Their
Cookery, Like That Of Meccah, Has Borrowed Something From Egypt,
Turkey, Syria, Persia, And India:
As all Orientals, they are
exceedingly fond of clarified butter.[FN#21]
[P.12]I have seen the boy Mohammed drink off nearly a tumbler-full,
although his friends warned him that it would make him as fat as an
elephant. When a man cannot enjoy clarified butter in these countries,
it is considered a sign that his stomach is out of order, and all my
excuses of a melancholic temperament were required to be in full play
to prevent the infliction of fried meat swimming in grease, or that
guest-dish,[FN#22] rice saturated with melted—perhaps I should say—rancid
butter. The “Samn” of Al-Hijaz, however, is often fresh, being brought in
by the Badawin; it has not therefore the foul flavour derived from the
old and impregnated skin-bag which distinguishes the “ghi” of India.[FN#23]
The house of a Madani in good circumstances is comfortable, for the
building is substantial, and the attendance respectable. Black
slave-girls here perform the complicated duties of servant-maids in
England; they are taught to sew, to cook, and to wash, besides sweeping
the house and drawing water for domestic use. Hasinah (the “Charmer,” a
decided misnomer) costs from $40 to $50; if she be a mother, her value
is less; but neat-handedness, propriety of demeanour, and skill in
feminine accomplishments, raise her to $100=£25. A little black boy,
perfect in all his points, and tolerably intelligent, costs about a
thousand piastres; girls are dearer, and eunuchs fetch double that sum.
The older the children become, the
[p.13]more their value diminishes; and no one would purchase[,] save
under exceptional circumstances, an adult slave, because he is never
parted with but for some incurable vice. The Abyssinian, mostly Galla,
girls, so much prized because their skins are always cool in the
hottest weather, are here rare; they seldom sell for less than £20, and
they often fetch £60. I never heard of a Jariyah Bayza, a white slave
girl, being in the market at Al-Madinah: in Circassia they fetch from
£100 to £400 prime cost, and few men in Al-Hijaz could afford so expensive
a luxury. The Bazar at Al-Madinah is poor, and as almost all the slaves
are brought from Meccah by the Jallabs, or drivers, after exporting the
best to Egypt, the town receives only the refuse.[FN#24]
The personal appearance of the Madani makes the stranger wonder how
this mongrel population of settlers has acquired a peculiar and almost
an Arab physiognomy. They are remarkably fair, the effect of a cold
climate; sometimes the cheeks are lighted up with red, and the hair is
a dark chestnut—at Al-Madinah I was not stared at as a white man. The
cheeks and different parts of the children’s bodies are sometimes marked
with Mashali or Tashrih, not the three long stripes of the
Meccans,[FN#25] but little scars generally in threes.
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