I
Alighted With The Bedouins Upon An Open Place Between The Western Wall
Of The Town, And Its Houses.
April 24th.
In the time of Niebuhr Suez was not enclosed; there is now a
wall on the west and south-west, which is rapidly falling to decay. The
town is in a ruinous state; and neither merchants nor artisans live in
it. Its population consists only of about a dozen agents, who receive
goods from the ports of the Red sea, and forward them to their
correspondents at Cairo, together with some shop-keepers who deal
chiefly in provisions. The Pasha keeps a garrison here of about fifty
horsemen, with an officer who commands the town, the neighbouring Arabs,
and the shipping in the harbour. As Suez is one of the few harbours in
the Red sea where ships can be repaired, some vessels are constantly
seen at the wharf; the repairs are carried on by Greek shipwrights and
smiths, in the service of the Pasha, who are let out to the shipowners
by the commanding officer. Suez has of late become a harbour of
secondary importance, the supplies of provisions, &c. for the Hedjaz
being collected principally at Cosseir, and shipped from thence to Yembo
and Djidda: but the trade in coffee and
[p.466] India goods still passes this way to Cairo. I saw numerous bales
of spices and coffee lying near the shore, and a large heap of iron,
together with packages of small wares, antimony, and Egyptian goods for
exportation to Djidda, and ultimately to Yemen and India. The merchants
complained of the want of camels to transport their goods to Cairo. The
Pasha, who owns a considerable part of the imports of coffee, has fixed
the carriage across the desert at a low price, and none of the agents
venture to offer more to the camel drivers; the consequence of which is,
that few are encouraged to come to Suez beyond the number required for
the Pasha’s merchandize. A caravan consisting of five or six hundred
camels leaves Suez for Cairo on the 10th of each lunar month,
accompanied by guards and two field-pieces; while smaller ones, composed
of twenty or thirty beasts, depart almost every four or five days; but
to these the merchants are shy of trusting their goods, because they can
never depend on the safety of the road; accidents however seldom happen
at present, so formidable is the name of Mohammed Ali.
Before the power of this Pasha was established in Egypt, and during the
whole period of the Mamelouk government, the Bedouins might be called
complete masters of Suez. Every inhabitant was obliged t[o] have his
protector, Ghafyr [Arabic], among the Bedouins of Mount Sinai, to whom
he made annual presents of money, corn, and clothes, and who ensured to
him the safe passage of his goods and person through the desert, and the
recovery of whatever was plundered by the others. At that time the rate
of freight was fixed by the Bedouins, and camels were in plenty; but,
whenever the governors of Cairo quarrelled with the Bedouins, or ill-
treated any of them at Cairo, the road was immediately interrupted, and
the Bedouins placed guards over the well of Naba [Arabic], two hours
distant from Suez, in the hills on the eastern side of the gulf, to
prevent the people of the town from drawing from thence their
[p.467] daily supply of sweet water. The difference was always settled
by presents to the Bedouins, who, however, as may readily be conceived,
often abused their power; and it not unfrequently happened that, even in
time of peace, a Bedouin girl would be found, in the morning, sitting on
the well, who refused permission to the water carriers of Suez to draw
water unless they paid her with a new shirt, which they were obliged to
do; for to strike her, or even to remove her by force, would have
brought on a war with her tribe. The authority of the Bedouins is now at
an end, though their Sheikhs receive from the Turkish governors of Suez
a yearly tribute, under the name of presents, in clothes and money; the
Pasha himself has become the Ghafyr of the people of Suez, and exacts
from every camel load that passes through the gates from two to four
dollars, for which he engages to ensure the passage through the desert;
when the caravan however was plundered in 1815, he never returned the
value of the goods to the owners.
The Arabs Terabein are the conductors of the caravans to Ghaza, and
Khalyl (Hebron), the latter of which is eight days distant. At this time
the freight per camel’s load was eighteen Patacks, or four dollars and a
half. These caravans bring the manufactures of Damascus, soap, glass-
ware, tobacco, and dried fruits, which are shipped at Suez for the
Hedjaz and Yemen.
The eastern part of the town of Suez is completely in ruins, but near
the shore are some well built Khans, and in the inhabited part of the
town are several good private houses. The aspect of Suez is that of an
Arabian, and not an Egyptian town, and even in the barren waste, which
surrounds it, it resembles Yembo and Djidda; the same motley crowds are
met with in the streets, and the greater part of the shop-keepers are
from Arabia or Syria. The air is bad, occasioned by the saline nature of
the earth, and the extensive low grounds on the north and north-east
sides, which are filled
[p.468] with stagnant waters by the tides. The inhabitants endeavour to
counteract the influence of this bad atmosphere by drinking brandy
freely; the mortality is not diminished by such a remedy, and fevers of
a malignant kind prevail during the spring and summer.
The water of the well of Naba, though called sweet, has a very
indifferent taste, and becomes putrid in a few days if kept in skins.
The government has made a sort of monopoly of it; but its distribution
is very irregular, and affrays often happen at the well, particularly
when ships are on the point of sailing.
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