[224] Oryx boatrix.
[233] I heard nothing of the fate of Obeyd’s widow, and could not inquire.
[251] The Ibn Alis were formerly Sheykhs of the Shammar, but were displaced by the Ibn Rashids fifty years ago.
[272] That Mohammed ibn Rashid does not limit his ambition to Nejd has been very recently proved. In the month of April last, 1880, he marched with an army of 5000 men from Haïl, passed up the Wady Sirhán, surprised Mohammed Dukhi ibn Smeyr in the Harra and sacked his camp, and then went on to the Hauran. The citizens of Damascus were not a little startled at learning one morning that the Emir was at Bozra not 60 miles from the capital of Syria, and there was much speculation as to his object in coming so far northwards, no army from Nejd having been seen in the Paahalik since the days of the Wahhabi Empire. Then it was whispered that he had made friends with Ibn Smeyr, that the quarrel between them had been a mistake, and that a Sherari guide, held responsible for the blunder, had been beheaded; lastly, that an enormous feast of reconciliation had been given by Ibn Rashid to the Northern tribes, at which 75 camels and 600 sheep had been slaughtered, and that after a stay of some weeks at Melakh the Emir had returned to Nejd.
Without pretending to know precisely what was in Mohammed’s mind in making this ghazú, or all that really happened, it seems to me not difficult to guess its main object. Ibn Smeyr’s success over Ibn Shaalan, already alluded to, had placed him in a leading position with the tribes of the North; and his raid against the Druses of the Hauran, a district once tributary to the Emirs of Nejd, pointed him out for Mohammed’s resentment. It is part of the Ibn Rashid policy to strike a blow and then make peace; and by thus humbling their most successful chief, and becoming afterwards his host, Mohammed achieved exactly that sort of reputation he most valued with the Northern tribes. He has asserted himself as supreme, where he chooses to be so, in the desert, and has moreover reminded the frontier population in Syria of the old Wahhabi pretensions to Eastern Syria. It is conceivable that having coerced or persuaded the Ánazeh to join his league, he may, in the coming break-up of the Ottoman Empire, succeed to that part of its inheritance, and be recognised as sovereign in all the lands beyond Jordan.