A Stranger Placed On The Great Road
To Tayf, Just Beyond The Turn Of The Hill, In The Immediate
Neigh-Bourhood Of The Sherif's Garden-House, Would Think Himself As Far
Removed From Human Society As If He Were In The Midst Of The Nubian
Desert.
But this may be wholly ascribed to the apathy of the
inhabitants, and their indifference for agricultural pursuits.
Numerous
wells, dispersed throughout the town, prove that water may be easily
obtained at about thirty feet below the surface.
In Arabia, wherever the ground can be irrigated by wells, the sands may
be soon made productive. The industry of a very few years might thus
render Mekka and its environs as remarkable for gardens and plantations,
as it now is for absolute sterility. El Azraky speaks
[p.132] of gardens in this valley, and describes different springs and
wells that no longer exist, having probably been choked up by the
violent torrents. El Fasy likewise affirms that in his days the town
contained no less than fifty-eight wells. But, in the earliest times of
Arabian history, this place was certainly barren; and the Koran styles
it accordingly "the valley without seeds." Azraky further says, that
before houses were constructed here by the Kossay, this valley abounded
with acacias and various thorny trees.
Nothing is more difficult than to compute exactly the population of
eastern towns, where registers are never kept, and where even the number
of houses can scarcely be ascertained. To judge from appearances, and by
comparison with European towns, in which the amount of population is
well known, may be very fallacious. The private habitations in the East
are generally (though the Hedjaz forms an exception to this rule) of one
story only, and therefore contain fewer inmates in proportion than
European dwellings. On the other hand, Eastern towns have very narrow
streets, are without public squares or large market-places, and their
miserable suburbs are in general more nurously peopled than their
principal and best streets. Travellers, however, in passing rapidly
through towns, may be easily deceived, for they see only the bazars and
certain streets, in which the greater part of the male population is
usually assembled during the day. Thus it happens that recent and
respectable authorities have stated two hundred thousand souls as the
population of Aleppo; four hundred thousand as that of Damascus; and
three hundred thousand as that of Cairo. My estimate of the population
of the three great Syrian towns is as follows: - Damascus two hundred and
fifty thousand; Hamah (of which, however, I must speak with less
confidence) from sixty to one hundred thousand; and Aleppo, daily
dwindling into decay, between eighty and ninety thousand. To Cairo I
would allow at most two hundred thousand. As to Mekka, which I have seen
both before and after the Hadj, and know, perhaps, more thoroughly than
any other town of the East, the result of my inquiries gives between
twenty-five and thirty thousand stationary inhabitants, for the
population of the city and suburbs; besides from three to four thousand
Abyssinian and
[p.133] black slaves: its habitations are capable of containing three
times this number. In the time of Sultan Selym I. (according to
Kotobeddyn, in A.H. 923) a census was taken of the inhabitants of Mekka,
previous to a gratuitous distribution of corn among them, and the number
was found to be twelve thousand, men, women, and children. The same
author shows that, in earlier times, the population was much more
considerable; for when Abou Dhaher, the chief of the Carmatis, (a
heretic sect of Moslims) sacked Mekka, in A.H. 314, thirty thousand of
the inhabitants were killed by his ferocious soldiers.
[p.134] DESCRIPTION OF THE BEITULLAH, OR GREAT
MOSQUE, AT MECCAH.
WHERE the valley is wider than in other interior parts of the town,
stands the mosque, called Beitullah, or El Haram, a building remarkable
only on account of the Kaaba, which it encloses; for there are several
mosques in other places of the East nearly equal to this in size, and
much superior to it in beauty.
The Kaaba stands in an oblong square, two hundred and fifty paces long,
and two hundred broad, none of the sides of which run quite in a
straight line, though at first sight the whole appears to be of a
regular shape. This open square is enclosed on the eastern side by a
colonnade: the pillars stand in a quadruple row: they are three deep on
the other sides, and united by pointed arches, every four of which
support a small dome, plastered and whitened on the outside. These
domes, according to Kotobeddyn, are one hundred and fifty-two in number.
Along the whole colonnade, on the four sides, lamps are suspended from
the arches. Some are lighted every night, and all during the nights of
Ramadhan. The pillars are above twenty feet in height, and generally
from one foot and a half to one foot and three quarters in diameter; but
little regularity has been observed in regard to them. Some are of white
marble, granite, or porphyry, but the greater number are of common stone
of the Mekka mountains. El Fasy states the whole at five hundred and
eighty-nine, and says they are all of marble, excepting one hundred and
twenty-six, which are of common stone, and three of composition.
Kotobeddyn reckons five hundred and fifty-five, of which, according to
him, three hundred and eleven are of marble, and the rest of stone taken
from the neighbouring mountains; but neither of these authors lived to
see
[p.135] the latest repairs of the mosque, after the destruction
occasioned by a torrent, in A.D. 1626. Between every three or four
columns stands an octagonal one, about four feet in thickness. On the
east side are two shafts of reddish gray granite, in one piece, and one
fine gray porphyry column with slabs of white feldspath. On the north
side is one red granite column, and one of fine-grained red porphyry:
these are probably the columns which Kotobeddyn states to have been
brought from Egypt, and principally from Akhmim (Panopolis), when the
chief El Mohdy enlarged the mosque, in A.H. 163.
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