A Pilgrimage to Nejd, the Cradle of the Arab Race. Vol. 1 [of 2]

Wednesday, December 25. – Christmas Day. We are out of the Harra at last, and on open ground. That black wilderness had become like a nightmare with its horrible boulders and little tortuous paths, which prevented the camels from doing more than about two miles an hour. Now we are able to push on at three, or three and a quarter.

After floundering down the wady for half an hour, we came to some splendid pools in a narrow cleft of rock, where we stopped to take in water. We have been very fortunate in such a season as this to find the Wady er-Rajel full. The rain which filled it must have been some isolated waterspout on the eastern slope of Jebel Hauran, for not a drop fell anywhere else; and there is no autumn grass except just along its edge. It is rapidly drying, or rather being drunk up, and the little vegetation is very closely eaten down. In the smaller pools there is a very distinct flavour of sheep and camels in the water; but at the pools we came to this morning it is still pure. The Kreysheh have been all up this valley, eating and drinking their way, and leaving not a blade they could help behind them, and we have come upon numerous tracks of their cattle. Every here and there we have passed the traces of their camps, stones set in line on three sides of a square; one we saw had been only just deserted, and we put up a number of vultures and ravens from the fresh carcase of a camel lying by it. There crossed it also the footprint of a horse, which brought on the usual talk of ghazús and marauders, in which our people delight. They, however, have settled it among them to their satisfaction, that such accidents as meeting robbers or people of a hostile tribe are “min Allah” (from God), to be classed with the rain and fine weather, and sickness and good health, all which things the Bedouins consider fortuitous.

Having filled our goat skins, we left the Wady er-Rajel for good, and are to come across no more water now till we get to Kâf. The valley takes a turn here to the west before it reaches the Wady Sirhán, and would therefore be out of our road. We have been crossing some rolling downs covered with light flinty gravel, a delightful change from the Harra, and have had a gallop or two after the gazelles, which now and then came in sight. We thought too of our Christmas dinner, and how glad we should be to get some addition to the rice, which was all we had; but neither greyhounds nor mares were in good enough condition to run down their quarry. Once we made a rather successful stalk, and a charge in among a small herd, but the dogs could not get hold of anything, and, though several shots were fired, nothing came to bag. Then we had a long gallop after Sayad, the black and tan greyhound, who went on after the gazelles for a good two miles, so that we were afraid of losing him; and then another long gallop to get back to our camels. This time, we had been three quarters of an hour away from them, and we found our people all much alarmed, Abdallah rather angry at our going so far, for Mohammed was with us. He was perfectly in the right, and we were to blame, for we are on a serious journey not a sporting tour; and to say nothing of danger from enemies, there is always a certain risk of missing one another in a country like this where camels leave no track behind them. A turn to right or left out of the direct line and a fold in the ground, and they are lost. So we apologised, and promised to do so again no more. We were, however, in a most unexpected manner provided with dinner; for while we were still talking, behold a grazing camel all alone on the plain, not a mile away; when with a general shout of “a prize,” the whole party on horseback and on foot rushed in pursuit. We were naturally the first up, and drove the animal at a canter to the others. The camel was a young one of last spring, in good condition, and at the sight tears rushed into Hanna’s eyes – tears of hunger, not of pity. I am afraid indeed that none of the party had much thought of pity, and the scene caused me mixed feelings of compassion for the poor victim, and disgust at ourselves who were waiting to prey upon it. No question was raised as to ownership; camels found astray in desert places were by acclamation declared the property of the first comer. We were in fact a ghazú, and this was our lawful prize. So the poor little camel was driven on before us.

Dinner is thus secured, and I must see what else can be arranged in honour of the occasion.

December 26. – Mohammed, Abdallah, Awwad, the two Ibrahims and Hanna, all of them, spent the evening in feasting and ate up the whole of the camel except the short ribs, which were set before us, and the shoulders which were kept for to-day. They divided among them the labour of killing, skinning and quartering, and cooking it, for all were equally ready to lend a hand to the work. People talk sometimes of camel meat, as if it were something not only unpalatable, but offensive. But it is in reality very good; when young it resembles mutton, even when old it is only tough, and never has any unpleasant taste as far as my experience goes; indeed if served up without the bones it could hardly be distinguished from mutton.

The servants having thus feasted were all soon sound asleep, and even when suddenly, between two and three in the morning, the wind rose with a deafening noise, they did not wake, not till their tent blew down upon them as ours did upon us. We were awake and might have kept our tent standing had we not been too lazy to get up and drive in the pegs. It was too late when the tent had fallen on us to do anything but lie as well as we could beneath the ruins and wait for daylight. Fortunately the main pegs had not drawn, and the sand, for this hurricane was a sand storm, soon covered over the edges of the fallen tent, and no further damage was done. In the morning, the servants proposed staying where we were; but we would not hear of this, as we had water for only two days, and it would have been folly to dawdle, so after rubbing the sand out of or rather into our eyes, we set to work packing and loading. The wind continued violent and bitterly cold, and carried a great deal of sand with it. It came from the west-south-west. We had camped under shelter at a small tell close to the Tell Guteyfi, which proved to be the same as one pointed out to us by Awwad from Ain el-Giaour, and once beyond it, we found ourselves on a perfectly open bit of plain, exposed to the full fury of the gale, now more violent than ever. Sand storms are evidently common here, for the Tell Guteyfi, which is of black volcanic boulders like the Harra, is half smothered in sand. We saw it looming near us in the thick air, and soon after were almost hidden from each other in the increasing darkness. The sun shone feebly at intervals through the driving sand, but it was all we could do to keep the caravan together, and not lose sight of each other. At one moment we had all to stop and turn tail to the wind, covering our eyes and heads with our cloaks, waiting till the burst was over. Nothing could have faced it. Still we were far from having any idea of danger, for there really is none in these storms, and had plenty of time to notice how very picturesque the situation was, the camels driven along at speed, all huddled together for protection, with their long necks stretched out, and heads low, tags and ropes flying, and the men’s cloaks streaming in the wind, all seen through the yellow haze of sand which made them look as though walking in the air. The beasts looked gigantic yet helpless, like antediluvian creatures overwhelmed in a flood. Still, as I said, there was no danger, for the wind was steady in its direction, and our course was directly across it – that we knew – and by patiently struggling on, we managed to get over a deal of ground. Suddenly the sandy plain over which we were travelling, seemed to sink away in front of us, and at the bottom of a steep dip we could see clumps of tamarisk looming through the storm. We knew that a refuge was at hand.

Here then we are comfortably housed under one of these bushes, where there is a delightful lull. The soil is all deep sand, white as snow, and the tent which we have rigged up is already half buried in it, so that we might imagine ourselves at home snowed up on Boxing Day. We have made a fire of tarfa sticks inside the tent, and have been enjoying Hanna’s delicious coffee. Where is one ever so much at home as in one’s own tent? Awwad surprised us very much to-day by objecting, when we proposed to pitch the tent, that it would be impossible to do so in the sand. If Mohammed or any of the townspeople had done so it would have been natural, but Awwad is a Bedouin born, and must have pitched camp hundreds of times in the Nefúd. Yet he had never heard of burying a tent peg.

One misfortune has happened in the storm. The old rogue of a camel we bought at Mezárib, who has been trying all along to get back to his family, has given us the slip. Taking advantage of the darkness, and knowing that the wind would obliterate his track at once, he decamped as soon as unloaded, and is gone. Mohammed and Awwad, each on a delúl, are scouring the country, but without a chance of finding him; for at best they can only see things a hundred yards off, and he was not missed for the first half hour. Mohammed has vowed to kill a lamb, but I fear that will do no good.

December 27. – We have arrived at Kâf after a long march, twenty-seven or twenty-eight miles. Course about south-east!

In the night a little rain fell, and the wind moderated. At eight o’clock we started, crossing a wide plain of coarse sand interspersed with low sandstone tells. At noon we came upon a well-marked track, the road of the salt caravans between Bozra and Kâf, which, after crossing a rather high ridge, brought us to a very curious valley; an offshoot, we were told, of the Wady Sirhán. The geological formation of this is singular; the crest of the ridge on either side the valley is of black rock with detached stones of the same – then yellow sandstone, then another black layer, then pure sand, then sand with isolated black stones, then a calcareous deposit, and at the bottom chalk. The actual bed of the wady is a fine white sand sprinkled over with tamarisk and guttub bushes. As we were crossing this our dogs started a jerboa, and, little creature though it is, it gave them much trouble to catch it. Its hops were prodigious, and from side to side and backwards and forwards, so that the dogs always ran over it, and snatching, always missed it; till at last, as if by accident, it jumped into Shiekhah’s mouth. Abdallah and the rest were very anxious to eat it, but it was so mauled as to be beyond cooking. At three o’clock we crested another ridge, and from it suddenly came in sight of the great Wady Sirhán, the object of so many of our conjectures. It seems, however, to be no wady, but the bed of an ancient sea. A little black dot on the edge of a subbka or salt lake, now dry, and just under a tall black tell, marked the oasis of Kâf, an infinitesimal village of sixteen houses, and a palm garden of about an acre.

I have had the misfortune to sprain my knee, an awkward accident, and very annoying in the middle of a journey. My delúl, always a fidgety animal, gave a bolt just as I was leaning over to arrange something on the off side of the shedád, or saddle, and pitched me off. The pain is indescribable, and I fear I shall be helplessly lame for some time to come. But here we are at Kâf.

CHAPTER V

“Rafi ran after her with his sword drawn, and was just about to strike off her head, when she cried ‘quarter.’” – Abulfeda.

Kâf and Itheri – More relations – The Wady Sirhán – Locust hunting – Hanna sits down to die – Tales of robbery and violence – We are surprised by a ghazú and made prisoners – Sherarât statistics – Jôf

December 28. – Kâf is a pretty little village, with a character of its own, quite distinct from anything one sees in Syria. All is in miniature, the sixteen little square houses, the little battlemented towers and battlemented walls seven feet high – seventy or eighty palm trees in a garden watered from wells, and some trees I took at first for cypresses, but which turned out to be a very delicate kind of tamarisk.9 Though so small a place, Kâf has a singularly flourishing look, all is neat there and in good repair, not a battlement broken or a door off its hinges, as would certainly have been the case in Syria. There are also a good many young palms planted in among the older ones, and young fig trees and vines, things hardly ever found in the North. The people are nice looking and well behaved, though at first they startled us a little by going about all of them with swords in their hands. These they hold either sloped over their shoulders or grasped in both hands by the scabbard, much as one sees in the old stone figures of mediæval martyrs, or in the effigies of crusaders.

Abdallah el-Kamis, Sheykh of the village, to whom we had letters from Huseyn, received us with great politeness; and a room in his house was swept out for our use. Like all the other rooms, it opened on to the court-yard, in the middle of which was tethered a two-year-old colt. Our room had been a storing place for wood, and was without furniture of any sort, but we were delighted to find also without inhabitants. The architecture here is very simple, plain mud walls with no windows or openings of any kind except a few square holes near the roof. The roof was of ithel beams with cross rafters of palm, thatched in with palm branches. The principal room is called the kahwah or coffee room; and in it there is a square hearth at the side or in the middle for coffee-making. There is no chimney, and the smoke escapes as it can; but this is not so uncomfortable as it sounds, for the wood burnt here burns with a beautiful bright flame, giving out a maximum of heat to a minimum of smoke. It is the ratha or ghada.10 People sit round the hearth while coffee is being made, a solemn process occupying nearly half an hour.

As soon as we arrived, a trencher of dates was brought, dates of the last year’s crop, all sticky and mashed up, but good; and later in the evening, we had a more regular dinner of burghul and boiled fowls. We are much struck with the politeness of everybody. Abdallah, our host, asked us at least twenty times after our health before he would go on to anything else; and it was not easy to find appropriate compliments in return. Everything of course is very poor and very simple, but one cannot help feeling that one is among civilized people. They have been making a great fuss with Mohammed, who is treated as a sheykh. Tudmur is well known by name, and at this distance is considered an important town. Much surprise was expressed at finding a man of his rank in the semi-menial position Mohammed holds with us, and he was put to some polite cross-questioning in the evening as to the motive of his journey. No Franjis have ever been seen at Kâf before, so the people say; and they do not understand the respect in which Europeans are held elsewhere. Mohammed, however, has explained his “brotherhood with the Beg,” and protested that his journey is one of honour, not of profit; so that we are treated with as much courtesy as if we were Arabs born. Awwad the Shammar has been of great use to us, as he is well known here, and he serves as an introduction.

Kâf is quite independent of the Sultan, though it has twice been sacked by Turkish soldiers, once under Ibrahim Pasha in 1834, and again only a few years ago, when the Government of Damascus sent a military expedition down the Wady Sirhán. We were shown the ruins of a castle, Kasr es-Saïd, on a hill above the town which the former destroyed, and we heard much lamentation over the proceedings of the latter. The inhabitants of Kâf acknowledge themselves subjects of Ibn Rashid, the Jebel Shammar chief, some of whose people were here only a few days since, taking the annual tribute, a very small sum, twenty mejidies (£4), which they are glad to pay in return for his protection. They are very enthusiastic about “the Emir,” as they call him, and certainly have no reason to wish for annexation to Syria. The little town of Kâf and its neighbour Itheri, where we now are, have commercially more connection with the north than with the south, for their principal wealth, such as it is, arises from the salt trade with Bozra. Abdallah el-Kamis seems to be well off, for he possesses several slaves, and has more than one wife. But the colt I have mentioned is his only four-footed possession; he would have come with us, he said, if he had owned a delúl. I noticed a few camels and donkeys and goats about the village.

Makbul, the Kreysheh, has gone back, and we now want to find a Sherári to take us on to Jôf. We have come on to Itheri, Kâf’s twin oasis, two and a half hours east of it, also in the Wady Sirhán. This is not marked on many of the modern maps, though Chesney has it incorrectly placed on his. We find by the barometer that they are both on the same level, so that our conjecture seems confirmed, about the Wady Sirhán having no slope. The Wady Sirhán is a curious chaotic depression, probably the bed of some ancient sea like the Dead Sea, and is here about twelve miles broad if we can judge by the hills we see beyond it, and which are no doubt the opposite cliffs of the basin. There are numerous wells both here and at Kâf, wide and shallow, for the water is only eight feet below the surface of the ground. From these the palm gardens are irrigated. There are wells too outside, all lying low and at the same level. The water is drinkable, by no means excellent. We crossed a large salt lake, now dry, where the salt is gathered for the caravans.

On our road Mohammed entertained us with tales of his birth and ancestry. The people of Kâf have heard of the Ibn Arûks, and have told Mohammed that he will find relations in many parts of Arabia besides Jôf. They say there is somebody at Bereydeh, and a certain Ibn Homeydi, whom Mohammed has heard of as a cousin. Then here at Itheri, the Sheykh’s wife is a member of the Jôf family. Everything in fact seems going just as we expected it.

Itheri is a still smaller place than Kâf but it boasts of an ancient building and miniature castle inside the walls, something after the fashion of the Hauran houses. This, instead of mud, the common Arab material, is built of black stones, well squared and regularly placed. On the lintel of the doorway there is or rather has been, an inscription in some ancient character, perhaps Himyaritic, which we would have copied had it been legible, but the weather has almost effaced it.11 Here we are being entertained by Jeruan, an untidy half-witted young man, with long hair in plaits and a face like a Scotch terrier, who is the son of Merzuga, Mohammed’s cousin, and consequently a cousin himself. Though nothing much to be proud of as a relation, we find him an attentive host. His mother is an intelligent and well-bred woman, and it seems strange that she should have so inferior a son. Her other three sons, for Jeruan is the eldest of four, have their wits like other people, but they are kept in the background. Merzuga came to see me just now with a large dish of dates in her hand, and stopped to talk. Her face is still attractive, and she must have once been extremely beautiful. I notice that she wears a number of silver rings on her fingers like wedding rings.

Merzuga tells us we shall find plenty of Ibn Arûk relations at Jôf. She herself left it young and talks of it as an earthly paradise from which she has been torn to live in this wretched little oasis. Itheri is indeed a forlorn place, all except Jeruan’s palm garden. After a walk in the palm garden, in which my lameness prevented me from joining, we all sat down to a very good dinner of lamb and sopped bread – the bread tasted like excellent pastry – served us by Jeruan in person, standing according to Arab fashion when guests are eating. His mother looks well after him, and tells him what to do, and it is evident, though he has the sense to say very little, that he is looked upon as not quite “accountable” in his family. Wilfrid describes the walk in the garden as rather amusing, Mohammed and Abdallah making long speeches of compliments about all they saw, and telling Jeruan’s head man extraordinary stories of the grandeur and wealth of Tudmur. Jeruan’s garden, the only one at Itheri, contains four hundred palm trees, many of them newly planted, and none more than twenty-five years old. Amongst them was a young tree of the héllua variety, the sweet date of Jôf, imported from thence, and considered here a great rarity. At this there was a chorus of admiration. The ithel trees were also much admired. They are grown for timber, and spring from the stub when cut down, a six years’ growth being already twenty feet high.

Two men have arrived from Jôf with the welcome news that all is well between this and Jôf; that is, there are no Arabs yet in the Wady Sirhán; welcome because we have no introductions, and a meeting might be disagreeable. The season is so late and the pasture so bad, that the Wady has been quite deserted since last spring. There will be no road now, or track of any kind, and as it is at least two hundred miles to Jôf, we must have a guide to shew us the wells. Such a one we have found in a funny looking little Bedouin, a Sherári, who happens to be here and who will go with us for ten mejidies.

December 29. – There was a bitter east wind blowing when we started this morning, and I observed a peewit, like a land bird at sea, flying hither and thither under the lea of the palm trees, looking hopeless and worn out with its long voyage. Poor thing, it will die here, for there is nothing such a bird can eat anywhere for hundreds of miles. It must have been blown out of its reckoning, perhaps from the Euphrates.

Our course to-day lay along the edge of the Wady, sometimes crossing stony promontories from the upper plain, sometimes sandy inlets from the Wady. The heights of these were always pretty much the same, 2250 feet above and 1850 below – so these may be taken as the respective heights of the Hamád and of the Wady Sirhán. There are besides, here and there, isolated tells, three hundred to four hundred feet higher than either. Rough broken ground all day, principally of sand with slaty grit sprinkled over it, the vegetation very scanty on the high ground, but richer in the hollows. In one small winding ravine leading into the Wady, we found ghada trees, but otherwise nothing bigger than shrubs. There Awwad told us that two years ago he was robbed and stripped by a ghazú from the Hauran. He had lost six camels and all he possessed. The Haurani were eight in number, his own party six. I asked him how it was the robbers got the best of it. He said it was “min Allah” (from God). The Wady Sirhán seems to be a favourite place for robbers, and Awwad takes the occurrence as a matter of course. I asked him why he had left his tribe, the Shammar, and come to live so far north as Salkhad. He said it was “nasíb,” a thing fated; that he had married a Salkhad wife, and she would not go away from her people. I asked him how he earned his living, and he laughed. “I have got half a mare,” he said, “and a delúl, and I make ghazús. There are nine of us Shammar in the Hauran, and we go out together towards Zerka, or to the western Leja and take cattle by night.” He then showed us some frightful scars of wounds, which he had got on these occasions, and made Wilfrid feel a bullet which was still sticking in his side. He is a curious creature, but we like him, and, robber or no robber, he has quite the air of a gentleman. He is besides an agreeable companion, sings very well, recites ballads, and is a great favourite everywhere. At Kâf and Itheri he was hugged and kissed by the men, old and young, and welcomed by the women in every house.

We were nearly frozen all the morning, the wind piercing through our fur cloaks. At half-past twelve, after four hours’ marching, we came to some wells called Kurághir, six of them in a bare hollow, with camel tracks leading from every point of the compass towards them. It is clear that at some time of the year the Wady is inhabited; Awwad says by the Roala in winter, but this year there is nobody. The water, like that of Kâf and Itheri, is slightly brackish. Near Kurághir we saw some gazelles and coursed them vainly. It is vexatious, for I have forgotten to bring meat, and unless we can catch or shoot something, we shall have none till we get to Jôf. I ought to have thought of it, for, though provisions are by no means plentiful at Itheri, we could probably have bought a sheep and driven it on with us. The pain of my lameness distracted my attention – a bad excuse, but the only one. I suffer less when riding than at any other time.