Places, even within half a day’s journey of
Meccah, might be liable to surprise and violence.”
For these reasons, our author informs us, a sufficient force was
disposed round Arafat, and the prodigious multitude went and returned
without molestation or insult.[FN#18]
[p.400] After the pilgrimage Haji Mahomet repaired to Taif. On the
road he remarked a phenomenon observable in Al-Hijaz—the lightness of the
nights there. Finati attributes it to the southern position of the
place. But, observing a perceptible twilight there, I was forced to
seek further cause. May not the absence of vegetation, and the
heat-absorbing nature of the soil,—granite, quartz, and basalt,—account for
the phenomenon[FN#19]? The natives as usual, observing it, have
invested its origin with the garb of fable.
It is not my intention to accompany Mahomet to the shameful defeat of
Taraba, where Tussun Pasha lost three quarters of his army, or to the
glorious victory of Bissel, where Mohammed Ali on the 10th January,
1815, broke 24,000 Wahhabis commanded by Faysal bin Sa’ud. His account of
this interesting campaign is not full or accurate like Mengin’s; still,
being the tale of an eye-witness, it attracts attention. Nothing can be
more graphic than his picture of the old conqueror sitting with
exulting countenance upon the carpet where he had vowed to await death
or victory, and surrounded by heaps of enemies’ heads.[FN#20]
