Here, Too, The Hedjaz Bedouins Come To Buy The Woollen
Abbas, Or Bedouin Cloaks, Brought From Egypt, On Which Country
They
entirely depend for this article; and thus they seem to possess the same
indolent character as most people of
The Hedjaz; for it is customary
with the wives of other Bedouins to fabricate their own abbas. Here,
also, they bring Turkish carpets of an inferior quality, which form an
indispensable article of furniture for the tent of a Sheikh. In these
shops are likewise retailed all other imports from Egypt necessary for
dress, as mellayes, cotton quilts, linen for shirts, shirts dyed blue,
worn by the peasants, red and yellow slippers,
[p.38] used by the more opulent merchants, and by all the ladies, red
caps, all kinds of cloth dresses, second-hand cashmere shawls, muslin
shawls, &c. &c.
Six large shops of Indian piece-goods: French cloth, cashmere shawls,
&c. belonging to respectable merchants, whose clerks here sell by
retail. Almost all the principal merchants carry on also a retail
business in their own houses, except the great Indian merchants
established here, who deal in nothing but Indian piece-goods. The other
merchants of Djidda engage in every branch of commerce. I once saw the
brother of Djeylany quarrelling with a Yembo pedlar about the price of a
mellaye, worth about fifteen shillings; but this is the case also in
Egypt and Syria, where the most wealthy native merchants sell in retail,
and enter into all the minute details of business, and yet without
keeping any large establishment of clerks or accomptants, which their
mode of conducting business renders little necessary. A Turkish merchant
never keeps more than one accompt-book; into this he copies from a
pocket-book his weekly sales and purchases. They have not that extensive
correspondence which European merchants are obliged to keep up; and they
write much less, though perhaps more to the purpose, than the latter. In
every town with which they traffic, they have one friend, with whom they
annually balance accounts. Turkish merchants, with the exception of
those living in sea-ports, generally pursue but one branch of trade;
maintaining a correspondence with the town only from whence they obtain
their merchandize, and with that to which they transport it. Thus, for
instance, the great Baghdad merchants of Aleppo, men with from thirty to
forty thousand pounds in capital, receive goods from their friends at
Baghdad, and then send them from Aleppo to Constantinople. I have known
many of them who kept no clerk, but transacted the whole of their
business themselves. At Cairo, the Syrian merchants trade in the stuffs
of Damascus and Aleppo, and
[p.39] are altogether unconnected with the Maggrebin, Syria, and Djidda
merchants.
Mercantile transactions are farther simplified by the traders employing
chiefly their own capital, commission business being much less extensive
than it is in Europe. When a merchant consigns a considerable quantity
of goods to a place, he sends a partner with them, or perhaps a
relative, if he have no partner resident in the place. Ranking concerns
and bills of exchange are wholly unknown among the natives, which saves
them much trouble. In those towns where European factories are
established, bills may be found, but they are hardly current with the
natives, among whom assignments only are customary.
The practice followed equally by Mahomedan, Christian, and Jewish
merchants, in the East, of never drawing an exact balance of the actual
state of their capital, is another cause that renders the details of
book-keeping less necessary here than in Europe. For the same reason
that a Bedouin never counts the tents of his tribe, nor the exact number
of his sheep, nor a military chief the exact number of his men, nor a
governor the number of inhabitants of his town, a merchant never
attempts to ascertain the exact amount of his property; an approximation
only is all that be desires. This arises from a belief that counting is
an ostentatious display of wealth, which heaven will punish by a speedy
diminution.
The Eastern merchant seldom enters into hazardous speculations, but
limits his transactions to the extent of his capital. Credit to a great
amount is obtained with difficulty, as affairs of individuals are in
general much more publicly known than in Europe; failures are,
therefore, of rare occurrence; and when a man becomes embarrassed either
from an unsuccessful speculation or inevitable losses, his creditors
forbear to press their demands, and are generally paid after a few
years' patience;
[p.40] thereby saving the merchant's credit, and preventing the
consequences of bankruptcy.
On the other hand, however, the Eastern merchants are liable to the
imputation of uncertainty in their payments, which they often delay
beyond the stipulated periods. Even the most respectable among them do
not hesitate to put off the payment of a debt for months; and it may be
stated as a general rule in Egypt and Syria, that assignments are never
fully paid till after a lapse of nearly double the time named. But this,
I was often assured by the best informed people here, has only become
the practice within the last twenty or thirty years, and is a
consequence of the universal decay of commerce and diminution of capital
in the Levant. At Djidda, as I have already observed, almost all
bargains are made for ready money.
Three sellers of copper vessels. A variety of well-tinned copper vessels
may be found in every Arabian kitchen. Even the Bedouins have one
capacious boiler, at least, in every tent. The whole of these come from
Egypt. The most conspicuous article of this description is the abrik, or
water-pot, with which the Muselman performs his ablutions. No Turkish
pilgrim arrives in the Hedjaz without one of these pots, or at least he
purchases one at Djidda. There are found, also, in the market a few
copper vessels from China, brought hither by the Malays; but they are
not tinned, and though the copper seems to be of a much finer quality
than that of Anatolia, which is brought from Cairo, the Arabs dislike to
use it.
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