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A hadjy had been robbed, on the preceding night, of three hundred dollars; and at Arafat several dozen of camels were stolen by the Bedouins: two of the thieves had been pursued and seized, and carried before Mohammed Aly at Muna, who ordered them to be beheaded. Their mutilated bodies lay before his tent the whole of the three days, with a guard, to prevent their friends from taking them away.
"Allah kebur, God is most powerful! That man has suffered much and what has he to show for it? a green turban. He is a hadjy; I never thought that we should have heard so good a story about a `crust of bread. His description of the simoom parched up my entrails. What think you, Mustapha, cannot a true believer go to Heaven without a visit to the tomb of the Prophet?"
Nearly in front of the Bab-es'-Salam; and nearer to the Kaaba than any of the other surrounding buildings, stands the Makam Ibrahim. The stone is said to have yielded under the weight of the patriarch, and to preserve the impression of his foot still visible upon it; but no hadjy has ever seen it, as the frame is always entirely covered with a brocade of red silk richly embroidered.
For a month subsequent to the conclusion of the Hadj, I found, almost every morning, corpses of pilgrims lying in the mosque; myself and a Greek hadjy, whom accident had brought to the spot, once closed the eyes of a poor Mogrebyn pilgrim, who had crawled into the neighbourhood of the Kaaba, to breathe his last, as the Moslems say, "in the arms of the prophet and of the guardian angels."
A negro hadjy once asked me, after a short conversation with him in the mosque, if I knew what prayers he should recite to make Mohammed appear to him in his sleep, as he wished to ask him a particular question; and when I expressed my ignorance, he told me that the Prophet had here appeared to a great many of his countrymen.
Of its brilliant shops, one-fourth only remained; and in the streets, where a few weeks before it was necessary to force one's way through the crowd, not a single hadjy was seen, except solitary beggars, who raised their plaintive voices towards the windows of the houses which they supposed to be still inhabited.
To the regular caravans above mentioned, must be added large bodies of Bedouins, which resort to Mekka, during peace, from every part of the Desert; for even among the least religious Bedouins, the title of hadjy is respected: Nedjed sends its pilgrims, as do also the Southern Bedouins.
A swift dromedary. The Maribout stopped his dromedary at the tent of the Emir Hadjy, who commanded the caravan. Anxious to know the reason of his following us, which I had a foreboding was connected with my camel, I hastened to the spot.
The Balesan for sale at Djidda and Mekka, from whence it comes to Cairo, always undergoes several adulterations; and if a hadjy does not casually meet with some Bedouins, from whom he may purchase it at first hand, no hopes can be entertained of getting it in a pure state.
Almost every hadjy, when he repairs to the mosque for evening prayer has a jar of the water placed before him by those who earn their livelihood by performing this service.
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