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Updated: June 14, 2025
At certain unlucky periods when the moon is in ill-omened Asterisms those who die are placed in bundles of matting upon a tree, the idea being that if buried a loss would result to the tribe. Though superstitious, the Somal are not bigoted like the Arabs, with the exception of those who, wishing to become learned, visit Yemen or El Hejaz, and catch the complaint.
The Master entered the pilot-house and assumed control. As Nissr passed over the extraordinary Hejaz Railway, indifferent to the mob of frenzied, vituperating pilgrims, the chief peered far ahead for his first sight of Mecca, the Forbidden. He had not long to wait. On the horizon, the hills seemed suddenly to break away.
Then in 1848 a new intrigue reinstated Abd el Mutalleb and the Zeyds; and then, in 1853, these were again deposed for rebellion, and an Aoun was placed in power. From 1853 till 1880 the Aouns retained the Grand Sherifate and were supreme in Hejaz.
At no modern period has a larger number of slaves been imported into Hejaz and Yemen than during the last eighteen months, and until friendly relations with the Porte, or whatever Mussulman authority succeeds the Porte in those provinces, are restored, slave-trading will continue.
The Sherifs, proud of their sacred ancestry, look upon the Turkish Caliphs as barbarians and impostors, while the Sultans find the Hejaz a heavy charge upon their revenue. Either hates and despises the other, the patron and the patronized; and, save that their union is a necessity, it would long ago have, by mutual consent, been dissolved.
It will be remembered, from what has already been written, that active operations were in progress about this time between the Turks south-east of the Dead Sea and our Arab allies, the troops of the King of the Hejaz. The Turkish line of communications ran down the Hejaz Railway through eastern Palestine, temptingly near our forces at Jericho.
The Allied thrust at the Dardanelles and Gallipoli had failed, the Aden Protectorate was in Turkish hands, we had spent a most unpleasant Easter in Sinai, and Kut had fallen. Still, the Turks were soon to realise that a wrongly-invoked jihad, like a mishandled musket, can recoil heavily, and, before the end of May, signs were not wanting that trouble was brewing for them in the Hejaz.
As nearly all modern arguments respecting the Caliphate appeal to examples in the earliest period, it will be well to consider the origin of its institution and the political basis of Islam itself. He was by birth a prince of the princely house of the Koreysh, itself the noblest tribe of Hejaz, and his grandfather had been supreme ruler in Mecca.
An excellent example of their system has recently been given in the episode of the late Grand Sherif's death, and the story of it will serve also to show the fear entertained by the present Sultan of this his great spiritual rival. To tell it properly I must go back to the epoch of the Wahhabite invasion of Hejaz in 1808.
And in a page or two after such divine sentiment, the ladies of Bagdad sit in the porter's lap, and indulge in a facetiousness which would have killed Pietro Aretino before his time. Often I am visited by the Topchi-Bashi, or master of the ordnance, half a dozen honeycombed guns, a wild fellow, Bashi Buzuk in the Hejaz and commandant of artillery at Zayla.
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