk in
the palm garden, in which my lameness prevented me from joining, we all
sat down to a very good dinner of lamb and sopped bread—the bread tasted
like excellent pastry—served us by Jeruan in person, standing according
to Arab fashion when guests are eating. His mother looks well after him,
and tells him what to do, and it is evident, though he has the sense to
say very little, that he is looked upon as not quite “accountable” in his
family. Wilfrid describes the walk in the garden as rather amusing,
Mohammed and Abdallah making long speeches of compliments about all they
saw, and telling Jeruan’s head man extraordinary stories of the grandeur
and wealth of Tudmur. Jeruan’s garden, the only one at Itheri, contains
four hundred palm trees, many of them newly planted, and none more than
twenty-five years old. Amongst them was a young tree of the _héllua_
variety, the sweet date of Jôf, imported from thence, and considered here
a great rarity. At this there was a chorus of admiration. The ithel
trees were also much admired. They are grown for timber, and spring from
the stub when cut down, a six years’ growth being already twenty feet
high.
Two men have arrived from Jôf with the welcome news that all is well
between this and Jôf; that is, there are no Arabs yet in the Wady Sirhán;
welcome because we have no introductions, and a meeting might be
disagreeable. The season is so late and the pasture so bad, that the
Wady has been quite deserted since last spring. There will be no road
now, or track of any kind, and as it is at least two hundred miles to
Jôf, we must have a guide to shew us the wells. Such a one we have found
in a funny looking little Bedouin, a Sherári, who happens to be here and
who will go with us for ten mejidies.
_December_ 29.—There was a bitter east wind blowing when we started this
morning, and I observed a peewit, like a land bird at sea, flying hither
and thither under the lea of the palm trees, looking hopeless and worn
out with its long voyage. Poor thing, it will die here, for there is
nothing such a bird can eat anywhere for hundreds of miles. It must have
been blown out of its reckoning, perhaps from the Euphrates.
Our course to-day lay along the edge of the Wady, sometimes crossing
stony promontories from the upper plain, sometimes sandy inlets from the
Wady. The heights of these were always pretty much the same, 2250 feet
above and 1850 below—so these may be taken as the respective heights of
the Hamád and of the Wady Sirhán. There are besides, here and there,
isolated tells, three hundred to four hundred feet higher than either.
Rough broken ground all day, principally of sand with slaty grit
sprinkled over it, the vegetation very scanty on the high ground, but
richer in the hollows. In one small winding ravine leading into the
Wady, we found ghada trees, but otherwise nothing bigger than shrubs.
There Awwad told us that two years ago he was robbed and stripped by a
ghazú from the Hauran. He had lost six camels and all he possessed. The
Haurani were eight in number, his own party six. I asked him how it was
the robbers got the best of it. He said it was “min Allah” (from God).
The Wady Sirhán seems to be a favourite place for robbers, and Awwad
takes the occurrence as a matter of course. I asked him why he had left
his tribe, the Shammar, and come to live so far north as Salkhad. He
said it was “_nasíb_,” a thing fated; that he had married a Salkhad wife,
and she would not go away from her people. I asked him how he earned his
living, and he laughed. “I have got half a mare,” he said, “and a delúl,
and I make ghazús. There are nine of us Shammar in the Hauran, and we go
out together towards Zerka, or to the western Leja and take cattle by
night.” He then showed us some frightful scars of wounds, which he had
got on these occasions, and made Wilfrid feel a bullet which was still
sticking in his side. He is a curious creature, but we like him, and,
robber or no robber, he has quite the air of a gentleman. He is besides
an agreeable companion, sings very well, recites ballads, and is a great
favourite everywhere. At Kâf and Itheri he was hugged and kissed by the
men, old and young, and welcomed by the women in every house.
We were nearly frozen all the morning, the wind piercing through our fur
cloaks. At half-past twelve, after four hours’ marching, we came to some
wells called Kurághir, six of them in a bare hollow, with camel tracks
leading from every point of the compass towards them. It is clear that
at some time of the year the Wady is inhabited; Awwad says by the Roala
in winter, but this year there is nobody. The water, like that of Kâf
and Itheri, is slightly brackish. Near Kurághir we saw some gazelles and
coursed them vainly. It is vexatious, for I have forgotten to bring
meat, and unless we can catch or shoot something, we shall have none till
we get to Jôf. I ought to have thought of it, for, though provisions are
by no means plentiful at Itheri, we could probably have bought a sheep
and driven it on with us. The pain of my lameness distracted my
attention—a bad excuse, but the only one. I suffer less when riding than
at any other time.
We are now, since four o’clock, camped on the sand under some ghada
bushes, and the wind has dropped for the moment. It seems always to blow
here except for an hour about sunset and another at dawn. We are to dine
on beef tea, burghul with curry sauce, and a water-melon, the last of our
Hauran store.
_December_ 30.—On the high level all the morning over ground like the
Harra with volcanic stones, a fierce south-east wind in our faces, so
that we could not talk or hardly think. Our course lay towards an
inhospitable looking range of hills called El Mizmeh, and when we reached
these, to the right of them, for we travel in anything but a straight
line. Saw great numbers of red locusts which, as the sun warmed the
ground, began to fly about and were pursued by the men and knocked down
with sticks. Enough have been secured to make a dish for dinner. When
flying, these insects look very like large May flies, as they have the
same helpless heavy flight, drifting down the wind with hardly sufficient
power of direction to keep them clear of obstacles. Sometimes they fly
right against the camels, and at others drop heavily into the bushes
where they are easily caught. When sitting on the ground, however, they
are hard to see, and they keep a good look-out and jump up and drift away
again as you come near them. They seem to have more sense, than power of
moving.
At two we came to more wells,—Mahiyeh—most of them choked up with sand,
but one containing a sufficient supply of brackish water. These wells
lay among clumps of tamarisk, out of which we started several hares which
the greyhounds could not catch, as they always dodged back to cover.
Wilfrid and I waited behind for this fruitless hunting upon which our
dinner depended, and did not join the rest of the party for more than a
mile. Before we reached them we came upon Hanna, sitting on the ground
on his _hedûm_ (quilt and abba), and Ibrahim standing over him, both
shouting, “_Wah_! _wah_! _wah_!” We could not conceive what had happened
and could get no information from either of them, except that they were
going to remain where they were. These two townspeople sitting on their
beds all alone in the Wady Sirhán were so absurd a spectacle that, at the
moment, we could not help laughing; but it was not an affair for
laughter, and of course it was impossible to leave them there. We
insisted on an explanation. There had been a quarrel between Hanna and
Abdallah, because the latter had driven on Hanna’s delúl fast with the
other camels, and refused to let it be made to kneel down and get up
again. Abdallah and Awwab were in a great hurry to get as far from
Mahiyeh as possible, because Hamdán the Sherâri says it is a dangerous
spot. But Hanna was angry, and in his anger he dropped his cloak; upon
which he jumped down, pulling his bed after him, and sat down on the
ground. There the others left him, wailing and raving, and in this state
we found him. He proposed that he and Ibrahim should be left behind to
be eaten up by the hyena whose tracks we had seen. However, Ibrahim, who
had only stayed to keep him company, was quite ready to go on, and,
seeing this, Hanna was not long in getting up, and, making his brother
carry his bedding, he followed us. It was no good inquiring who was
right or who was wrong; we stopped the camels, and, driving back the
delúl insisted on Hanna’s mounting, which after some faces he did, and
the episode ended. Mohammed has been commissioned to insist with the
Arabs on peace, and we have we think prevailed with Hanna to bear no
malice. It is absolutely impossible for anybody to go back now without
losing his life, and I trust they will all be reasonable; it is
disagreeable to think that there has been discord in our small party,
separated as it is from all the rest of the world. We are camped now in
a side wady where the camel pasture is good. We saw the place from a
great distance, for we are becoming skilful now at guessing likely spots.
Wherever you see rocky ground in lines you may be sure pasture will be
found. We have seen no sign of recent habitation in the country since
leaving Itheri, neither footprint of camel nor of man.
The locusts fried are fairly good to eat.
_December_ 31.—Another long day’s march, and here we are at the end of
the year in one of the most desolate places in the world. It was so cold
last night, that all the locusts are dead. They are lying about
everywhere, and being eaten up by the little desert birds, larks, and
wheatears. We have got down again into the main bed of the Wady Sirhán,
which is still at the same level as before; it is here nearly flat, and
covered with great bunches of guttub and other shrubs, all very salt to
the taste; the soil crumbly and unsound, in places white with saltpetre.
Awwad and the Sherâri declare that there are quicksands, _hadôda_
(literally, an abyss), somewhere in the neighbourhood, in which
everything that passes over sinks and disappears, leaving no trace—men,
camels, and gazelles; but of such we saw nothing. Coasting the edge of
the Wady, we came suddenly on some gazelles, which led us to higher
ground, where we found a stony wilderness of the Harra type; and amongst
the stones we saw a hyena trotting leisurely. We got nothing, however;
neither him nor the gazelles, and are still without meat. No other
incident occurred till we came to a palm tree standing by itself in an
open place; near it, a charming little spring, quite in among the roots
of a thick clump of palm bushes. The hole is about three feet across,
and two deep, with about a foot of water in it; the water rises again as
fast as it is taken out, but never overflows. There were traces of
hyenas and gazelles about, and this, I suppose, is where the desert
animals come to drink, for it is the only water above ground we have yet
seen. This spring is called Maasreh (little by little)—a pleasant spot
where we should have liked to camp; but it is always dangerous to stop
near water, lest people should come. Awwad says there is some tradition
of a town or village having formerly existed here; but no ruins are to be
seen. The water is sweet and good, as might be perceived by the insects
which were swimming about in it. The Arabs always judge of the
wholesomeness of water in this way. There is nothing more suspicious in
the desert than perfectly clear water, free from animal life.
We are now camped under a low cliff hollowed out into caves as if by
water, capital dens for hyænas. There is a beautiful view looking back
at the Mizmeh hills. The evening is still and cold, but we do not like
to make much fire for fear of enemies. Hamdán, our Sherári guide, an
uncouth, savage creature to look at, has been reciting a very pretty
ballad, which he tells us he made himself. It is in stanzas of four
lines with alternate rhymes, and relates to an episode in his own family.
As he recited it the rest of the Arabs chimed in, repeating always the
last word of the line with the rhyming syllable; it had a good effect.
The story was simple, and told how Hamdán’s mother and sister had a
quarrel, and how they brought their grievances before Obeyd ibn Rashid at
Haïl, and how the old Sheykh settled it by putting a rope round the
daughter’s neck, and bidding the mother hold the end of it, and do so for
the rest of their days. Whereupon the daughter had kissed her mother,
and Obeyd had sent them away with presents, a delúl, a cloak each, and a
hundred measures of wheat, a present he had continued giving them every
year till he died, and which is given still by his nephew, Mohammed, the
present ruler of Jebel Shammar. Hamdán has also given us an interesting
account of the Haïl politics, which agrees very closely with what we
remember of Mr. Palgrave’s, carrying them on to a later date. The
present Ibn Rashid is not by any means so amiable a character as his
brother Tellál; and Hamdán’s account of his career is rather startling.
It appears that he has put to death something like a dozen of his
relations, and is more feared than loved by the Shammar. This is very
tiresome, as it may be a reason for our not going on to Nejd after all.
But we shall hear more when we get to Jôf.
Hamdán’s recitative was, as nearly as I could write the musical part of
it, like this:—
[Picture: Two lines of music]
_January_ 1, 1879.—A black frost, but still. We have changed our course,
and have been going all day nearly due south—twenty-five miles, as near
as we can calculate it—and down the middle of the Wady Sirhán, a level
plain of sand and grit, with here and there mounds of pure white sand
covered with ghada. Our plan is to get up and strike the tents at the
first glimpse of dawn, drink a cup of coffee, and eat a biscuit or a bit
of rusk (kâk), and then march on till three or four in the afternoon
without stopping for an instant, eating half-a-dozen dates and some more
rusk as we go. Then immediately on stopping, and before the tents are
pitched, we light a fire and make coffee, which carries us on till dinner
is ready, about sunset. It is wonderful how little food one can do with
while travelling. We have had no meat now for the last four days till
to-day, only beef tea, and burghul, and dates, with sometimes fried
onions, or flour mixed with curry powder and butter, and baked into a
cake. This last is very good, and easily made. To-day, however, we are
in clover, as the dogs coursed a hare, and we dug her out. The desert
hare is very little bigger than a large rabbit, and is literally too much
for one, and not enough for two; but Mohammed magnanimously foregoes his
portion, and says he can wait.
Mohammed has been improving the occasion of a dispute which arose this
evening on a choice of camp, to tell us some stories of his own
adventures in the desert; and we have been telling him ours. He had a
younger brother, whom his mother was very fond of, a regular town boy
with “a white face like a girl,” who knew how to read and write and knew
nothing of the desert (Mohammed himself like his great namesake, has
always been a camel driver). Now at Tudmur they have constantly had
fights and quarrels for the Sheykhat, and on one such occasion his
brother was sent away by his parents to Sokhne, the neighbouring village,
about thirty miles from Tudmur; and there he stayed for some time with a
relation. At last, however, he got tired of being away from home, and
wanted to see his mother. He started off with another boy of his own age
(about fifteen) to walk back to Tudmur. It was in the middle of summer,
and they lost their way and wandered far down into the Hamád where they
died of thirst. Mohammed had gone out to look for them, and found them
both dead close together.
On another occasion Mohammed himself was nearly meeting his death. He
had gone alone with his camels on the road to Karieteyn, and had fallen
in with a ghazú of robbers from the hills. These stripped him of
everything except his shirt and a tarbush. His gun he had contrived to
hide under a bush, but they left him nothing else, neither food nor
water, and it was in the middle of summer. Karieteyn, the nearest place,
was about forty miles off, and he was lame with a blow he had received.
However, when the robbers were gone, he set out in that direction, and
managed to walk on till night and the next day, till he got to a ruin
called Kasr el Hayr where he fell down senseless under the shade, and lay
for twenty-four hours unable to move, and suffering agonies from thirst.
At last, when he had said to himself, “now I shall have to die,” a party
of camel men from Sokhne came by and found him lying there. At first
they took him for a slave, for the sun had burnt him black, and his
tongue was dried so that he could not speak. Fortunately one of the
party recognised him, and then they gave him water. He still could give
no account of himself, but they put him on a donkey and brought him with
them to Tudmur.
Our own story was the one of our quarrel with Abunjad and our rush from
Akaba to Gaza, when we so nearly perished of thirst.
The year would have begun prosperously, but for a severe cold Wilfrid has
caught. He has lost his voice.
_January_ 2.—A hard frost—water frozen in the pail. Reached the wells of
Shaybeh at half-past eight and watered the camels—water very
brackish—level by aneroid 1950, depth to surface of water twelve feet.
Got into a sort of track, part of the morning, but one evidently not
frequented. At one o’clock came to another well, near a curious rock
which at first we took for a castle. We have now crossed the wady and
are on its western bank. Passed a ruined house of no great antiquity
called Abu Kasr and another well near it, and at half-past four have
encamped under some sand hills, crowned with ghada, a delightful spot not
far from a fourth well called Bir el-Jerawi—level by barometer 1840.
Wilfrid has recovered his voice but still has a bad cold. I am as lame
as ever, though in less pain. I sometimes think I shall never be able to
walk again.
_Friday_, _January_ 3.—We have had an adventure at last and a
disagreeable one; a severe lesson as to the danger of encamping near
wells. We started early, but were delayed a whole hour at Jerawi taking
water, and did not leave the wells till nearly eight o’clock. Then we
turned back nearly due east across the wady. The soil of pure white sand
was heavy going, and we went slowly, crossing low undulations without
other landmark than the tells we had left behind us. Here and there rose
little mounds tufted with ghada. To one of these Wilfrid and I cantered
on, leaving the camels behind us, and dismounting, tied our mares to the
bushes that we might enjoy a few minutes’ rest, and eat our midday
mouthful—the greyhounds meanwhile played about and chased each other in
the sand. We had finished, and were talking of I know not what, when the
camels passed us. They were hardly a couple of hundred yards in front
when suddenly we heard a thud, thud, thud on the sand, a sound of
galloping. Wilfrid jumped to his feet, looked round and called out, “Get
on your mare. This is a ghazú.” As I scrambled round the bush to my
mare I saw a troop of horsemen charging down at full gallop with their
lances, not two hundred yards off. Wilfrid was up as he spoke, and so
should I have been, but for my sprained knee and the deep sand, both of
which gave way as I was rising. I fell back. There was no time to think
and I had hardly struggled to my feet, when the enemy was upon us, and I
was knocked down by a spear. Then they all turned on Wilfrid, who had
waited for me, some of them jumping down on foot to get hold of his
mare’s halter. He had my gun with him, which I had just before handed to
him, but unloaded; his own gun and his sword being on his delúl. He
fortunately had on very thick clothes, two abbas one over the other, and
English clothes underneath, so the lances did him no harm. At last his
assailants managed to get his gun from him and broke it over his head,
hitting him three times and smashing the stock. Resistance seemed to me
useless, and I shouted to the nearest horseman, “_ana dahílak_” (I am
under your protection), the usual form of surrender. Wilfrid hearing
this, and thinking he had had enough of this unequal contest, one against
twelve, threw himself off his mare. The _khayal_ (horsemen) having
seized both the mares, paused, and as soon as they had gathered breath,
began to ask us who we were and where we came from. “English, and we
have come from Damascus,” we replied, “and our camels are close by. Come
with us, and you shall hear about it.” Our caravan, while all this had
happened, and it only lasted about five minutes, had formed itself into a
square and the camels were kneeling down, as we could plainly see from
where we were. I hardly expected the horsemen to do as we asked, but the
man who seemed to be their leader at once let us walk on (a process
causing me acute pain), and followed with the others to the caravan. We
found Mohammed and the rest of our party entrenched behind the camels
with their guns pointed, and as we approached, Mohammed stepped out and
came forward. “Min entum?” (who are you?) was the first question.
“Roala min Ibn Debaa.” “Wallah? will you swear by God?” “Wallah! we
swear.” “And you?” “Mohammed ibn Arûk of Tudmur.” “Wallah?” “Wallah!”
“And these are Franjis travelling with you?” “Wallah! Franjis, friends
of Ibn Shaalan.”
[Picture: Ghazú in the Wady Sirhán]
It was all right, we had fallen into the hands of friends. Ibn Shaalan,
our host of last year, was bound to protect us, even so far away in the
desert, and none of his people dared meddle with us, knowing this.
Besides, Mohammed was a Tudmuri, and as such could not be molested by
Roala, for Tudmur pays tribute to Ibn Shaalan, and the Tudmuris have a
right to his protection. So, as soon as the circumstances were made
clear, orders were given by the chief of the party to his followers to
bring back our mares, and the gun, and everything which had been dropped
in the scuffle. Even to Wilfrid’s tobacco bag, all was restored. The
young fellows who had taken the mares made rather wry faces, bitterly
lamenting their bad fortune in finding us friends. “Ah the beautiful
mares,” they said, “and the beautiful gun.” But Arabs are always
good-humoured, whatever else their faults, and presently we were all on
very good terms, sitting in a circle on the sand, eating dates and
passing round the pipe of peace. They were now our guests.
What struck us as strange in all this was, the ready good faith with
which they believed every word we said. We had spoken the truth, but why
did they trust us? They knew neither us nor Mohammed; yet they had taken
our word that we were friends, when they might so easily have ridden off
without question with our property. Nobody would ever have heard of it,
or known who they were.
It appears that Ibn Debaa (hyæna), the Sheykh, and his friends were a
small party in advance of the main body of the Roala. They had come on
to see what pasturage there might be in the wady, and had there camped
only a few miles from the wells of El Jerawi near which we slept last
night. They had come in the morning for water, and had seen our tracks
in the sand, and so had followed, riding in hot haste to overtake us. It
was a mere accident their finding us separated from the rest of the
caravan, and they had charged down as soon as they saw us. Everything
depends on rapidity in these attacks, and this had been quite successful
The least hesitation on their part, and we should have been safe with our
camels. There they could not have molested us, for though they were
twelve to our eight, they had only lances, while we carried firearms. We
liked the look of these young Roala. In spite of their rough behaviour,
we could see that they were gentlemen. They were very much ashamed of
having used their spears against me, and made profuse apologies; they
only saw a person wearing a cloak, and never suspected but that it
belonged to a man. Indeed their mistake is not a matter for surprise,
for they were so out of breath and excited with their gallop, that they
looked at nothing except the object of their desire—the mares. The loss
of these, however, I fear, was to them a cause of greater sorrow than the
rough handling to which we had been treated, when, after explanations
given and regrets interchanged, they rode away. Mohammed was anxious not
to detain them, prudently considering that our acquaintance with them had
gone far enough, and it was plain that Awwad was in a terrible fidget. I
fancy he has a good many debts of blood owing him, and is somewhat shy of
strangers. The others, too, were rather subdued and silent; so we wished
Ibn Debaa farewell and let him go.
The mares belonging to this ghazú were small, compact, and active, with
especially good shoulders and fine heads, but they were of a more
poneyish type than our own Ánazeh mares. Most of them were bay. One I
saw was ridden in a bit.
When the Roala were gone we compared notes. In the first place,
Wilfrid’s hurts were examined, but they are only contusions. The thick
rope he wears round his head had received all the blows, and though the
stock of the gun is clean broken, steel and all, his head is still sound.
The lances could not get through his clothes. As regards myself the only
injury I have received is the renewal of my sprain. But I could almost
forget the pain of it in my anger at it, as being the cause of our being
caught. But for this we might have galloped away to our camels and
received the enemy in quite another fashion. I was asked if I was not
frightened, but in fact there was at first no time, and afterwards rage
swallowed up every other feeling. Wilfrid says, but I do not believe
him, that he felt frightened, and was very near running away and leaving
me, but on reflection stayed. The affair seems more alarming now it is
over, which is perhaps natural.
As to the others, Mohammed is terribly crestfallen at the not very heroic
part he took in the action. The purely defensive attitude of the caravan
was no doubt prudent; but it seemed hardly up to the ideal of chivalry
Mohammed has always professed. He keeps on reproaching himself, but we
tell him that he did quite right. It was certainly our own fault that we
were surprised in this way, and if the enemy, as they might have been,
had really been robbers and outlaws, our safety depended on our having
the caravan intact as a fortress to return to after being robbed. To
have rushed forward in disorder to help us would have exposed the whole
caravan to a defeat, which in so desolate a region as this would mean
nothing less than dying of cold and starvation.
We may indeed be very thankful that matters were no worse. I shall never
again dismount while I remain crippled, and never as long as I live, will
I tie my horse to a bush.
Many vows of sheep, it appears, were made by all the party of spectators
during the action, so we are to have a feast at Jôf—if ever we get there.
Now all is quiet, and Hamdán the Sherâri is singing the loves of a young
man and maiden who were separated from one another by mischief-makers,
and afterwards managed to carry on a correspondence by tying their
letters to their goats when these went out to pasture
_January_ 4.—There was no dawdling this morning, for everybody has become
serious, and we were off by seven, and have marched steadily on for quite
thirty miles without stopping, at the rate of three-and-a-half miles an
hour. We have left the Wady Sirhán for good, and are making a straight
cut across the Hamád for Jôf. There is no water this way, but less
chance of ghazús. The soil has been a light hard gravel, with hardly a
plant or an inequality to interfere with the camels’ pace. At one
o’clock we came to some hills of sandstone faced with iron, the beginning
of the broken ground in which, they say, Jôf stands. We had been
gradually ascending all day, and as we reached that, the highest point of
our route, the barometer marked 2660 feet. Here we found a number of
little pits, used, so Hamdán explained, for collecting and winnowing
_semh_, a little red grain which grows wild in this part of the desert,
and is used by the Jôf people for food.
A little later we sighted two men on a delúl, the first people we have
seen, except the ghazú, since leaving Kâf. Wilfrid and Mohammed galloped
up to see what they were, and Mohammed, to atone I suppose for his
inertness on a recent occasion, fired several shots, and succeeded in
frightening them out of their wits. They were quite poor people, dressed
only in old shirts, and they had a skin of dates on one side the camel
and a skin of water on the other. They were out, they said, to look for
a man who had been lost in the Wady Sirhán, one of the men sent by Ibn
Rashid to Kâf for the tribute. He had been taken ill, and had stopped
behind his companions, and nobody had seen him since. They had been sent
out by the governor of Jôf to look for him. They said that we were only
a few hours from the town.
Meanwhile, I had remained with our camels, listening to the remarks of
Awwad and Hamdán, both dying with curiosity about the two zellems from
Jôf. At last Awwad could wait no longer, and begged Hamdán to go with
him. They both jumped down from the camels they were riding, and set off
as hard as they could run to meet the Jôfi, who by this time had
proceeded on their way, while Wilfrid and Mohammed were returning.
Wilfrid on arriving held out to me a handful of the best dates I have
ever eaten, which the men had given him. The Sherâri and Awwad presently
came back with no dates, but a great deal of Jôf gossip.
We are encamped this evening near some curious tells of red, yellow, and
purple sandstone, a formation exactly similar to parts of the Sinai
peninsula. There is a splendid view to the south, and we can see far
away a blue line of hills {110} which, they tell us, are beyond Jôf at
the edge of the Nefúd!
We have been questioning Hamdán about his tribe, the Sherarât, and he
gives the following as their principal sections:—
El Hueymreh Sheykh El Hawi.
El Helesseh ,, Ibn Hedayaja.
El Khayâli ,, Zeyd el Werdi.
Shemalat ,, Fathal el Dendeh.
The Sherarât have no horses, but breed the finest dromedaries in Arabia.
Their best breed is called _Benat Udeyhan_, (daughters of Udeyhan). With
a Bint Udeyhan, he says, that if you started from where we now are at
sunset, you would be to-morrow at sunrise at Kâf, a distance of a hundred
and eighty miles. A thief not long ago stole a Sherâri delúl at Mezárib,
and rode it all the way to Haïl in seven days and nights!
_January_ 5.—A long wearisome ride of twenty-two miles, always expecting
to see Jôf, and always disappointed. The ground broken up into fantastic
hills and ridges, but on a lower level than yesterday, descending in fact
all day. Every now and then we caught sight of the Wady Sirhán far away
to the right, with blue hills beyond it, but in front of us there seemed
an endless succession of rocky ridges. At last from the top of one of
these there became visible a black outline, standing darkly out against
the yellow confusion of sandstone hills and barren wadys, which we knew
must be the castle of Marid. It looked a really imposing fortress,
though dreary enough in the middle of this desolation. Towards this we
pushed on, eager for a nearer view. Then we came to a natural causeway
of white rock, which Awwad and Hamdán both affirmed to be a continuation
of the Roman road from Salkhad. We should have liked to believe this,
but it was too clear that the road was one made by nature. Along this we
travelled for some miles till it disappeared. All of a sudden we came as
it were to the edge of a basin, and there, close under us, lay a large
oasis of palms, surrounded by a wall with towers at intervals, and a
little town clustering round the black castle. We were at Jôf.
[Picture: The castle of Jôf]