A Pilgrimage to Nejd, the Cradle of the Arab Race. Vol. 2 [of 2]

Locusts are now a regular portion of the day’s provision with us, and are really an excellent article of diet. After trying them in several ways, we have come to the conclusion that they are best plain boiled. The long hopping legs must be pulled off, and the locust held by the wings, dipped into salt and eaten. As to flavour this insect tastes of vegetable rather than of fish or flesh, not unlike green wheat in England, and to us it supplies the place of vegetables, of which we are much in need. The red locust is better eating than the green one. 5 Wilfrid considers that it would hold its own among the hors d’œuvre at a Paris restaurant; I am not so sure of this, for on former journeys I have resolved that other excellent dishes should be adopted at home, but afterwards among the multitude of luxuries, they have not been found worth the trouble of preparation. For catching locusts, the morning is the time, when they are half benumbed by the cold, and their wings are damp with the dew, so that they cannot fly; they may then be found clustered in hundreds under the desert bushes, and gathered without trouble, merely shovelled into a bag or basket. Later on, the sun dries their wings and they are difficult to capture, having intelligence enough to keep just out of reach when pursued. Flying, they look extremely like May flies, being carried side-on to the wind. They can steer themselves about as much as flying fish do, and can alight when they like; in fact, they very seldom let themselves be drifted against men or camels, and seem able to calculate exactly the reach of a stick. This year they are all over the country, in enormous armies by day, and huddled in regiments under every bush by night. They devour everything vegetable; and are devoured by everything animal: desert larks and bustards, ravens, hawks, and buzzards. We passed to-day through flocks of ravens and buzzards, sitting on the ground gorged with them. The camels munch them in with their food, the greyhounds run snapping after them all day long, eating as many as they can catch. The Bedouins often give them to their horses, and Awwad says that this year many tribes have nothing to eat just now but locusts and camels’ milk; thus the locust in some measure makes amends for being a pestilence, by being himself consumed.

We are encamped to-night once more in the Nefûd, amongst the same herbage, and at the edge of one of the same kind of fuljes, we were accustomed to on our way from Jôf. This Nefûd however, is intermittent, as there are intervening tracts of bare ground, between the ridges of sand which here very distinctly run east and west. The sand is not more than eighty feet deep, and the fuljes are insignificant compared with what we saw further west.

February 11. – Some boys with camels joined us last night, Bedouins from the Abde tribe of Shammar, on their way to meet the Haj, as they have been ordered up by Ibn Rashid. They have given us some information about the road. Ibn Duala is five days’ journey on; but we shall find the Dafir, with their Sheykh, Ibn Sueyti, on the second day. Ibn Sueyti, they say, has a kind of uttfa like Ibn Shaalan’s, but it is pitched like a tent when a battle is to be fought. The Ajman, near Queyt, have a real uttfa with ostrich feathers and a girl to sing during the fighting. 6 They also narrated the following remarkable tale.

There is, they say, in the desert, five days’ march from here to the eastwards, and ten days from Suk es Shiôkh on the Euphrates, a kubr or tomb, the resting-place of a prophet named Er Refay. It is called Tellateyn el Kharab (the two hills of the ruins), and near it is a birkeh or tank always full of water. The tomb has a door which stands open, but round it there sleeps all day and all night a huge snake, whose mouth and tail nearly meet, leaving but just room for anyone to pass in. This it prevents unless the person presenting himself for entrance is a dervish, and many dervishes go there to pray. Inside there is a well, and those who enter are provided (“min Allah”) for three days with food, three times a day, but on the fourth they must go. A lion is chained up by the neck inside the kubr.

The birkeh outside is always full of water, but its shores are inhabited by snakes, who spit poison into the pool so that nothing can drink there. But at evening comes the ariel (a fabulous antelope), who strikes the water with his horns, and by so doing makes it sweet. Then all the beasts and birds of the desert follow him, and drink. The Sheykh of the Montefyk is bound to send camels and guides with all dervishes who come to him at Suk-es-Shiôkh to make the pilgrimage to Refay. The boys did not say that they had themselves seen the place.

We are not on the high road now, having left it some miles to the right, and our march to-day has been mostly through Nefûd. The same swarms of locusts everywhere, and the same attendant flocks of birds, especially of fine black buzzards, one of which Abdallah was very anxious to secure if possible, as he says the wing bones are like ivory, and are used for inlaying the stocks of guns and stems of pipes. But he had no success, though he fired several times. Wilfrid was more fortunate, however, in getting what we value more, a bustard, and the very best bird we ever ate. Though they are common enough here, it is seldom that they come within shot, but this one was frightened by the hawk, and came right overhead.

About noon, we came to a solitary building, standing in the middle of the Nefûd, called Kasr Torba. It is square, with walls twenty feet high, and has a tower at each corner. It is garrisoned by four men, soldiers of Ibn Rashid’s, who surlily refused us admittance, and threatened to fire on us if we drew water from the well outside. For a moment we thought of storming the place, which I believe we could have done without much difficulty, as the door was very rotten and we were all very angry and thirsty, but second thoughts are generally accepted as best in Arabia, and on consideration, we pocketed the affront and went on.

Soon afterwards, we overtook a young man and his mother, travelling with three delúls in our direction. They were on the look-out, they said, for their own people, who were somewhere in the Nefûd, they didn’t quite know where. There are no tracks anywhere, however, and they have stopped for the night with us. Very nice people, the young fellow attentive and kind to his mother, making her a shelter under a bush with the camel saddles. They are Shammar, and have been on business to Haïl.

February 12. – Our disappointment about water yesterday, has forced us back on to the Haj road and the wells of Khuddra, thirteen or fourteen miles east of last night’s camp. We had, however, some sport on our way. First, a hare was started and the falcon flown. The Nefûd is so covered with bushes, that without the assistance of the bird the dogs could have had no chance, for it was only by watching the hawk’s flight that they were able to keep on the hare’s track. It was a pretty sight, the bird above doubling as the hare doubled, and the three dogs below following with their noses in the air. We made the best of our way after them, but the sand being very deep they were soon out of sight. Suddenly we came to the edge of the Nefûd, and there, a few hundred yards from the foot of the last sand-bank, we saw the falcon and the greyhounds all sitting in a circle on the ground, watching a large hole into which the hare had just bolted. The four pursuers looked so puzzled and foolish, that in spite of the annoyance of losing the game, we could not help laughing. Hares in the desert always go to ground. Mohammed and Abdallah and Awwad were keen for digging out this one, and they all worked away like navvies for more than half an hour, till they were up to their shoulders in the sandy earth (here firm ground), but it was in vain, the hole was big enough for a hyæna, and reached down into the rock below. Further on, however, we had better luck, and having run another hare to ground, pulled out not only it, but a little silver grey fox, where they were both crouched together. I do not think the hares ever dig holes, but they make use of any they can find when pressed. We also coursed some gazelles.

There are fourteen wells at Khuddra, mere holes in the ground, without parapet or anything to mark their position, and as we drew near, we were rather alarmed at finding them occupied by a large party of Bedouins. It looked like a ghazú, for there were as many men as camels, thirty or forty of them with spears; and the camels wore shedads instead of pack saddles. They did not, however, molest us, though their looks were far from agreeable. They told us they were Dafir waiting like the rest for the Haj; that their Sheykh, Ibn Sueyti, was still two days’ march to the eastwards, beyond Lina, which is another group of wells something like these; and they added, that they had heard of us and of our presents to the Emir, the rifle which fired twelve shots, and the rest. It is extraordinary how news travels in the desert. I noticed that Mohammed when questioned by them, said that he was from Mosul, and he explained afterwards that the Tudmur people had an old standing blood feud with the Dafir in consequence of some ghazú made long before his time, in which twenty of the latter were killed. 7 This has decided us not to pay Ibn Sueyti the visit we had intended. It appears that there has been a battle lately between the Dafir and the Amarrat (Ánazeh), in which a member of the Ibn Haddal family was killed. This proves that the Ánazeh ghazús sometimes come as far south as the Nefûd. These wells are seventy feet deep, and the water when first drawn smells of rotten eggs; but the smell goes off on exposure to the air.

The zodiacal light is very bright this evening; it is brightest about two hours after sunset, but though I have often looked out for it, I have never seen it in the morning before sunrise. It is a very remarkable and beautiful phenomenon, seen only, I believe, in Arabia. It is a cone of light extending from the horizon half-way to the zenith, and is rather brighter than the Milky Way.

February 13. – We have travelled quite twenty-four miles to-day, having had nothing to distract our attention from the road, and have reached the first of the reservoirs of Zobeydeh.

To my surprise this, instead of being on low ground, is as it were on the top of a hill. At least, we had to ascend quite two hundred feet to get to it, though there was higher ground beyond. It is built across a narrow wady of massive concrete, six feet thick, and is nearly square, eighty yards by fifty. The inside descends in steps for the convenience of those who come for water, but a great rent in the masonry has let most of this out, and now there is only a small mud-hole full of filthy water in the centre. We found some Arabs there with their camels, who went away when they saw us, but we sent after them to make inquiries, and learnt that they were Beni Wáhari, a new artificial compound tribe of Sherârat, Shammar and others, made up by Ibn Rashid with a slave of his own for their Sheykh. They are employed in taking care of camels and mares for the Emir. They talk of eight days’ journey now to Meshhed Ali, but Wilfrid says it cannot be less than fifteen or sixteen.

Mohammed, who has been very anxious to make himself agreeable, now he is quite away from Haïl influences, has been telling us a number of stories and legends, all more or less connected with his birthplace Tudmur. He has a real talent as a narrator, an excellent memory, and that most valuable gift, the manner of a man who believes what he relates. Here is one of his tales, a fair specimen of the extraordinary mixture of fable and historic tradition to be found in all of them:

Suliman ibn Daoud (Solomon, son of David) loved a Nasraniyeh (a Christian woman), named the Sitt Belkis, 8 and married her. This Christian lady wished to have a house between Damascus and Irak (Babylonia), because the air of the desert was good, but no such a house could be found. Then Solomon, who was king of the birds as well as king of men, sent for all the birds of the air to tell him where he should look for the place Belkis desired, and they all answered his summons but one, Nissr (the eagle), who did not come. And Solomon asked them if any knew of a spot between Damascus and Irak, in the desert where the air was good. But they answered that they knew of none. And he counted them to see if all were there, and found that the eagle was missing. Then he sent for the eagle, and they brought him to Solomon, and Solomon asked him why he had disobeyed the first summons. And Nissr answered, that he was tending his father, an old eagle, so old that he had lost all his feathers, and could not fly or feed himself unless his son was there. And Solomon asked Nissr if he knew of the place wanted by Belkis; and Nissr answered that his father knew, for he knew every place in the world, having lived four thousand years. And Solomon commanded that he should be brought before him in a box, for the eagle could not fly. But when they tried to carry the eagle he was so heavy that they could not lift him. Then Solomon gave them an ointment, and told them to rub the bird with it and stroke him thus, and thus, and that he would grow young again. And they did so, and the feathers grew on his back and wings, and he flew to Solomon, and alighted before the throne. And Solomon asked him, “where is the palace that the Sitt Belkis requires, between Damascus and Irak, in the desert where the air is good?” and the eagle answered, “It is Tudmur, the city which lies beneath the sand.” And he showed them the place. And Solomon ordered the jinns to remove the sand, and when they had done so, there lay Tudmur with its beautiful ruins and columns.

Still there was no water. For the water was locked up in a cave in the hills by a serpent twenty thousand double arms’ length long, which blocked the mouth of the cave. And Solomon called on the serpent to come out. But the serpent answered that she was afraid. And Solomon promised that he would not kill her. But as soon as she was half way out of the cave (and they knew it by a black mark on her body which marked half her length), Solomon set his seal upon her and she died. And the jinns dragged her wholly out and the water ran. Still it was poisonous with the venom of the serpent, and the people could not drink. Then Solomon took sulphur (kubrit) and threw it into the cave, and the water became sweet. And the sulphur is found there to this day.

Mohammed says also that ghosts (afrit) are very common among the ruins at Tudmur – also (more curious still) that there is a man at Tudmur more than a hundred years old, and that when he reached his hundredth year he cut a complete new set of teeth, and is now able to eat like a young man. 9 So he beguiled the evening.

February 14. – We have passed more birkehs in better repair than the first, and being now in the neighbourhood of water, find a good many Bedouins on the road. Jedur (the Shammar with the mother, with whom we are still travelling, and whom we like particularly) knows everybody, and it is well that he is with us, as some of these Bedouins are rough looking fellows with hang-dog countenances (especially the Dafir and the Sellem), which we don’t quite like. To-day, as Wilfrid and I were riding apart from our caravan, a number of men ran towards us without any salaam aleykum and began calling to us to stop. But we did not let them get within arm’s length, and bade them ask their questions from a distance. We shall have to keep watch to-night. The road is now regularly marked out with a double wall, which we are told was built by Zobeydeh to hang an awning from, so that the pilgrims might travel in the shade. But this must be nonsense. It is more likely that it is merely the effect of the road having been cleared of the big stones which here cover the plain.

* * * * *

Since writing this a curious thing has happened. We encamped early inside a ruined birkeh and had just got all in order for the night, when we perceived six men on dromedaries riding down from the northeast, straight towards us. There was much speculation of course amongst us, as to who they might be, honest men or robbers, Shammar or Dafir. They evidently were not a mere party of camels for the Haj, as each delúl was mounted by a man with a lance, and they came on at a trot. They rode straight to where we were, made their camels kneel down, took off khurjs and shedads and then arranged their bivouac for the night. Then they came up to our tents and accosted Mohammed and the servants, who of course invited them to sit down and drink coffee. Mohammed presently came to us and whispered that he felt convinced they were Dafir, but that we should presently know for certain. They sat down and began talking on general subjects, as the custom is till coffee has been served, but afterwards Mohammed asked them whence they had come and whither they were going. They answered that they were Ketherin, sent by their Sheykh to Haïl on business, and explained further that their object was to find a certain relative of their Sheykh’s whom he had heard of as being a guest at Ibn Rashid’s and to invite him to their tents. Perhaps we might have heard of him, his name was Mohammed ibn Arûk. And their Sheykh’s name? Muttlak ibn Arûk! Here is a coup de théâtre! Mohammed’s long-lost relation, the third brother of the three who left Aared in the eighteenth century and parted company at Jôf, has been discovered in his descendant, whose servants are at this moment in our camp. Imagine the joy of Mohammed and the triumph of so appropriate an occasion for reciting once more the kasid Ibn Arûk! The rhymes of that well-known legend, recited by Mohammed and responded to by the new comers in chorus, were indeed the first intimation we had of what had happened. Then the Ketherin ambassadors were brought to our tent and their story told. Now all ideas of Bussorah and Meshhed Ali and the Haj are abandoned, and, for the moment, there is no other plan for any of us but an immediate visit to these new relations. One of the Ketherin has already started off homewards to announce the joyful event, and the rest will turn back with us to-morrow. Muttlak’s tents are not more than a day’s journey from where we now are, and we shall see these long-lost cousins to-morrow before the sun goes down. “Yallah,” exclaimed Mohammed, beaming with joy and pride.

February 15. – We made a late start, for Mohammed has lost his head again and is playing the fine gentleman, as he did at Haïl, afraid or ashamed to be seen by his new acquaintances doing any sort of work. Instead of helping to pack or load the camels, he would do nothing but sit on the ground playing with his beads, and calling to Awwad to saddle his delúl, – airs and graces which, I am glad to see, are thrown away on the Ketherin, who, as Bedouins, care little for the vanities of life. Even when started, we did not get far, for it began to thunder and lighten, and presently to rain heavily, so that Wilfrid ordered a halt at half-past ten. We have now come to the great birkehs which are full of water. They stand in a valley called the Wady Roseh, from a plant of that name which grows in it, and is much prized as pasture for both camels and horses. There are two tanks near us, one round, the other square, and both of the same fashion as the first we saw. We have been examining the construction and find that the walls were originally built hollow, of stone, and filled up with concrete. This is now as hard as granite, and has a fine polish on the surface. The water is beautifully clear and good. The largest of the tanks is sixty-four yards by thirty-seven, and perhaps twelve feet deep. There is a ruined khan of the same date close by, and Wilfrid has discovered an immense well ten feet wide at the mouth and very deep. All these were constructed by Zobeydeh, the wife of the Caliph Haroun er-Rashid, who nearly died of thirst on her way back from Mecca and so had the wells and tanks dug. Wilfrid believes that no European has visited them before, though they are marked vaguely on Chesney’s map. A wild day has ended with a fine sunset. Dinner, not of stalled ox, nor of herbs, but of boiled locusts and rice, with such bread as we can manage to make of flour well mixed with sand.

Mohammed, who has been in the agonies of poetic composition for a week past, has at last delivered himself of the following kasíd or ballad, which I believe is intended as a pendant to the original Ibn Arûk kasíd, with which he sees we are bored.

KASÍD IBN ARÛK EL JEDÍDENahárrma min esh Sham, el belád el bayíde,Némshi ma el wudiân wa el Beg khaláwa.Wa tobéyt aéla Jôf, dar jedíde.Yaáz ma tílfi ubrobok khaláwi.Nahárret ’Abu Túrki, aálumi bayíde,Dábakha lil khottár héyle semáne.Ya marhába bil Beg wa es Sitt Khatún.Talóbbt bíntu gal jaátka atíye.Wa siághahu min el Beg khámsin mía.Khatún, ya bint el akrám wa el juwádi.Khatún, ya bint el Amáva wa el kebár.Ya Robb, selémli akhúi el Beg wa es Sitt Khatún.Ya Robb, wasálhom diyar essalámi,

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1

Abbas Pasha’s Seglawieh is reported to have had two foals while in Egypt; one of them died, and the other was given to the late King of Italy, and left descendants, now in the possession of the present king.

2

We measured one, a pollard, thirty-six feet round the trunk at five feet from the ground.

3

Rassam, who has been digging at Babylon, informs me that these inscriptions are in the ancient Phœnician character. It would seem that the Phœnicians, who were a nation of shopkeepers, were in the habit of sending out commercial travellers with samples of goods all over Asia; and wherever they stopped on the road, if there was a convenient bit of soft rock, they scratched their names on it, and drew pictures of animals. The explanation may be the true one, but how does it come that these tradesmen should choose purely desert subjects for their artistic efforts – camels, ostriches, ibexes, and horsemen with lances. I should have fancied rather that these were the work of Arabs, or of whoever represented the Arabs, in days gone by, anyhow of people living in the country. But I am no archæologist.

4

It was to Taybetism that Abdallah ibn Saoud fled ten years ago when he was driven by his brother out of Aared, and from it that he sent that treacherous message to Midhat Pasha at Bagdad which brought the Turks into Hasa and broke up the Wahhabi Empire.

5

Red is said to be the female and green the male, but some say all are green at first and become red afterwards.

6

Compare Mr. Palgrave’s account.

7

Compare Fatalla’s account of the war between the Mesenneh and the Dafir near Tudmor at the beginning of the present century.

8

Belkis is the name usually given by tradition to the Queen of Sheba.

9

I have since been told by dentists that the fact of a third set of teeth being cut in old age is not unknown to science.