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Updated: June 11, 2025
Emir Feisal is, no doubt, an enlightened prince, but one swallow does not make a summer, and Hejazi troops have not yet evolved enough moral to dominate and control a more formidable breed or be trusted with the peace and welfare of a more civilised population, especially where there are large non-Moslem communities.
In practice, however, we soon found that the Hejazi merchants were selling direct to the Turks and letting their fellow-countrymen have what was left at the highest possible price. On top of it all India started a howl that her pilgrims in the Hejaz were starving, and we had to defer to this outcry.
The inference is that if the limits of Hejazi rule are to be much extended there had better be a clear understanding with their neighbours and also some definite idea of the extent to which we are likely to be involved in support of our protégé.
We gave them water and their position, but I told the reis that he was putting more strain on the mercy of Allah than he was, individually, entitled to. But the craft that plied along the Hejazi coast were sinister customers and wanted watching.
An interdiction of the Haj, or the threat of such for a single year, would act upon every purse among the Hejazi and neutralize the hostility of the most recalcitrant of resident caliphs or sherifs; while a systematic development of the pilgrimage as a Government undertaking, with the construction of a railway from Jeddah to Mecca, and the establishment of thoroughly well-ordered lines of steamers from the principal Mohammedan ports, all matters which would amply repay their cost, would every year add a new prestige to English influence.
Though of less ability than Abdallah, he is described as eminently humane and virtuous, and it is certain that, with the exception of his hereditary enemies, the Zeyds, he was universally beloved by the Hejazi.
After certain communications had passed between the representatives of His Majesty's Government and the Sharif, it was decided to tighten the blockade and so induce the gentle Hejazi to declare himself. The day was fixed, May, 15, on and after which date no traffic whatever was to be permitted with the Arabian coast other than that specially sanctioned by Government.
The Hejazi troops were ably led by the Sharifian Emirs and Syrian officers of note, and had the co-operation of the Red Sea flotilla on the coast and British officers of various corps inland to cut off Medina, the last place of importance held by the Turks after the summer of 1916.
Mohammed Towfik, if he were a man of genius like his grandfather, or if, honest man as he is, he plays his cards with success, might in a few years become an important rival at Mecca to the Sultan. To say nothing of its traditional connection with the Caliphate, Egypt has the more modern recollection of Mehemet Ali to urge upon the Hejazi in its favour as the protecting State of Islam.
It is hardly too much to say that one can learn more of modern Islam in a week at Jeddah than in a year elsewhere, for there the very shopkeepers discourse of things divine, and even the Frank Vice-Consuls prophesy. The Hejazi is less shy, too, of discussing religious matters than his fellow Mussulmans are in other places.
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