I must briefly sketch the Holy City before we bid it adieu.
Meccah, also called Beccah, the words being synonymous, signifies according to some a “place
of great concourse,” is built between 21° and 22° of N. Lat. and in 39° E. Long. (Greenwich).[5] It is therefore more decidedly tropical than El Medinah, and the parallel corresponds with that of Cuba. The origin of the Bayt Ullah is lost in the glooms of time, but Meccah as it now stands is a comparatively modern place, built in A.D. 450 by Kusayr the Kuraysh. It is a city colligated together like Jerusalem and Rome. The site is a winding valley in the midst of many little hills; the effect is that it offers no general coup d’œil. Thus the views of Meccah known to Europe are not more like Meccah than like Cairo or Bombay.
The utmost length of the Holy City is two miles and a half from the Mab’dah, or northern suburb, to the southern mound called Jiyad. The extreme breadth may be three-quarters between the Abu Kubays hill on the east and the Kaykaan, or Kuwaykaan, eminence on the west. The mass of
houses clusters at the western base of Abu Kubays. The mounts called Safa and Marwah extend from Abu Kubays to Kayhaan, and are about seven hundred and eighty cubits apart. The great temple is near the centre of the city, as the Kaabah is near the middle of the temple. Upon Jebel Jiyad the Greater there is a fort held by Turkish soldiery; it seems to have no great strength. In olden time Meccah had walls and gates; now there are none.
The ground in and about the Holy City is sandy and barren, the hills are rocky and desert. Meat, fruits, and vegetables must be imported viâ Jeddah, the port, distant about forty-five miles. The climate is exceedingly hot and rarely tempered by the sea breeze. I never suffered so much from temperature as during my fortnight at Meccah.
The capital of the Hejaz, which is about double the size of El Medinah, has all the conveniences of a city. The streets are narrow, deep, and well watered. The houses are durable and well built of brick mixed with granite and sandstone, quarried in the neighbouring hills. Some of them are five stories high, and more like fortresses than dwelling-places. The lime, however, is bad, and after heavy rain, sometimes ten days in the year, those of inferior structure fall in ruins. None but the best have open-work of brick and courses of coloured stone. The roofs are made flat to serve for sleeping-places, the interiors are sombre to keep out the heat; they have jutting upper stories, as in the old town of Brazil, and huge latticed
hanging balconies—the maswrabujah of Cairo, here called the shamiyah—project picturesquely into the streets and the small squares in which the city abounds.
The population is guessed at forty-five thousand souls. The citizens appeared to me more civilised and more vicious than those of El Medinah, and their habit of travel makes them a worldly-wise and God-forgetting and Mammonist sort of folk. “Circumambulate and run between Mounts Safa and Marwah and do the seven deadly sins,” is a satire popularly levelled against them. Their redeeming qualities are courage, bonhomie, manners at once manly and suave, a fiery sense of honour, strong family affections, and a near approach to what we call patriotism. The dark half of the picture is pride, bigotry, irreligion, greed of gain, debauchery, and prodigal ostentation.
Unlike his brother of El Medinah, the Meccan is a swarthy man. He is recognised throughout the east by three parallel gashes down each cheek, from the exterior angles of the eyes to the corners of the mouth. These mashali, as they call them, are clean contrary to the commands of El Islam. The people excuse the practice by saying that it preserves their children from being kidnapped, and it is performed the fortieth day after birth.