Maan Is Situated In The Midst Of A Rocky Country, Not Capable Of
Cultivation; The Inhabitants Therefore Depend Upon Their Neighbours Of
Djebal And Shera For Their Provision Of Wheat And Barley.
At present,
owing to the discontinuance of the Syrian Hadj, they are scarcely able
to obtain money to purchase it.
Many of them have commenced pedlars
among the Bedouins, and fabricators of different articles for their use,
especially sheep-skin furs, while others have emigrated to Tafyle and
Kerek. The Barbary pilgrims who were permitted by the Wahabi chief to
perform their pilgrimage in 1810, and 1811, returned from Medina by the
way of Maan and Shobak to Hebron, Jerusalem, and Yaffa, where they
embarked for their own country, having taken this circuitous route on
account of the hostile demonstrations of Mohammed Ali Pasha on the
Egyptian road. Several thousands of them died of fatigue before they
reached Maan. The people of this town derived large profits from the
survivors, and for the transport of their effects; but it is probable
that if the Syrian Hadj is not soon reestablished, the place will in a
few years be abandoned. The inhabitants considering their town as an
advanced post to the sacred city of Medina, apply themselves with great
eagerness to the study of the Koran. The greater part of them read and
write, and many serve in the capacity of Imams or secretaries to the
great Bedouin Sheikhs. The two hills upon which the town is built,
divide the inhabitants into two parties, almost incessantly engaged in
quarrels which are often sanguinary; no individual of one party even
marries into a family belonging to the other.
On arriving at the encampment of the Howeytat, we were informed that the
caravan was to set out on the second day; I had
HOWEYTAT ENCAMPMENT
[p.438] the advantage, therefore, of one day’s repose. I was now reduced
to that state which can alone ensure tranquillity to the traveller in
the desert; having nothing with me that could attract the notice or
excite the cupidity of the Bedouins; my clothes and linen were torn to
rags; a dirty Keffye, or yellow handkerchief, covered my head; my
leathern girdle and shoes had long been exchanged, by way of present,
against similar articles of an inferior kind, so that those I now wore
were of the very worst sort. The tube of my pipe was reduced from two
yards to a span, for I had been obliged to cut off from it as much as
would make two pipes for my friends at Kerek; and the last article of my
baggage, a pocket handkerchief, had fallen to the lot of the Sheikh of
Eldjy. Having thus nothing more to give, I expected to be freed from all
further demands: but I was mistaken: I had forgotten some rags torn from
my shirt, which were tied round my ancles, wounded by the stirrups which
I had received in exchange from the Sheikh of Kerek.
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