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Updated: May 31, 2025
We remained a few minutes only, about midnight, at Szafra, to drink some coffee in one of the shops, and then continued our road to the westward of the route by which I reached Szafra in coming from Mekka. Thick date- plantations form an uninterrupted line on both
The market of Beder is furnished with the same articles as that of Szafra. Some water-melons, the produce of the gardens, were offered for sale. The Maskat merchant purchased, without my knowledge, five pounds of Mekka balsam, all that remained in the market, which he intended for a present to the Imam of Maskat. It was in the same adulterated state as that I had formerly seen at Szafra.
At the end of two hours and three quarters, the road begins to ascend, and the soil of the valley, which thus far from Szafra is gravel intermixed with sand, now becomes stony. We stopped here for a quarter of an hour; where we were surrounded by many of the inhabitants; and on remounting my camel, I found that several trifling articles had been pilfered from my baggage.
At the end of thirteen hours, we came to level ground at its top, and there entered the valley of Es' Szafra, close by the village of the same name, at which we alighted. January 23d. Our camels being tired, having found very little food on the road, though they always had the whole morning to pasture, and several of them threatening to break down, the drivers stopped here the whole day.
The Beni Harb established at Djedeyde, Szafra, and Beder, give their daughters in marriage to strangers, and even to settlers; and a few Turkish soldiers, attracted by the beauty of some Bedouin girls, had fixed themselves here, and married them: one of them, an Arnaut, who spoke good Arabic, and had been accustomed from his youth to the wild life of warlike mountaineers, intended to follow his young wife to the mountain.
We were accompanied thus far by a number of people from Medina, in compliment to one of the Muftis of Mekka, who had been on a visit to the town, and was now returning to his home, intending to leave our caravan at Szafra. He had several tents and women with him.
The copious rains were a sure prognostic of a plentiful year, and the ever-recurring questions put to our guides by the people they passed on the road were, whether such and such a spot in the upper country was well drenched with rain. In seven hours we came to Szafra.
Abdullah Pasha of Damascus, who conducted the Hadj eighteen times in person to Mekka, was compelled to do the same. Whenever the Harb are in amity with the caravan, they have a right to a considerable passage duty, which is paid at Djedeyde. Szafra appeared to me better peopled, and to contain more houses, than are now in Djedeyde.
Szafra and Beder are the only places in the Hedjaz where the balsam of Mekka, or Balesan, can be procured in a pure state. The tree from which it is collected grows in the neighbouring mountains, but principally upon Djebel Sobh, and is called by the Arabs Beshem. I was informed that it is from ten to fifteen feet high, with a smooth trunk, and thin bark.
Our road lay in a broad sandy valley, with little windings, which brought us, after a very fatiguing march of fourteen hours and a half, to Beder. April 25th. Beder, or as it is also called, Beder Honeyn, is a small town, the houses of which are built either of stone or mud, and of better appearance, although less numerous, than those of Szafra.
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