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141

CHAPTER XIII

FROM HOFHOOF TO KATEEF

Hardly the place of such antiquity

Or note, of these great monarchies we find;
Only a fading verbal memory;

An empty name in writ is left behind-Fletcher

ABOO-'EYSA'S HOME-GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE INHABITANTS OF HAŞA

THEIR AVERSION FROM THE WAHHABEES-RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE CARMATHIAN MOVEMENT IN ARABIA-ITS CHARACTER AND RESULTSSUBSEQUENT FORTUNES OF HAŞA-OUR LODGINGS AT HOFHOOF-DESCRIPTION OF THE TOWN-THE KÔT THE ĶEYSAREEYAH—THE RIFEY'EEYAH—THE NA'ATHAR-FORTIFICATIONS-THE KHOȚEYM-NEIGHBOURHOOD OF HOFHOOF-HOT SPRINGS-EARTHQUAKES-NATURE OF THIS DISTRICT VEGETATION-DECLINE OF AGRICULTURE, MANUFACTURE, AND COMMERCE-CLIMATE-NABȚEE VERSIFICATION-THE NABATHÆANS-WHO, THEY WERE-REMARKS ON THE MISAPPLICATION OF NAMES-LITERATURE IN HAŞA-DRESS-ORNAMENT-PLEASURE PARTIES OF MOGHOR-OUR OWN LIFE AT HOFHOOF-EVENINGS IN SOCIETY-DISAFFECTION AGAINST ISLAM AND THE WAHHABEE GOVERNMENT-ANTI-WAHHABEE CONSPIRACY-ITS RAMIFICATIONS AND PROGRESS NEJDEAN SPIES-A FAIR AT HOFHOOFVISIT TO MEBARRAZ-THE CASTLE AND TOWN-INTERIOR OF A HOUSEGARDENS AND PLANTATIONS-THE KHALAŞ DATE-VISIT TO OMM-SABAA' -DESCRIPTION OF THE FOUNTAIN-AN ARAB PICNIC-THE WATERS OF ПAŞA -WOMEN-ARAB CURRENCY-THE HAŞA COINAGE-PLANS FOR VISITING 'OMAN-DEPARTURE FROM HOFHOOF-AN INCIDENT-KELĀBEEYAH—THE NORTH HAŞA ROAD-CHARACTER OF THE COUNTRY-DJEBEL-MUSHAHHAR OF KATEEF-THE PLAIN-AN AQUEDUCT

-BEDOUINS-'AZMIAH-HILLS

THE

-TOWN OF KATEEF-THE CASTLE-THE SEA-DESCRIPTION OF HARBOUR-FEYŞUL'S NAVY-FARḤĀT, GOVERNOR OF ĶAȚEEF-PALACE OF ĶARMOOT-FARHAT'S Ķ'HAWAH-NEIGHBOURHOOD OF KATEEF-RUINS— A SEMI-PERSIAN SUPPER-LIFE OF NEJDEANS AT KATEEF-WE EMBARK FOR MOHARREK.

It was still night. All was silent in the street and house at the entrance of which we now stood; indeed, none but the master of a domicile could think of knocking at such an hour, nor was Aboo-'Eysa expected at that precise moment. With much difficulty he contrived to awake the tenants; next the shrill

voice of the lady was heard within in accents of joy and welcome, the door at last opened, and Aboo-'Eysa invited us into a dark passage, where a gas-light would have been a remarkable improvement, and by this ushered us into the K'hawah. Here we lighted a fire, and after a hasty refreshment all lay down to sleep, nor awoke till the following forenoon.

Our stay at Hofhoof was very pleasant and interesting, not indeed through personal incidents and hairbreadth escapes--of those we had had a fair traveller's portion at Riad and elsewhere—but in the information here acquired, and in the novel character of everything around us, whether nature, art, or man. Aboo-'Eysa was very anxious that we should see as much as possible of the country, and procured us all means requisite for so doing, while the shelter of his conscious roof, and the precautions which he adopted or suggested, obviated whatever dangers and inconveniences we had experienced in former stages of the journey. Besides, the general disposition of the inhabitants of Ḥaşa is very different from that met with in Nejed and even in Shomer or Djowf, and much better adapted to make a stranger feel himself at home. A sea-coast people, looking mainly to foreign lands and the ocean for livelihood and commerce, accustomed to see among them not unfrequently men of dress, manners, and religion differing from their own, many of them themselves travellers or voyagers to Başrah, Bagdad, Bahreyn, 'Oman, and some even farther, they are commonly free from that half-wondering, half-suspicious feeling which the sight of a stranger occasions in the isolated desert-girded centre; in short, experience, that best of masters, has gone far to unteach the lessons of ignorance, intolerance, and national aversion. Free intercourse with other races has indeed in all lands, unless I am much mistaken, this excellent effect, that, while it nowise lessens, nay even strengthens, national and patriotic feelings, it encourages at the same time a kindlier and a more generous way of thought and action towards other branches of the great human family, and renders men more social to all, without disuniting them among themselves. The history of commercial nations and sea-port cities, whether chronicled in records or read by observers in the great book of life whose pages are countries, affords a constant proof of this.

In Ḥaşa also, independently of the external and circumstantial causes just alluded to, the character of the inhabitants themselves is little predisposed to exclusiveness and asperity. Wahhabeeism exists indeed, but only among the few who form the dominant and hated class; while its presence serves by natural reaction to render the main bulk of the inhabitants yet more averse from a system whose evils they know not only by theory, but more by frequent and bitter experience. Nay, Mahometanism itself, though varnished over most of the surface, is scarce skin-deep, and numbers who hate Islam no less in its ordinary than in its Wahhabee form, are devoid of even this superficial coating. What then is here the prevalent tone and tendency of belief and usage? The question is not easy to answer, nor the answer perhaps more easy to understand, without a certain amount of previous knowledge and research, involving too much minute and lengthy detail for the limits of this work. I will, however, do my best, though in a summary manner, to unravel for the benefit of my readers a skein which cost my own mental fingers no little trouble.

From the period of the great schism which in the first century of Islam divided the Mahometan world into two distinct sections -namely, the Sonnee or orthodox, and the Shiya'ee or the faction of 'Alee and his family, a faction including all attached to that race, and imbued with their peculiar and mystic doctrine -Ḥaşa, with the adjoining lands that reach northwards along the banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris, had joined herself to the latter or Shiya'ee party, and partook, in a measure, of all the vicissitudes of fortune and phases of mind through which the Fatemite family and their partisans were destined to pass. But while the armies of the Ommiade dynasty, and above all the cruelties of the bloodthirsty and infamous Hejjāj, repressed the Shiya'ees of Coufa and Başrah, Ḥaşa, more fortunate in the protection of the intervening desert, was comparatively left to herself, and her inhabitants maintained their distinctive ways. and tenets without much molestation from the victorious Sonnees. In Ḥaşa accordingly the exiled disciples of Moseylemah, the broken troops of Aboo-Na'amat-el-Kataree, the soldiers of the heroic Shebeeb-Aboo-ed-Dokḥāk, the scattered survivors of the prodigies and castle of 'Ata-el-Khorassanee

(more famous by his title of Mokannaa', or the "Veiled" Prophet) -all these and many others of analogous belief and fortunes, took secure refuge, while each successive band brought with it fresh enmity to Islam, and bitterer hatred against the Mahometan system and rule.

The separation of Ḥaşa from that great body of which the Hejazee Arabs were at once the framers and the backbone, was further encouraged by difference of national origin. The first known colonists of these coasts had been Benoo-Khalid and Benoo-Hajar, both of them Kaḥṭānic tribes, and hence unsympathizing with the Arabs whom history or mythos designates by the symbol of Ismael. To the two clans already mentioned had been added the numerous family of Fezarah, Nejdean indeed in origin, but banished by long wars and an enmity of almost fabulous bitterness from Nejed, nor more disposed to fraternize with the Ḥejāzees and their caliphs than the Kaḥṭanees themselves. Last, the clans of Kelb (mortal enemies they of Koreysh), of Belee, of Tenookh, and all the countless branches of Kodaa', the noblest and most high-spirited among the children of Kaḥṭān, had overspread the whole eastern coast from Katar to Başrah, and reached even farther north. Of all the Arab race these were the last to take Islam, and the first to lose it. Finally, the neighbourhood of Persia, and the intoxicating atmosphere of her strange mysticism, were here strongly felt; and this appears to have been the case even in the remotest times on which the doubtful glimmer of legend throws just enough light to redeem them from absolute obscurity. In short, Haşa, formerly, like 'Omān, a stronghold of Sabeeism, and now a subject, rather than a convert, to Islam, was anything but a favourable soil for Mahometan orthodoxy and allegiance.

Much fermentation of opinion, many partial, and for that very reason ineffectual, movements, took place in this province during the first two centuries of Islam; but I pass them by to arrive at the great outbreak headed by Aboo-Sa'eed-el- Djenābee, popularly known as El-Karmoot, a name of which the worldwide celebrity equals the obscurity of its origin, and whence our own European term "Carmathian." In vain did the Caliph of Bagdad, Ma'teḍad-b-'Illah, in the year 287 of the Hejirah, send

his most numerous troops and bravest generals to trample out the rising flame; the armies of Islam were cut to pieces in the battle of Djebel Moghazee by the infuriated Carmathians, whose hatred of Mahometanism led them so far as to burn all their surviving prisoners alive, reserving from the flames one officer alone, whom they dismissed to announce at Bagdad the fate of his companions. Aboo-Sa'eed-el-Karmoot, no longer held in check by fear of the Abbaside soldiery, burst forth with his followers from Haşa, and extended his ravages far and wide over Mesopotamia and Syria itself. To this prince is ascribed the erection of the great fort and palace at Kateef, for more than eight hundred years after the stronghold of his race. But the exploits of his son and successor Aboo-Tahir Soleyman threw those of his father into the shade.

Now followed those tremendous and devastating wars which sealed the downfall of Mahometanism throughout two-thirds of Arabia, while they menaced its very existence in the rest of the Eastern world. With the sword of his predecessor Dja'oonat-elKataree (first chief of the Khowarij in the sixtieth year after the Hejirah) in his hand, and with his verses in his mouththose verses of which Ebn-Khallikān has said that "they would impart courage to the greatest coward that God Almighty ever created"-Aboo - Tahir-el- Karmoot now held the trembling caliph a prisoner in Bagdad, now menaced the citadel of Aleppo, and now filled the precincts of the Ca'abah and the well of Zemzem with Mahometan corpses. In a former chapter I gave, or attempted to give, a faint English echo of Arabian love-song. A few lines from the war-cry of Dja'oonat-el-Kațaree and AbooTahir Soleyman may not be unacceptable to my readers; the more so as historical is here added to poetical interest :

I said to my soul, when a moment struck with dread

In presence of the hostile squadrons, Shame on thee, why dost thou fear?
Wert thou to do thy utmost to prolong thy being for but one day
Beyond the destined term allotted thee, 't were all in vain ;

Bear up, then, amid the eddies of death, bear up,

An eternity of life were an unattainable desire.

Length of days is no mantle of honour to the wearer,

Be it then a robe to wrap the faint-hearted, the coward;
Death is life's goal, and all our paths lead thither;
Death is king, and his herald summons one and all;

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