We now marched without delay upon the Col, which was reached at 8:15 a.m.; Mohammed bin Atíyyah having meanwhile disappeared. We descended the Khuraytat el-Jils in twenty-six minutes, and dismissed the remainder of our Ma'ázah escort at the foot. I vainly offered them safeguard to El-Muwaylah, which they have not visited for the last dozen years; all refused absolutely to pass their own frontiers.
Au revoir Mohammed ibn Atíyyah and company!
Having broken our fast and sent forward the caravan, we at once began to descend the southern Pass, the Khuraytat el-Zibá. Here the watershed of the Wady Surr heads; and merchants object to travel by its shorter line, because their camels must ascend two ladders of rocks, instead of one at the top of the Wady Sadr. The Col was much longer and but little less troublesome than its northern neighbour; the formation was the same, and forty-five minutes placed us in a gully, that presently widened to a big valley, the Wady Dahal or El-Khuraytah. We reached it at 12:30 p.m., and laid down the distance from the summit of the northern Col at about five miles and a quarter. The air felt tepid, the sun waxed hot; drinking-water was found on the left of the bed, and a hole in the sole represented a spring, which the people say is perennial: we were dismounting to quench our thirst at the latter, when Juno plunged into it, and stood quietly eyeing us with an air of intense satisfaction.
We spent that night at a place lower down the Wady Dahal, known as the Jayb el-Khuraytah ("Collar of the Col"). The term "Jayb" is locally applied to two places only; the other being the Jayb el-Sa'lúwwah, which we shall presently visit. A larger feature than a Wady, it reminds us of a Norfolk "broad," but it is of course waterless. Guards were placed around the camp; and a wholesome dread of the Ma'ázah kept them wide awake. The only evil which resulted was that none dared to lead our mules to water; and the poor animals were hardly rideable on the next day.
Of the Hismá in its present state, we may say as of Ushant, Qui voit Ouessant, voit la mort. Nothing can be done towards working the mines of Midian until this den of thieves is cleared out. It is an asylum for every murderer and bandit who can make his way there—a centre of turbulence which spreads trouble all around it. Under the sham rule of miserable Shám (Syria), with its Turkish Wális, men like the late Ráshid Pasha, matters can only wax worse. Subject to Egypt, the people will learn discipline and cease to torment the land.
Happily for their neighbours there will be no difficulty in reducing the Ma'ázah. They are surrounded by enemies, and they have lately been obliged to pay "brother-tax" to the Ruwalá as a defence against being plundered: the tribute consists of one piece of hair-cloth about twenty cubits long. On the north, as far as El-Ma'án, they meet the hostile Beni Sakr (Jawázi), under the Shaykh Mohammed ibn Jázi; southwards the Baliyy, commanded by Shaykh Afnán, are on terms of "blood" with them; eastward stand the Anezah and the warlike Sharárát-Hutaym, who ever covet their two thousand camels: westward lie in wait their hereditary foes, the Huwaytát. Shaykh Furayj, the tactician, has long ago proposed a general onslaught of his tribesmen by a simultaneous movement up the Wadys Surr, Sadr, Urnub, and Afál: they seemed to have some inkling of his intentions, as they hastened to conclude with him a five months' Altwah or "truce." Finally, a small disciplined force, marching down the Damascus-Medínah pilgrimage-road to the east, and co-operating with the Huwayta't on the west would place this vermin between two fires.
The tale of my disappointment may conclude with an ethnological notice of those who caused it.
The Ma'ázah is a Syro-Egypto-Bedawi clan, originally Arab, or rather Syrian, but migratory, as are all Arabs. It now extends high up the valley of the Nile, and it is still found in the Wady Musá (of Suez) and on the Za'faránah block. Even in Egypt it is turbulent and dangerous: the men are professional robbers; and their treachery is uncontrolled by the Bedawi law of honour—they will eat bread and salt with the traveller whom they intend to murder. For many years it was unsafe to visit the camps within sight of Suez, until a compulsory residence at head-quarters taught the Shaykhs manners. The habitat in Arabia stretches from the Wady Musá of Petra, where they are kinsmen of the Tiyáhah, the Bedawin of the Tíh-desert; and through Ma'án as far as the Birkat el-Mu'azzamah, south of Tabúk. Finally, they occupy the greater part of the Hismá and the northern Harrah.
According to Mohammed el-Kalb, these bandits own the bluest of blue blood. Their forefather was one Wáíl, who left by his descendants two great tribes. The first and the eldest took a name from their Ma'áz ("he-goats"); while the junior called themselves after the Annáz ("she-goats"): from the latter sprung the great Anezah family, which occupies the largest and the choicest provinces of the Arabian peninsula. Meanwhile genealogists ignore the Ma'ázah.
Wallin would divide the tribe into two, the Ma'ázah and the "Beni Atiyá:" of the latter in Midian I could hear nothing except that they represent the kinsmen of the Shaykh's family. We find "Benoo Ateeyah" in maps like that of Crichton's (1834), where the Ma'ázah are laid down further south; and northwards the Beni Atiyyah are a powerful clan who push their razzias as far as the frontiers of Moab. My informants declare that the numbers of fighting men in the Midianite division of the race may be two thousand (two hundred?), and that they are separated only by allegiance to two rival Shaykhs. The greater half, under Ibn Hermás, is distributed into five clans, of whom the first, Orbán Khumaysah, contain two septs. Under Mohammed ibn Atíyyah (El-Kalb) they number also five divisions. Amongst them are the Subút or Beni Sabt, "Sons of the Sabbath," that is, Saturday; whom Wallin suspects to be of Jewish origin, relying, it would appear, principally upon their name. The ringing of the large bell suspended to the middle pole of the tents at sunset, "to hail the return of the camels and the mystic hour of descending night," is an old custom still maintained, because it confers a Barakat ("blessing") upon the flocks and herds. Certainly there is nothing of the Bedawi in this practice, and it is distinctly contrary to the tradition of El-Islam; yet many such survivals hold their ground amongst the highly conservative Wild Men, and they must be looked upon only as local and tribal peculiarities.