Whilst We Were Eating, Some Badawin Came In And Joined Us,
When Invited So To Do.
They were poorly dressed, and all armed with
knives and cheap sabres, hanging to leathern bandoleers:
In language
and demeanour they showed few remains of their old ferocity. As late as
Mohammed Ali's time these people were noted wreckers, and formerly they
were dreaded pirates: now they are lions with their fangs and claws
drawn.
In the even, when we returned to our tent, a Syrian, one of our party
on the poop, came out to meet us with the information that several
large vessels had arrived from Suez, comparatively speaking, empty, and
that the captain of one of them would land us at Yambu' for three
dollars a head. The proposal was tempting. But presently it became
apparent that my companions were unwilling to shift their precious
boxes, and moreover, that I should have to pay for those who could not
or would not pay for themselves,-that is to say, for the whole party.
As such a display of wealth would have been unadvisable, I dismissed
the idea with a sigh. Amongst the large vessels was one freighted with
Persian pilgrims, a most disagreeable race of men on a journey or a
voyage. They would not land at first, because they feared the Badawin.
They would not take water from the town people, because some of these
were Christians. Moreover, they insisted upon making their own call to
prayer, which heretical proceeding-it admits five extra words-our
party, orthodox Moslems, would rather have died than have permitted.
When their crier, a small wizen-faced man, began the Azan with a voice
"in quel tenore
Che fa il cappon quando talvolta canta,"
we received it with a shout of derision, and some, hastily
[p.206] snatching up their weapons, offered him an opportunity of
martyrdom. The Maghrabis, too, hearing that the Persians were Rafaz
(heretics) crowded fiercely round to do a little Jihad, or Fighting for
the Faith. The long-bearded men took the alarm. They were twice the
number of our small party, and therefore they had been in the habit of
strutting about with nonchalance, and looking at us fixedly, and
otherwise demeaning themselves in an indecorous way. But when it came
to the point, they showed the white feather. These Persians accompanied
us to the end of our voyage. As they approached the Holy Land, visions
of the "Nabbut" caused a change for the better in their manners. At
Mahar they meekly endured a variety of insults, and at Yambu' they
cringed to us like dogs.
[FN#1] Men of the Maghrab, or Western Africa; the vulgar plural is
Maghrabin, generally written "Mogrebyn." May not the singular form of
this word have given rise to the Latin "Maurus," by elision of the
Ghayn, to Italians an unpronounceable consonant? From Maurus comes the
Portuguese "Moro," and our "Moor." When Vasco de Gama reached Calicut,
he found there a tribe of Arab colonists, who in religion and in
language were the same as the people of Northern Africa,-for this
reason he called them "Moors." This was explained long ago by Vincent
(Periplus, lib.
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