The
Best Enclose Spacious Courtyards And Small Gardens With Wells, Where
Water Basins And Date Trees Gladden The Owners' Eyes.
The latticed
balconies, first seen by the overland European traveller at Malta, are
here common, and the windows are
[P.393]mere apertures in the wall, garnished, as usual in Arab cities,
with a shutter of planking. Al-Madinah fell rapidly under the Wahhabis,
but after their retreat, it soon rose again, and now it is probably as
comfortable and flourishing a little city as any to be found in the
East. It contains between fifty and sixty streets, including the alleys
and culs-de-sac. There is about the same number of Harat or quarters;
but I have nothing to relate of them save their names. Within the town
few houses are in a dilapidated condition. The best authorities
estimate the number of habitations at about 1500 within the enceinte,
and those in the suburb at 1000. I consider both accounts exaggerated;
the former might contain 800, and the Manakhah perhaps 500; at the same
time I must confess not to have counted them, and Captain Sadlier (in
A.D. 1819) declares that the Turks, who had just made a kind of census,
reckoned 6000 houses and a population of 18,000 souls. Assuming the
population to be 16,000 (Burckhardt raises it as high as 20,000), of
which 9000 occupy the city, and 7000 the suburbs and the fort, this
would give a little more than twelve inhabitants to each house, a fair
estimate for an Arab town, where the abodes are large and slaves
abound.[FN#20]
The castle joins on to the North-West angle of the city enceinte, and
the wall of its Eastern outwork is pierced for
[p.394]a communication through a court strewed with guns and warlike
apparatus, between the Manakhah Suburb and the Bab al-Shami, or the
Syrian Gate. Having been refused entrance into the fort, I can describe
only its exterior. The outer wall resembles that of the city, only its
towers are more solid, and the curtain appears better calculated for
work. Inside, a donjon, built upon a rock, bears proudly enough the
banner of the Crescent and the Star; its whitewashed walls make it a
conspicuous object, and guns pointed in all directions, especially upon
the town, project from their embrasures. The castle is said to contain
wells, bomb-proofs, provisions, and munitions of war; if so, it must be
a kind of Gibraltar to the Badawin and the Wahhabis. The garrison
consisted of a Nisf Urtah,[FN#21] or half battalion (four hundred men)
of Nizam infantry, commanded by a Pasha; his authority also extends to
a Sanjak, or about five hundred Kurdish and Albanian Bash-Buzuks, whose
duty it is to escort caravans, to convey treasures, and to be shot at
in the Passes. The Madani, who, as usual with Orientals, take a
personal pride in their castle, speak of it with much exaggeration.
Commanded by a high line of rocks on the North-West, and built as it is
in most places without moat, glacis, earthwork, or outworks, a few
shells and a single battery of siege guns would soon render it
untenable.
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