Five bean-sellers. These sell for breakfast also, at an early hour, Egyptian horse-beans boiled in water, which are eaten with ghee and pepper. The boiled beans are called mudammes; they form a favourite dish with the people of Egypt, from whom the Arabs have adopted it.
Five sellers of sweetmeats, sugar-plums, and different sorts of confectionary, of which the Hedjaz people are much fonder than any Orientals I have seen; they eat them after supper, and in the evening the confectioners stands are surrounded by multitudes of buyers. The Indians are the best makers of them. I saw no articles of this kind here that I had not already found in Egypt; the Baktawa, Gnafe, and Ghereybe, are as common here as at Aleppo and Cairo.
Two kebab shops, where roasted meat is sold; these are kept by Turks, the kebab not being an Arab dish.
[p.31] Two soup-sellers, who also sell boiled sheeps heads and feet, and are much visited at mid-day.
One seller of fish fried in oil, frequented by all the Turkish and Greek sailors.
Ten or twelve stands where bread is sold, generally by women; the bread has an unpleasant flavour, the meal not having been properly cleansed, and the leaven being bad. A loaf of the same size as that which at Cairo is sold for two paras, costs here, though of a much worse quality, eight paras.
Two sellers of leben, or sour milk, which is extremely scarce and dear all over the Hedjaz. It may appear strange that, among the shepherds of Arabia, there should be a scarcity of milk, yet this was the case at Djidda and Mekka; but, in fact, the immediate vicinity of these towns is extremely barren, little suited to the pasturage of cattle, and very few people are at the expense of feeding them for their milk only. When I was at Djidda, the rotolo or pound of milk (for it is sold by weight) cost one piastre and a half, and could only be obtained by favour. What the northern Turks called yoghort, and the Syrians and Egyptians leben- hamed, [Very thick milk, rendered sour by boiling and the addition of a strong acid.] does not appear to be a native Arab dish; the Bedouins of Arabia, at least, never prepare it.
Two shops, kept by Turks, where Greek cheese, dried meat, dried apples, figs, raisins, apricots, called kammareddin, &c. are sold at three times the price paid in Cairo. The cheese comes from Candia, and is much in request among all the Turkish troops. An indifferent sort of cheese is made in the Hedjaz; it is extremely white, although salted, does not keep long, and is not by any means very nutritive. The Bedouins themselves care little for cheese; they either drink their milk, or make it into butter. The dried meat sold in these shops is the salted and smoked beef of Asia Minor, known all over Turkey by the name of bastorma, and
[p.32] much relished by travellers. The Turkish soldiers and the Hadjis are particularly fond of it, but the Arabs never can be induced to taste it; many of them, observing that it differs in appearance from all other meat with which they are acquainted, persist in regarding it as pork, and the estimation in which they hold the Turkish soldiery and their religious principles is not likely to remove their prejudices on this head. All the dried fruits above mentioned, except the apricots, come from the Archipelago; the latter are sent from Damascus all over Arabia, where they are considered a luxury, particularly among the Bedouins. The stone is extracted and the fruit reduced to a paste, and spread out upon its leaves to dry in the sun. It makes a very pleasant sauce when dissolved in water. On all their marches through the Hedjaz, the Turkish troops live almost entirely upon biscuit and this fruit.
Eleven large shops of corn-dealers, where Egyptian wheat, barley, beans, lentils, dhourra, [Or durra, from Sowakin, which comes from Taka, in the interior of Nubia, and a small-grained sort from Yemen, are also sold here.] Indian and Egyptian rice, biscuits, &c. may be purchased. The only wheat now sold in the Hedjaz comes from Egypt. In time of peace, there is a considerable importation from Yemen into Mekka and Djidda, and from Nedjed to Medina; but the imports from Egypt are by far the most considerable, and the Hedjaz may truly be said to depend upon Egypt for corn. The corn-trade was formerly in the hands of individuals, and the Sherif Ghaleb also speculated in it; but at the present, Mohammed Aly Pasha has taken it entirely into his own hands, and none is sold either at Suez or Cosseir to private persons, every grain being shipped on account of the Pasha. This is likewise the case with all other provisions, as rice, butter, biscuits, onions, of which latter great quantities are imported. At the time of my residence in the Hedjaz, this country not producing a sufficiency, the Pasha sold the grain at Djidda for the price of