In the desert, and everywhere outside the precincts of the town, order is kept by the Bedouins, with whom the Emir lives a portion of each year. He is then neither more nor less himself than a Bedouin, throws off his shoes and town finery, arms himself with a lance, and leads a wandering life in the Nefûd. He commonly does this at the commencement of spring, and spring is the season of his wars. Then with the extreme heat of summer he returns to Haïl. The tribute paid by each town and village to the Emir is assessed according to its wealth in date palms, and the sheep kept by its citizens with the Bedouins. Four khrush for each tree is, I believe, the amount, trees under seven years old being exempt. At Haïl this is levied by the Emir’s officers, but elsewhere by the local sheykhs, who are responsible for its due collection. At Jôf and Meskakeh, which are still in the position of territory newly annexed, Ibn Rashid is represented by a vakil, or lieutenant, who levies the tax in coin, Turkish money being the recognised medium of exchange everywhere. Without pretending to anything at all like accuracy we made a calculation that the Emir’s revenue from all sources of tribute and tax may amount to £60,000 yearly, and that the annual passage of the pilgrimage through his dominions may bring £20,000 to £30,000 more to his exchequer.
With regard to his expenditure, it is perhaps easier to calculate. He pays a small sum yearly in tribute to the Sherif of Medina, partly as a religious offering, partly to insure immunity for his outlying possessions, Kheybar, Kâf and the rest, from Turkish aggression. I should guess this tribute to be £3,000 to £5,000, but could not ascertain the amount. The Emir’s expenditure on his army can hardly be more, and with his civil list and every expense of Government, should be included within £10,000. On his household he may spend £5,000, and on his stable £1,000. By far the largest item in his budget must be described as entertainment. Mohammed ibn Rashid, in imitation of his predecessors, feeds daily two to three hundred guests at the palace; the poor are there clothed, and presents of camels and clothes made to richer strangers from a distance. The meal consists of rice and camel meat, sometimes mutton, and there is besides a constant “coulage” in dates and coffee, which I cannot estimate at less than £50 a day, say £20,000 yearly, or with presents, £25,000. Thus we have our budget made up to about £45,000 expenditure, as against £80,000 to £90,000 revenue—which leaves a handsome margin for wars and other accidents, and for that amassing of treasure which is traditional with the Ibn Rashids. I must say, however, once more, that I am merely guessing my figures, and nobody, perhaps, in Jebel Shammar, except the Emir himself and Hamúd, could do more.
It will be seen from all this that Jebel Shammar is, financially, in a very flourishing state. The curse of money-lending has not yet invaded it, and neither prince nor people are able to spend sixpence more than they have got. No public works, requiring public expenditure and public loans, have yet been undertaken, and it is difficult to imagine in what they would consist. The digging of new wells is indeed the only duty a “company” could find to execute, for roads are unnecessary in a country all like a macadamised highway; there are no rivers to make canals with, or suburban populations to supply with tramways. One might predict with confidence, that the secret of steam locomotion will have been forgotten before ever a railway reaches Jebel Shammar.
With regard to the form of government, it is good mainly because it is effective. It is no doubt discordant to European ideas of political propriety, that the supreme power in a country should be vested in Bedouin hands. But in Arabia they are the only hands that can wield it. The town cannot coerce the desert; therefore, if they are to live at peace, the desert must coerce the town. The Turks, with all their machinery of administration, and their power of wealth and military force, have never been able to secure life and property to travellers in the desert, and in Arabia have been powerless to hold more than the towns. Even the pilgrim road from Damascus, though nominally in their keeping, can only be traversed by them with an army, and at considerable risk. Ibn Rashid, on the other hand, by the mere effect of his will, keeps all the desert in an absolute peace. In the whole district of Jebel Shammar, embracing, as it does, some of the wildest deserts, inhabited by some of the wildest people in the world, a traveller may go unarmed and unescorted, without more let or hindrance than if he were following a highway in England. On every road of Jebel Shammar, townsmen may be found jogging on donkey-back, alone, or on foot, carrying neither gun nor lance, and with all their wealth about them. If you ask about the dangers of the road, they will return the question, “Are we not here in Ibn Rashid’s country?” No system, however perfect, of patrols and forts and escorts, could produce a result like this.
In the town, on the other hand, the Bedouin prince, despotic though he may be, is still under close restraint from public opinion. The citizens of Jebel Shammar have not what we should call constitutional rights; there is no machinery among them for the assertion of their power; but there is probably no community in the old world, where popular feeling exercises a more powerful influence on government than it does at Haïl. The Emir, irresponsible as he is in individual acts, knows well that he cannot transgress the traditional unwritten law of Arabia with impunity. An unpopular sheykh would cease, ipso facto, to be sheykh, for, though dethroned by no public ceremony, and subjected to no personal ill-treatment, he would find himself abandoned in favour of a more acceptable member of his family. The citizen soldiers would not support a recognised tyrant in the town, nor would the Bedouins outside. Princes in Arabia have, therefore, to consider public opinion before all else.
The flaw in the system, for in every system there will be found one, lies in the uncertainty of succession to the Sheykhat or Bedouin throne. On the death of an Emir, if he have no son of full age and acknowledged capacity to take up the reins of government, rival claimants, brothers, uncles, or cousins of the dead man, dispute his succession in arms, and many and bitter have been the wars in consequence. Such, quite lately, was the quarrel which convulsed Aared on the death of Feysul ibn Saoud, and led to the disintegration of the Wahhabi monarchy, and such, one cannot help fearing, may be the fate of Jebel Shammar, on Mohammed’s. He has no children, and the sons of Tellál, the next heirs to the throne, have a formidable rival in Hamúd. The Emir, however, is a young man, forty-five, and may live long; and if he should do so, seems to have the succession of the Wahhabi monarchy in his hands. He has effected, he and his predecessors, the union of all the Bedouin sheykhs, from Meshhed Ali to Medina, under his leadership, and is in close connection with those of Kasim and Aared. His authority is established as far north as Kâf, and he has his eye already on the towns still further north, if ever they should shake off the Turkish bondage. I look forward to the day when the Roala too, and the Welled Ali, shall have entered into his alliance, possibly even the Sebaa and Ibn Haddal; and though it is neither likely nor desirable that the old Wahhabi Empire should be re-established on its centralised basis, a confederation of the tribes of the north may continue its best traditions. Hauran and the Leja, and the Euphrates towns, were once tributary to the Ibn Saouds, and may be again one day to the Ibn Rashids. This is looking far afield, but not farther than Mohammed himself looks. [272]
END OF VOL. I.