The _Hamád_, starting from the level of the Euphrates, rises rapidly for

a few miles through a district much intersected by ravines, to an upper

plateau, which thenceforward has a fairly regular slope upwards towards

the west and south of 8 to 10 feet per mile. The drainage of the plain

would not, however, seem to be continuous towards the river; but to

terminate in certain sandy hollows, known by the name _Buttn Jôf_ or

_Bekka_, all signifying belly or receptacle, which may in former times

have been lakes or small inland seas. These do not now at any time of

the year hold water above ground, but at the depth of a few feet below

the surface it may be found in wells. Such are the Buttn on the Haj

road, in which the Wady-er-Rothy terminates, the oases of Taibetism and

Jobba in the south, and I believe that of Teyma in the west; but the most

remarkable of them all is without comparison the so-called Wady and Jôf

of Sirhan.

The _Wady Sirhan_ bisects northern Arabia in a line parallel with the

Euphrates and with the coast lines of the Peninsula, that is to say,

nearly from N.W. to S.E. Immediately east and north of it the Hamád

reaches its highest level, 2,500 feet above the sea; and the cliffs

bounding it on this side are rather abrupt, corresponding, as I am

inclined to think, with the general formation of the plain. This

consists of a series of shelves set one above the other, with their edges

opposed to the general slope; a formation very evident on the Haj road,

where the traveller from Nejd, though in reality descending at a general

rate of more than eight feet to the mile, is tempted to fancy himself on

an ascending road, owing to the frequent _Akabas_ or steep cliffs he has

to climb. I am inclined, therefore, to believe that the Wady Sirhan and

the Jôf receive their drainage principally from the west, and that there

is a second great watershed to the plain in the volcanic region, which,

according to Guarmani, continues the Hauran ridge southwards to Tabuk.

East of the Wady Sirhan I was struck by the absence of large tributary

wadys such as one would expect if the area drained was a wide one. The

Wady Sirhan, however, in the days when it was an inland sea, must have

received contributions from all sides. It lies as a trough between two

watersheds in the plain, and may have been supplied from Jebel Aja in the

south, as it is still supplied from Jebel Hauran in the north. Its

general level below that of the adjacent plain eastwards, is about 500

feet, and the plain may rise again still higher to the west.

Be this as it may, one thing is clear, namely, that the Wady was and is

the great central receptacle of the plain, and corresponds pretty closely

with its neighbour, the still existing Dead Sea, while the Wady-er-Rajel

entering it from the north, holds towards it the position of the Jordan.

Water in the Wady Sirhan is found at a nearly uniform level of 1850 feet;

and this rule applies to that part of it which is known as the Jôf as

well as to the rest. The abundance of water obtainable from its wells

along a line extending 300 miles from the frontier of Syria, to within

200 of the frontier of Nejd, points out Wady Sirhan as the natural high

road of Northern Arabia, and such it must from the earliest times have

been. It is probable that in the days when Arabia was more populous than

now, villages existed in it at intervals from Ezrak to Jôf. At present,

the wells of these only remain, if we except the twin oases of Kâf and

Ithery, still preserved in life by the salt lakes which supply them with

an article of trade. These are but poor places, and their population can

hardly exceed two hundred souls.

Jôf and Meskakeh are still flourishing towns, but I have reason to think

their population has been over estimated by Mr. Palgrave. I cannot put

the total number of houses in Jôf at more than 500, nor in Meskakeh at

more than 600, while 100 houses are an ample allowance for Kara and the

other hamlets of the Jôf oasis. This would give us a census of hardly

8,000 souls, whereas Mr. Palgrave puts it at 40,000. I do not, however,

pretend to accuracy on this point.

With regard to the geology of the Hamád and the adjacent districts north

of the Nefûd, I believe that sandstone is throughout the principal

element. In the extreme north, indeed, limestone takes its place or

conglomerate; but, with the exception of a single district about 100

miles south of Meshhed Ali on the Haj road, I do not think our route

crossed any true calcareous rock. The cliffs which form the eastern

boundary of the Wady Sirhan are, I think, all of sandstone, south at any

rate of Jebel Mizmeh, as are certainly the hills of Jôf and Meskakeh, the

rocks of Aalem and Jobba, and all the outlying peaks and ridges

north-west of Haïl. These have been described as basaltic or of dark

granite, the mistake arising from their colour which, though very varied,

is in many instances black. The particular form of sandstone in which

iron occurs, seems indeed to acquire a dark weathering with exposure, and

unless closely examined, has a volcanic look. I do not, however, believe

that south of latitude 31° the volcanic stones of the Haura are really

met with; unless indeed it be west of the Wady Sirhan. Jebel Mizmeh, the

highest point east of it, is alone perhaps basaltic. The whole of the

Jôf district reminded me geologically of the sandstone formation of

Sinaï, both in the excentric outline of its rocks, which are often

mushroom shaped, and in their colour, where purple, violet, dark red,

orange, white and even blue and green are found, the harder rock assuming

generally an upper weathering of black. I can state positively that

nothing basaltic occurs on the road between Jôf and Jebel Aja. Of Jebel

Mizmeh I am less certain, as I did not actually touch the stone, but, if

volcanic it be, it is the extreme limit of the Harra southwards. The

tells of Kâf I certainly took to be of basalt when I passed them. But I

did not then consider how easily I might be mistaken. On the whole I am

inclined to place latitude 31° as the boundary of the volcanic district

east of the Wady.

The bed of the Wady Sirhan is principally of sand, though in some places

there is a clayey deposit sufficient to form subbkhas, or salt lakes,

notably at Kâf and Ithery. About three days’ journey E.S.E. of Ithery, I

heard of quicksands, but did not myself cross any ground holding water.

The sand of the Wady Sirhan, like that of all the hollows both of the

Hamád and of northern Nejd, is nearly white, and has little to

distinguish it from the ordinary sand of the sea shore, or of the Isthmus

of Suez. It is far less fertile than the red sand of the Nefûd, and is

more easily affected by the wind. The ghada is found growing wherever

the sand is pure, and I noticed it as far north as Kâf. In some parts of

the Wady which appear to hold water in rainy seasons, there is much

saltpetre on the surface, and there the vegetation is rank, but of little

value as pasture. In the pure white sand, little else but the ghada

grows. Wady Sirhan is the summer quarters of the Sherarat.

The _Harra_ is a high region of black volcanic boulders too well known to

need description. It begins as far north as the latitude of Damascus,

and stretches from the foot of the Hauran hills eastward for some fifty

miles, when it gives place to the Hamád. Southwards it extends to Kâf,

and forms the water shed of the plain east of the Wady Sirhan. According

to Guarmani, it is found again west of the Wady, as far south as Tebuk.

The eastern watershed of the Harra would seem with the Jebel Hauran to

feed the Wady-er-Rajel, a bed sometimes containing running water, and on

its opposite slope the Wady Hauran which reaches the Euphrates. The

Harra is more plentifully supplied with water than the Hamád, and has a

reputation of fertility wherever the soil is uncovered by the boulders.

_The Nefûd_.—A little north of latitude 29′, the Hamád, which has to this

point been a bare plain of gravel broken only by occasional hollows, the

beds of ancient seas, suddenly becomes heaped over with high ridges of

pure red sand. The transition from the smooth hard plain to the broken

dunes of the Nefûd is very startling. The sand rises abruptly from the

plain without any transition whatever; and it is easy to see that the

plain is not really changed but only hidden from the eye by a

super-incumbent mass. Its edge is so well defined that it is hardly an

exaggeration to say that with one foot a man may stand upon the Hamád,

and with the other on the Nefûd; nor is there much irregularity in its

outline. The limit of the sand for several hundred miles runs almost

evenly from east to west, and it is only at these extremities that it

becomes broken and irregular. Such, at least, I believe to be the case;

and if, as seems probable, the whole drift of sand has been shaped by

prevailing easterly winds, the phenomenon is less strange than might be

thought.

The great Nefûd of Northern Arabia extends from the wells of Lina in the

east to Teyma in the west, and from the edge of the Jôf basin in the

north to the foot of Jebel Aja in the south. In its greatest breadth it

is 150 miles, and in its greatest length 400 miles, but the whole of this

is not continuous sand. The extreme eastern portion (and perhaps also

the extreme western) is but a series of long strips, from half a mile to

five miles in breadth, running parallel to each other, and separated by

intervening strips of solid plain. Nor is the sand everywhere of equal

depth; the intermittent Nefûds are comparatively shallow, and would seem

to bear a certain proportion in depth to the breadth of the strips. Thus

the highest sand ridge crossed by the Haj road is barely eighty feet,

while others are but fifty and twenty feet. The continuous Nefûd on the

other hand, between Jôf and Haïl, has a depth of at least two hundred

feet. The intermittent ridges may possibly suggest an explanation of the

original formation of the mass. It would seem as if the wind acting upon

the sand drove it at first into lines, and that, as these grew broader

and deeper, they at last filled up the intervening space, and formed

themselves into a continuous mass at their lee end. If this be the case,

the intermittent ridges show the direction in which the solid mass of

sand is advancing, the direction, that is, contrary to that of the wind.

I leave this deduction, however, to more competent persons than myself to

draw, contenting myself with recording the fact.

The red sand of the Nefûd is of a different texture from the ordinary

white sand of the desert, and seems to obey mechanical laws of its own.

It is coarser in texture and far less volatile, and I am inclined to

think that the ordinary light winds which vary sandy surfaces elsewhere

leave it very little affected. A strong wind alone, amounting to a gale,

could raise it high in the air. It is remarkable that whereas the light

white sand is generally found in low hollows, or on the lee side of

hills, the red sand of the Nefûd has been heaped up into a lofty mass

high above the highest part of the plain. The Hamád where the Nefûd

begins is 2,200 feet above the sea. No traveller can see this desert of

red sand for the first time without acknowledging its individuality. It

is as little like the ordinary sand dunes of the desert, as a glacier is

like an ordinary snow field in the Alps. It seems, like the glacier, to

have a law of being peculiar to itself, a law of increase, of motion,

almost of life. One is struck with these in traversing it, and one seems

to recognise an organism.

[Picture: Horse-hoof shaped hollows]

The most remarkable phenomenon of the Nefûd are the long lines of

horse-hoof shaped hollows, called _fuljes_, with which its surface is

pitted; these are only observable where the sand has attained a depth of

from 80 to 100 feet, and are consequently seldom found in the

intermittent portion of the Nefûd; while it is remarkable that in the

very centre of all, where it might be supposed the sand was deepest, the

fuljes are less deep than towards the northern and southern edges, while

the lines in which they run become more regular. Indeed, for some miles

on either side of Aalem, which marks the centre of the Nefûd, there are

no large fuljes; but their strings are so regular as to form, with the

intervening spaces, a kind of shallow ridge and furrow running nearly

east and west, and not altogether unlike, on a gigantic scale, those

ridges in which meadows are sometimes laid down in England. From the top

of Aalem this formation was very distinct.

The fuljes themselves are singularly uniform in shape, though varying in

size. They represent very closely horse tracks on an enormous scale,

that is to say a half-circle, deep at the curved end or toe, and shelving

up to the level of the plain at the square end or heel. The sides of the

former are as precipitous as it is in the nature of sand to be, and they

terminate abruptly where they meet the floor of the fulj. This floor,

sloping downwards towards the toe at an angle of about 70°, and scored

with water-courses converging to a centre, roughly represents the frog,

so that in plan the whole hollow would appear as in the woodcut A; while

in section it would appear as in woodcut B. It is necessary, therefore,

in entering a fulj on horseback, or with camels, to approach it from the

east; but on foot one can slip down the sand at any point. I noticed

that just west of the deep fuljes there is generally a high mound of

sand, which adds considerably to their apparent depth and to the delusion

of their being artificial in their origin, as though the sand scooped out

has been thrown up by a digger.

[Picture: Plan view of hollow]

[Picture: Section view of hollow]

The size and depth of the fuljes varies greatly; some are, as it were,

rudimentary only, while others attain a depth of 200 feet and more. The

deepest of those I measured proved to be 280 feet, including the sand

hill, which may have been 60 feet above the general level of the plain;

its width seemed about a quarter of a mile. At the bottom of these deep

fuljes, solid ground is reached, and there is generally a stony deposit

there, such as I have often noticed in sandy places where water has

stood. This bare space is seldom more than a few paces in diameter. I

heard of, but did not see, one which contained a well. The wells of

Shagik do not stand in a fulj, but in a valley clear of sand, and those

of Jobba in a broad circular basin 400 feet below the level of the Nefûd.

The fuljes, I have said, run in strings irregularly from east to west,

corresponding in this with their individual direction. {244} They are

most regularly placed in the neighbourhood of the rocks of Aalem, but

their size there is less than either north or south of it. The shape of

the fuljes seems unaffected by the solid ground beneath, for at the rocks

of Ghota there is a large fulj pierced by the rocks, but which otherwise

retains its semi-circular form.

The physical features of the Nefûd, whether they be ridges or mounds or

fuljes, appear to be permanent in their character. The red sand of which

they are composed is less volatile than the common sand of the desert

and, except on the summits of the mounds and ridges, seems little

affected by the wind. It is everywhere, except in such positions,

sprinkled over with brushwood ghada trees and tufts of grass. The sides

of the fuljes especially are well clothed, and this could hardly be the

case if they were liable to change with a change of wind. In the Nefûd

between Jobba and Igneh I noticed well defined sheep tracks ascending the

steep slopes of the fuljes spirally, and these I was assured were by no

means recent. Moreover, the levelled track made according to tradition

by Abu Zeyd is still discernible in places where cuttings were originally

made. Sticks and stones left in the Nefûd by travellers, the bones of

camels and even their droppings, remain for years uncovered, and those

who cross do so by the knowledge of landmarks constantly the same. I am

inclined to think, then, that the Nefûds represent a state of comparative

repose in Nature. Either the prevailing winds which heaped them up

formerly are less violent now than then, or the fuljes are due to

exceptional causes which have not occurred for many years. That wind in

some form, and at some time, has been their cause I do not doubt, but the

exact method of its action I will not affect to determine. Mr.

Blandford, an authority on these subjects, suggests that the fuljes are

spaces still unfilled with sand; and if this be so, the strings of fuljes

may in reality mark the site of such bare strips as one finds in the

intermittent Nefûds. It is conceivable that as the spaces between the

sand ridges grew narrower, the wind blocked between them acquired such a

rotatory motion as to have thrown bridges of sand across, and so, little

by little, filled up all spaces but these. But to me no theory that has

been suggested is quite satisfactory. What cause is it that keeps the

floors of the deeper fuljes bare; floors so narrow that it would seem a

single gale should obliterate them, or even the gradual slipping of the

sand slopes above them? There must be some continuous cause to keep

these bare. Yet where is the cause now in action sufficient to have

heaped up such walls or dug out such pits?

Another strange phenomenon is that of such places as Jobba. There, in

the middle of the Nefûd, without apparent reason, the sand is pushed high

back on all sides from a low central plain of bare ground three or four

miles across. North, south, east, and west the sand rises round it in

mountains 400 and 500 feet high, but the plain itself is bare as a

threshing-floor. It would seem as if this red sand could not rest in a

hollow place, and that the fact of Jobba’s low level alone kept it free.

Jobba, if cleared of sand all round, would, I have no doubt, present the

same feature as Jôf or Taibetism. It would appear as a basin sunk in the

plain, an ancient receptacle of the drainage from Mount Aja. Has it only

in recent times been surrounded thus with sand? There is a tradition

still extant there of running water.

_Jebel Shammar_.—A little north of latitude 29°, the Nefûd ceases as

suddenly as it began. The stony plain reappears unchanged geologically,

but more broken by the proximity of a lofty range of hills, the Jebel

Aja. Between these, however, and the sand, there is an interval of at

least five miles where the soil is of sandstone, mostly red, the material

out of which the Nefûd sand was made, but mixed with a still coarser sand

washed down from the granite range. This rises rapidly to the foot of

the hills. There, with little preliminary warning, we come upon

unmistakeable red granite cropping in huge rounded masses out of the

plain, and rising to a height of 1000 and 1500 feet. The shape of these

rocks is very fantastic, boulder being set on boulder in enormous

pinnacles; and I noticed that many of them were pierced with those round

holes one finds in granite. The texture of the rock is coarse, and

precisely similar to that of Jebel Musa in the Sinaï peninsula, as is the

scanty vegetation with which the wadys are clothed. There are the same

thorny acacia, and the wild palm, and the caper plant as there, and I

heard of the same animals inhabiting the hills.

The _Jebel Aja_ range has a main direction of E. by N. and W. by S. Of

this I am convinced by the observations I was able to take when

approaching it from the N.W. The weather was clear and I was able to see

its peaks running for many miles in the direction mentioned. With regard

to its length I should put it, by the accounts I heard, at something like

100 miles, and its average breadth may possibly be 10 or 15. In this I

differ from the German geographers, who give Jebel Aja a direction of

N.E. by S.W., on the authority I believe of Wallin. But as they also

place Haïl on the southern slope of the hills, a gross error, I do not

consider the discrepancy as of any importance.

Of _Jebel Selman_, I can only speak according to the distant view I had

of it. But I should be much surprised to learn that any portion of it

passed west of the latitude of Haïl. That portion of it visible from

Haïl certainly lies to the S.E., and at an apparent distance of 30 miles,

with no indication of its being continued westwards. It is by all

accounts of the same rock (red granite) as Jebel Aja.

Between Jebel Selman and the Nefûd lie several isolated hills rising from

broken ground. All these are of the sandstone formation of the Hamád,

and have no geological connection with Aja or Selman. Such are Jebels

Jildiyeh, Yatubb, and Jilfeh, Jildiyeh the tallest having a height of

perhaps 3800 feet above the sea, or 300 above Haïl.

Haïl lies due east of the extreme eastern buttress of Jebel Aja, and not

south of it as has been supposed. Both it and Kefar, as indeed all the

towns and villages of the district, lie in a single broad wady, draining

the south-eastern rocks of Aja, and sweeping round them northwards to the

Nefûd. The height of Haïl is 3,500 feet above the sea, and the plain

rises southwards behind it, almost imperceptibly. The small isolated

hills close to the town, belong, I think, geologically to the granite

range. The main drainage of the plain south of Haïl would seem to be

received by the Wady Hannasy, whose course is north, so that the highest

part of the plain is probably between Aja and Selman, and may be as much

as 4,000 feet above the sea. This, I take it, is the highest plateau of

Arabia—as Aja is its highest mountain, 5000 to 5600 feet,—an all

sufficient reason for including Jebel Shammar in the term Nejd or

Highland.

I feel that I am taking a very serious liberty with geographers in

placing Haïl 60 miles farther south than where it is found in our modern

maps. I consider, however, that until its position has been

scientifically determined, I am justified in doing this by the fact, that

my dead reckoning gave it this position, not only according to the out

journey, but by the return one, measured from Meshhed Ali. I am so much

in the habit of measuring distances by a rough computation of pace and

time, that I doubt if I am much out in the present instance. On this,

however, I forbear to dogmatise.

I had hoped to conclude this sketch with a list of plants found in the

Nefûd. But our small collection has proved to be so pulverised by its

journey, that Sir Joseph Hooker, who kindly undertook to look over it,

has been able to identify hardly half-a-dozen specimens.

Of wild animals, I have ascertained the existence of the ostrich, the

leopard, the wolf, the fox, the hyæna, the hare, the jerboa, the white

antelope, and the gazelle in the Nefûd; and of the ibex and the marmot in

Jebel Aja. Of these it may be remarked that the ostrich is the most

valuable and perhaps the most rare; I had not the luck to see a single

wild specimen, though once a fresh egg was brought me. Neither did I

see, except in confinement, the white antelope (Oryx beatrix), which is

the most important quadruped of the Nefûd. This antelope frequents every

part of the red sand desert, and I found its track quite one hundred

miles from any spring, so that the Arabs may be pardoned for affirming

that it never drinks. The hare too is found and plentifully throughout;

but the gazelle haunts only the outskirts within reach of the hills or of

wells where the Arabs are accustomed to water their flocks. The same may

be said of the wolf, the fox, and the hyæna, which seem fairly abundant.

The tracks of these grew frequent as we approached Jebel Aja, and it may

be assumed that it is there they have their lairs, making use of the

Nefûd as a hunting ground. The Jebel Aja, a granite range not less than

5,500 feet above the sea, furnishes the water required by these animals,

not indeed in streams, for none such are found in the range, but in

springs and natural tanks where rain water is stored. These seem by all

accounts to be fairly numerous; and if so, the ancient tradition of a

wild horse having also been found in the Nefûd, may not be so improbable

as at first sight it seems. There is certainly pasture and good pasture

for the horse in every part of it. The sheep of the Nefûd requires water

but once in a month, and the Nefûd horse may have required no more.

Of reptiles the Nefûd boasts by all accounts the horned viper and the

cobra, besides the harmless grey snake called Suliman, which is common

everywhere. There are also immense numbers of lizards.

Birds are less numerous, but I noticed the frilled bustard Houbara, and

one or two hawks and buzzards. A large black buzzard was especially

plentiful. The Bedouins of Nejd train the Lanner falcon, the only noble

hawk they possess, to take hares and bustards. In the Nefûd, most of the

common desert birds are found, the desert lark, the wheatear, and a kind

of wren which inhabits the ghada and yerta bushes.

Of insects I noticed the dragon-fly, several beetles, the common

house-fly, and ants, whose nests, made of some glutinous substance mixed

with sand, may be seen under these bushes. I was also interested at

finding, sunning itself on the rocks of Aalem, a specimen of the painted

lady butterfly, so well known for its adventurous flights. This insect

could not well have been bred at any nearer point than Syria or the

Euphrates, respectively 400 and 300 miles distant. Fleas do not exist

beyond the Nefûd, and our dogs became free of them as soon as we reached

Haïl. Locusts were incredibly numerous everywhere, and formed the chief

article of food for man, beast, and bird. They are of two colours, red

and green, the latter being I believe the male, while the former is the

female. They both are excellent eating, but the red locust is preferred.

Sand-storms are probably less common in the Nefûd than in deserts where

the sand is white, for reasons already named; nor do the Bedouins seem

much to dread them. They are only dangerous where they last long enough

to delay travellers far from home beyond the time calculated on for their

supplies. No tales are told of caravans overwhelmed or even single

persons. Those who perish in the Nefûd perish of thirst. I made

particular inquiries as to the simoom or poisonous wind mentioned by Mr.

Palgrave, but could gain no information respecting it.

In the Jebel Aja an ibex is found, specimens of which I saw at Haïl, and

a mountain gazelle, and I heard of a leopard, probably the same as that

found in Sinaï. The only animal there, which may be new, is one

described to me as the Webber, an animal of the size of the hare, which

climbs the wild palms and eats the dates. It is described as sitting on

its legs and whistling, and from the description I judged it to be a

marmot or a coney (hierax). But Lord Lilford, whom I spoke to on the

subject, assures me it is in all probability the Lophiomys Imhausii.

W. S. B.

[Picture: Lophiomys Imhausii]

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE RISE AND DECLINE OF WAHHABISM IN ARABIA.

COMPILED PRINCIPALLY FROM MATERIALS SUPPLIED BY LT.-COLONEL E. C. ROSS,

H.M.’S RESIDENT AT BUSHIRE.

AT the beginning of last century, Nejd, and Arabia generally, with the

exception of Oman, Yemen, and Hejaz, was divided into a number of

independent districts or townships, each ruled by a tribal chief on the

principle already explained of self-government under Bedouin protection.

Religion, except in its primitive Arabian form, was almost forgotten by

the townspeople, and little if any connection was kept up between them

and the rest of the Mahometan world.

In 1691, however, Mohammed Ibn Abd-el-Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi

sect, was born at Eiyanah in Aared, his father being of the Ibn Temim

tribe, the same which till lately held power in Jebel Shammar. In his

youth he went to Bussorah, and perhaps to Damascus, to study religious

law, and after making the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina returned to his

native country, and soon after married in the village of Horeylama near

Deriyeh. There and at Eyaneh he began his preaching, and about the year

1742 succeeded in converting Mohammed Ibn Saoud, Emir of Deriyeh, the

principal town of Aared.

The chief features of his teaching were:—

1st. The re-establishment of Mahometan beliefs as taught by the Koran,

and the rejection of those other beliefs accepted by the Sunis on

tradition.

2nd. A denial of all spiritual authority to the Ottoman or any other

Caliph, and of all special respect due to sherifs, saints, dervishes, or

other persons.

3rd. The restoration of discipline in the matter of prayer, fasting, and

pilgrimage.

4th. A strict prohibition of wine, tobacco, games of chance, magic, silk

and gold in dress, and of tombstones for the dead.

Ibn Abd-el-Wahhab lived to an advanced age at Deriyeh, and died in 1787.

Mohammed Ibn Saoud, the first Wahhabi Emir, belonged to the Mesalikh

tribe of Ánazeh, itself an offshoot of the Welled Ali of western Nejd

(deriving, according to the account of the Ibn Saouds themselves, from

the Beni Bekr Wail, through Maane Ibn Rabiia, king of Nejd, Hasa and Oman

in the 15th century). He embraced the tenets of Abd-el-Wahhab, as has

been said, in the year 1742, and was followed in his conversion by many

of the inhabitants of Deriyeh and the neighbouring districts, who at last

so swelled the number of Ibn Saoud’s adherents, that he became the head

of the reformed religion, and according to the Wahhabi pretensions the

head of all Islam. Guided by the counsels of Ibn Abd-el-Wahhab, and

carried forward on the wave of the new teaching, he gradually established

his authority over all Aared and eventually over the greater part of

Nejd. His hardest contests there were with the people of Riad, who,

under their Sheykh, Mohammed Ibn Daus, long held out, and with the Ibn

Ghureyr (Areyr or Aruk), Sheykhs of the Beni Khaled. These latter, who

owned the districts of Hasa and Katif, though forced to tribute, have

always been hostile to the Ibn Saouds, and are so at the present day.

Another opponent, bitterly hostile to the new religion, was the Emir’s

brother, Theniyan, whose descendants still belong to the anti-Wahhabi

faction in Aared. Mohammed Ibn Saoud died in 1765 and was succeeded by

his son Abdel Aziz.

Abd-el-Aziz Ibn Saoud, a man of energy and ambition, completed the

subjugation of Nejd and Hasa, and carried the Wahhabi arms as far

northwards as Bussorah, and even it would seem to Mesopotamia and the

Sinjar Hills. These latter raids so greatly alarmed the government of

the Sultan, that in 1798 a Turkish expeditionary force was sent by land

from Bagdad into Hasa, under the command of one Ali Pasha, secretary to

Suliman Pasha the Turkish Valy. It consisted of 4000 or 5000 regular

infantry, with artillery, and a large contingent of Bedouin Arabs

collected from the Montefik, Daffir, and other tribes hostile to the

Wahhabi power. These marched down the coast and took possession of the

greater part of Hasa, but having failed to reduce Hofhuf, a fortified

town, were returning northwards when their retreat was intercepted by

Saoud, the Emir’s son, who took up a position under the walls of Taj. A

battle was then imminent, but it was averted by the mediation of the Arab

Sheykhs, and Ali Pasha was allowed to continue his retreat to Bussorah,

while Saoud retook possession of Hasa and punished those who had

submitted to the Turks. This affair contributed much to the extension

and renown of the Wahhabi power; and offers of submission came in from

all sides. The Emir, nevertheless, thought it prudent to endeavour to

conciliate the Turkish Valy, and despatched horses and other valuable

presents to Bagdad.

The Wahhabi State was now become a regular Government, with a centralised

administration, a system of tax instead of tribute, and a standing army

which marched under the command of Saoud Ibn Saoud, the Emir’s eldest

son. The Emir, Abd-el-Aziz himself, appears to have been a man of peace,

simple in his dress and habits, and extremely devout. Saoud, however,

was a warrior, and it was through him that the Wahhabis pushed their

fortunes. There seems, nevertheless, to have been always a strong party

of opposition in the desert, where the Bedouins clung to the traditions

of their independence and chafed under the religious discipline imposed

on them. Kasim and Jebel Shammar, both of them centres of Bedouin life,

never accepted the Wahhabi tenets with any enthusiasm, and the people of

Hasa, an industrious race standing in close commercial relations with

Persia, accepted the rule of the Ibn Saouds only on compulsion. Southern

Nejd alone seems to have been fanatically Wahhabi, but their fanaticism

was their strength and long carried all before it.

In 1799, Saoud made his first pilgrimage to Mecca, at the head of 4000

armed followers, and in the following year he repeated the act of piety.

Passage through Nejd, however, seems to have been forbidden to the Shiah

pilgrims whom the Wahhabis regarded as infidels, and a violent feeling

was roused against the Wahhabis in Persia and in the Pashalik of Bagdad,

where most of the inhabitants are Shiahs. It ended in the assassination

of the Emir Abd-el-Aziz by a Persian seyyid from Kerbela, in 1800, at the

age of 82 years. (Colonel Ross gives 1803 as the date of this event,

but, according to members of the Ibn Saoud family themselves, it happened

three years earlier; a date which accords better with other events.)

In 1801, a first expedition was despatched against Oman under

Selim-el-Hark, one of Saoud’s lieutenants; and in the same year Saoud

himself, to avenge his father’s murder, marched northwards with 20,000

men to the Euphrates, and on the 20th of April sacked Kerbela, whence,

having put all the male inhabitants to the sword and razed the tomb of

Husseyn, he retired the same afternoon with an immense booty. The

success of this attack, made in the name of a reformed Islam upon the

stronghold of the Shiah heretics and within the nominal dominions of the

Sultan, spread consternation throughout the Mussulman world.

In 1802 the island of Bahreyn was reduced to tribute, and the Wahhabi

power extended down the Eastern coast as far as Batinah on the Sea of

Oman, and several of the Oman tribes embraced the Wahhabi faith, and

became tributary to Ibn Saoud.

In 1803, a quarrel having occurred between the Wahhabi Emir and Ghalib

the Sherif of Mecca, Saoud marched into Hejaz with a large army, reduced

Taif, and on the 1st of May entered Mecca, where he deposed the Sherif

and appointed a Governor of his own. He did not, however, appear there

as an enemy but as a pilgrim, and his troops were restrained from

plunder, the only act of violence permitted being the destruction of the

large tombs in the city, so that, as they themselves said, “there did not

remain an idol in all that pure city.” Then they abolished the taxes and

customs; destroyed all instruments for the use of tobacco and the

dwellings of those who sold hashish or who lived in open wickedness.

Saoud returned to Nejd, having received the submission of all Central

Arabia, including the holy city of Medina. This may be considered as the

zenith of the Wahhabi power. Law and order prevailed under a central

government, and the Emir on his return to Deriyeh issued a proclamation

promising strict protection of life, property, and commerce throughout

his dominions. This fortunate state of things continued for several

years.

In 1807 Saoud once more marched to the Euphrates and laid siege to

Meshhed Ali, but failed to capture that walled town and was forced to

retreat.

In 1809 he collected an army of 30,000 men with the intention of

attacking Bagdad, but disturbances having broken out in Nejd he abandoned

his intention and marched instead with his army on pilgrimage to Mecca,

whence he returned home by Medina, now annexed to his empire.

In Oman the Wahhabi arms continued to gain ground, and their name seems

first to have become known in India in connexion with piratical raids

committed on the Indian Sea. This led to an expedition undertaken in

1809 by the English against Ras-el-Kheymah on the Persian Gulf. But in

spite of this, the Wahhabis advanced next year to Mattrah, a few miles

only from Muscat, and to Bahreyn, which was occupied by them and received

a Wahhabi governor.

In 1810 Saoud invaded Irak, and in 1811 his son Abdallah arrived close to

Bagdad on a plundering raid, while another Wahhabi army, under Abu Nocta,

a slave of the Emir’s, invaded Syria and held Damascus to ransom. In

Syria, indeed, for some years tribute had been paid by the desert towns

of the Hauran and the districts east of Jordan to Nejd; and it seemed

probable that the new Arabian Empire would extend itself to the

Mediterranean, and Abd-el-Wahhabi’s reformation to all the Arab race. A

coalition of the Northern Bedouins, however, under Eddrehi Ibn Shaalan,

Sheykh of the Roala, saved Damascus from Abu Nocta, and after sustaining

a defeat from them on the Orontes the Wahhabi army returned to Nejd.

The danger, however, to orthodox Islam was now recognized, and in the

same year, 1811, the Ottoman Sultan, urged by his Suni subjects to

recover the holy places of Arabia to orthodox keeping, resolved on

serious measures against Nejd. Matters had been brought to a crisis the

year before by an act of fanaticism on the part of Saoud which had roused

the indignation of all sects in Islam against him. On the occasion of a

fourth pilgrimage which he had then made, he had caused the tomb of the

prophet to be opened at Medina and the rich jewels and precious relics it

contained to be sold or distributed among his soldiers, an act of

sacrilege which it was impossible to tolerate. The Sultan was reminded

that one of the claims on which his ancestors of the House of Ottoman

rested their tenure to the Caliphate was that they possessed the Holy

Places, and he was called upon to assert his protectorate of Mecca and

Medina by force. It is probable, indeed, that only the great interests

at stake in Europe during the previous years of the century had delayed

vigorous action. The invasion of Egypt by Napoleon, and the

disorganisation of the Turkish Empire resulting from it, had contributed

not a little to the Wahhabi successes. Now, however, Egypt was under the

rule of Mehemet Ali, and to his vigorous hands the Sultan entrusted the

duty of punishing the Ibn Saouds. The absence of the Emir’s armies in

the north gave a favourable opportunity to the Egyptian arms, a force of

8000 men was despatched to Hejaz, and Mecca was occupied by Tusun Pasha

without resistance. On advancing inland, however, beyond Taif, Tusun was

met by Abdullah Ibn Saoud, and defeated in the desert with the loss of

half his army; nor was he able to do more than hold his own in Mecca

until relieved from Egypt.

In 1813, Mehemet Ali, impatient of his son’s failure, went in person to

Arabia, and seized Ghalib the Sherif, whom he suspected of Wahhabism, at

Mecca and sent him prisoner to Cairo. Tusun was again entrusted with the

command of an expedition destined for Nejd, but was again met and

defeated beyond Taif in the spring of 1814.

In April 1814, while preparations were being pressed for a renewal of the

campaign, Saoud Ibn Saoud the Wahhabi Emir, died, and Abdallah, his son

and recognized successor, was acknowledged without opposition, chief of

the Wahhabis.

In January 1815, Mehemet Ali inflicted a first serious defeat on the

Wahhabi army, and Tusun having occupied Medina advanced into Kasim, in

northern Nejd, where he took possession of Ras, at that time capital of

the district.

Negotiations were opened from that point with the Emir Abdallah who had

retired with his army to Aneyzeh; and these resulted to the astonishment

of every one (for Abdallah still had a powerful army) in the Emir’s

submission.

It is probable that in thus yielding, Abdallah felt his position in Nejd

insecure. The Bedouins though subdued had never accepted the Wahhabi

rule but on compulsion, and many of them were openly siding with the

Turks, while his late defeat had destroyed much of his soldier’s

prestige. Be that as it may, the Emir agreed to the following stringent

terms at Aneyzeh.

1st. He acknowledged as suzerain the Sultan of Turkey.

2nd. He agreed to give hostages for future conduct, and even, if

required, to present himself in person at Constantinople.

3rd. He would deliver over Deriyeh, his capital, to a governor appointed

by the Sultan; and

4th. He would restore the jewels plundered from Medina on the occasion

of his father’s visit in 1810.

On these conditions peace was concluded between the Emir and Tusun, and

Abdallah gave the hostages required. He did not, however, give over

Deriyeh, but proceeded on the contrary to prepare it for a siege.

Neither did Mehemet Ali, when he learned that Abdallah refused to come to

Egypt in person, nullify the peace. Tusun was recalled, and Ibrahim, his

second son, appointed commander of the army in Arabia in his stead.

In September 1816 Ibrahim Pasha left Egypt at the head of a considerable

force and proceeded to the scene of action.

The first encounter seems to have taken place at Ma’ Wiyah, where

Abdallah ibn Saoud attacked the Egyptian army and suffered a signal

defeat. On this occasion Ibrahim Pasha put to death all prisoners taken.

The pasha then advanced with 4000 infantry and 1200 cavalry, besides

contingents of the friendly Arab tribes, Beni-Kháled, Muteyr, ’Oteybah,

Harb, and Suhool against Ras, which was held by a Wahhabi garrison.

Before this town Ibrahim Pasha suffered a serious check, and after

besieging it for three and a half months, and losing 3000 men, he was

obliged to agree to an armistice and abandon the siege. The Egyptian

general, however, masking Ras, continued to advance eastwards on ’Aneyzah

and the Emir retired south to Bereydah. After six days’ bombardments,

the forts of ’Aneyzah surrendered, and the entire district of Kasim then

submitted to the Egyptian commander. Abdallah retired on Shakrah, a town

in the district of Woshem, and Ibrahim Pasha took Bereydah, where he

halted two months for reinforcements. During this time the pasha

succeeded in detaching from the Wahhabi cause many of those Bedouins who

still remained faithful to Ibn Saoud. Among the first to join the

Egyptians had been Feysul-el-Dawish, Sheikh of the Muteyr, who, animated

by an ancient feud with the Ibn Saouds, was readily persuaded by Ibrahim

with the promise of being installed Governor of Nejd, a promise which the

pasha had no intention of fulfilling.

Having received at Bereydah a reinforcement of 800 men, and two guns, as

well as supplies of provisions and ammunition, Ibrahim Pasha was able to

continue his advance on Shakrah at the head of 4500 Turkish, Albanian,

and Moorish troops in addition to Arab contingents. About 10,000 camels

accompanied the force, and the infantry soldiers were usually mounted two

and two on camels. The Emir Abdallah meantime retired on his capital,

wasting the country before the enemy, and sending the surplus cattle and

flocks to Hasa. This was in the latter part of December, 1817. In the

following month the Turkish army appeared before Shakrah, which was

regularly approached under the direction of a French engineer, M.

Vaissière, and capitulated on the 22nd of January, 1818. The lives of

the garrison were spared, but they were deprived of their arms, and had

to engage not to serve again under the Wahhabi Emir. Some time after,

when Deriyeh had fallen, Ibrahim Pasha caused the fortifications of

Shakrah to be demolished.

Abdallah ibn Saoud had now retreated to Deriyeh and before following him

up to the capital Ibrahim Pasha judged it advisable to turn aside from

the direct route to take the town of Dhoramah. At that place he

encountered a spirited resistance, several of his men being killed. In

revenge for this, the male inhabitants were put to the sword, the town

pillaged and destroyed, and the women given up to the brutality of the

Turkish soldiery. Only the governor and his guard, who had shut

themselves in a citadel, were suffered to escape with their lives.

Detained by rains, it was March before Ibrahim Pasha advanced on Deriyeh

which town he invested in April with a force of 5500 horse and foot and

twelve pieces of artillery, including two mortars and two howitzers.

Shortly after, reinforcements and convoys of supplies reached the Turkish

camp from Medina and Busrah. The siege operations were for some time

conducted without any success to the Turkish arms, and in the latter part

of the month of May an explosion having occurred by which the pasha lost

all his spare ammunition, his position became extremely critical.

Indeed, the indomitable personal courage and good example of Ibrahim

alone saved the army from disaster. The troops suffered much from

dysentery and ophthalmia, and the Wahhabis thought to overwhelm the

besiegers by a sortie in force. The attack was however repulsed and the

opportunity lost to the besieged; for soon after the engagement caravans

with fresh supplies of ammunition and provisions reached the Egyptian

camp, and then reinforcements of infantry and cavalry. News was also

received of the approach of Khalil Pasha from Egypt with 3000 fresh

troops. Early in September the Emir sent a flag of truce to request an

audience of the pasha. This was accorded, and the Wahhabi chief was

kindly received, but was informed that the first and indispensable

condition of peace was the attendance of Abdallah in person at Cairo.

The Emir asked twenty four hours for reflection, which delay was granted,

and at the expiration of the time he returned to the pasha’s camp and

intimated his willingness to fulfil the condition imposed, provided

Ibrahim would guarantee that his life would be spared. Ibrahim Pasha

replied that he had no authority himself to bind the Sultan and the

Viceroy on that point, but that he thought both were too generous to put

him to death. Abdallah then pleaded for his family and prayed that

Deriyeh and his adherents there should be spared. These terms were

conceded and a peace concluded. The ill-starred Emir at once set out on

his journey under a strong escort, and on reaching Cairo, was courteously

received by Mehemet Ali, who forwarded him to Constantinople with a

strong appeal for his pardon. The government of the Porte was, however,

implacable: Abdallah ibn Saoud was paraded ignominiously through the

streets of the capital for three days, and then, with his companions in

captivity, was publicly beheaded.

Thus ends the first epoch of the Wahhabi rule in Nejd. During the

twenty-three years which followed the destruction of Deriyeh, Nejd

continued to be a province of Egypt; sometimes occupied by Egyptian

troops, sometimes tributary only. When Ibrahim Pasha first appeared in

Nejd, he commanded the sympathies of a great part of the population, and

especially in Jebel Shammar, Kasim, and Hasa, where he was received

rather as a deliverer from the Wahhabi yoke, than as a foreign conqueror.

No Turkish army had previously been seen in Central Arabia; and the Arabs

of the interior, when not fanatically biased, had no special hatred of

them. But the Turkish and Albanian troops left in garrison by Ibrahim

soon excited by their cruelties the enmity of the people; and as early as

1822 a first massacre of a Turkish garrison occurred at Riad, the new

capital of Nejd (for Deriyeh was never rebuilt). This was followed in

1823 and 1824 by a successful rising of the Arabs under Turki ibn Saoud

(see pedigree), and the re-establishment of his family as sovereign in

Aared. Turki seized Riad, drove out the Egyptian troops still remaining

in Nejd, and as leader of a popular movement against the foreigner, was

recognized Emir by most of the tribes of Central Arabia.

For ten years—1824 to 1834—Turki consolidated his power in Nejd, Hasa,

and even Oman, the whole coast of the Persian Gulf to Ras-el-Had

acknowledging him and paying tribute. He, however, himself paid tribute

to the Government of Egypt, which accorded countenance to his action in

Arabia.

In 1834, Turki ibn Saoud was assassinated by a relative, Meshari, who was

in turn put to death by Turki’s son, Feysul, now recognised Emir in his

father’s stead.

In 1838, Feysul, having neglected or refused to pay tribute to Egypt,

Mehemet Ali sent a force under Jomail Bey to depose him, and to establish

Khalid, a rival claimant of the Ibn Saoud family, as Emir at Riad.

Feysul then fled to Hasa, and Khalid, supported by a portion of the

people of Aared and by reinforcements from Egypt under Khurshid Pasha,

usurped the throne, but was shortly set aside by the Egyptian commanders,

who established Egyptian government throughout Nejd. Feysul meanwhile

had surrendered to them, and been sent prisoner to Cairo. The second

Egyptian occupation of Nejd lasted for two years. Then the greater part

of the troops were recalled, and Khalid left as Valy for the Turkish

government.

In 1842, Abdallah ibn Theneyan ibn Saoud headed a revolt against Khalid,

who with his few remaining Egyptian troops was ejected from Riad; and

Feysul, having escaped from his prison in Cairo, reappeared in Aared, and

was everywhere acknowledged as Emir. From this time neither the Egyptian

nor the Turkish government have exercised any authority in Nejd.

Under Feysul, whose reign lasted after his restoration for twenty-three

years, nearly all the former territories of the Wahhabi empire were

re-conquered. Oman in 1845 was reduced to tribute; Hasa was forced to

accept Wahhabi governors, and in Feysul’s last years Kasim also was

conquered. Jebel Shammar, which on the overthrow of the first Nejd

empire by Ibrahim Pasha had reverted to independence under the Ibn Ali

family of the Beni Temim, was now also annexed nominally to the Wahhabi

state. With Feysul’s help, Abdallah ibn Rashid, Sheykh of the Shammar,

established himself at Haïl, and paying tribute to the Emir acknowledged

his sovereignty. Only in Bahreyn were his arms unsuccessful, and that

owing to the support given to the Bahreyn sheykhs by England.

In the later years of his life Feysul became blind, and the management of

affairs fell to his son Abdallah, who by his fanaticism and his cruelty

alienated the Bedouin population from his standard, and prepared matters

for a third intervention on the part of the Turks.

Before narrating, however, the last episode of Arabian misfortune and

Turkish annexation, it will be necessary to explain briefly the views and

pretensions of the Ottoman Sultans with respect to Arabia.

The first appearance of the Turks in the peninsula dates from 1524, when

Selim I., having conquered Egypt and usurped the Caliphate, till then

held by members of the Abbaside family, took military possession of the

holy places, Mecca and Medina, and annexed Yemen to his dominions.

Beyond the districts immediately bordering on the Red Sea, however, no

part of Arabia proper was at that time claimed by the Sultans; and in the

following century a national insurrection drove them even from these, so

that with the exception of the pilgrim roads from Cairo and Damascus, the

Turks made no pretension of being masters in the Peninsula.

Ibrahim Pasha’s expedition had been made not in assertion of a sovereign

right, but as an act of chastisement and retaliation on a hostile sect;

and once the Wahhabi government crushed, little care had been taken in

retaining Nejd as a possession. The sultans were at that time far too

anxiously occupied with their position in Europe to indulge in dreams of

conquest in Asia, and were, from a military point of view, too weak for

unprofitable enterprises not absolutely necessary. But at the close of

the Crimean war the Turkish army was thoroughly reorganised, thanks to

the English loan, which made its equipment with arms of precision

possible; and the Sultan, finding himself in the possession of

unaccustomed power, used it for the reduction first of the outlying

districts of the Empire which had shaken off his yoke, and next of those

tribes on its borders which appeared easiest of conquest. The frontier

lands of Syria and Kurdistan were thus brought back into subjection, the

Euphrates and Tigris valleys, independent since the days of Tamerlane,

were occupied in force, and Irak was once more placed under the Imperial

system of tax and conscription. The Suez Canal was opened, and Arabia,

accessible hitherto by land only, was now for the first time within easy

reach of Constantinople. With the sense of increased power, born of full

coffers and an army ready and equipped for action, new dreams of conquest

came to the Imperial government. The Sultan remembered what he seemed to

have forgotten, that he was heir to the Arabian caliphate, and his

Ministers of the day based on this fact a claim to all Arabia. The

garrisons of Mecca and the Hejaz were increased, an expedition was

despatched against Yemen, and Midhat Pasha, a man of a restless, unquiet

temper, was appointed Governor of Bagdad, with orders to watch his time

for extending the Sultan’s influence in any direction that might seem to

him advisable. The opportunity soon came.

In 1865 Feysul ibn Saoud died, and the Wahhabi State which under him had

regained so much of its former power, was once more weakened by internal

dissension. Feysul left two sons, Abdallah and Saoud, the former a

strict Wahhabi, but the latter holding liberal opinions, national rather

than religious. Each put himself at the head of a party; Abdallah of the

townsmen in Aared who were still fanatically attached to the reformed

doctrine, and Saoud of the Bedouins. For a while they divided Feysul’s

inheritance between them, but coming to blows the younger brother forced

the elder to fly from Aared, and Saoud established himself there as sole

Emir. Jebel Shammar meanwhile and Kasim became completely independent,

and Hasa and the rest of the maritime districts refused any longer to pay

tribute.

In 1871 Abdallah, turned out of Aared, made his way with a few followers

to Jebel Shammar, where Metaab Ibn Rashid was then Emir, and from that

asylum (for he was treated there as a guest) put himself into

communication with Midhat at Bagdad. Midhat, who saw in this

circumstance an opportunity such as he had been instructed to seek,

readily responded; and at once issued a proclamation in which the

sovereign power of the Sultan over Nejd was assumed, and Abdallah

referred to as Caimakam or Deputy Governor of that province. It was

notified, moreover, that a Turkish force would be despatched from Bagdad

“to restore order, and to maintain the said Caimakam against his

rebellious brother.”

After some opposition on the part of the Indian Government, which for

many years had insisted upon absolute peace being maintained in the

Persian gulf, a rule which had been agreed to by all the chiefs of the

Arabian coast, including the people of Hasa and the Wahhabi government,

and which had been attended with excellent results, a military expedition

was despatched by sea to Hasa. It consisted of 4000 to 5000 Turkish

regulars, under Nazfi Pasha, and disembarked at Katif in the month of

June. Abdallah in the meantime had returned to Nejd, and having

collected a body of adherents, in union with the Beni Kahtan tribe,

attacked Saoud from the west; but was defeated and took refuge in the

Turkish camp.

Dissensions nevertheless broke out in Riad and forced Saoud to take the

field against a third rival, Abdallah ibn Turki, at whose hands he

sustained a defeat, and he was in his turn forced to retire to Katr. The

Turks had now occupied all the seaboard of Hasa, and the inland fort and

town of Hofhuf, whence they entered into communication with this Abdallah

ibn Turki, whom they named Mudir of Riad, “pending the arrival there of

Abdallah ibn Feysul;” but before the end of the year, Midhat announced

that in consequence of a petition received by the Sultan from the

principal inhabitants of Nejd {266} the Ibn Saoud family had ceased to

reign, and that the country should henceforth be administered by a

Turkish Governor. Nafiz Pasha was appointed in the same announcement

Muteserrif or Governor of Nejd, and Abdallah was entirely put aside. The

Emir Abdallah thereupon fled from the Turkish camp in Hasa to Riad.

[Picture: Fortress of Agde]

In 1872 Raouf Pasha, who had succeeded Midhat at Bagdad, opened

negotiations with Saoud, and induced him to send his brother Abderrahman

to Bagdad, where he was retained a prisoner till 1874.

In the same year Saoud returned to Riad, and once more ejected his

brother Abdallah, who retired to Queyt, leaving Saoud in undisturbed

possession till his death in 1874.

In 1873, the Turkish regular troops were withdrawn, and Bizi ibn Aréar,

Sheykh of the Beni Kháled and hereditary enemy of the Ibn Saouds, was

left in Hasa as Ottoman Governor, with a garrison of zaptiehs.

In 1874, Abderrahman, brother of the Emir Saoud, having been released

from Bagdad, raised a revolt in Hasa, and was joined by the Al Mowak,

Ajman and other Bedouin tribes, with whom he marched on Hofhuf and

besieged Bizi there with his garrison, many of whom were slain.

Whereupon Nassr Pasha was sent from Bussora with a battalion of regulars,

by sea to Hasa, at the news of whose approach Abderrahman retired to

Riad. Nassr then marched on Hofhuf and relieved the garrison, which were

shut up in the fort; but gave the town to pillage. For several days the

Turkish soldiers and their auxiliaries indulged in indiscriminate

massacre and plunder of the inhabitants; men, women and children were

shot down, and women were openly treated with the brutality peculiar to

such occasions. It is said in extenuation that the Turkish officers

remonstrated with the Pasha, but that he replied that it was necessary to

make an example.

Shortly after this the Emir Saoud died at Riad, it has been said of

poison; and in 1875 Abdallah returned to Nejd, where he found

Abderrahman, his half brother, established. The brothers, after some

disputing, came to an amicable arrangement with respect to the chief

power, Abdallah holding the title of Emir, and Abderrahman of chief

minister. Such is now the state of things at Riad. Overtures from the

Turkish Government have been lately opened with the Emir, on the basis of

his becoming Governor of Nejd as Turkish nominee, but have met with no

response. Abdallah, it would seem, exercises little authority out of

Riad, and none whatever out of Aared. He represents the party of Wahhabi

fanaticism there, which is rapidly declining, and there are schemes on

foot among the Bedouins and certain members of the Ibn Saoud family, for

starting a new pretender in the person of one of the sons of Saoud, and

claiming the protection of England. The power of the Ibn Saoud family in

Arabia may, however, be considered at an end.

Hasa and the seaboard from Katr to Queyt is now held by the Turks, under

whose system of stirring up tribal feuds among the Arabs, the commercial

prosperity of the coast is rapidly disappearing. Piracy, under the

protection of the Ottoman flag, has once more become the mode of life

with the coast villagers, and intrigues have been opened with the Sheykhs

of the districts eastwards, to induce them to accept similar protection

on the promise of similar license.

Meanwhile all that is truly national in thought and respectable in

feeling in central Arabia, is grouping itself around Mohammed Ibn Rashid,

the Emir of Jebel Shammar, and it is to Haïl that we must look for a

restoration, if such be possible, of the ancient glories and prosperity

of the Nejd Empire.

W. S. B.

[Picture: Pedigree of the Ibn Saouds, Emirs of Nejd]

[Picture: Pedigree of the Ibn Rashids, Emirs of Jebel Shammar]

MEMORANDUM ON THE EUPHRATES VALLEY RAILWAY,

AND ITS KINDRED SCHEMES OF RAILWAY COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE

MEDITERRANEAN AND THE PERSIAN GULF.

HAVING now completed the whole journey by land between Alexandretta and

Bushire, the extreme points usually mentioned as terminuses for a

Perso-Mediterranean Railway, and being, in so far, capable of estimating

the real resources of the countries such a railway would serve, I make no

apology for the few remarks I here offer on the subject. I do so with

the more confidence because I perceive that of the many advocates these

railway schemes have had, not one has taken the trouble of thus

travelling over the whole distance, and that nearly all calculations made

regarding them, are based on a survey of a part only of the road. It is

seldom indeed that those who write or speak about a Euphrates valley

railway, have done more than cross that river at Bir, or that they carry

their arguments much beyond a choice of the most suitable Mediterranean

port for a terminus, a kind of reasoning sufficient, no doubt, for the

purpose before them, but in reality misleading. I believe, that one and

all of these schemes are based upon a deficient knowledge of the facts.

A railway of this sort, to Englishmen, is naturally attractive, and

presents itself to them in a double aspect, political and commercial.

Politically it has been represented as an alternative route for troops to

India, more expeditious than that by Suez; commercially as a scheme that

will open up a rich but neglected country to the operations of trade.

With regard to the first I would remark first that, having gone through

the calculation carefully, I find that four days is the total saving

between London and Calcutta which a line of railway from Scanderun or

Tripoli to Bushire would effect, an advantage quite inadequate to the

risk of transhipment, and the fatigue of a long desert journey; secondly

that the Persian Gulf is both hotter and less healthy than the Red Sea,

and that the Syrian ports of the Mediterranean are peculiarly liable to

fever; and thirdly that such a line could be used for the conveyance of

English troops, by permission only of whatever power might be in

possession of Asia Minor.

When I was in India last summer I made acquaintance with a great number

of British officials, and I was at some pains to learn from them their

views on this “alternative route.” I will not say that their answers to

my questions were invariably the same, but I think I am making no mistake

in affirming, that the consensus of intelligent opinion among them is

wholly adverse to the notion. “The Euphrates route,” say they, “would be

of exceedingly little use to us. The mails, to be sure, would go that

way, and we should get our letters from England three or four days

sooner; but, politically speaking, the mails are a matter of less

consequence than they were. Nowadays all official work of real

importance is transacted by telegraph, and when the mails come in

afterwards, their interest has been forestalled. It would matter little

at Simla or Calcutta whether they had taken three weeks or a fortnight on

the road. Trade would certainly benefit somewhat in this way, but

Government very little. As regards the sending of troops overland, there

could be no question of it, as long as the Suez route was open; and if

England cannot keep the Suez route open, she had better give up India at

once. No Secretary at War would be so ill-advised as to send troops,

with the risk of cholera and over-fatigue, by the land journey as long as

they could be marched on board at Plymouth, and landed fresh at Bombay.”

“Not even in case of a new mutiny?” I asked. “Not even in a mutiny.

People in England have no idea of the meaning of a thousand-mile railway

journey in desert countries. For six months in the year no passengers

would go that way, except, maybe, an occasional officer on a three

months’ furlough. We should not take our wives and children there at any

time. The extra trouble and expense have prevented most of us from

making use of the Brindisi line, which really saves us a week and avoids

the Bay of Biscay; so we certainly should not face the Persian Gulf for

the sake of four days. The Persian Gulf is hotter than the Red Sea.”

Lastly, as to the strategical importance of the Euphrates and Tigris

districts to India, I found that these were considered, even by the

extremest advocates of conquest, quite out of our line of march for many

years to come. The veriest Russophobe could not be made to believe, that

a modern army would attempt a march through any passes in Asia Minor, or

down any Euphrates valley, on India.

It may therefore be dismissed from our calculations that India stands in

need of a railway from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. The

political advantage, if advantage there be, would lie solely with Turkey,

or with whatever power may eventually become master of Armenia and

Kurdistan.

As a commercial speculation, the Euphrates railway scheme is, I believe,

equally delusive. The additional cost and risk of transhipment would be

an effectual bar to through traffic; while local traffic alone, would be

insufficient to secure the financial success of the line. The Euphrates

and Tigris valleys are often represented as rich agricultural districts,

waiting only the hand of the immigrant to become again what they were in

classic and even mediæval times. It is argued that if, in the twelfth

century, the Euphrates valley boasted such towns as Rakka, Karkesia, and

Balis, such towns may exist again, and that a railway carried by that

route to Bagdad, would surely revive the ancient wealth of a naturally

wealthy district. But such an argument speedily vanishes on an

examination of the facts.

1st. The Euphrates and Tigris valleys neither are nor ever were rich

agriculturally. As corn-growing districts they cannot compare with the

hill country immediately north of them, with northern Syria, the Taurus,

or Kurdistan. They lie out of the reach of the regular winter rains,

which cling to the hills, and for this reason are almost entirely

dependent on irrigation for their fertility. At best, the Euphrates and

Tigris valleys, through which a railway would pass, are inconsiderable

strips of good land, hemmed in closely by a barren desert, and incapable

of lateral extension or development. They are isolated, and have long

ceased to lie on the track of commerce. At the present day they contain

no place of importance, with the exception of the pilgrim shrines of

Kerbela and Meshhed Ali, and the decayed city of Bagdad, nor along the

greater part of their extent, more than a few villages, depending for

their subsistence on the date-palm. They are, moreover, subject to the

caprices of their great unmanageable rivers, which at flood time wreck

half the valleys. The Euphrates for 150 miles, passes without alluvial

belt of any kind, through a quite inhospitable desert, while lower down

it loses itself in marshes at least as valueless. The Tigris, from Mosul

to Bagdad, boasts but three inconsiderable villages, and from Bagdad to

Bussorah, a poor half dozen. The Montefik country on the lower

Euphrates, and the island enclosed within the Hindiyeh Canal, are the

only important corn-growing districts now existing.

2nd. The great plain of Irak, the ancient Babylonia, is not only

uncultivated now, but for the most part is uncultivable. A vast portion

of it has been overflowed by the rivers, and converted into a swamp,

while the rest is more absolutely barren than even the desert itself. It

would seem that the water of the Tigris contains saltpetre in solution,

and the plain below Bagdad, in the neighbourhood of the river, is in many

places covered with a saltpetrous deposit, the result of over-irrigation

in ancient days. The soil would seem to have been in some sort worked

out. I believe, moreover, that from the denudation since ancient times

of Armenia, from which the two rivers flow, their floods have become more

sudden, and the water supply less calculable, and that the vast

irrigation works from the Euphrates, which would be necessary before the

fertility of Irak could be restored to what it then was, would still be

liable to excessive flood and drought.

The ancient agricultural wealth of Babylonia was a purely artificial

thing, depending upon a gigantic system of irrigation which has no

parallel in anything now found in the world. When these vast works were

begun is not known; but it must have been in an age of mankind when Asia

was densely peopled and human labour cheap. Indeed, we may feel sure

that only compulsory labour could have carried them out at all, for they

would have ruined any treasury at any rate of wages. This can hardly be

done again. There are no captive nations now to be impressed; no

treasury capable of providing the funds. We see India, with its really

great population, and its comparatively great wealth, sinking under the

burden of irrigation works; and the miserable Arabs of Irak cannot be

called on to square their shoulders and carry this far greater load.

With all our knowledge, too, of engineering, there would still be some

risk of failure; for the Euphrates and the Tigris are not rivers to be

trifled with, as Midhat Pasha found to his cost. I think it more than

probable that in the day of Babylonian greatness, the flooding of both

rivers was more regular and less subject to disasters of drought and

excess than now. As I have said, the denudation of Armenia accounts,

perhaps, for the destruction of Irak. In any case it is certain, that at

the present moment the full energies of the existing population are

required to preserve their footing, not to make new conquests on the

river. Now, as I am writing, Lower Mesopotamia is expecting famine from

the failure of the Tigris, for not an acre of wheat can be sown without

its flooding. Last year all hands were at work damming out the

Euphrates. These matters are worth considering.

3rd. In treating this question of Euphrates Valley communication, it

seems to be forgotten that not only the circumstances of the Valley

itself are changed, but those of all the world of Asia adjoining it.

To understand the present position of Mesopotamia and its adjacent lands,

we must consider the history of their ruin. In the days of ancient Rome,

not only the shores of the Mediterranean, African as well as European,

but also all Western Asia, were a densely peopled empire. Even the lands

beyond Roman jurisdiction were full of great cities, from Armenia,

through the central plateau of Asia, to the edge of China. Land was

everywhere taken up and everywhere of value, while a great surplus

population was constantly being pushed out into poorer and still poorer

districts by the struggle of life, until hardly a habitable corner of the

old world remained unoccupied.

It is not surprising, then, that, with such a necessity for elbow room,

the Euphrates and Tigris Valleys were early seized upon, and that at a

later date, even poorer regions of the desert were conquered from

sterility, and forced into the work of producing food. As long as

Babylonia, and the kingdoms which succeeded it, maintained their

fertility, these valleys lay on the highway between them and Asia Minor.

Even so lately as the twelfth century, Benjamin of Tudela, a Spanish Jew,

found numerous large towns still flourishing in Upper Mesopotamia.

Palmyra, at that day, was still a commercial city, containing with other

inhabitants a population of two thousand Jews. On the Upper Euphrates he

mentions five towns, and on the Tigris two or three. It must not,

however, for a moment be supposed that these cities owed their wealth in

any but a very small measure to agriculture. Palmyra and El Haddr, the

two most important, never could have had more than a few cultivated acres

attached to them, while the towns on the rivers, though making full use

of the alluvial valleys, were essentially commercial. The high road

between Aleppo and Bagdad then passed down the Euphrates as far as

Kerkesia (Deyr?), whence striking across Mesopotamia to El Haddr, it

joined the Tigris at Tekrit. Along this line cities were found at

intervals, much as the posting-houses used to be found upon our own

highways, and with the same reason for their existence. They gradually

died, as these died, with the diversion of traffic from their route.

Palmyra and El Haddr, which (to continue the posting-house metaphor) had

no paddocks attached to them, were the first to disappear; and then one

by one the river towns, which for a time had still struggled on with the

aid of their fields, died too. In the thirteenth, and again in the

sixteenth centuries, the terrible scourges of Mongul and Ottoman

conquests passed over Asia, and swept the regions surrounding Mesopotamia

clear of inhabitants. All Western Asia was at this time ruined; and the

first result was the abandonment of outlying settlements, which only the

stress of over-population elsewhere had ever brought into existence. The

Tigris and Euphrates were gradually abandoned, and only the richest

districts of Armenia, Kurdistan, and Syria retained. The Ottoman system

of misgovernment has done the rest; and now at the present day there is

no surplus population eastwards nearer than China, which could supply the

deficiency. Until Persia and Armenia are fully occupied, it is idle to

expect the comparatively waste lands of Mesopotamia and the river banks

to invite immigration. Russia may some day assimilate Asia Minor, and

Asia Minor may some day again become populous, but until that is done

Mesopotamia must wait.

On the other hand, Europe is as little likely to send emigrants to the

banks of the Euphrates. With such large tracts of good land on the

southern shores of the Mediterranean and in Syria, unoccupied, there is

nothing to tempt agriculturists to poorer lands so far away. Mesopotamia

has hardly a climate suited to northern Europeans, while Italians and

Maltese (the only southern nations with a surplus population) find

openings nearer home. It is equally idle to talk of coolies from India,

or coolies from China. These only emigrate, on the prospect of immediate

high wages, to countries where labour commands its full price, and

capital is there to employ it. As mere emigrants in search of land they

will not come.

4th. Although South-western Persia, through which the last 400 miles of

a railroad to Bushire might be made to pass, has not suffered from the

same physical causes which have ruined Babylonia, its present condition

as regards population, production, and existing wealth, are hardly less

unfortunate. The government of Persia, which burlesques all that we most

complain of in Turkey, has succeeded in reducing the production of a

district, one of the wealthiest in natural advantages of all Asia,

practically to nothing. With the single exception of a tract of

cultivated land lying between Dizful and Shustar, and another between

Dilam and Bushire, the railway would pass through a country at present

uninhabited even by wandering tribes possessed of pastoral wealth. The

policy of the Persian government in its dealings with Arabistan has been

to depopulate, as the shortest and easiest mode of governing it, and the

policy has been successful.

Still I consider, that a railway run along the edge of the Bactiari

hills, would have a far better chance of attracting population towards

it, than one in the Euphrates or Tigris valleys. The soil is naturally a

very rich one, and the winter rainfall sufficient for agricultural

purposes. Where-ever cultivation exists it is remunerative, and the soil

has not been worked out, as is the case in the plains. The line would

doubtless serve the better peopled districts of Shirazd and Luristan; and

Bebaban, Shustar and Dizful, would become once more important _entrepôts_

for the wealth of the interior. With the security a railway would give,

immigrants might even gradually arrive, and it is conceivable that the

district might in the course of years be reclaimed, for it is well worth

reclaiming, but the prospect is a distant one.

On the whole I would suggest that all calculations as to traffic should

be based strictly on existing circumstances. It may be, that the present

population and production are sufficient for the support of a railway, (I

myself considerably doubt it), but investors should trust to these only.

The future has only delusions in store for them. It is idle to quote the

precedent of those American railways, carried through waste places, which

have speedily attracted population, and through population, wealth. In

Asia there is no surplus population anywhere to attract. Moreover there

are existing circumstances of misgovernment, which no system of railways

can cure, and till these are changed, it is idle to hope for other

changes. Railways in Europe or in America, serve the interests of the

people. In Turkey or in Persia they would serve the interests of their

rulers only.

That readers may judge what the actual condition is, of the lands lying

between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, I have put in tabular

form the amount of cultivated and uncultivated land, of pasture and

desert, afforded by the various lines of route which have been suggested

for a railway. These are:

1.—_The Palmyra Route_, 555 miles.

Miles.

Tripoli to Homs, partial cultivation 70

Homs to Palmyra, a pastoral desert 120

Palmyra to Hitt, uninhabited desert 250

Hitt to Seglawieh, partial cultivation 65

Seglawieh to Bagdad, alluvial plain, uncultivated, for 50

the most part uninhabited

Total under partial cultivation 135

,, desert or pastoral 420

Total 555

This route has nothing to recommend it except its shortness. It would

pass through but one considerable town, Homs; it would serve no important

agricultural district, and could count upon no local traffic. The

greater part of its course is without water, fuel, inhabitants, or

possibility of development. It would require considerable cutting and

bridging (for ravines), and would have little strategical value.

2.—_The Euphrates Valley Route_, 625 miles.

Miles.

Lattakia or Alexandretta to Aleppo, cultivation 100

Aleppo to Deyr, pastoral 210

Deyr to Abu Camal, pastoral, partly cultivated 70

Abu Camal to Hitt, desert, with palm oases 130

Hitt to Seglawieh, partial cultivation 65

Seglawieh to Bagdad, alluvial plain, uncultivated, and 50

mostly uninhabited

Total cultivated and partly cultivated 235

,, desert or pastoral 390

Total 625

This line passes through one town of eighty thousand inhabitants, Aleppo,

and two small towns, Deyr and Ana, besides a few villages. It could

count on very little local traffic; Deyr might export a little corn, Ana

a few dates. Except in the northern portion it is not a sheep district.

It has the advantages of water and fuel, but these would be to a certain

extent neutralised if, as is probable, the line should have to pass along

the desert above, instead of in the valley. In either case the

construction would not be without expense, the river with its inundations

causing constant obstruction below; while the desert above, is much

broken with ravines. It could hardly pay the whole of its working

expenses. Its principal advantage is, that in case of its being

continued from Seglawieh to Bussorah, some miles would be saved, or a

branch line might be made to Kerbela. The Euphrates line is

strategically of advantage to Turkey, mainly as a check on the Bedouin

tribes.

3.—_The Mesopotamian or Tigris Valley Route_, 700 miles.

Miles.

Alexandretta or Lattakia to Aleppo, cultivation 100

Aleppo to Orfa, cultivation 120

Orfa to Mosul, by Mardin, partial cultivation 250

Mosul to Bagdad by the right bank of the Tigris, pastoral 230

Total cultivated and partly cultivated 470

,, pastoral 230

Total 700

This line has the advantage of passing through no absolutely desert

district. It would be well watered throughout, and in the Tigris Valley

would have a supply of fuel. It would, as far as Mosul, serve four large

towns with an aggregate population of two hundred thousand inhabitants,

besides numerous villages, and a nearly continuous agricultural

population. Its stations would serve as depots for the produce of Upper

Syria, Armenia, and Kurdistan from the north, and of a fairly prosperous

pastoral district from the south. Below Mosul, however, there would be

but two small towns, Samara, and Tekrit, and hardly a village. The

engineering difficulties of this route, in spite of several small rivers

besides the Euphrates (which all three lines would have to cross), would

probably be less than in the others. Upper Mesopotamia is a more even

plain than the Syrian Desert, and southwards is but little intersected

with ravines. This route is strategically of immense importance to

Turkey, and is perhaps the best. I would, however, suggest, that

commercially, a better line would be from Mosul by Kerkuk to Bagdad.

This would continue through cultivated lands, and is the route

recommended by the very intelligent Polish engineer, who surveyed it some

years ago.

Beyond Bagdad the routes to the Persian Gulf would be—

1. Bagdad to Queyt by right bank of Euphrates, serving Kerbela, Meshhed

Ali, and the district of Suk-esh-Shiokh (460 miles) or to Bussorah (400

miles).

This could be continued from Seglawieh, thereby saving fifty miles. It

would serve two fairly flourishing agricultural districts, and should

pass along the edge of the desert where the ground is nearly level.

Queyt is a good port as to anchorage, but has no commercial importance.

Bussorah is a river port much circumscribed by marshes.

2. Bagdad to Mohamra by the left bank of the Tigris (320 miles).

This would be a difficult line to make, on account of the marshes, and

would pass through a nearly uninhabited country. It has no advantage but

its shortness.

3. Bagdad to Bushire, along the edge of the Hamrin Hills to Dizful, then

by Shustar, Ram Hormuz, and Dilam (570 miles).

This line would be an expensive one, on account of the six large rivers

it would have to cross, but it presents no other engineering

difficulties. It should keep close under the Hamrin Hills to avoid

marshy ground near the river. It is uninhabited as far as Dizful, though

the soil is good and well watered. Dizful and Shustar are important

commercial towns, being the principal markets of South Western Persia;

the district between them is well cultivated. Beyond Shustar to Dilam

there is but one inhabited place, Ram Hormuz (or Ramuz). There are a few

villages along the shore of the Persian Gulf to Bushire, but very little

cultivation. This route might be shortened by taking a direct line from

Ali Ghurbi on the Tigris to Dilam, but it would then pass wholly through

uninhabited country, swampy in places. On the whole I prefer the

Dizful-Shustar route, as having better commercial prospects. These towns

would supply no little traffic. Bushire is an important place, and would

make the best terminus for a railway on the Gulf. I cannot, however,

recommend any of these lines south of Bagdad as commercially promising

for a railway.

W. S. B.

[Picture: Rock inscriptions and drawings in Jebel Shammar]

FOOTNOTES.

{7} Abbas Pasha’s Seglawieh is reported to have had two foals while in

Egypt; one of them died, and the other was given to the late King of

Italy, and left descendants, now in the possession of the present king.

{34} We measured one, a pollard, thirty-six feet round the trunk at five

feet from the ground.

{41} Rassam, who has been digging at Babylon, informs me that these

inscriptions are in the ancient Phœnician character. It would seem that

the Phœnicians, who were a nation of shopkeepers, were in the habit of

sending out commercial travellers with samples of goods all over Asia;

and wherever they stopped on the road, if there was a convenient bit of

soft rock, they scratched their names on it, and drew pictures of

animals. The explanation may be the true one, but how does it come that

these tradesmen should choose purely desert subjects for their artistic

efforts—camels, ostriches, ibexes, and horsemen with lances. I should

have fancied rather that these were the work of Arabs, or of whoever

represented the Arabs, in days gone by, anyhow of people living in the

country. But I am no archæologist.

{50} It was to Taybetism that Abdallah ibn Saoud fled ten years ago when

he was driven by his brother out of Aared, and from it that he sent that

treacherous message to Midhat Pasha at Bagdad which brought the Turks

into Hasa and broke up the Wahhabi Empire.

{57} Red is said to be the female and green the male, but some say all

are green at first and become red afterwards.

{59} Compare Mr. Palgrave’s account.

{63} Compare Fatalla’s account of the war between the Mesenneh and the

Dafir near Tudmor at the beginning of the present century.

{65} Belkis is the name usually given by tradition to the Queen of

Sheba.

{67} I have since been told by dentists that the fact of a third set of

teeth being cut in old age is not unknown to science.

{75} Presents of honour always given to a sheykh.

{107} An incomplete account of this state of things is given in “Bedouin

Tribes of the Euphrates.”

{109} We heard nothing of Mohammed for nearly a year, and then heard

that he was in prison. Prompted by a conscientious motive, of which

those who have read thus far will need no explanation, he rendered

himself liable to the action of Ottoman justice. A man of the Faris

faction was found slain at Tudmur, and the relations of the deceased

pointed out Mohammed’s as the hand which had fired the shot. The Turks

had just re-occupied the town and were anxious to make an example, so

Mohammed was put in chains and sent to Deyr. There he found means to

send us news of his misfortune, and Wilfrid had the satisfaction of being

able to fulfil his brotherly obligation by interceding with the Pasha, on

his behalf, and eventually by procuring his release.

{119} Just a year afterwards, poor Captain Clements, being in command of

the Kalifeh, was attacked off Korna by an Arab ghazú, and while gallantly

defending his vessel, was shot through the lungs.

{128} What became of Ariel we shall never know. At first reports came

to Bagdad that she was alive and recovering; then news that she was dead;

and then, when someone was sent to inquire, it was discovered that Seyd

Abbas and Bashaga and all the Arabs had deserted and were gone. We hope

still she may be with them.

{152} This part of the journal was written at irregular moments when

order was not possible. It has been pieced together since.

{154} We trust this duplicity may be pardoned us in consideration of the

straits we were in.

{179} Christians of St. John, see “Bedouin Tribes.”

{227} Captain Cameron never started at all from Bagdad on the expedition

planned between us. Letters received, after we had left, recalled him to

India, and he went there by steamer down the Tigris and Persian gulf.

{244} The exact direction of these strings it is difficult to determine

accurately; but perhaps E. by S. and W. by N. may be accepted as nearest

the truth.

{266} This seems to have been a forgery.