[P.218] The Circumcision Feasts Are Similar To Those At Cairo:

The child, after the operation, is dressed in the richest stuffs, set upon a fine horse highly adorned, and is thus carried in procession through the town with drums beating before him.

Funerals differ in nothing from those in Egypt and Syria.

The people of Mekka, in general, have very few horses; I believe that there are not more than sixty kept by private individuals. The Sherif has about twenty or thirty in his stables; but Sherif Ghaleb had a larger stud. The military Sherifs keep mares, but the greater part of these were absent with the army. The Bedouins, who are settled in the suburb Moabede, and in some other parts of the town, as being concerned with public affairs, have also their horses; but none of the merchants or other classes keep any. They are afraid of being deprived by the Sherif of any fine animal they might possess, and therefore content themselves with mules or gedishes (geldings of a low breed). Asses are very common, but no person of quality ever rides upon them. The few horses kept at Mekka are of noble breed, and purchased from the Bedouins: in the spring they are usually sent to some Bedouin encampment, to feed upon the fine nutritious herbage of the Desert. Sherif Yahya has a gray mare, from the stud of Ghaleb, which was valued at twenty purses; she was as beautiful a creature as I ever saw, and the only one perfectly fine that I met with in the Hedjaz.

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Words from 83260 to 83523 of 182297