The people of Aidab live like brutes. They resemble in their character wild beasts more than human beings. The pilgrims are exposed during their sea voyage to terrible adventures. They usually meet with strong winds in distant and desert anchoring places to the south.i[185] The Bedja people then come down to them from their mountains and hire to them their camels, with which they travel without any supply of water.i[186] Many of them die from thirst, and the Bedjas take whatever they had with them. Others lose their road, and likewise die from thirst, and he who escapes reaches Aidab as if risen out of his winding sheet, and entirely altered in features and in body. No where perish more pilgrims than in these anchoring places. To others, but the smaller number, the wind is propitious, and carries them to Aidab. In the ships that carry the pilgrims, are no nails whatsoever. They sew the planks with the Kombar, which is made of the cocoa tree,i[187] and drive into them wooden pegs made of the date tree; after which they pour butter over them, or the oil of the Kheroa,i[188] or the fat of the Kersh,i[189] which is a very large sea fish that swallows up the drowned. The sails of these ships are made of the mats of the tree Mokel.i[190] The inhabitants of Aidab use all kind of devilish practices with the pilgrims. Anxious for the fare, they load their ships with passengers one above the other, and never care about what may happen to them at sea, saying, on the contrary: “to us belongs the care of the ships, and to the pilgrims that of their own selves.”i[191] The inhabitants of Aidab are of the Bedja, and have a king of that nation, and a governor named by the Sultan of Egypt. I have seen myself their Kadhy at Cairo, a man of black colour. The Bedjas have no religion, and are people of no understanding. Their males and females go constantly naked, with some rags round their loins, but many of them have no covering whatever. The heat is very great at Aidab, on account of the burning Simoum. (V. [note b] at the end.)
NOTES.
(1.) This work of Ibn Selym I have in vain searched for in Egypt. Its title is well known; at Assouan and at Derr in Nubia, I found that some people knew it by name, but I never could find any body who had seen it.
(1.*) (see [p. 494]). I am led to believe, from different circumstances, that the Mokel here meant is the Doum. Wahyshe speaks of a tree called the blue Mokel, or Mokel el Azrek, which he says resembles the quince tree, has no fruit or flower, but emits from its trunk a fluid that has a good odour, and is used as a perfume. This tree, he adds, is principally found in Barbary. Of the Mokel simply so called, Wahyshe says that it produces a gum which is used by the Arabs as a mixture with perfumes, and that it grows in Arabia. He no farther describes the tree. I am ignorant whether the Doum produces a gum.
(2.) Selt (سلت) is a species of barley. In an abridgment of Ibn Wahyshe’s translation of the Agriculture of the Nabateans,i[192] it is said that the Selt requires a hard stony soil and little water. (The country of Bedja would therefore be well fitted for it.) The bread made of it is of difficult digestion.
(3.) The expression of the author (فيعتقبون الارض لفيقها) may likewise mean, that the first cultivator makes room for another, who sows in the same spot after him.
(4.) Djawars or Djawarsh (جاورس or جاورش). A grain unknown to me, and, I believe, unknown in Egypt. The above cited author says that it requires a well watered soil to prosper; and that it is like Dhourra.
(5.) I find this name spelt Bedjrash, Bahrash, Narash, Bakhrash, Nadjrash. The two first occur most frequently.