Certain statesmen of world prominence choose detective stories for their moments of relaxation; Prince Feisal, in the lull between campaigns, refreshed himself for renewed battle and the cares of state with classical Arabic poetry. His favorite poet is Imr el Kais, the most renowned of all Arab bards, who lived just before Mohammed, and who wrote about camels, the desert, and love. Among Feisal’s other favorites are Ibn Isham, Ibn el Ali, Zuhair, Zarafa, A1 Harith, and Mutanabbi, great writers of the Middle Ages, when Arabian learning and culture penetrated to the most remote corners of Europe. Mutanabbi’s couplet must have struck a responsive chord in Feisal’s heart:
Night and my steed and the desert know me—
And the lance thrust and battle, and parchment and pen.
I also saw him frequently reading the works of Antara, the famous poet who wrote a huge epic of his own life filled with tales of raids and love lyrics. The recent war of liberation inspired many new poets to arouse the people by means of patriotic songs. Even the humblest camel-driver improvised songs built around Lawrence, Feisal, and that celebrated warrior, Auda Abu Tayi.
Poetry, song, and proverb all exalt the virtue of hospitality among the Arabs. An Arab, from Hussein down to the humblest of his subjects, will risk his own life rather than allow any harm to befall a guest, even if the latter happens to be his worst enemy. For many months prior to the outbreak of the Arabian revolution, Shereef Hussein and his sons were secretly preparing for it, while leading the Turks to believe that they were mobilizing against the Allies. Emir Feisal happened to be in Damascus during this period as the guest of Djemal Pasha, the Turkish viceroy of Syria and Palestine. His father sent word to him that he had succeeded in gathering together a number of tribes for an attack on the Turkish garrison at Medina; so Feisal excused himself on some pretext and said he must return south. Djemal urged him to delay his departure for a few days, saying that he and Enver Pasha would like to accompany him to Medina. When Feisal arrived at Medina with Djemal and Enver, they attended a review of over five thousand Arab tribesmen who whirled by on camels and horses, firing their rifles into the air. The two members of the Turkish triumvirate were delighted with the warlike display and told Feisal that his men would be of great assistance to the sultan and his illustrious fellow-Mohammedan ruler, Kaiser William Pasha, in their war against the Unbeliever.
That night, during the usual banquet, Ali Ibn Hussein, of the robber Harith clan, and a number of other shereefs and sheiks stole up to Feisal and whispered:
“We have the palace surrounded and are going to kill these Turkish dogs.”
Realizing that his followers were in dead earnest, Feisal waved them aside for the moment and, turning to Djemal and Enver, said:
“Now, gentlemen, according to our custom, after a banquet of this kind, you must spend the night in my house.”
Feisal then established his guests in his own room and slept outside the door all night. Without leaving them for a single moment, he took them to the train the next morning and accompanied them on their three-day journey to Damascus. This required no little nerve, for if Djemal and Enver had suspected that anything was wrong in Medina and that the Arabs did not intend to cooperate with Turkey and Germany in the war, they would either have killed Feisal or held him as a hostage to guarantee the good behavior of his father.
An Arabian banquet is an occasion to be remembered. After the war King Hussein entertained at the Belediyah, the town-hall of Jeddah, in honor of Prince Georges Lotfallah of Egypt. Rows and rows of small tables were placed end to end and then piled high with food until they groaned under the weight. Eighty guests were served at one sitting, and the waiters walked up and down on top of the tables, looking down at you. If your plate was not full they would slice off a slab of sheep or goat and then step over the cake and attend to your neighbor. After the first eighty had dined, the next sitting was served in like manner.
CHAPTER V
THE FALE OF JEDDAH AND MECCA
WHEN the World War pulled Turkey into the maelstrom, with Great Britain, France, Russia, and Italy pitted against her, it was the hour of opportunity for Arabia. Unable to obtain sufficient funds and ammunition, Shereef Hussein was compelled to let many months pass by without declaring himself. Then came the news of the surrender of Kut el Amara by General Townsend. This was a serious reverse for the Allies and an important victory for the Turks. Hussein could no longer hold his followers. He sent word to the British Government that he could not stand by and permit his people to remain subject to the Turks. He asked for assistance, but before receiving a reply, with all the pent-up fury and hatred of five hundred years of oppression and dishonor, the Arabs of the Hedjaz leaped at the throats of the Turks. From all parts of the desert came the swarthy, lean, picturesque sons of Ishmael to avenge and free themselves at last.
Hussein and his four sons had worked out all the details of their plan for the revolution, but kept them secret until a few weeks before they touched off the fuse. They did not even dare to trust their close associates, because in Turkish territory plots were usually discovered before they matured, and no man knew whom he could trust. Not only were there spies but innumerable spies on spies.
Early in 1916, when Lieutenant Lawrence was making a reputation for himself with the Secret Corps in Cairo, Grand Shereef Hussein sent word to all the tribes of Holy Arabia to be ready at a moment’s notice. Then, on June 9, he gave the signal. At the same instant he himself publicly denounced Enver, Talaat, Djemal, and their infamous Committee of Unity and Progress. Simultaneous attacks were launched against Mecca, Jeddah, the seaport to the holy city, and Medina, three of the least known and most interesting cities in the world. And before we continue to the point in the Arab Revolt where Lawrence made his entrance, let us stop and see these centers of life in the Hedjaz whence came so many of Lawrence’s associates.
When you land at Jeddah you blink your eyes and pinch yourself to see if you are awake. The Koran forbids the use of intoxicating liquors, but either the architects who designed this city were not faithful Mussulmans or most of the buildings were constructed before Mohammed introduced prohibition into Arabia. The streets of Jeddah are a bewildering maze of narrow zigzag cañons between tall tottering houses, which look as though they had been joggled about by incessant earthquakes. Many of the houses are of five and six stories and are used only for the accommodation of pilgrims who pass through on their way to Mecca during Ramadan, a time when the population of the city increases from twenty thousand to perhaps one hundred thousand. The most fitting way I can think of describing this weird Arabian seaport is to say that it looks like any ordinary Oriental city might look to a man suffering from delirium tremens. The Leaning Tower of Pisa would be in an appropriate setting if it were transferred to Jeddah. Symmetry seems to be an unknown quantity in this part of the Near East. It is said that an Arab carpenter cannot draw a right angle, and an Arab waiter never puts a table-cloth on square. The sacred shrine of the Mohammedans in Mecca, known as the Kaaba, meaning “cube,” has none of its sides or angles equal. Arab streets are seldom parallel, and even “the street that is called straight” in Damascus is not straight! Jeddah, with its inebriated buildings, its crazy fragile balconies, its leaning minarets, its lazy Arab merchants squatting cross-legged on top of tables in front of chaotic shops, its fantastic arcaded bazaars covered in with patchwork roofs pieced together like the sails of a Chinese junk, is the nearest approach to a futurist paradise of any city in the world.
Arabia is indeed a topsyturvy land. Where we measure most of our liquids and weigh most of our solids, they weigh their liquids and measure their solids. Where we use knives and forks and spoons, they use their hands. Where we use tables and chairs they recline on the floor. Where we mount from the left, they mount their camels and horses from the right. We read from left to right, while they read from right to left. The desert-dweller keeps his head covered in the summer and winter alike, and his feet usually unprotected. Where we take off our hats in e
ntering a friend’s house, they take off their shoes.
In addition to its Arab population, Jeddah is inhabited by the remnants of a thousand pilgrimages, descendants of pilgrims who had sufficient money to enable them to reach Mecca but not enough to enable them to leave Arabia after fulfilling their religious vows. Many of them are poverty-stricken and barely able to eke out a living at the odd jobs which they get during the short pilgrimage season each year. Among them are Javanese, Filipinos, Malays, representatives of a dozen different Indian races, Kurds, Turks, Egyptians, Sudanese, Abyssinians, Senegalese, tribesmen from the Sahara, Zanzibaris, Yemenites, Somalis, and numerous others.
One afternoon, accompanied by Major Goldie, an officer attached to the British mission which had its headquarters there during the campaign, I rode out through the Mecca gate to the Abyssinian quarter. The dwellings of these primitive people are round huts with conical thatched roofs, surrounded by high kraal fences made of rusty petrol and preserved-meat tins. We pulled up our ponies in front of a hut where a negro woman was busy tanning a hide. The moment she saw us she began screaming: “Oh, why have you come to destroy my home? Oh, why are you going to carry away my child? Oh! Oh! Oh! What have I done that you should want to shoot me?” Although Goldie did his best to reassure her, she continued this wail until we rode out of hearing.
On either side of Jeddah, a few miles distant, are small ports which foreigners scrupulously avoid visiting. Tourists have never been welcome because these villages for many years have been slave-trading centers. Here negroes, smuggled across from the African coast, were sold to wealthy Arabs. The Turkish Government winked at this vicious commerce, but King Hussein is vigorously endeavoring to stamp it out. As a result of Hussein’s stand on the slavery question, the price of a well-built young negro has advanced from the pre-war quotation of £50 to £300 or even as high as £500. Although the trade may continue surreptitiously for a short time, the king and his sons are so bitterly opposed to it that it is only a question of months until they will have driven it out.
Beyond the north gate of the Jeddah wall Major Goldie took me to see what thousands of Mohammedans believe to be the tomb of the common ancestor of us all. There is a century-old tradition to the effect that it was here near Jeddah that the ark grounded after the Great Flood. According to one version of the story, on his six hundred and first birthday, not long after the waters had abated, Noah and his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, were walking along the beach when they came to a depression in the sand. This depression seemed to resemble a human form. It was about three hundred feet long. Ham asked his father what he thought it could be, and the venerable patriarch replied, “Ham, my lad, that is the last resting-place of Mother Eve.” Of course there are many educated Mohammedans who laugh at this legend, but, nevertheless, a wall three hundred feet long has been built around the supposed depression, and within this inclosure is a white mosque where thousands of women worship every year. They believe Mother Eve was three hundred feet in height. Just think how the rest of us must have degenerated! But the city takes its name from this tomb, for the word “Jeddah” means grandmother or ancestress.
Since the time of Mohammed, no Jews, Christians, followers of Zoroaster, or other unbelievers, have been welcome anywhere in the Hedjaz except along the coast. None but the faithful are even allowed to go beyond the Jeddah wall through the east gate, which leads in the direction of Mecca. The British officers who were stationed in Jeddah from the outbreak of the revolution until the end of the war scrupulously observed this unwritten law. During the campaign no Allied representatives ever visited the forbidden capital of the king of the Hedjaz—at any rate not officially or for publication. King Hussein even went so far as to request the British authorities to instruct all officers piloting seaplanes attached to war-ships cruising in the Red Sea under no circumstances to profane the air by flying over either Mecca or Medina.
This very day millions of Moslems are turning their faces five times toward Mecca and declaring over and over again:
“La ilaha Allah wa Muhammad-ar-rasul Allah! There is but one God, Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet.”.
Mecca and Medina, its sister metropolis of the desert, are the two most mysterious cities in the world. Any man in the vicinity of either who declared that Christ was the son of God would be torn to pieces.
Since the time of Mohammed, Mecca and Medina have been forbidden to all but Moslems. In fact, the fanatical followers of the founder of Islam would destroy any intruder whom they even suspected of being an unbeliever. For this reason all conferences between King Hussein and the representatives of the British and French Governments were held in Jeddah.
We have a record of only a dozen or so Christians who have visited Mecca during the past one thousand years—and lived to tell the tale. The most celebrated of these, of course, was Sir Richard Burton. Fewer still have visited Medina. At the end of the eighteenth century a puritanical and fanatical sect from Central Arabia called the Wahabis overran the Hedjaz and captured Mecca. They were driven out by an Egyptian army under Mohammed Ali, and for a time an adventurer and ex-sergeant in the Black Watch had the unique honor of acting as governor of Medina and guardian of the tomb of the Prophet.
Not only do all Mohammedans turn toward Mecca to pray, because it was the birthplace of their Prophet, but many of them build their houses, and even their outhouses, facing Mecca; and when they die they are buried facing Mecca.
Mohammed enjoined his followers to make pilgrimages to Mecca. He advocated this in order to satisfy the pagans of Arabia, who had been doing it for centuries. The city has no economic importance, but the pilgrims who go there each year during the month of Zu el Hajz are a source of income to its one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants.
Tens of thousands of pilgrims visit Mecca annually, although for many who come from far-off lands two years are required to make the trip.
The region about Mecca is all holy. Pilgrims are not permitted to disturb the wild animals nor even to cut the thorns or desert herbs. The holy city of Islam is located in a narrow pocket between the hills where two valleys join. Three forts frown down upon Mecca from the heights and were occupied by Turkish troops until King Hussein’s followers drove them out.
In the center of Mecca is the Great Mosque, which was built as a place of pagan worship many centuries before the birth of Mohammed. It is known as the Mosque of the Kaaba or Masjid Al Haram, which means “the sacred temple.” Within the courtyard is a small cube-shaped building, the famous Kaaba. It is covered over with a gorgeous holy carpet of black silk with a wide border of gold lettering, texts from the Koran. The roof is supported by pillars of aloe wood. Around the edge is a spout of gold, which carries off rain-water. Embedded in one of the walls is the most sacred object in the world to more than two hundred millions of people. It is the black stone of meteoric origin which the Mohammedans believe was tossed down from heaven by the Angel Gabriel to Father Abraham. They say it was once whiter than milk but that it has been turned black by the sins of the people who have kissed it. Others say that it derived its color from Adam’s tears. It has been broken in seven pieces, and its parts are now held together by a background of cement surrounded by a silver band studded with silver nails.
The followers of the Prophet believe that this cubeshaped building rests directly underneath the throne of God. They say it was lowered down from heaven at the request of Adam and that it is an exact duplicate of one that he had seen in paradise before his expulsion, called Beit al Mamur, and frequented by angels. Very few people ever enter the Kaaba, but those who do keep their eyes down in an attitude of reverence and humble submission to divine power. If a pilgrim from Syria enters it, for the rest of his life he never goes barefoot, because he bebeves that his skin has touched holy ground and therefore must never be placed on profane earth again.
The holy carpet which covers the Kaaba is replaced each year by a new one. Formerly there were two sent each year, one of which came down from
Damascus from the sultan of Turkey, while the other was made in Cairo and presented to the mosque by the sultan of Egypt. When a new one is put up, the old one is cut into bits by the pilgrims, who take the pieces home for souvenirs.
According to tradition, from the dawn of creation to judgment day at least one pilgrim is always supposed to be engaged in walking seven times around the Kaaba. But about every twenty years great floods come and fill all the streets of Mecca, including the mosque, and when these floods occur men are hired to swim around it day and night in order that the ceremony may never be interrupted.
The pilgrims kiss the black stone, run around the building seven times, take a drink from a holy well called Zem Zem, and kiss the stone again. Sir Richard Burton said that when he tried to kiss the black stone he found himself in a milling throng of religious devotees, each of whom was trying to force his way through the crowd in order that he might press his lips against the most sacred object in the World. He said that these religious enthusiasts were all calling out their prayers in loud voices, and between sentences of their prayers they would stop and curse the man who was elbowing them away from the black stone.
With Lawrence in Arabia Page 6
