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Updated: July 26, 2025
He who would explore Asir should take a Khedivial mail steamer from Suez to Jeddah, and there show his credentials and explain his purpose to his consul and the local authorities. The Idrisi has an agent there, and it should not be difficult to pick up an Asiri dhow returning down the coast to Gîzân, which is the port for Sabbia.
I made acquaintance while at Jeddah with a young Arab from Shinghiat in Senegal who, Bedouin as he was, was an Alem, and one sufficiently well versed in the Sheriat to be referred to more than once in my presence on points of religious law and literature.
It was not altogether without the design of gaining more accurate knowledge than I could find elsewhere on the subject of this Mohammedan revival that I visited Jeddah in the early part of the past winter, and that I subsequently spent some months in Egypt and Syria in the almost exclusive society of Mussulmans.
In this connection a typical incident may be mentioned as illustrating the sort of thing we were up against. The ship I was serving in at the time lay off Jeddah and had three boats down picketing the dhow-channels leading in to that reef-girt harbour, for which dhows were making like homing bees.
More of a Dutchman in build than Arab broad-based, bandy-legged, stubby, stolid, and slow; spare of his speech, but nimble with his fingers in all that appertains to the rigging and working of small boats, as much at ease in the water as a rollicking porpoise such is Hamed of Jeddah. His favourite garment is a light green woollen sweater. He wears other, but less obvious things.
The streets of Jeddah are narrow and tortuous, and the way from the gate to the house of Omar Nassif, his agent, where he was accustomed to alight, was thronged with pious folk, who struggled for the privilege of kissing his feet and the hem of his Arab cloak. He had nearly reached the place when an old beggar from the crowd pushed his way forward asking loudly for alms in the name of God.
The people attributing the rescript to the English and French Consuls of Jeddah, insisted upon pulling down their flags. The Pasha took them under his protection, and on the 14th January, 1856, the "Queen" steamer was despatched from Bombay, with orders to assist the government and to suppress the contest. This weight, as usual in the East, varies at every port.
At Jeddah our Khedivial Mail Agency, under the good old English name of Robinson, was a perfect nest of Germans and pro-German Dutchmen when I called there in 1912. They were very active early in the War, but had wisely disappeared before my last visit, when Jeddah fell to our blockade and bombardment.
I went to the pantry and foraged, and with this simple fare ate my Christmas dinner by his bedside. We stopped in Trieste eight days, just to pack up and complete arrangements for our tour; and on the last day of the old year we left for Jeddah.
Now our first act was a rush for water; then we cleared up our camp, but had to harness our camels ourselves, for the camel drivers had fled at the very beginning of the skirmish. "Then, under the safe protection of Turkish troops, we got to Jeddah. There the authorities and the populace received us very well.
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