Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah, vol 2 | Page 4

indolence, and the true Arab prejudice, which, even in the present day, prevents a Badawi from marrying the daughter of an artisan. Like Castilians, they consider labour humiliating to any but a slave; nor is this, as a clever French author remarks, by any means an unreasonable idea, since Heaven, to punish man for disobedience, caused him to eat daily bread by the sweat of his brow. Besides, there is degradation, moral and physical, in handiwork compared with the freedom of the Desert. The loom and the file do not conserve courtesy and chivalry like the sword and spear; man “extends his tongue,” to use an Arab phrase, when a cuff and not a stab is to be the consequence of an injurious expression. Even the ruffian becomes polite in California, where his brother-ruffian carries his revolver, and those European nations who were most polished when every gentleman wore a rapier, have become the rudest since Civilisation disarmed them.
By the tariff quoted below it will be evident that Al-Madinah is not a cheap place.[FN#20] Yet the citizens,
[p.11]despite their being generally in debt, manage to live well. Their cookery, like that of Meccah, has borrowed something from Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Persia, and India: as all Orientals, they are exceedingly fond of clarified butter.[FN#21]
[p.12]I have seen the boy Mohammed drink off nearly a tumbler-full, although his friends warned him that it would make him as fat as an elephant. When a man cannot enjoy clarified butter in these countries, it is considered a sign that his stomach is out of order, and all my excuses of a melancholic temperament were required to be in full play to prevent the infliction of fried meat swimming in grease, or that guest-dish,[FN#22] rice saturated with melted—perhaps I should say—rancid butter. The “Samn” of Al-Hijaz, however, is often fresh, being brought in by the Badawin; it has not therefore the foul flavour derived from the old and impregnated skin-bag which distinguishes the “ghi” of India.[FN#23] The house of a Madani in good circumstances is comfortable, for the building is substantial, and the attendance respectable. Black slave-girls here perform the complicated duties of servant-maids in England; they are taught to sew, to cook, and to wash, besides sweeping the house and drawing water for domestic use. Hasinah (the “Charmer,” a decided misnomer) costs from $40 to $50; if she be a mother, her value is less; but neat-handedness, propriety of demeanour, and skill in feminine accomplishments, raise her to $100=￡25. A little black boy, perfect in all his points, and tolerably intelligent, costs about a thousand piastres; girls are dearer, and eunuchs fetch double that sum. The older the children become, the
[p.13]more their value diminishes; and no one would purchase[,] save under exceptional circumstances, an adult slave, because he is never parted with but for some incurable vice. The Abyssinian, mostly Galla, girls, so much prized because their skins are always cool in the hottest weather, are here rare; they seldom sell for less than ￡20, and they often fetch ￡60. I never heard of a Jariyah Bayza, a white slave girl, being in the market at Al-Madinah: in Circassia they fetch from ￡100 to ￡400 prime cost, and few men in Al-Hijaz could afford so expensive a luxury. The Bazar at Al-Madinah is poor, and as almost all the slaves are brought from Meccah by the Jallabs, or drivers, after exporting the best to Egypt, the town receives only the refuse.[FN#24]
The personal appearance of the Madani makes the stranger wonder how this mongrel population of settlers has acquired a peculiar and almost an Arab physiognomy. They are remarkably fair, the effect of a cold climate; sometimes the cheeks are lighted up with red, and the hair is a dark chestnut—at Al-Madinah I was not stared at as a white man. The cheeks and different parts of the children’s bodies are sometimes marked with Mashali or Tashrih, not the three long stripes of the Meccans,[FN#25] but little scars generally in threes. In some points they approach very near the true Arab type, that is to say, the Badawi of ancient and noble family. The cheek-bones are high and saillant, the eye small, more round than long,
[p.14] piercing, fiery, deep-set, and brown rather than black. The head is small, the ears well-cut, the face long and oval, though not unfrequently disfigured by what is popularly called the “lantern-jaw”; the forehead high, bony, broad, and slightly retreating, and the beard and mustachios scanty, consisting of two tufts upon the chin, with, generally speaking, little or no whisker. These are the points of resemblance between the city and the country Arab. The difference is equally remarkable. The temperament of the Madani is not purely nervous, like that of the Badawi, but admits a large admixture of the bilious, and, though