They Are Filled From The Same Fine Aqueduct
Which Supplies Mekka, And The Head Of Which Is About One Hour And A Half
Distant, In The Eastern Mountains.
The canal is left open here for the
convenience of pilgrims, and is conducted round the three sides of the
mountains, passing by Modaa Seydna Adam.
[At the close of the sixteenth
century, according to Kotobeddyn, the whole plain of Arafat was
cultivated.]
From the summit of Arafat, I counted about three thousand tents
dispersed over the plain, of which two thirds belonged to the two
[p.268] Hadj caravans, and to the suite and soldiers of Mohammed Aly;
the rest to the Arabs of the Sherif, the Bedouin hadjys, and the people
of Mekka and Djidda. These assembled multitudes were for the greater
number, like myself, without tents. The two caravans were encamped
without much order, each party of pilgrims or soldiers having pitched
its tents in large circles or dowars, in the midst of which many of
their camels were reposing. The plain contained, dispersed in different
parts, from twenty to twenty-five thousand camels, twelve thousand of
which belonged to the Syrian Hadj, and from five to six thousand to the
Egyptian; besides about three thousand, purchased by Mohammed Aly from
the Bedouins in the Syrian Deserts, and brought to Mekka with the Hadj,
to convey the pilgrims to this place, previously to being used for the
transport of army-provisions to Tayf.
The Syrian Hadj was encamped on the south and south-west side of the
mountain; the Egyptian on the south-east. Around the house of the
Sherif, Yahya himself was encamped with his Bedouin troops, and in its
neighbourhood were all the Hedjaz people. Here it was that the two Yemen
caravans used formerly to take their station. Mohammed Aly, and Soleyman
Pasha of Damascus, as well as several of their officers, had very
handsome tents; but the most magnificent of all was that of the wife of
Mohammed Aly, the mother of Tousoun Pasha, and Ibrahim Pasha, who had
lately arrived from Cairo for the Hadj, with a truly royal equipage,
five hundred camels being necessary to transport her baggage from Djidda
to Mekka. Her tent was in fact an encampment consisting of a dozen tents
of different sizes, inhabited by her women; the whole enclosed by a wall
of linen cloth, eight hundred paces in circuit, the single entrance to
which was guarded by eunuchs in splendid dresses. Around this enclosure
were pitched the tents of the men who formed her numerous suite. The
beautiful embroidery on the exterior of this linen palace, with the
various colours displayed in every part of it, constituted an object
which reminded me of some descriptions in the Arabian Tales of the
Thousand and One Nights. Among the rich equipages of the other hadjys,
or of the Mekka people, none were so conspicuous as that belonging to
the family of Djeylany, the merchant, whose tents, pitched
[p.269] in a semicircle, rivalled in beauty those of the two Pashas, and
far exceeded those of Sherif Yahya. In other parts of the East, a
merchant would as soon think of buying a rope for his own neck, as of
displaying his wealth in the presence of a Pasha; but Djeylany has not
yet laid aside the customs which the Mekkawys learned under their old
government, particularly that of Sherif Ghaleb, who seldom exercised
extortion upon single individuals; and they now rely on the promises of
Mohammed Aly, that he will respect their property.
During the whole morning, there were repeated discharges of the
artillery which both Pashas had brought with them. A few pilgrims had
taken up their quarters on Djebel Arafat itself, where some small
cavern, or impending block of granite, afforded them shelter from the
sun. It is a belief generally entertained in the East, and strengthened
by many boasting hadjys on their return home, that all the pilgrims, on
this day, encamp upon Mount Arafat; and that the mountain possesses the
miraculous property of expansion, so as to admit an indefinite number of
the faithful upon its summit. The law ordains that the wakfe, or
position of the Hadj, should be on Djebel Arafat; but it wisely provides
against any impossibility, by declaring that the plain in the immediate
neighbourhood of the mountain may be regarded as comprised under the
term "mountain," or Djebel Arafat.
I estimated the number of persons assembled here at about seventy
thousand. The camp was from three to four miles long, and between one
and two in breadth. There is, perhaps, no spot on earth where, in so
small a place, such a diversity of languages are heard; I reckoned about
forty, and have no doubt that there were many more. It appeared to me as
if I were here placed in a holy temple of travellers only; and never did
I at any time feel a more ardent wish to be able to penetrate once into
the inmost recesses of the countries of many of those persons whom I now
saw before me, fondly imagining that I might have no more difficulty in
reaching their homes, than what they had experienced in their journey to
this spot.
When the attention is engrossed by such a multitude of new objects, time
passes rapidly away. I had only descended from Mount
[p.270] Arafat, and had walked for some time about the camp, here and
there entering into conversation with pilgrims; inquiring at the Syrian
camp after some of my friends; and among the Syrian Bedouins, for news
from their deserts, when mid-day had already passed. The prayers of this
period of the day ought to be performed either within, or in the
immediate neighbourhood of, the mosque of Nimre, whither the two Pashas
had repaired for that purpose. The far greater number of hadjys,
however, dispense with this observance, and many of them with the mid-
day prayers altogether; for no one concerns himself whether his
neighbour is punctual or not in the performance of the prescribed rites.
After mid-day, the pilgrims are to wash and purify the body, by means of
the entire ablution prescribed by the law, and called Ghossel, for which
purpose chiefly, the numerous tents in the plain have been constructed;
but the weather was cloudy, and rather cold, which induced nine-tenths
of the pilgrims, shivering as they were already under the thin covering
of the ihram, to omit the rite also, and to content themselves with the
ordinary ablution.
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