Two Shops, Kept By Turks, Where Greek Cheese, Dried Meat, Dried Apples,
Figs, Raisins, Apricots, Called Kammared'din, &C. Are Sold At Three
Times The Price Paid In Cairo.
The cheese comes from Candia, and is much
in request among all the Turkish troops.
An indifferent sort of cheese
is made in the Hedjaz; it is extremely white, although salted, does not
keep long, and is not by any means very nutritive. The Bedouins
themselves care little for cheese; they either drink their milk, or make
it into butter. The dried meat sold in these shops is the salted and
smoked beef of Asia Minor, known all over Turkey by the name of
bastorma, and
[p.32] much relished by travellers. The Turkish soldiers and the Hadjis
are particularly fond of it, but the Arabs never can be induced to taste
it; many of them, observing that it differs in appearance from all other
meat with which they are acquainted, persist in regarding it as pork,
and the estimation in which they hold the Turkish soldiery and their
religious principles is not likely to remove their prejudices on this
head. All the dried fruits above mentioned, except the apricots, come
from the Archipelago; the latter are sent from Damascus all over Arabia,
where they are considered a luxury, particularly among the Bedouins. The
stone is extracted and the fruit reduced to a paste, and spread out upon
its leaves to dry in the sun. It makes a very pleasant sauce when
dissolved in water. On all their marches through the Hedjaz, the Turkish
troops live almost entirely upon biscuit and this fruit.
Eleven large shops of corn-dealers, where Egyptian wheat, barley, beans,
lentils, dhourra, [Or durra, from Sowakin, which comes from Taka, in the
interior of Nubia, and a small-grained sort from Yemen, are also sold
here.] Indian and Egyptian rice, biscuits, &c. may be purchased. The
only wheat now sold in the Hedjaz comes from Egypt. In time of peace,
there is a considerable importation from Yemen into Mekka and Djidda,
and from Nedjed to Medina; but the imports from Egypt are by far the
most considerable, and the Hedjaz may truly be said to depend upon Egypt
for corn. The corn-trade was formerly in the hands of individuals, and
the Sherif Ghaleb also speculated in it; but at the present, Mohammed
Aly Pasha has taken it entirely into his own hands, and none is sold
either at Suez or Cosseir to private persons, every grain being shipped
on account of the Pasha. This is likewise the case with all other
provisions, as rice, butter, biscuits, onions, of which latter great
quantities are imported. At the time of my residence in the Hedjaz, this
country not producing a sufficiency, the Pasha sold the grain at Djidda
for the price of
[p.33] from one hundred and thirty to one hundred and sixty piastres per
erdeb, and every other kind of provision in proportion; the corn cost
him twelve piastres by the erdeb in Upper Egypt, and including the
expense of carriage from Genne to Cosseir, and freight thence to Djidda,
twenty-five or thirty piastres.
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