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The actual holder of the title was Ghaleb ibn Mesaad, and he, finding himself unable to contend against the Wahhabis, became himself a Wahhabi. Consequently, when Mehemet Ali appeared at Mecca in 1812, his first act was to depose this Ghaleb, in spite of his protest that he had returned to orthodoxy, and to appoint another member of the Sherifal House in his place.
He oppressed the merchants of Djidda by heavy duties and his own powerful competition; but he was never known to practise extortion upon them. It was the well-known security which property enjoyed under his government that induced foreign merchants to visit the port of Djidda, even when Ghaleb was reduced to great distress by the Wahabis.
Nearly on the summit of the opposite mountain stands the Great Castle, a very large and massy structure, surrounded by thick walls and solid towers. It commands the greatest part of the town, but is commanded by several higher summits. I heard that this castle owes its origin to the Sherif Serour, the predecessor of Ghaleb; but I believe it to be of a more ancient date.
When Serour and Ghaleb successively possessed themselves of a more uncontrolled authority than any of their predecessors had enjoyed, the remaining Sherifs united more closely with the Mekkawys, and, till the most recent period, formed with them a body respectable for its warlike character, as was evinced in frequent quarrels among themselves; and a resistance against the government, when its measures affected their lives, although they were so far reduced as never to revolt when their purses only were assailed.
Soon after the death of Sherif Pasha, the Sherif Ghaleb was obliged to surrender Mekka to the Wahabys, having been besieged, the preceding year, in Djidda, by Saoud. He then openly declared himself a proselyte to the Wahaby faith, and a subject of the Wahaby chief, though he still retained full possession of Djidda and the produce of its customs, which formed the principal part of his income.
From the date plantation beyond Hadjalye, we reached in half an hour the plain where the Syrian pilgrim-caravan usually encamps, and which has taken the name of Sheikh Mahmoud, from the tomb of a saint so called, built in the midst of it. It is encompassed By this road we ascended, and on the summit of the hill passed two watch-towers, built on each side of the road by the Sherif Ghaleb.
As Ghaleb was a merchant and land-owner, and procured all the articles of consumption at the first hand, the maintenance of his household, with his women and slaves, did not, I should imagine, require above twenty thousand pounds sterling per annum.
Many of the people of Djidda reside in it; and here also the Sherif Ghaleb has a good house, where his family, consisting of several young children The main street is lined with coffee-shops, from which the post sets out every evening, on asses, with the letters for Djidda.
There had been great trouble with the Hamoumi, and only three months before two soldiers had been killed about half a mile from Sheher. Ghaleb Mia and Hussein Mia dared not go to Inbula or anywhere outside their walls without forty or fifty men, and when Sal
This is the last stage of the Eastern-Syrian Hadj route, or that which lies to the east of the Great Hedjaz chain, running from Medina to Mekka. To the S.E. or E.S.E. of Wady Lymoun, is another fertile valley, called Wady Medyk, where some sherifs are settled, and where Sherif Ghaleb possessed landed property.
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