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Updated: May 28, 2025
From Lye the road leads over mountains for about two hours, and then descends into the great Eastern plain, where, at a distance of seven or eight hours from Lye, and twelve from Tayf, lies the small town of Kolakh: here were the head-quarters of the Turkish army for several months in 1814. It is an open place, without trees or enclosures, with many water-pits.
I was now in possession of a sum sufficient to banish all apprehension of suffering from poverty before the arrival of fresh supplies from Egypt, whatever might be the consequence of my application to the Pasha; but Yahya Effendi was no sooner gone, than I received a somewhat favourable answer to the letter I had written to Tayf.
A few Arabs of Beni Salem here sow some fields with durra, which they irrigate by means of a fine spring of running water issuing from a cleft in the mountains, where it forms several small basins and pretty cascades the best water I had drank since leaving the mountains of Tayf. We started from hence in the afternoon, and encountered more heavy rain from mid-day to sun-set.
The water of Ras el Kora is celebrated throughout the Hedjaz for its excellence. While Mohammed Ali remained at Mekka and at Djidda, he received a regular supply of Nile water for drinking, sent from Egypt, by every fleet, in large tin vessels; but on passing this place, he found its water deserving of being substituted for the other: a camel comes here daily from Tayf for a load of it.
I believe that two thousand is the largest yearly number of Barbary pilgrims. The last caravans comprised altogether from six to eight thousand men. Two Yemen pilgrim caravans used to arrive at Mekka, in former times, by land. The one called Hadj el Kebsy, started from Sada, in Yemen, and took its course along the mountains to Tayf and to Mekka.
Some merchants from Tayf had just brought in a load of grapes; and, although I felt myself still weak from the fever, I could not withstand this temptation, and seized a few of them; for the baskets were no sooner opened than the whole company fell upon them, and soon devoured the entire load; the owner, however, was afterwards paid.
No. Notices respecting the Country south of Mekka. I HAVE already described the road from Mekka to Tayf. Four hours distant from Tayf, in a S.E. direction, is Lye, a wady with a rivulet, fine gardens, and many houses on the borders of the stream.
From Zeyme, the road to Tayf leads, on the second day, from Mekka to Seyl, a rivulet so called, flowing across a plain, which is without trees, but affords abundance of rich pasture. At Seyl, the road enters a mountainous tract, through which is a difficult and very narrow passage of about six hours. The station of
The plain contained, dispersed in different parts, from twenty to twenty-five thousand camels, twelve thousand of which belonged to the Syrian Hadj, and from five to six thousand to the Egyptian; besides about three thousand, purchased by Mohammed Aly from the Bedouins in the Syrian Deserts, and brought to Mekka with the Hadj, to convey the pilgrims to this place, previously to being used for the transport of army-provisions to Tayf.
From the summit of the declivity just mentioned, Tayf is seen in the distance. At half an hour from the foot of the mountain, we entered a fertile valley, called Wady Mohram, extending from N.W. to S.E. Like the upper district, it is full of fruit-trees; but the few cultivated fields are watered from wells, and not by running streams.
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