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Updated: June 17, 2025
All kinds of fruits are cultivated there, with which the market of Yembo is supplied. The houses, I heard, are built of stone, and of a better appearance than those of Djedeyde. The Yembawys consider this valley as their original place of abode, to which the town and harbour belong as a colony.
At seven hours and a half, we passed El Kheyf, the last village in the valley of Djedeyde; several insulated groups of houses are also scattered along the valley. About eighty tents of Turkish soldiers were pitched here, to guard this pass; one of the most important positions in the Hedjaz, because it is the only way by which caravans can proceed from Mekka or Yembo to Medina.
Besides the port of Djidda, that of Yembo, where the Sherif kept a governor, was subjected to similar duties. He also levied a tax as well upon all cattle and provisions carried from the interior of the country into Djidda, as upon those carried into Mekka, Tayf, and Yembo, except what came with the two great hadj-caravans from the north, which passed every where duty-free.
At Medina several persons engage in small commercial transactions, chiefly concerning provisions; a lucrative branch of traffic, as the town depends for its support upon the caravans from Yembo, which are seldom regular, and this circumstance causes the prices of provisions continually to fluctuate.
Yembo was formerly annexed to the government of the Sherif of Mekka, who ought to have divided the receipts at the custom-house with the Turkish Pasha of Djidda. Ghaleb appropriated it entirely to his own treasury, and kept here a vizier, or governor, with a guard of about fifty or sixty men.
The produce of the fields which surround the town, is said to be barely sufficient for four months' consumption; for the rest, therefore, it must depend upon Yembo, or imports from Egypt.
The water is excellent, much better than that of any other town of the Hedjaz, where the inhabitants are not industrious enough to form similar cisterns. When the winter-rains fail, the inhabitants of Yembo suffer severely, and are obliged to fill their water-skins at the distant wells of Aseylya.
At Mekka, also, and at Tayf, Medina, and Yembo, all the druggists are of Indian descent; and although they have been established in the country for several generations, and completely naturalized, yet they continue to speak the Hindu language, and distinguish themselves in many trifling customs from the Arabs, by whom they are in general greatly disliked, and accused of avarice and fraud.
At fourteen hours, having travelled the whole night over bad ground, we saw Yembo at sun-rise; and after a ride of fifteen hours and a half, at a very slow pace, we reached the gate of the town: just before it we crossed an inlet of the harbour, it being then low water, but which extends to a considerable distance inland at high tide.
"The name is spelled in so many different ways it is hard to find it in the books. Sometimes it is Yembo, Yanba, and Yembu, and again it is Zembo, Zambu, and Zanba. It is Yembo on my charts, and for that reason I use it. It is of not much importance except as the port of Medina, the later home of Mohammed, where the professor will take you at the next conference this afternoon.
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