With the pilgrims to Mecca: The great pilgrimage of A.H. 1319; A.D. 1902

by Hadji Khan; Wilfrid Sparroy

The guide grew exceeding wrath, and would have struck the speaker had I not prevented him; then he cried, “You lie! the humiliation you would thrust on me, see, I cast it back in your face!” The seal-maker smiled good-humouredly. “Friend,” said he, “the humiliation was mine, and not yours, for have I not spoken to a careless listener? Know, however, for your future guidance, that a man, if he meet with humiliation, has sometimes nobody but himself to blame. This will certainly be his sorry case if he sit down uninvited to another’s table, or if he respect not his host, or if he hope for kindness from a foe or for learning from the low-born; so much the more will he suffer the inevitable consequence if he honour not his Prophet, his country, and his King. And”—here he turned to the crowd—“to listen inquisitively to another’s conversation has the same effect as addressing an inattentive audience. I would not have ye be guilty of the former, which is the extreme of discourtesy, any more than I would have the latter, which is the acme of humiliation, thrust on me a second time by the friend to whom I spoke.”

I watched the guide, who could not contain his spleen. “Thou sententious ass!” he shrieked, making as if to take off his sandal wherewith to belabour the seal-maker. Once more he was met by a meek and smiling countenance. “Verily,” quoth Sadik, “if one show leniency to the mean, the low, or the servant, one must expect to be imposed on. I do but light a lamp in broad daylight, or sow seed in the desert sand, which is as wasteful as eating when one’s stomach is laden, or as showing consideration to one who is not deserving of it. Three things tend towards madness: the first is to walk with the blind, the second is to talk to the deaf, and the third is to sleep alone.”

By this time the sun had risen high in the heavens, and the mat awnings suspended on poles were already drawn down in order to keep out the fierce rays of sunlight, so on we went till we came to the tin-makers’ bazaar. There we heard a cry of “Yá Allah! yá Allah!” and, on looking round, beheld a funeral procession. The corpses, four victims of the epidemic, were being borne from the Harem to the graveyard on rough serirs, or wooden biers peculiar to Mecca. When the procession had passed by, I entered one of the shops and bought a couple of tin bottles, each of which would hold about two pints of Zem-Zem water. It is not customary to bargain over the purchasing of these articles since they are meant to contain the water of the sacred spring.

Across the way, in a shop full of musty manuscripts of questionable antiquity, I chanced on a veritable treasure. This was an exquisite copy of the Kurán in the old Kufi writing. It was plain that the bookseller had no conception of its value, for when I asked him the price of it he said, “Give whatever you like, and I will be content to part with it. We must not attempt to make a profit out of the Word of God, though it were well that we should seek to profit by its lessons.”

The Muhammadans are not supposed “to sell” the Kurán like any other book: a “hedieh,” or “present” goes to defray the cost of production. I offered a “hedieh” of a Turkish pound, not so much as dreaming that the bid would be accepted; but to my intense delight the shopkeeper, having raised the Book to his lips, and from the lips to his eyes, and from the eyes to his forehead, handed it to me, saying, “This is the Word of Allah; I give it to you, earnestly begging you to pray for me when you read it!”

I certainly prayed for him five times that day out of a grateful heart, and I made a point of doing so until, just before I embarked on my homeward voyage, I looked for the precious Book only to find it gone, along with several other valuable purchases.

Soon after leaving the bookseller’s, being in need of rest and refreshment, we entered a coffee-house which was literally filled with a crowd of pilgrims of every nationality in the East. Conspicuous in flowing abás with white and yellow stripes were two Sheykhs, who were sitting on stools at a low table, and with them I entered into conversation, offering them a cup of coffee each. The elder, a man of about forty-five, belonged to the tribe of Beni Súbh, while his companion, who was many years younger, owed allegiance to the tribe of Owf; consequently, both of them were members of the fighting clan of Harb Bedouins, who either live in tents about two stages from Mecca, on the road to Medina, or reside, if they are settled Arabs, in the towns of Rabegh, Safrá, and Fará. Of all the tribes of Harb none is more dreaded by the pilgrims than that of Owf, more particularly are they feared by the caravans that travel between the two holy cities. Their power and bravery are undeniable, as was clearly proved during the Wahhábí invasion of Hejaz. Closely allied to them are the tribes of Beni Amere and Zobeid.

The young Sheykh, with whom I now struck up an acquaintance, declared that the Owf, with all their shortcomings, could teach moral lessons to the rest of the clan, and he attributed their predatory habits to the “overboiling spirit that was in them.” He contradicted the report that his tribe had robbed forty Persian pilgrims of their belongings between Heddah and Mecca, and had murdered three Syrians between Medina and the Prophet’s birthplace. He professed strong attachment to the person of the Sheríf, and expressed the hope that we would live to see the union of every tribe of Arabia under his sway; in fact, he was a true patriot, frank of speech, of engaging manners, and showing no signs of lawless violence.

Not less courteous was his companion. On hearing that he was a Sheykh of Beni Sobh I asked him if he would tell me something about the famous balsam of Mecca, for I had read that the amyris-tree, which exudes this fragrant juice, grows on the mountain of Jébélé-Sobh, between the towns of Rabegh and Bedre. He was good enough to comply with my request, being a connoisseur on the subject. The trees, Bishon, as he called them, have a straight stem, and grow to the height of about twelve feet. In the middle of summer incisions are made by the women in the soft bark with a special kind of knife, whereon a white juice oozes out, and this the women collect with the thumb-nails of their right hands, and put into a sheepskin or into a vessel of burnished copper. The balsam, if the incisions are made later in the season, takes on a yellowish colour, and loses a good deal of its virtue as a tonic.

The Persian pilgrims, I was told, are unwearied in their efforts to obtain the honey-like balm in its unadulterated form, but they rarely succeed unless they go to the headquarters of Beni Sobh, for the stuff sold as balsam in the Meccan bazaars is hardly ever pure. The Arabs themselves can detect by the smell whether it is adulterated or not. Fortunately for the pilgrims there are certain other tests which are said to be infallible. The best balsam sinks in water, has a bright blue flame when alight, and, if you put a drop on your finger and set fire to it, it will burn without injuring the skin. The Persian traders mix turpentine with it, probably because the yellow balsam, even when it has not been “doctored,” smells of that resinous substance, but the Arabs adulterate the white balsam with inoffensive oils of several kinds. Every morning the pilgrims who could afford to buy the precious tonic would take a drop in their tea or their coffee, and I know from experience that it has the most invigorating effect on the nervous system.