Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: August 19, 2024
On their arrival before its gates, he joined them, and was received by Ahmed Bonaparte, the Turkish commander, with distinguished honours; the town was soon after attacked, and the castle taken by capitulation: but after the Wahaby party was totally suppressed in these parts, both Medheyan, to whom safe-conduct had been promised, and Hassan el Kalay, were seized, put in chains, and sent by way of Cairo to Constantinople, where they experienced the fate which, the latter at least, well merited, though his crimes can never excuse the treachery of those who seized him.
During my stay at Damascus, which is the richest book-market in the East, and the cheapest, from being very little frequented by Europeans, I heard that several Arabs of Baghdad, secretly commissioned for that purpose by Saoud, the Wahaby chief, had purchased there many historical works.
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.
Othman el Medhayfe, the famous Wahaby chief, a principal instrument employed by Saoud in the subjugation of the Hedjaz, was himself a Sheikh of Adouan; and Sherif Ghaleb had married his sister. The other Sherifs
Before the Wahaby conquest it was a custom among the Asyr Arabs, to take their marriageable daughters, attired in their best clothes, to the public market, and there, walking before them, to cry out, Man yshtery el Aadera? "Who will buy the virgin?" The match, I heard that tigers and wolves abound in these mountains, but that there are not any lions.
I knew Turks established at Cairo, who, even while the Wahaby faith predominated in the Hedjaz, went every year by way of Cosseir to Mekka; and there are a few individuals who reside constantly in that city, that they may pass the remainder of their days in pious duties and abstraction from the world.
Prior to the Wahaby conquest, when the inhabitants were often exposed to bloody affrays among themselves, they always went armed with the djombye, or crooked Arabian knife: at present few of these are seen; but every body, from the highest to the lowest, carries in his hand a long heavy stick.
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.
When Saoud, the Wahaby chief, attacked the northern parts of the Hedjaz, his first endeavours were to reduce the two great Bedouin tribes Beni Harb and Beni Djeheyne to submission; which was greatly facilitated by the hatred and animosity that had always existed between those tribes, who were frequently at war with each other.
The number of inhabitants may be estimated, according to the report of the Bedouins, who state that the town furnished three thousand men armed with firelocks to the Wahaby chief: they are composed of different tribes, principally the Mekren, a branch of the Messalykh, part of the great Aeneze race.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking