It Is Called Haret El Djyad, And Is Inhabited
By Poor People, And Several Of The Lower Servants Of The Sherif's
Household.
Asamy says that it derives its name from having been the post
occupied by the horsemen who accompanied Toba, King of Yemen, in his
expedition against Mekka; an event celebrated among the Moslim writers,
for the miraculous destruction of the army.
This is certainly one of the
most ancient quarters of the town.
[p.116] Close by the mosque, on either side of the entrance to the
above-mentioned plain, stands a palace of the Sherif; the northern
consists of two stately houses, connected together, which are occupied
by Sherif Yahya: his women reside in the opposite southern building,
which was erected by Sherif Ghaleb, who in this favourite residence
spent the greater part of his time, induced by its vicinity to the
mosque, its central situation, and the large open space which it
commands.
Continuing from this place, in a northern direction, parallel with the
mosque, we enter the long street called Mesaa. The small by-streets to
the right, in approaching the Mesaa, form the quarter of El Szafa, which
takes its name from the holy place Szafa, already de-scribed. The houses
surrounding this place are handsome buildings, and here the richest
foreigners, in the time of the pilgrimage, take up their abode. In a
large house here resides the Aga of the eunuchs belonging to the temple,
together with all the eunuch boys, who are educated here, till they
attain a sufficient age to allow of their living in private lodgings.
We now turn into the Mesaa, the straightest and longest street in Mekka,
and one of the best built. It receives its name from the ceremony of the
Say, which is performed in it, and which I have already described: from
this circumstance, and its being full of shops, it is the most noisy and
most frequented part of the town. The shops are of the same description
as those enumerated in the account of Djidda, with the addition of a
dozen of tin-men, who make tin bottles of all sizes, in which the
pilgrims, upon their return, carry the water of Zemzem to their homes.
The shops are generally magazines on the ground-floor of the houses,
before which a stone bench is reared. Here the merchant sits, under the
shade of a slight awning of mats fastened to long poles; this custom
prevails throughout the Hedjaz. All the houses of the Mesaa are rented
by Turkish pilgrims. On the arrival of a party of hadjys from Djidda,
which happens almost every morning, for four or five months of the year,
their baggage is usually deposited in this street, after which they pay
their visit to the mosque,
[p.117] and then go in quest of lodgings; and in this manner I found the
street crowded almost every day with new comers, newsmongers, and
guides.
About the time of my stay at Mekka, the Mesaa resembled a
Constantinopolitan bazar. Many shops were kept by Turks from Europe or
Asia Minor, who sold various articles of Turkish dress, which had
belonged to deceased hadjys, or to those who, being deficient in cash,
had sold their wardrobe. Fine swords, good English watches, and
beautiful copies of the Koran, the three most valuable articles in a
Turkish pilgrim's baggage, were continually offered for sale.
Constantinopolitan pastry-cooks sold here pies and sweetmeats in the
morning; roasted mutton, or kebabs, in the afternoon; and in the
evening, a kind of jelly called mehalabye. Here, too, are nume-rous
coffee-houses, crowded from three o'clock in the morning until eleven
o'clock at night. The reader will be surprised to learn, that in two
shops intoxicating liquors are publicly sold during the night, though
not in the day-time: one liquor is prepared from fermented raisins, and
although usually mixed with a good deal of water, is still so strong,
that a few glasses of it produce intoxication. The other is a sort of
bouza, mixed with spices, and called soubye. This beverage is known
(although not made so strong) at Cairo.
The Mesaa is the place of punishment: there capital offenders are put to
death. During my stay, a man was beheaded, by sentence of the Kadhy, for
having robbed a Turkish pilgrim of about two hun-dred pounds sterling;
this was the only instance of the kind which came to my knowledge,
though thieves are said to abound in Mekka, while the Hadj continues.
The history of Mekka, however, affords many instances of the most cruel
punishments: in A.D. 1624, two thieves were flayed alive in this street;
in 1629, a military chief of Yemen, who had been made prisoner by the
reigning Sherif, had both his arms and shoulders perforated in many
places, and lighted tapers put into the wounds; one of his feet was
turned up, and fastened to his shoulder by an iron hook, and in this
posture he was suspended two days on a tree in the Mala, till he died.
The destruction
[p.118] of a man's sight, no uncommon punishment in other parts of the
east, seems never to have been inflicted by the Hedjaz governors.
In the Mesaa, and annexed to the mosque, stands a handsome building,
erected in A.H. 882, by Kaid Bey, Sultan of Egypt, in which he
established a large public school, with seventy-two different
apartments; he also furnished it with a valuable library. The historian
Kotobeddyn, who, one hundred years afterwards, was librarian here,
complains that only three hundred volumes remained in his time, the rest
having been stolen by his unprincipled predecessors.
On the northern extremity of the Mesaa is the place called Merowa, the
termination of the Say, as already described; this, as it now stands,
was built in A.H. 801. Behind it is shown a house which was the original
habitation of El Abbas, one of the many uncles of Mohammed.
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