The people of Mekka, in general, have very few horses; I believe that there are not more than sixty kept by private individuals. The Sherif has about twenty or thirty in his stables; but Sherif Ghaleb had a larger stud. The military Sherifs keep mares, but the greater part of these were absent with the army. The Bedouins, who are settled in the suburb Moabede, and in some other parts of the town, as being concerned with public affairs, have also their horses; but none of the merchants or other classes keep any. They are afraid of being deprived by the Sherif of any fine animal they might possess, and therefore content themselves with mules or gedishes (geldings of a low breed). Asses are very common, but no person of quality ever rides upon them. The few horses kept at Mekka are of noble breed, and purchased from the Bedouins: in the spring they are usually sent to some Bedouin encampment, to feed upon the fine nutritious herbage of the Desert. Sherif Yahya has a gray mare, from the stud of Ghaleb, which was valued at twenty purses; she was as beautiful a creature as I ever saw, and the only one perfectly fine that I met with in the Hedjaz. The Bedouins of that country, and those especially around Mekka, are very poor in horses; a few Sheikhs only having any, pasture being scarce, and the expense of a horses keep being three piastres a day.
In the Eastern plain, behind Tayf, horses are more numerous, although much less so than in Nedjed and the deserts of Syria, in consequence of the comparative scarcity of corn, and the uncertainty of the rain; a deficiency of which often leaves the Bedouin a whole year without vegetation; a circumstance that rarely happens in the more northern deserts, where the rains seldom fail in the proper seasons.
[p.219] GOVERNMENT OF MEKKA.
The territories of Mekka, Tayf, Gonfade, (which stretches southwards as far as Haly, on the coast,) and of Yembo, were, previous to the Wahaby and Egyptian conquests, under the command of the Sherif of Mekka, who had extended his authority over Djidda also, though this town was nominally separated from his dominions, and governed by a Pasha, sent thither by the Porte, to be sole master of the town, and to divide its revenue with the Sherif. The Sherif, raised to his station by force or by personal influence, and the consent of the powerful Sherif families of Mekka, held his authority from the Grand Signor, who invariably confirmed the individual that had possessed himself of it. [The government of the Hedjaz has often been a subject of dispute between the Khalifes of Baghdad, the Sultans of Egypt, and the Imams of Yemen. The honour attached, even to a nominal authority over the holy cities, was the only object they had in view, although that authority, instead of increasing their income, obliged them to incur great expenses. The right of clothing the Kaaba, and of having their name inserted in the Fridays prayers in the mosque, was the sole benefit they derived. The supremacy of Egypt over Mekka, so firmly established from the beginning of the fifteenth century, was transferred, after the conquest of that country by Selim I., to the Sultans of Constantinople.] He was invested annually with a pelisse, brought from Constantinople by the Kaftandji Bashy; and, in the Turkish ceremonial, he was ranked among the first Pashas of the empire. When the power of the Pashas of Djidda became merely nominal, and the Porte was no longer able to send large armies with the Hadj caravans of the Hedjaz, to secure its command over that country, the Sherifs of Mekka became independent, and disregarded all the orders of the Porte, although
[p.220] they still called themselves the servants of the Sultan, received the annual investiture of the pelisse, acknowledged the Kadhi sent from Constantinople, and prayed for the Sultan in the great mosque. Mohammed Aly has restored the authority of the Osmanlys in the Hedjaz, and usurps all the power of the Sherif; allowing to the present Sherif Yahya a merely nominal sway.
The Sherif of Mekka was chosen from one of the many tribes of Sherifs, or descendants of the Prophet, who settled in the Hedjaz; these were once numerous, but are now reduced to a few families of Mekka. Till the last century, the right of succession was in the Dwy [Dwy means Ahl, or family.] Barakat, so called after Barakat, the son of Seyd Hassan Adjelan, who succeeded his father in A.H. 829; he belonged to the sherif tribe of Katade, which was originally settled in the valley of Alkamye, forming part of Yembo el Nakhel, and was related, by the female side, to the Beni Hashem, whom they had dispossessed of the government of Mekka in A.H. 600, after the death of the last Hashemy, called Mekether. During the last century, the Dwy Barakat had to sustain many wars with their rival tribes, and finally yielded to the most numerous, that of Dwy Zeyd, to whom the present Sherifs belong, and which, together with all the Ketade, form part of the great tribe of Abou Nema. Most of the Barakat emigrated; many of them settling in the fertile valleys of the Hedjaz, and others in Yemen. Of the Sherifs still existing in and about Mekka, besides the tribes above mentioned, the following five were named to me: Abadele, Ahl Serour, Herazy, Dwy Hamoud, Sowamele. [In addition to these, I find several others mentioned by Asamy, as Dwy Masoud, Dwy Shambar, Dwy el Hareth, Dwy Thokaba, Dwy Djazan, Dwy Baz. It would demand more leisure than I enjoy, to compile a history of Mekka from the above-mentioned sources. DOhsson has given an historical notice on the Sherifs of Mekka, in which are several errors. The long pedigrees that must be traced, to acquire a clear notion of the rulers of any part of Arabia, render the history of that country extremely intricate.]
The succession to the government of Mekka, like that of the Bedouin Sheikhs, was not hereditary; though it remained in the same tribe as long as the power of that tribe preponderated. After the
[p.221] death of a Sherif, his relative, whether son, brother, or cousin, &c. who had the strongest party, or the public voice in his favour, became the successor. There were no ceremonies of installation or oaths of allegiance. The new Sherif received the complimentary visits of the Mekkawys; his band played before the door, which seems to be the sign of royalty here, as it is in the black country; and his name was henceforth inserted in the public prayers. Though a succession seldom took place without some contest, there was little bloodshed in general; and thogh instances of cruelty sometimes occurred, the principles of honour and good faith which distinguish the wars of the Desert tribes, were generally observed. The rivals submitted, and usually remained in the town, neither attending the levees of their victorious relative, nor dreading his resentment, after peace had once been settled. During the war, the rights of hospitality were held as sacred as they are in the Desert; the dakhyl, or refugee, was always respected: for the blood shed on both sides, atonement was made by fines paid to the relations of the slain, and the same laws of retaliation were observed, which prevail among the Bedouins. There was always a strong party in opposition to the reigning power; but this opposition was evinced more in the protection afforded to individuals persecuted by the chief, than in open attempts against his authority. Wars, however, frequently happened; each party had its adherents among the neighbouring Bedouins; but these were carried on according to the system in Bedouin feuds, and were seldom of long duration.
Though such customs might have a tendency to crush the power of the reigning Sherif, they were attended with bad consequences to the community: every individual was obliged to attach himself to one or other of the parties, and to some protector, who treated his adherents with the same tyranny and injustice that he experienced from his superior; laws were little respected; every thing was decided by personal influence. The power of the Sherifs was considerably diminished by Serour, who reigned from 1773 to 1786; but even, in later times, Ghaleb, although possessed of more authority than any of his predecessors, had often to fight with his own relations.
This continued prevalence of intestine broils, the wars and contentions [p.222] of the prevailing parties, the vicissitudes of fortune which attended them, and the arts of popularity which the chiefs were obliged to employ, gave to the government of the Hedjaz a character different from that of most of the other governments in the East, and which it retained, in outward appearance, even after Ghaleb had almost succeeded in reigning as a despot. None of that ceremony was observed, which draws a line of distinction between the Eastern sovereigns, or their vicegerents, and the people. The court of the Sherif was small, and almost entirely devoid of pomp. His title is neither Sultan, nor Sultan Sherif, nor Sire, as Aly Bey Abbas asserts. Sydna, our Lord, was the title which his subjects used in conversing with him; or that of Sádetkum, or your Highness, which is given to all Pashas. The distance between the subject and the chief was not thought so great as to prevent the latter, in cases of need, from representing his griefs personally, and respectfully but boldly demanding redress. The reigning Sherif did not keep a large body of regular troops; but he summoned his partisans among the Sherifs, with their adherents, whenever war was determined upon. These Sherifs he attached to his person by respecting their rank and influence, and they were accustomed to consider him in no other light than as the first among equals. To give a history of the events which have occurred at Mekka since the period at which the Arabian historians conclude, (about the middle, I believe, of the seventeenth century,) would be a work of some labour, as it must be drawn from verbal communications; for nobody, in this country, thinks of committing to paper the events of his own times. The circumstances under which I visited the place would have prevented me from obtaining any very extensive and accurate information on the political state of the country, even if I had had leisure, as such inquiries would have obliged me to mix with people of rank, and those holding offices; a class of society which, for obvious reasons, it was my constant endeavour to shun. The following is the amount of what information I was able to collect concerning the recent history of Mekka.