Unless A Person Is Himself Engaged In Commercial Concerns, Or Has An Intelligent Friend Among The Wholesale Merchants, It Is Difficult, If Not Impossible, For Him To Obtain Any Accurate Details Of So Extensive A Trade As That Carried On By Mekka.

I shall, therefore, abstain from making any partial, and, on that account, probably erroneous remarks, on its different branches, with which I am not well acquainted, and which I could find no one at Mekka to explain to me.

It will naturally be supposed that Mekka is a rich town: it would be still more so, if the lower classes did not so rapidly spend their gains in personal indulgences. The wholesale merchants are rich; and as the whole of their business is carried on with ready money, they are less exposed to losses than other Eastern merchants. Most of them have an establishment at Djidda, and the trade of both towns is closely connected. During the time of the Wahabys, the interior of Arabia was opened to Mekka; but the foreign imports, by sea and land, were reduced to what was wanted for the use of the inhabitants. The great fair of the pilgrimage no longer took place; and although some foreign hadjys still visited the holy city, they did not trust their goods to the chance of being seized by the Wahabys. Under these circumstances, the principal inducement with the Mekkawys to remain in the town, namely, their unceasing gains, no longer existed. The rich waited for a renewal of the Hadj caravans; but many of the poor, unable longer to find subsistence, retired from Mekka, and settled at Djidda, or other harbours on the Red Sea; whither they have been followed by many of the more respectable traders.

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Words from 71965 to 72257 of 182297