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Updated: July 26, 2025
Jeddah is indeed in the pilgrim season the suburb of a great metropolis, and even a European stranger there feels that he is no longer in a world of little thoughts and local aspirations. On every side the politics he hears discussed are those of the great world, and the religion professed is that of a wider Islam than he has been accustomed to in Turkey or in India.
The missionary question should be left to the reigning house for decision; it is not fair to hamper the Hejaz with unnecessary complications, and to allow active missionary propaganda at a pilgrim-port like Jeddah is asking for trouble, apart from the flagrant violation of religious sentiment. Imagine Catholic feeling if an enterprising Moslem mission were established at Lourdes.
Indeed, a great many of the pilgrims the people from Central Asia, for instance don't speak Arabic at all. But I felt sure that if I went down the Red Sea alone on a pilgrim steamer, landed alone at Jeddah, and went up with a crowd of others to Mecca, living with them, sleeping with them, day after day, sooner or later I should make some fatal slip and never reach Mecca at all.
At last the caravan entered the fertile district of Tak or El Gasch, a wide watered plain, whose soil is wonderfully fertile, but which for two months in the year is uninhabited. Grain is plentiful and is sold in Jeddah for twenty per cent. more than the best Egyptian millet.
The Sultan levies no tax in the interior or impost of any kind, and the sole revenue he receives in Hejaz comes from Customs duties of Jeddah and Yembo, which may amount to £40,000.
We continued the bombardment on the night of the 11th and were in action most of the day on the 12th, shelling the Turkish positions north of Jeddah, which we had located by glass and the co-operation of friendly fishing-craft who gave us the direction by signal.
Good money is paid at Cowes to see no more spirited sailing we had to put a shot across the bows of the leading dhow before they would abandon the race. There was always trouble off Jeddah the approaches to that reef-girt harbour lend themselves to blockade-running dhows with sound local knowledge on board.
In former years the market was abundantly stocked; the numbers annually shipped to Mocha, Hodaydah, Jeddah, and Berberah, varied from 600 to 1000. The Hajj received as duty one gold "Kirsh," or about three fourths of a dollar, per head.
The history of the Babites, so well described by M. de Gobineau in his Religions of Asia, is a case in point, and similar occurrences are by no means rare in Persia. I met at Jeddah a highly educated Persian gentleman, who informed me that he had himself been witness when a boy to a religious prodigy, notorious, if I remember rightly, at Tabriz.
Even at Jeddah Christians were only just tolerated before the War, and I found it advisable, when exploring its tortuous bazars, to wear a tarboosh, which earned me the respectful salutations then accorded to a Turk. The indigenous townsfolk of Jeddah are the "meanest" set of Moslems I have ever met I use the epithet in its American sense, as indicating a blend of currishness and crabbedness.
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