This degradation
did not diminish poor Fatimah’s affection: she continued to visit him,
and to leave little presents and tokens for him in his room. But
presently the girl proved likely to become a mother,—their intercourse
was more than suspected,—Giovanni Finati had a dread of
circumcision,[FN#2]
[p.392] so he came to the felon resolution of flying alone from
Scutari. He happened to meet his “original friend the captain-merchant,”
and in March, 1809, obtained from him a passage to Egypt, the Al-Dorado
to which all poverty-struck Albanian adventurers were then flocking. At
Alexandr[i]a the new Mahomet, after twice deserting from a Christian
service, at the risk of life and honour, voluntarily enlisted as an
Albanian private soldier in a Moslem land; the naïvete with which he
admires and comments upon his conduct is a curious moral phenomenon.
Thence he proceeded to Cairo, and became a “Balik bash” (corporal), in
charge of six Albanian privates, of Mohammed Ali’s body-guard. Ensued a
campaign against the Mamluks in Upper Egypt, and his being present at
the massacre of those miscreants in the citadel of Cairo,—he confined his
part in the affair to plundering from the Beys a “saddle richly mounted
in silver gilt,” and a slave girl with trinkets and money. He married the
captive, and was stationed for six months at Matariyah (Heliopolis),
with the force preparing to march upon Meccah, under Tussun Pasha. Here
he suffered from thieves, and shot by mistake his Bim Bashi or
sergeant, who was engaged in the unwonted and dangerous exercise of
prayer in the dark. The affair was compromised by the amiable young
commander-in-chief, who paid the blood money amounting to some thousand
piastres. On the 6th October, 1811, the army started for Suez, where
eighteen vessels waited to convey them to Yambu’. Mahomet assisted at the
capture of that port, and was fortunate enough to escape alive from the
desperate action of Jadaydah.[FN#3] Rheumatism obliged him
[p.393] to return to Cairo, where he began by divorcing his wife for
great levity of conduct. In the early part of 1814, Mahomet, inspired
by the news of Mohammed Ali Pasha’s success in Al-Hijaz, joined a
reinforcement of Albanians, travelled to Suez, touched at Yambu’ and at
Jeddah, assisted at the siege and capture of Kunfudah, and was present
at its recapture by the Wahhabis. Wounded, sick, harassed by the
Badawin, and disgusted by his commanding officer, he determined to
desert again, adding, as an excuse, “not that the step, on my part at
least, had the character of a complete desertion, since I intended to
join the main body of the army;” and to his mania for desertion we owe
the following particulars concerning the city of Meccah.
“Exulting in my escape, my mind was in a state to receive very strong
impressions, and I was much struck with all I saw upon entering the
city; for though it is neither large nor beautiful in itself, there is
something in it that is calculated to impress a sort of awe, and it was
the hour of noon when everything is very silent, except the Muezzins
calling from the minarets.
“The principal feature of the city is that celebrated sacred enclosure
which is placed about the centre of it; it is a vast paved court with
doorways opening into it from every side, and with a covered colonnade
carried all round like a cloister, while in the midst of the open space
stands the edifice called the Caaba, whose walls are entirely covered
over on the outside with hangings of rich velvet,[FN#4] on which there
are Arabic inscriptions embroidered in gold.
“Facing one of its angles (for this little edifice is of
[p.394] a square form),[FN#5] there is a well which is called the well
Zemzem, of which the water is considered so peculiarly holy that some
of it is even sent annually to the Sultan at Constantinople; and no
person who comes to Meccah, whether on pilgrimage or for mere worldly
considerations, ever fails both to drink of it and to use it in his
ablutions, since it is supposed to wipe out the stain of all past
transgressions.
“There is a stone also near the bottom of the building itself which all
the visitants kiss as they pass round it, and the multitude of them has
been so prodigious as to have worn the surface quite away.
“Quite detached, but fronting to the Caaba, stand four pavilions
(corresponding to the four sects of the Mahometan religion), adapted
for the pilgrims; and though the concourse had of late years been from
time to time much interrupted, there arrived just when I came to Meccah
two Caravans of them, one Asiatic and one from the African side,
amounting to not less than about 40,000 persons, who all seemed to be
full of reverence towards the holy place.[FN#6]”
After commenting on the crowded state of the city, the lodging of
pilgrims in tents and huts, or on the bare ground outside the
walls,[FN#7] and the extravagant prices of provisions, Haji Mahomet
proceeds with his description.
“Over and above the general ceremonies of the purification at the well,
and of the kissing of the corner-stone,[FN#8]
[p.395]and of the walking round the Caaba a certain number of times in
a devout manner, every one has also his own separate prayers to put up,
and so to fulfil the conditions of his vow and the objects of his
particular pilgrimage.”
We have then an account of the Mosque-pigeons, for whom it is said, “some
pilgrims bring with them even from the most remote countries a small
quantity of grain, with which they may take the opportunity of feeding
these birds.” This may have occurred in times of scarcity; the grain is
now sold in the Mosque.
