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The journey to Medina, like that between Mekka and Djidda, is performed by night, which renders it much less profitable to the traveller, and, in winter time, much less comfortable than it would be by day. We passed through valleys of firm sand, between irregular chains of low hills, where some shrubs and stunted acacia-trees grow. The road, with few exceptions, was perfectly level.

I left him at Djidda when I returned to Mekka, and learnt afterwards that he died there in the month of March, of the plague, and that he was buried by the Greeks of Djidda upon an island in the harbour. When I returned to Mekka, about the 8th or 9th of December, I found no longer the same multitudes of people; but the beggars had

All the Mekka and Djidda merchants wear watches, many of which are of good English manufacture; they are brought either from India, or by the Hadjys from Constantinople.

After the Syrian Hadj had departed, and the greater part of the other pilgrims retired to Djidda, waiting for an opportunity to embark, Mekka appeared like a deserted town.

Mohammed Aly, and Soleyman Pasha of Damascus, as well as several of their officers, had very handsome tents; but the most magnificent of all was that of the wife of Mohammed Aly, the mother of Tousoun Pasha, and Ibrahim Pasha, who had lately arrived from Cairo for the Hadj, with a truly royal equipage, five hundred camels being necessary to transport her baggage from Djidda to Mekka.

The ship-owners are not, as at Djidda, merchants, but merely carriers; yet they always invest their profits in some little mercantile speculation. The transport trade to Medina occupies many people, and all the merchants of that town have their agents among the Arabs of Yembo.

It was in the Mesfale, as I have already mentioned, that I took up my lodging on returning from Djidda, at first in the house of a Maggrebyn settler, from which I soon afterwards removed into that of a Yemen merchant close by.

The distribution of rooms is nearly the same as in the houses of Egypt and Syria; with this difference, however, that in Djidda there are not so many large and lofty apartments as in those countries, where but few houses, at least of the natives, have two stories, whilst the rooms on the ground-floor are sometimes of a considerable height.

The coffee-huts are miserable structures, with half-ruined Formerly, it is said, there were twelve coffee-houses on this road, which afforded refreshments of every kind to the passengers between Djidda and the holy city; but as the journey is now made chiefly during the night, and as the Turkish soldiers will pay for nothing unless by compulsion, most of these houses have been abandoned.

Most of the rice used at Djidda is brought as ballast by the ships from India. The best sort comes from Guzerat and Cutch: it forms the chief article of food among the people of the Hedjaz, who prefer it to the rice from Egypt, because they think it more wholesome than the former, which is used exclusively by the Turks and other strangers from the north-ward.