An Acacia-Tree Or Two On The Eastern Side, And Behind It A
Wall-Like Line Of Mud Houses, Finish The Coup-D'oeil; The Interior Of
This Building Is As Simple As Is The Exterior.
And here I may remark
that the Arabs have little idea of splendour, either in their public or
in their private architecture.
Whatever strikes the traveller's eye in
Al-Hijaz is always either an importation or the work of foreign
artists. This arises from the simple tastes of the people, combined,
doubtless, with their notable thriftiness. If strangers will build for
them, they argue, why should they build for themselves? Moreover, they
have scant inducement to lavish money upon grand edifices. Whenever a
disturbance takes place, domestic or from without, the principal
buildings are sure to suffer. And the climate is inimical to their
enduring. Both ground and air at Al-Madinah, as well as at Meccah, are
damp and nitrous in winter, in summer dry and torrid: the lime is poor;
palm-timber soon decays: even foreign wood-work suffers, and a few
years of neglect suffice to level the proudest pile with the dust.
The suburbs to the South of Al- Madinah are a collection
[p.397]of walled villages, with plantations and gardens between. They
are laid out in the form, called here, as in Egypt, Hosh-court-yards,
with single-storied tenements opening into them. These enclosures
contain the cattle of the inhabitants; they have strong wooden doors,
shut at night to prevent "lifting," and they are capable of being
stoutly defended. The inhabitants of the suburb are for the most part
Badawi settlers, and a race of schismatics who will be noticed in
another chapter. Beyond these suburbs, to the South, as well as to the
North and Northeast, lie gardens and extensive plantations of
palm-trees.
[FN#1] To the East he limits Al-Hijaz by Yamamah (which some include in
it), Nijd, and the Syrian desert, and to the West by the Red Sea. The
Greeks, not without reason, included it in their Arabia Petraea.
Niebuhr places the Southern boundary at Hali, a little town south of
Kunfudah (Gonfoda). Captain Head (Journey from India to Europe) makes
the village Al-Kasr, opposite the Island of Kotambul, the limit of
Al-Hijaz to the South.
[FN#2] Or, according to others, between Al-Yaman and Syria.
[FN#3] If you ask a Badawi near Meccah, whence his fruit comes, he will
reply "min Al-Hijaz," "from the Hijaz," meaning from the mountainous
part of the country about Taif. This would be an argument in favour of
those who make the word to signify a "place tied together," (by
mountains). It is notorious that the Badawin are the people who best
preserve the use of old and disputed words; for which reason they were
constantly referred to by the learned in the palmy days of Moslem
philology. "Al-Hijaz," also, in this signification, well describes the
country, a succession of ridges and mountain chains; whereas such a
name as "the barrier" would appear to be rather the work of some
geographer in his study.
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