[p.353]GARDENS and plantations, as I have already said, surround the town of Medina, with its suburbs, on three sides, and to the eastward and southward extend to the distance of six or eight miles. They consist principally of date-groves and wheat and barley fields; the latter usually enclosed with mud walls, and containing small habitations for the cultivators. Their houses in the immediate neighbourhood of the town are well built, often with a vestibule supported by columns, and a vaulted sitting-room adjoining, and a tank cased with stone in front of them. They are the summer residence of many families of the town, who make it a custom to pass there a couple of months in the hottest season. Few of the date-groves, unless those dispersed over the fields, are at all enclosed; and most of them are irrigated only by the torrents and winter rains. The gardens themselves are very low, the earth being taken from the middle parts of them, and heaped up round the walls, so as to leave the space destined for agriculture, like a pit, ten or twelve feet below the surface of the plain: this is done to get at a better soil, experience having shown that the upper stratum is much more impregnated with salt, and less fit for cultivation, than the lower. No great industry is any where applied; much ground continues waste; and even where the fields are laid out, no economy whatever is shown in the culture of them. Many spots are wholly barren; and the saline nature of the soil prevents the seed from growing. The ground towards the village of Koba, and beyond it, in a south and east direction, is said to consist of good earth, without any saline mixture; and in value it is consequently much higher than that near the town, which, after rains, I have seen completely covered for several days with a saline crust, partly deposited from the waters, and partly evaporated from the soil itself, in the more elevated spots which the waters do not reach.
Most of the gardens and plantations belong to the people of the
[p.354] town; and the Arabs who cultivate them (called nowakhele) are mostly farmers. The property of the gardens is either mulk or wakf; the former, if they belong to an individual; the latter, if they belong to the mosque, or any of the medreses or pious foundations, from which they are farmed, at very long leases, by the people of Medina themselves, who re-let them on shorter terms to the cultivators. They pay no duties whatever. Not the smallest land-tax, or miri, is levied; an immunity which, I believe, all the fertile oases of the Hedjaz enjoyed previous to the invasion by the Wahabys: these, however, had no sooner taken possession of the town, than they taxed the soil, according to their established rule. The fields were assessed, not by their produce in corn, but in dates, the number of date-trees in every field being usually proportionate to the fertility of the soil, and also to its crop of grain. From every erdeb of dates the Wahaby tax-gatherers took their quota either in kind or in money, according to the market-price they then bore. These regulations caused the Wahabys to be disliked here much more than they were at Mekka, where the inhabitants had no fields to be taxed; and where the tax which the Wahabys had imposed was dispensed with, or rather given up to the Sherif, the ancient governor of the town, as I have already remarked. The Mekkans, besides, carried on commerce, from which they could at all times derive some profit, independent of the advantages accruing to them from the foreign hadjys. The people of Medina, on the contrary, are very petty merchants; and their main support depends upon the pilgrims, the yearly stipends from Turkey, or their landed property. As they were obliged entirely to renounce the former, and were curtailed in the profits from the latter; and as the Wahabys showed much less respect for their venerated tomb than they did for the Beitullah at Mekka, we cannot wonder that their name is execrated by the people of Medina, and loaded with the most opprobrious epithets.
The principal produce of the fields [They are here called Beled, (plur. Boldan): the beled of such a one.] about Medina, is wheat and barley, some clover, and garden-fruits, but chiefly dates. Barley is
[p.355] grown in much larger quantity than wheat; and barley-bread forms a principal article of food with the lower classes. Its harvest is in the middle of March. The crops are very thin; but the produce is of a good quality, and sells in the market of Medina at about fifteen per cent higher than the Egyptian. After harvest, the fields are left fallow till the next year; for though there is sufficient water in the wells [Every garden or field has its well, from whence the water is drawn up by asses, cows, or camels, in large leathern buckets. I believe there are no fields that are not regularly watered, and the seed of none is left merely to the chance of the winter-rains.] to produce a second irrigation, the soil is too poor to suffer it, without becoming entirely exhausted. No oats are sown here, nor any where else in the Hedjaz. The fruit-trees are found principally on the side of the village of Koba. Pomegranates and grapes are said to be excellent, especially the former: there are likewise some peaches, bananas, and, in the gardens of Koba, a few water-melons, and vegetables, as spinach, turnips, leeks, onions, carrots, and beans, but in very small quantities. The nebek-tree, producing the lotus, is extremely common in the plain of Medina, as well as in the neighbouring mountains; and incredible quantities of its fruit are brought to market in March, when the lower classes make it a prime article of food. But the staple produce of Medina is dates, for the excellence of which fruit this neighbourhood is celebrated throughout Arabia. The date-trees stand either in the enclosed fields, where they are irrigated together with the seeds in the ground, or in the open plain, where they are watered by the rains only: the fruit of the latter, though less abundant, is more esteemed. Numbers of them grow wild on the plain, but every tree has its owner. Their size is, in general, inferior to that of the Egyptian palm-tree, fed by the rich soil of the country, and the waters of the Nile; but their fruit is much sweeter, and has a more fragrant smell.
The many different uses to which almost every part of the date-tree is applied, have already been mentioned by several travellers; they render it as dear to the settled Arab, as the camel is to the Bedouin.
[p.356] Mohammed, in one of the sayings recorded of him, compares the virtuous and generous man to this noble tree. He stands erect before his Lord; in his every action he follows the impulse received from above, and his whole life is devoted to the welfare of his fellow- creatures. [See also the 1st Psalm, v. 3.—And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, &c.] The people of the Hedjaz, like the Egyptians, make use of the leaves, the outer and inner bark of the trunk, and the fleshy substance at the root of the leaves where they spring from the trunk; and, besides this, they use the kernels of the fruit, as food for their cattle: they soak them for two days in water, when they become softened, and then give them to camels, cows, and sheep, instead of barley; and they are said to be much more nutritive than that grain. There are shops at Medina in which nothing else is sold but date-kernels; and the beggars are continually employed, in all the main streets, in picking up those that are thrown away. In the province of Nedjed the Arabs grind the kernels for the same purpose; but this is not done in the Hedjaz.
Various kinds of dates are found at Medina, as well as in all other fruitful vallies of this country; and every place, almost, has its own species, which grows no where else. I have heard that upwards of one hundred different sorts of dates grow in the immediate neighbourhood of the town; the author of the description of Medina mentions one hundred and thirty. Of the most common sorts are the Djebely, the cheapest, and I believe the most universally spread in the Hedjaz; the Heloua; the Heleya, a very small date, not larger than a mulberry; it has its name from its extraordinary sweetness, in which it does not yield to the finest figs from Smyrna, and like them is covered, when dried, by a saccharine crust. The inhabitants relate, that Mohammed performed a great miracle with this date: he put a stone of it into the earth, which immediately took root, grew up, and within five minutes a full-grown tree, covered with fruit, stood before him. Another miracle is related of the species called El Syhány, a tree of
[p.357] which addressed a loud Salam Aleykum to the Prophet, as he passed under it. The Birny is esteemed the most wholesome, as it is certainly the easiest of digestion: it was the favourite of Mohammed, who advised the Arabs to eat seven of its fruit every morning before breakfast. The Djeleby is the scarcest of them all: it is about three inches in length, and one in breadth, and has a peculiarly agreeable taste, although not so sweet as the Heleya. It seems that it grows with great difficulty; for there are, at most, not more than one hundred trees of this species, and they are less fertile than any of the other. They grow in no part of the Hedjaz, but here and in the groves of Yembo el Nakhel. The price of the Birny is twenty paras per keile, a measure, containing at least one hundred and twenty dates, while the Djeleby is sold at eight dates for twenty paras: they are in great request with the hadjys, who usually carry some of these dates home, to present to their friends, as coming from the city of the Prophet; and small boxes, holding about one hundred of them, are made at Medina, for their conveyance.
Dates form an article of food by far the most essential to the lower classes of Medina: their harvest is expected with as much anxiety, and attended with as much general rejoicings, as the vintage in the south of Europe; and if the crop fails, which often happens, as these trees are seldom known to produce abundantly for three or four successive years, or is eaten up by the locusts, universal gloom overspreads the population, as if a famine were apprehended.