I Heard
That In The Upper Mountains, And At Tayf, The Rainy Season, Although Not
So Regular As Under The
Tropics in Africa, is yet more steady than in
the low country of Mekka and Djidda, where, even in the
Midst of summer,
the sky is often clouded by storms and rain. The historians of Mekka
have recorded several dreadful inundations in that city; the most
disastrous occurred in the years of the Hedjira 80, 184, 202, 280, 297,
549, 620, 802, 829. In some of these, the whole town of Mekka, and the
Temple, as high as the black stone, were under water, and in all of them
many houses were destroyed and lives lost. Assamy gives the details of
an inundation which devastated Mekka in A.H. 1039, or in the year 1626
of our era, when five hundred lives were lost, and the Kaaba in the
Temple was destroyed. Another dreadful inundation happened in 1672.
I arrived at Mekka about mid-day, when my companions went in search of
their acquaintance among the soldiers, and left me to shift for myself,
without knowing a single individual in the town, and without being
recommended to any body but the Kadhy, whom, as I have already said, I
wished to avoid.
MEKKA
[p.94] Whoever enters Mekka, whether pilgrim or not, is enjoined by the
law to visit the Temple immediately, and not to attend to any worldly
concern whatever, before he has done so. We crossed the line of shops
and houses, up to the gates of the mosque, where my ass-driver took his
fare and set me down:
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