It Was Not Without Much Difficulty That The Wahabys
Forced Them To Renounce This Custom; And As There Was A Scarcity Of Rain
For Two Years After, The Merekedes Regarded This Misfortune As A
Punishment For Having Abandoned The Laudable Rites Of Hospitality,
Practised During So Many Centuries By Their Ancestors.
That this extraordinary custom prevailed in the Merekede tribe, I had
often heard during my travels among the Syrian
Bedouins, but could not
readily believe a report so inconsistent with our established notions of
the respect in which female honour is held by the Arabs; but I can no
longer entertain a doubt on the subject, having received, both at Mekka
and Tayf, from various persons who had actually witnessed the fact, most
unequivocal evidence in confirmation of the statement.
Before the Wahaby conquest it was a custom among the Asyr Arabs, to take
their marriageable daughters, attired in their best clothes, to the
public market, and there, walking before them, to cry out, Man yshtery
el Aadera? "Who will buy the virgin?" The match,
[p.449] sometimes previously settled, was always concluded in the
market-place; and no girl was permitted to marry in any other manner.
I heard that tigers and wolves abound in these mountains, but that there
are not any lions. The Arabs have here a fine breed of mules and asses.
No. III.
Route from Tayf to Sanaa.
This itinerary was communicated to me by a poor man who had travelled
with his wife, in 1814, from Sada to Mekka. He was a native of some
place near Sanaa; and as the pilgrimage or Hadj el Kebsy had been for
some years interrupted, and he could not afford a passage by sea to
Djidda, he undertook this route, which is practicable even in these
critical times to those who can pass unsuspected in the character of
pilgrims. He was every where treated with hospitality. On his arrival at
a village he proceeded to the Mesdjed or mosque, and recited some
chapter of the Koran: the Arab inhabitants then inquired who he was, and
supplied him with plenty of flour, milk, raisins, meat, &c. He was never
stopped by robbers until he reached the advanced posts of Mohammed Aly's
Turkish army; there he was plundered by some soldiers of all his
provisions. He could not mark exactly each day's journey, because he
loitered about from one settlement to another, waiting often several
days that he might have companions on the road. The journey occupied him
altogether three months. He supported himself at Mekka by singing,
during the night, before the houses of wealthy pilgrims, some verses in
honour of the propbet and of the pilgrimage. His route was as follows: -
El Tayf - Beni Sad, Arabs - Naszera, Arabs - Begyle (or Bedjele), a market-
place - Rebah, a market-place - El Mandak, in the Zohran country - El Bekaa,
in the Zohran country - Raghdan, in the district of the Ghamed Arabs -
Ghamed, Arabs - Sollebat, inhabited by Ghamed Arabs and those called
Khotham, a very ancient tribe that flourished in the beginning of Islam -
Shomran, Arabs - Bel Korn - Ibn Dohman, an Arab tribe so called - Ibn el
Ahmar, another Arab tribe - Ibn el Asmar, an Arab tribe - The country here
is called after the inhabitants, which my informer had not forgotten,
although he did not always recollect the names of the villages through
which he passed in the districts of each tribe - Asyr; this tribe is now
united with the three former under one head - The Asyr chief, El Tamy,
proved the steadiest antagonist of Mohammed Aly:
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