The boy Izzar has left us, I am sorry to say, and he is sorry too. He was very serviceable and pleasant, and we lose with him his naga’s milk, which we have been drinking fresh every morning. (N.B. We will never travel again without a she camel for milk.) But his delúls have been impressed for the Haj. We gave him three mejidies (about ten shillings) for his ten days’ service, which brought down blessings on our heads. I do not think he expected anything.
February 20.—Again the Haj has come to a stand-still, to the renewed wrath of the pilgrims. It is now twenty days since they left Haïl and not more than half the journey has been accomplished. There are two hundred miles more of road, and their provisions, calculated for three weeks, are all but run out. What makes this new delay the more aggravating to them is that it has been ordered by the negro Ambar, so that he may send the hat round for a private contribution to his own benefit. He has made it known that two mejidies a head is what he expects, and that he will not move till the sum is forthcoming. This will be a nice little purse for him, something like eight hundred pounds, and we maintain a fleet in the Red Sea to suppress the slave trade, out of motives of humanity! The Persians are powerless to resist, for without the black man’s order, not a camel would move. We, as Ibn Rashid’s guests, are exempted from all toll or tax whatever, but we want to get on. Fortunately we laid in a whole month’s provisions at Haïl.
The day has been a very hot one, and we have had the tent propped up all round, so that it resembles a gigantic umbrella. It is pitched on a hill overlooking the Haj, and has attracted a good many visitors. The first of them was a certain Seyd Mustafa, a native of Shustar in Persia, but speaking Arabic well. He is travelling as interpreter with Ali Koli Khan, and has given us some information about the country between Bagdad and his own town. Ali Koli has several times proposed that we should go on with him from Bagdad, to pay a visit to his father in the Bactiari mountains, and Wilfrid is very much bent on doing this.
He himself is going round by the river to Bussorah, and then up the Karun to Shustar, a plan which would not suit us; but Seyd Mustafa says he will go with us by land, though it is a very difficult country to get through. The frontier between Turkey and Persia is occupied by the Beni Laam who recognise neither the Sultan nor the Shah. The Beni Laam however, ought to receive us well from our connection with the Ibn Arûks, and a visit to them would almost complete our acquaintance with the Arab tribes north of Nejd.
Next two poor women came, an old and a young one, dressed alike in white rags. They are from Bagdad, and have made the pilgrimage barefoot and begging their bread. One of them carries a tin mug, into which somebody had just thrown a handful of barley. I gave them a loaf of bread, with which they went away invoking blessings on me. They seem perfectly contented and happy.
Then we had a visit from some Bagdadis; one had been a soldier, the others shopkeepers. They were pilgrims, however, now, and not on business, as most of the Arabs here are.
Next a Dafir boy, with a lamb and a skin of fresh butter to sell, the butter mixed up with date-skins and hair, and coloured yellow with a plant called saffron. After much haggling (for stinginess in a purchaser inspires respect) we bought the lamb and the butter for a mejidie—four shillings.
Next a Jinfaneh Shammar, with a bay horse, also for sale, a Kehîlan Ajuz fourteen hands, with good jowl, good shoulder, and tail well carried, but rather small eye, thick nose, and coarse hind quarter—altogether strong with plenty of bone—aged, very much aged! We do not want him.
Then an Ibn Duala, with a Wadneh mare, also bay, thirteen hands three inches, or fourteen hands—pretty head, with projecting forehead, very good jowl, good shoulder, but thick nose and coarse hindquarter, rather high on the legs, with a good deal of hair on the fetlocks. They all seem to have the same faults.
I asked the Jinfaneh Shammar about the well of Wakisa, marked on Chesney’s map as eight hundred feet deep, but he laughed and said, “forty of these,” holding out his arms, and Muttlak confirmed the statement; this would make it two hundred and forty, a much more probable depth.