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

one who ventures to abuse, much more to strike him.[FN#19] They
receive a stranger at the shop window with the haughtiness of Pashas,
and take pains to show him, by words as well as by looks, that they
consider themselves as
[p.10]“good gentlemen as the king, only not so rich.” Added to this
pride are 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