A Camel Comes Here Daily
From Tayf For A Load Of It.
The houses of the Hodheyl, to whom these plantations belong, are
scattered over the fields in clusters of four or five together.
They are
small, built of stones and mud, but with more care than might be
expected from the rude hands of the occupants. Every dwelling comprises
three or four rooms, each of which being separated from the others by a
narrow open space, forms, as it were,
[p.67] a small detached cottage. These apartments receive no light but
from the entrance; they are very neat and clean, and contain Bedouin
furniture, some good carpets, woollen and leathern sacks, a few wooden
bowls, earthen coffee-pots, and a matchlock, of which great care is
taken, it being generally kept in a leathern case. At night I reposed
upon a large well-tanned cow-skin: the covering was formed of a number
of small sheep-skins neatly sewed together, similar to those used in
Nubia. The Hodheyl told me, that before the Wahabys came, and obliged
them to pay tribute for their fields, they knew no land-tax, but, on the
contrary, received yearly presents from the sherifs, and from all the
Mekkawys who passed this way to Tayf. Ras el Kora extends from east to
west about two and a half or three miles, and is about a mile in
breadth. According to the statements of the Arabs, many spots towards
the south, where Bedouin tribes, like the Hodheyl, cultivate the soil in
detached parts of the mountain, are equally fertile and beautiful as
that which we saw in the chain above mentioned.
We left the Ras, which will be remembered by me as long as I am sensible
to the charms of romantic scenery, and rode for about one hour over
uneven barren ground, with slight ascents and descents, till we came to
a steep declivity, to walk down which occupied us half an hour, and
double that time would be necessary for ascending it. The rock is
entirely composed of sand-stone. From the summit of the declivity just
mentioned, Tayf is seen in the distance. At half an hour from the foot
of the mountain, we entered a fertile valley, called Wady Mohram,
extending from N.W. to S.E. Like the upper district, it is full of
fruit-trees; but the few cultivated fields are watered from wells, and
not by running streams. A village, which the Wahabys had almost wholly
ruined, stands on the slope, with a small tower constructed by the
inhabitants to secure the produce of their fields against the invasion
of enemies.
[p.68] Here begins the territory of Tayf, and of the Arab tribe of
Thekyf, who, in former times, were often at war with their neighbours
the Hodheyl. The Wady is denominated Mohram, from the circumstance, that
here the pilgrims and visitors going from the eastward to Mekka, invest
themselves with the ihram before noticed. There is a small ruined stone
tank close by the road. The caravan of the Yemen pilgrims, called Hadj
el Kebsy, whose route lies along these mountains, used always to observe
the ceremony here, and the tank was then filled with water for ablution.
The husbandmen of Mohram draw the water from their wells in leathern
buckets suspended from one end of an iron chain, passed round a pulley,
and to the other end they yoke a cow, which, for want of a wheel, walks
to a sufficient distance from the well to draw up the bucket, when she
is led back to resume the same course. The cows I saw here, like all
those of the Hedjaz, are small, but of a stout, bony make: they have
generally only short stumps of horns, and a hump on the back, just over
the shoulder, about five inches in height and six in length, much
resembling in this respect the cows which I saw on the borders of the
Nile in Nubia. According to the natives, the whole chain of mountains
from hence southward, as far as the country where the coffee-plantations
begin, is intersected by similar cultivated valleys at some distance
from each other, the intermediate space consisting chiefly of barren
rocky soil.
From Wady Mohram we again crossed uneven, mountainous ground, where I
found sand-stone and silex. Acacia trees are seen in several sandy
valleys, branching out from the road. At two hours and a half from Wady
Mohram we ascended, and at the top of the hill saw Tayf lying before us.
We reached it in three hours and a half from Wady Mohram, after having
crossed the barren sandy plain which separates it from the surrounding
hills. The rate of our march from Mekka, when we were quite alone upon
our dromedaries, and able to accelerate their pace at pleasure, was not
[p.69] less than three miles, and a quarter per hour. I therefore
calculate from Mekka to the foot of Djebel Kora, about thirty-two miles;
to its top, ten miles; and from thence to Tayf, thirty miles, making in
the whole seventy-two miles. The bearing of the road from Arafat to Tayf
is about twelve or fifteen degrees of the compass, to the southward of
that from Mekka to Arafat; but having had no compass with me, I cannot
give the bearing with perfect accuracy.
[p.70] RESIDENCE AT TAYF.
I ARRIVED at Tayf about mid-day, and alighted at the house of Bosari,
the Pasha's physician, with whom I had been well acquainted at Cairo. As
it was now the fast of Ramadhan, during which the Turkish grandees
always sleep in the day-time, the Pasha could not be informed of my
arrival till after sun-set. In the mean while, Bosari, after the usual
Levantine assurances of his entire devotion to my interests, and of the
sincerity of his friendship, asked me what were my views in coming to
the Hedjaz.
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