Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 22, 2025
They are all very warlike, but the Wahabys have succeeded in checking their private feuds. The country from Mekka southwards near the sea-shore, to the west of the chain of mountains, is flat, intersected with hills that gradually disappear as we approach the sea, of which the shore presents a level plain in almost every direction at the distance of several hours.
The Wahaby chief sends all his horses to this place every season. It has walls and towers, and was successfully defended against the Pasha of Baghdad in 1797. It is one of the principal strongholds of the Wahabys; and their chief derives from this fertile district the greater part of his income.
I was informed that the transport trade in provisions from Yembo had been shut up for several years after the conquest of Medina by the Wahabys, whose chief, Saoud, wished to favour his own subjects of Nedjed; and that Medina in the mean time drew all its supplies from Nedjed, and its own fields.
I shall here observe that Aly Bey el Abassy has made a strange mistake with respect to the host of Wahabys, whom he saw entering Mekka at the time of the pilgrimage; for he fancied that they came to take possession of the town, and flattered himself that he was present at the first conquest of Mekka by the Wahabys, while every child in the place could have informed him that this event happened three years before his arrival in the Hedjaz.
Several tombs of hadjys were seen near the wells, which the Wahabys had respected; for they seldom injured any tombs that pride or bigotry had left unadorned. January 21st. We set out at three o'clock P.M. The plain we crossed is either flinty, or presents spots of cultivable clay. The direction was north.
The mosque is a square solid-built edifice of small dimensions. Its dome was thrown down by the Wahabys, but they spared the tomb. The mosque encloses the tomb of Hamze, and those of his principal men who were slain in the battle; namely, Mesab ibn Omeyr, Djafar ibn Shemmas, and Abdallah ibn Djahsh.
In the autumn of 1811, when the Turkish army under Tousoun Pasha effected its first landing near the town, the Yembawys were very willing to shake off the government both of the Sherif and the Wahabys; and the officers of Ghaleb and Saoud then in the town fled, and, after a trifling show of resistance, the two first days, by Ghaleb's commander, who had but a few soldiers with him, and who soon saw that the spirit of the inhabitants was wholly against fighting, the town opened its gates, and experienced some slight injuries from the disorderly Turkish soldiers.
The Mekkawys say, that before the Wahaby invasion, singers might be heard during the evening in every street, but that the austerity of the Wahabys, who, though passionately fond of their own Bedouin songs, disapproved of the public singing of females, occasioned the ruin of all musical pursuits: this, however, may be only an idle notion, to be ranked with that which is as prevalent in the East as it is in Europe, that old times were always better in every respect than the present.
Soon after the death of Sherif Pasha, the Sherif Ghaleb was obliged to surrender Mekka to the Wahabys, having been besieged, the preceding year, in Djidda, by Saoud. He then openly declared himself a proselyte to the Wahaby faith, and a subject of the Wahaby chief, though he still retained full possession of Djidda and the produce of its customs, which formed the principal part of his income.
The Wahabys declared this ceremony of the Hadj to be a vain pomp, of idolatrous origin, and contrary to the spirit of true religion; and its use was one of the principal reasons which they assigned for interdicting the caravans from repairing to Mekka. In the first centuries of Islam, neither the Omeyades nor the Abassides ever had a Mahmal.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking