Their
Bedouin Inhabitants Are Agriculturists, And Mostly Petty Merchants Who
Sell To Their Wandering Brethren Of The Desert The Goods Which They
Purchase At The First Cost In The Syrian Or Arabian Towns.
Beginning
northward with the small town of Deir on the Euphrates, we can trace a
line of these oases that form advanced points towards the Desert all the
way south as far as Medina.
Deir, Sokhne, Tedmor, Djof, Maan, Ola,
Khaibar, and Teyme, are all inhabited by Bedouins, who cultivate the
soil, and form an intermediate class between Bedouins and peasants.
These positions would be highly important to those who might wish to
subdue, or at least to check the Bedouins; and they might become of
still greater importance, in being rendered the means of inspiring the
whole Bedouin nation with more amicable sentiments towards the Syrian
and Hedjaz inhabitants.
[p.465] No. VII.
Postscript to the Description of the Beitullah or Mosque at Mekka - (See
p. 161.)
THE law forbids that blood should be shed either in the mosque or town
of Mekka, or within a small space around it: neither is it lawful there
to cut down trees, or to kill game. This privilege of the mosque is
generally respected in common cases of delinquency, and many criminals
take refuge in the Beitullah accordingly; but it is also frequently
violated. I have myself seen Mohammed Aly's soldiers pursue a deserter,
seize and carry him off from the covering of the Kaaba to which he had
clung; and the history of Mekka cites numerous examples of men killed in
the mosque, among others the Sherif of Mekka, Djazan Ibn Barakat,
assassinated while he performed the towaf round the Kaaba.
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