The Morning Was Spent In Watching Certain
Badawin, Who, Matchlock In Hand, Had Climbed The Hills In Pursuit Of A
Troop Of Cranes:
Not one bird was hit of the many fired at-a
circumstance which did not say much for their vaunted marksmanship.
Before breakfast I bought a moderately sized sheep for a dollar.
[P.256] Shaykh Hamid "halaled[FN#25]" (butchered) it, according to
rule, and my companions soon prepared a feast of boiled mutton. But
that sheep proved a "bone of contention." The boy Mohammed had, in a
fit of economy, sold its head to a Badawi for three piastres, and the
others, disappointed in their anticipations of "haggis," lost temper.
With the "Demon's" voluble tongue and impudent countenance in the van,
they opened such a volley of raillery and sarcasm upon the young
"tripe-seller," that he in his turn became excited-furious. I had some
difficulty to keep the peace, for it did not suit my interests that
they should quarrel. But to do the Arabs justice, nothing is easier for
a man who knows them than to work upon their good feelings. "He is a
stranger in your country-a guest!" acted as a charm; they listened
patiently to Mohammed's gross abuse, only promising to answer him when
in his land, that is to say, near Meccah. But what especially soured
our day was the report that Sa'ad, the great robber-chief, and his
brother were in the field; consequently that our march would be delayed
for some time: every half-hour some fresh tattle from the camp or the
coffee-house added fuel to the fire of our impatience.
A few particulars about this Schinderhans of Al-Hijaz[FN#26] may not be
unacceptable. He is the chief of the Sumaydah and the Mahamid, two
influential sub-families of the Hamidah, the principal family of the
Beni-Harb tribe of Badawin. He therefore aspired to rule all the
Hamidah, and through them the Beni-Harb, in which case he would have
been, de facto, monarch of the Holy Land. But the Sharif of Meccah, and
Ahmad Pasha,
[p.257] the Turkish governor of the chief city, for some political
reason degraded him, and raised up a rival in the person of Shaykh
Fahd, another ruffian of a similar stamp, who calls himself chief of
the Beni-Amr, the third sub-family of the Hamidah family. Hence all
kinds of confusion. Sa'ad's people, who number it is said 5000, resent,
with Arab asperity, the insult offered to their chief, and beat Fahd's,
who do not amount to 800. Fahd, supported by the government, cuts off
Sa'ad's supplies. Both are equally wild and reckless, and-nowhere doth
the glorious goddess, Liberty, show a more brazen face than in this
Eastern
"Inviolate land of the brave and the free;"
both seize the opportunity of shooting troopers, of plundering
travellers, and of closing the roads. This state of things continued
till I left the Hijaz, when the Sharif of Meccah proposed, it was said,
to take the field in person against the arch-robber.
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