[p.376] after a few months residence in England, and ignorant of the English language, should pretend to a competent knowledge of the British character and constitution; not recollecting that it is much easier for a Frenchman to judge of a neighbouring European nation, than for any European to judge of Oriental nations, whose manners, ideas, and notions are so different from his own. For my own part, a long residence among Turks, Syrians, and Egyptians, justifies me in declaring that they are wholly deficient in virtue, honour, and justice; that they have little true piety, and still less charity or forbearance; and that honesty is only to be found in their paupers or idiots. Like the Athenians of old, a Turk may perhaps know what is right and praiseworthy, but he leaves the practice to others; though, with fine maxims on his lips, he endeavours to persuade himself that he acts as they direct. Thus he believes himself to be a good Muselman, because he does not omit the performance of certain prayers and ablutions, and frequently invokes the forgiveness of God.
At Medina several persons engage in small commercial transactions, chiefly concerning provisions; a lucrative branch of traffic, as the town depends for its support upon the caravans from Yembo, which are seldom regular, and this circumstance causes the prices of provisions continually to fluctuate. The evil consequence of this is, that the richer corn-dealers sometimes succeed in establishing a monopoly, no grain remaining but in their warehouses, the petty traders having been obliged to sell off. Whenever the caravans are delayed for any considerable time, corn rises to an enormous price; and as the chiefs of the town are thus interested, it can scarcely be supposed that the magistrates would interfere.
Next to the provision-trade, that with the neighbouring Bedouins is the most considerable: they provide the town with butter, honey, (a very essential article in Hedjaz cookery,) sheep, and charcoal; for which they take, in return, corn and clothing. Their arrival at Medina is likewise subject to great irregularity; and if two tribes happen to be at war, the town is kept for a month at the mercy of the few substantial merchants who happen to have a stock of those articles in hand. When I first reached Medina, no butter was to be had in
[p.377] the market, and corn was fifty per cent dearer than at Yembo; soon after, it was not to be had at all in the market: at another time salt failed; the same happened with charcoal; and in general the provision-market was very badly regulated. In other eastern towns, as at Mekka and Djidda, a public officer, called Mohteseb, is appointed to watch over the sale of provisions; to take care that they do not rise to immoderate prices, and fix a maximum to all the victualling traders, so that they may have a fair but not exorbitant profit. But this is not the case at Medina, because the Mohteseb is there without any authority. Corn is sold twenty per cent dearer in one part of the town than in another, and the same with every other article, so that foreigners unacquainted with the ways of the place are made to suffer materially. During my stay, the communication with Yembo was kept up by a caravan of about one hundred and fifty camels, which arrived at Medina every fortnight, and by small parties of Bedouin traders with from five to ten camels, which arrived every five or six days. The far greater part of the loads was destined for the army of Tousoun Pasha; the rest consisted of merchandize and provisions; but the latter were very inadequate to the wants of the town. I heard from a well-informed person, that the daily consumption of Medina was from thirty to forty erdebs, or twenty- five to thirty-five Hedjaz camel-loads. The produce of the fields which surround the town, is said to be barely sufficient for four months consumption; for the rest, therefore, it must depend upon Yembo, or imports from Egypt. In time of peace there is plenty: but lately, since the Turkish army has been stationed here, the Bedouins fear to trust their camels in the hands of the Turks, and the supply has fallen much below the wants of the town. The inhabitants were put to great inconvenience on that account, and had greatly reduced their consumption of corn, and eaten up the last of their stock on hand. Tousoun Pasha had very imprudently seized a great number of the Bedouins camels, and obliged them to accompany his army, which had so terrified them, that, previous to Mohammed Alys arrival, famine was apprehended from the want of beasts of transport. The Pasha endeavoured to restore confidence, and some of the Bedouins began to return with their beasts.
[p.378] In time of peace, corn caravans arrive also from Nedjed, principally from that district of it called Kasym; but these were altogether interrupted. I was informed that the transport trade in provisions from Yembo had been shut up for several years after the conquest of Medina by the Wahabys, whose chief, Saoud, wished to favour his own subjects of Nedjed; and that Medina in the mean time drew all its supplies from Nedjed, and its own fields. Provisions were now excessively dear: the lower class lived almost entirely upon dates, and very coarse barley bread; few could afford a little butter, much fewer meat. The fruit of the lotus, or Nebek, which ripened in the beginning of March, induced them to quit the dates, and became almost their sole nourishment for several months; large heaps of it were seen in the market, and a person might procure enough to satisfy himself for a pennyworth of corn, which was usually taken in exchange instead of money, by the Bedouins, who brought the fruit to the town. The vegetables cultivated in the gardens are chiefly for the use of foreigners, and are of very indifferent flavour. Arabs dislike them, and they are only used by those who have acquired the relish in foreign countries. Fresh onions, leeks, and garlic, are the only vegetables of which the Arabs are fond.
The prime article of food at Medina, as I have already stated, is dates. During the two or three months of the date-harvest, (for this fruit is not all ripe at the same time, each species having its season), from July till September, the lower classes feed on nothing else; and during the rest of the year dried dates continue to be their main nourishment. The date-harvest is here of the same importance as that of wheat in Europe, and its failure causes general distress. What is the price of dates at Mekka or Medina? is always the first question asked by a Bedouin who meets a passenger on the road. Of these dates a considerable part is brought to Medina from distant quarters, and especially from Fera, a fertile valley in the possession of the Beni Aamer tribe, where there are numerous date-groves: it is three or four days journey from Medina, and as many from Rabegh in the mountains. The dates are brought from thence in large baskets, in which they are pressed together into a paste, as I have already mentioned.
[p.379]Although commercial dealings are pretty universal, yet few of the inhabitants ostensibly follow them. Most of the people are either cultivators, or, in the higher classes, landed proprietors, and servants of the mosque. The possession of fields and gardens is much desired; to be a land-owner is considered honorable; and the rents of the fields, if the date-harvest be good, is very considerable. If I may judge from two instances reported to me, the fields are sold at such a rate, as to leave to the owner, in ordinary years, an income of from twelve to sixteen per cent upon his capital, after giving up, as is generally done, half the produce to the actual cultivators. Last year, however, it was calculated that their money yielded forty per cent. The middling classes cannot afford to lay out their small capital in gardens, because to them sixteen or twenty per cent would be an insufficient return; and, in the Hedjaz, no person who trades with a trifling fund is contented with less than fifty per cent annually; and in general they contrive, by cheating foreigners, to double their capital. Those, therefore, only are land-owners, who by trade, or by their income from the mosque, and from hadjys, have already acquired considerable wealth.
The chief support of Medina is from the mosque and the hadjys. I have already mentioned the Ferrashyn, or servants of the mosque, and their profits; to them must be added a vast number of people attached to the temple, whose offices are mere sinecures, and who share in the income of the Haram; a train of ciceroni or mezowars; and almost every householder, who lets out apartments to the pilgrims Besides the share in the income of the mosque, the servants of every class have their surra or annuity, which is brought from Constantinople and Cairo; and all the inhabitants besides enjoy similar yearly gifts, which also go by the name of surra. These stipends, it is true, are not always regularly distributed, and many of the poorest class, for whom they were originally destined, are now deprived of them; the sums, however, reach the town, and are brought into circulation. [Kayd Beg, Sultan of Egypt, after having, in A.H. 881, rebuilt the mosque, appropriated a yearly income of seven thousand five hundred erdebs for the inhabitants of the town, to be sent from Egypt; and Sultan Soleyman ibn Selim allowed five thousand erdebs for the same purpose. (See Kotobeddyn and Samhoudy.)] Many
[p.380] families are, in this manner, wholly supported by the surra, and receive as much as 100l. and 200l sterling per annum, without performing any duty whatever. The Medinans say, that without these surras the town would soon be abandoned to the land-owners and cultivators; and this consideration was certainly the original motive for establishing them, and the numerous wakfs, or pious foundations, which in all parts of the Turkish empire are annexed to the towns or mosques. At present the surra is misapplied, and serves only to feed a swarm of persons in a state of complete idleness, while the poor are left destitute, and not the smallest encouragement is given to industry. As to want of industry, Medina is still more remarkable than Mekka. It wants even the most indispensable mechanics; and the few that live here are foreigners, and only settle for a time. There is a single upholsterer, and only one locksmith in the town; carpenters and masons are so scarce, that to repair a house, they must be brought from Yembo. Whenever the mosque requires workmen, they are sent from Cairo, or even from Constantinople, as was the case during my stay, when a master-mason from the latter place was occupied in repairing the roof of the building. All the wants of the town, down to the most trifling articles, are supplied by Egypt. When I was here, not even earthen water jars were made. Some years ago a native of Damascus established a manufacture of this most indispensable article; but he had left the town, and the inhabitants were reduced to the necessity of drinking out of the half-broken jars yet left, or of importing others, at a great expense, from Mekka No dying, no woollen manufactures, no looms, no tanneries nor works in leather, no iron-works of any kind are seen; even nails and horse-shoes are brought from Egypt and Yembo. In my account of Mekka, I attributed the general aversion of the people of the Hedjaz from handicrafts, to their indolence and dislike of all manual labour. But the same remark is not applicable to Medina, where the cultivators and gardeners, though not very industrious in improving their land, are nevertheless a hard-working people, and
[p.381] might apply themselves to occupations in town, without undergoing greater bodily labour than they endure in their fields. I am inclined to think that the want of artisans here is to be attributed to the very low estimation in which they are held by the Arabians, whose pride often proves stronger than their cupidity, and prevents a father from educating his sons in any craft. This aversion they probably inherit from the ancient inhabitants, the Bedouins, who, as I have remarked, exclude, to this day, all handicraftsmen from their tribes, and consider those who settle in their encampment as of an inferior cast, with whom they neither associate nor intermarry. They are differently esteemed in other parts of the East, in Syria, and in Egypt, where the corporations of artisans are almost as much respected as they were in France and Germany during the middle ages. A master craftsman is fully equal in rank and consideration to a merchant of the second class; he can intermarry with the respectable families of the town, and is usually a man of more influence in his quarter, than a merchant who possesses three times more wealth than himself. The first Turkish emperors did every thing in their power to favour industry and the arts; and fifty years ago they still flourished in Syria and Egypt: in the former country they are now upon the decline, except, perhaps, at Damascus; in Egypt they are reduced to the lowest state: for, while Mohammed Aly entices English and Italian workmen into his service, who labour on his sole account, and none of whom prosper, he oppresses native industry, by monopolizing its produce, and by employing the greater part of the workmen himself, at a daily salary thirty per cent less than they might get, if they were permitted to work on their own account, or for private individuals.