The governor, or motsellem, of Hamah, was a certain Abdallah Bey, the son of a pasha: for Hamah is a city of the third rank, and generally has a distinguished person to rule over it. His predecessor was named Yahyah Bey, who had been carried off prisoner to Damascus, upon a suspicion of malversation, a few days before.[43] He was said to be one of the most artful men in Syria. Relying on his spies and his own acuteness, he had for a long time, without being in open rebellion, set the Porte and the pasha at defiance. Thus, he had detected seven plots in succession to entrap him: but this time the pasha of Damascus was more clever than he. Abdallah Bey never showed more civility to Lady Hester, Mr. B., or myself than was required by the firmáns of which we were bearers.
On the 15th, I went to the hamlet of Menäýn, about six miles from Hamah, where the inhabitants use the conical reservoirs, spoken of above, as reservoirs for corn. To the south-west of the city, two leagues off, is Kefferbûah, a Christian village. Mr. B. this day came back from an excursion to Museaf.
February 17th, Mahannah, the Emir of the Bedouins, came to Hamah. We were thrown into some alarm this day by an accident which befel M. Beaudin, the interpreter, who tumbled from his horse on his head, and returned home with his face much disfigured by the fall. Mrs. Fry, Lady Hester’s maid, was also dangerously ill of a pleurisy.
There were epidemic fevers, at this time prevailing throughout the city, of which I make no mention here, because foreign to the object of the general reader. I was called in to the wife of the governor, Abdallah Bey, whom I found dying of a consumption: and it may not be useless to observe that I saw almost as many consumptions in the Levant as in England, although it cannot be denied that this disease is peculiarly fatal to our own country.
Selim, the son of Musa, the governor’s secretary, was just recovered from a bilious remittent fever, and we rode out into the country together. We took a south-south-west direction, and at the distance of two miles we came to some grottoes, in and near to which were several females loitering about. These, he told me, were loose women, who (as we have already seen to be the case at Damascus) were required, from their bad morals, to live out of public view.
On the 25th of February the weather changed, and the nightly frosts ceased. There were occasionally some violent squalls of wind, but the sun was very warm.
On the 26th, Monsieur Narsiat, a French traveller who had filled some post in the suite of General Gardanne when on a mission in Persia, this day passed through Hamah, and dined with us. Lady Hester received from Constantinople fresh firmáns to replace those lost in the shipwreck. This evening it rained a little; and, until the 5th of March, there was cloudy or showery weather, with intervals of clear sky and hot sun.
It will be recollected that on the 10th of February I hired a Christian boy, named Antonio, to wait on me. I caught him, one day, filching some dollars out of a money-bag which lay at the top of a chest, the lid of which I had left open. He had secreted two in his girdle; and, when discovered, fell down, kissed my feet, and uttered such pitiable lamentations, that I merely turned him away, considering myself somewhat to blame for putting temptation in the way of a youth by neglecting to lock the chest. In his stead I was resolved to try a Turkish servant, and I hired one, named Mohammed, for ten paras a day and his food, which was at about the rate of four guineas a year.
On the 7th of March there were great rejoicings to celebrate the recovery of Mecca from the Wahábys. The people of Syria, but more especially at Damascus, and on the high road to it, might naturally feel exhilarated at the prospect of the re-establishment of the pilgrimage to Mecca, by which their interests would be so much benefitted.
On the 9th there was a tremendous hurricane of wind. Istefán and Hadj Ali, two servants, were seized with remittent fevers. On the 11th there was alternate rain and sunshine, and by the 14th the weather seemed settled, fine, and hot. On the 18th we had the burning wind, or sirocco, when the heat was very oppressive.