In the town are several wells of brackish water, but no cisterns. The supply of water for drinking is obtained from some large cisterns,
[p.423] at about five minutes walk from the Medina gate, where the rainwater is collected. Small canals have been dug across the neighbouring plains, to convey the streams of rain-water to these cisterns. They are spacious, well-cased, subterranean reservoirs, and some of them large enough to supply the whole town for several weeks. They are the property of private families, whose ancestors built them, and who sell the water, at certain prices, fixed by the governor, who also exacts a tax from each of them. The water is excellent, much better than that of any other town of the Hedjaz, where the inhabitants are not industrious enough to form similar cisterns. When the winter-rains fail, the inhabitants of Yembo suffer severely, and are obliged to fill their water-skins at the distant wells of Aseylya.
Yembo was formerly annexed to the government of the Sherif of Mekka, who ought to have divided the receipts at the custom-house with the Turkish Pasha of Djidda. Ghaleb appropriated it entirely to his own treasury, and kept here a vizier, or governor, with a guard of about fifty or sixty men. He appears to have had little other authority than that of collecting the customs, while the Arabs of the town were left to the government of their own Sheikhs, and enjoyed much greater liberty than the people of Mekka and Djidda. The powerful tribe of Djeheyne was not to be trifled with by the Sherif; and whenever a man of Yembo was unjustly persecuted, he flew to his relations in the Desert, who retorted the oppression upon some of the Sherifs people or caravans until the matter was compromised.
When Saoud, the Wahaby chief, attacked the northern parts of the Hedjaz, his first endeavours were to reduce the two great Bedouin tribes Beni Harb and Beni Djeheyne to submission; which was greatly facilitated by the hatred and animosity that had always existed between those tribes, who were frequently at war with each other. After the Djeheyne had surrendered, and Yembo el Nakhel had received a garrison of Wahaby soldiers, Saoud attacked Yembo, for the first time, in 1802, with a considerable force, which remained encamped before it for several weeks, and repeatedly attempted to carry it by assault. After his retreat, the Yembawys built the new strong wall round
[p.424] the town, by order of the Sherif, who made them bear the whole expense of the work. After Sherif Ghaleb himself had submitted to the superior power of Saoud, who took possession of Mekka, Yembo still held out for some months; and it was not till a strong army was preparing to attack it, and the Vizier himself had fled, that the Yembawys sent a messenger to Saoud, and capitulated, adopting at the same time his creed. The Wahabys did not place a garrison in the town; the Sherif continued to keep his governor there: but the Wahaby tax-gatherers came; and the inhabitants, who, except customhouse duties, had never before been subject to any imposts, found the government of the Wahabys press very heavily upon them.
In the autumn of 1811, when the Turkish army under Tousoun Pasha effected its first landing near the town, the Yembawys were very willing to shake off the government both of the Sherif and the Wahabys; and the officers of Ghaleb and Saoud then in the town fled, and, after a trifling show of resistance, the two first days, by Ghalebs commander, who had but a few soldiers with him, and who soon saw that the spirit of the inhabitants was wholly against fighting, the town opened its gates, and experienced some slight injuries from the disorderly Turkish soldiers. Since that time Yembo has been garrisoned by them, and was made the commissariat depot of the Turkish army employed against the enemy in the neighbourhood of Medina. The soldiers, being at a distance from the Pasha, or his son, behaved with much more irregularity than they dared to do either at Djidda or Mekka. Every Bimbashy, or commander of a company, who landed here with his soldiers, assumed, during his stay, the government of the town; while the real governor, Selym Aga, who had but a few soldiers under him, was often reduced to a mere cipher. Several affrays happened during my stay, and the inhabitants were extremely exasperated. A Turkish officer shot, with his pistol, in the open street in mid-day, a young Arab, to whom he had for some time been making infamous proposals; he committed this murder with the greatest composure, in revenge for his refusal, and then took refuge in the quarters of a Bimbashy, whose soldiers were called out
[p.425] to defend him against the fury of the populace. The relations of the Arab hastened to Medina to ask the life of the aggressor from Mohammed Aly Pasha; I left Yembo before the affair was settled.
The Yembawys are all armed, although they seldom appear so in public, and they carry usually a heavy bludgeon in their hand. A few of them keep horses; the Djeheyne established at Yembo el Nakhel have good breeds of Nedjed horses, though in small numbers. Asses are kept by every family, to bring water to the town. The want of servants and day- labourers is felt here still more than in the other towns of the Hedjaz. No Yembawy will engage in any menial labour, if he has the smallest chance of providing for his existence by other means. Egyptian peasants, left on this coast after their pilgrimage, and obliged to earn money for their passage home, engage themselves as porters and labourers, bring wood, water, &c. I have seen a piastre and a half paid to a man for carrying a load the distance of five hundred yards from the shore to a house.
Yembo is the cheapest place in the Hedjaz with regard to provisions; and as it possesses good water, and appears to be in a much more healthy situation than Djidda, a residence in it might be tolerable, were it not for the incredible quantity of flies that haunt this coast. No person walks out without a straw fan in his hand to drive off these vermin; and it is utterly impossible to eat, without swallowing some of them, which enter the mouth the moment it is opened. Clouds of them are seen passing over the town; they settle even upon the ships that sail out of the harbour, and remain on board during the whole voyage.
[p.426]FROM YEMBO TO CAIRO.