38 CHAPTER XI HISTORY OF THE WAHHABEE DYNASTY I read the history of man, age after age, And little find therein but treachery and slaughter. Or half the desolation that man brings on man- Arab Poct RISE OF THE EBN-SA'OOD DYNASTY-LATTER YEARS OF SA'OOD II-HIS THE circumstances to which this dynasty owed its rise, have been already stated in the sketch, two chapters back, of Moḥammed-ebn-'Abd-el-Wahhab, and of his position at the castle and court of Sa'ood, the first independent prince of that name at Derey'eeyah. We find special mention of Derey'eeyah in Arab annals, previous to the importance conferred on it by its Wah habee rulers. Riad had been the capital of the 'Aared in the time of Moseylemah and later; 'Eyanah had taken that rank under the Ma'ammer family; while Manfooḥah long remained the head town of Yemamah. Sa'ood, a chief of 'Anezah extraction, and in consequence of kindred blood to Wa'il, Taghleb, and Shomer, had obtained mastery of the village destined to rule Arabia, and held it in vassalage from the BenooMa'ammer. This was about fifty years before the accession of his grandson, the first of the family who assumed the title of king. But Sa'ood the First is regarded in Nejed as the founder of the family. At his death he was succeeded by his son 'Abdel-'Azeez, and who was in his turn followed by Sa'ood the Second, the disciple and the patron of the great Wahhabee. How this prince was converted to the Wahhabee sect, and with what zeal and success he exerted himself in its propagation, I have already described with sufficient minuteness. His reign was long, occupying from first to last nearly fifty years, and before he died he saw his authority acknowledged from the shores of the Persian Gulf to the frontiers of Mecca. The dynasty of EbnTahir in Hasa, of Da'as in Yemamah, of the descendants of Dārim in Kaseem, had each in their turn disappeared before the conqueror, and his empire had already attained an extent equal to that which it covers at the present day. But Sa'ood, no less cautious than enterprising, carefully avoided any encroachment on the limits of the great powers in contact with his new empire. The supremacy of Persia in Bahreyn, and its protectorate in Kateef, were respected by the Nejdean; EbnSa'eed, the monarch or sultan of 'Oman, could complain of no aggression, nor had the sacred frontiers of the Meccan Haram been as yet violated, or any risk incurred of Turkish and Egyptian animosity. Sa'ood himself seems to have been not only victorious abroad, but popular at home; he was a patron of learning and study so far as compatible with the tenets of his own sect; and while he cooperated vigorously in the propagation of Wahhabee doctrines, he did not neglect to adorn his capital with religious and national monuments calculated to feed the pride and to augment the veneration of his subjects. The ruins of an enormous palace, and of a scarce less enormous mosque at Derey'eeyah, even now remain to attest the magnificence of the monarch who reared them, and the old capital displays amid all its present desolation traces of much greater regularity and ornament than Riad can boast. Sa'ood was also averse to unnecessary bloodshed, and humane even in war. His campaigns were regulated by Minerva rather than Bellona; timely pacification often turned the edge of his sword; nor do Nejdean chronicles record any wasting massacres or wholesale devastation in most of the provinces annexed during his reign, not even in Kaseem, where we might have expected the worst. The Benoo-Khalid alone, in Ḥașa, resisted fiercely, but they were unseconded by the majority of the inhabitants, and were soon subdued. On his death-bed Sa'ood called before him his two elder sons, 'Abd-el-'Azeez and 'Abd-Allah; named the first his successor, assigned to the other an honourable position in the government, and, lastly, recommended them most earnestly to follow his own line of policy, and, to quote the expresssion attributed to him by popular tradition, "not to undermine the cliff; "-words denoting the danger they lay under of being some day overwhelmed by the hostility of their more powerful neighbours, and especially of the Ottoman government, seemingly weak, yet crushing by the mere dead weight of its immense resources. In 1800 or near it (my readers will call to mind what I have more than once said about Arab dates) 'Abd-el-'Azeez ascended the throne. His reign was short, but full of events equally glorious and pernicious. Restless and bold, but much less prudent than his father, 'Abd-el-'Azeez at once turned his arms against the East, stormed Kateef, where he made great slaughter of the inhabitants, occupied Bahreyn and the adjacent islands of the Persian Gulf, attacked the eastern coast or Barr-Fāris, which he detached irrecoverably from Persian rule, and lastly assailed the kingdom of 'Oman. This last expedition was headed by his younger brother, the impetuous 'Abd-Allah. The success of the Nejdeans was complete; after several battles, each a victory, 'AbdAllah reached the heights above Mascat, and turned the fort batteries against the town below. The Sultan Sa'eed yielded to the storin, consented to the payment of an annual tribute, admitted a Wahhabee garrison in the more important localities of his kingdom, and permitted the erection of mosques of orthodox fashion in Mascat and elsewhere. But these very conquests were fatal to 'Abd-el-'Azeez, who had by them provoked a foe much more dangerous than any hitherto known to the Wahhabee empire. Kateef and Bahreyn were both of them dependencies of Persia, and had been even more closely linked to the latter kingdom by religious than by civil ties. 'Oman was also in intimate connection with Persia. The court of Teheran resolved to avenge its allies on the Arab brigand. To hazard a Persian army amid the wilds of Arabia would have been a measure equally dangerous and unprofitable; but there remained an easier way through an instrument familiar to Shiya'ees in all ages and climes, namely, the murderer's dagger. Numerous and dissident as are the sects sprung from the quarrels of 'Alee with his more successful rivals, they all of them agree on one point, the traditional approbation and frequent practice of assassination. Shiya'ees of the original stock, Ismaileeyah (assassins par excellence, and from whom all others have derived the name), Druses, Carmathians, Kharijeeyah, Metawelah, in a word, the entire kith and kin from the earliest Rafeḍee down to the Babee of our own time, have and do sanction the assassin's knife, wherever a purpose is to be attained or a rival to be got rid of; it is a part of their practical no less than of their theoretical code. Muslim and Christian, Sonnee and polytheist, each in his day has, an Arab would say, "tasted" the dagger of the multiform Shiya'ee, the prototype "carbonaro" of the East. 'Abd-el-'Azeez was now to learn at his own cost that the "secret sects" of Asia are not to be trifled with. A fanatic, native of the province of Ghilan, the land where 'Abd-el-Kadir had six centuries before made the enthusiasm of his disciples a pedestal to almost divine honours, offered himself for the work of blood. He received suitable instructions in Teheran, whence he journeyed to Meshid Hoseyn, the authentic Mecca of Shiya'ee devotion. There he procured a written pardon of all past or future sins, and a title-deed duly signed and sealed, assuring him the eternal joys of paradise, should he rid the earth of the Nejdean tyrant. With this document carefully rolled up and secured in an amulet round his arm, he took his way under mercantile disguise to Derey'eeyah, and there awaited an occasion for meriting the reward promised to the deed of treachery. 'Abd-el-'Azeez, a sincere Wahhabee, never failed to be present in person at the public prayers held in the great mosque of the town. Then it was that, without arms, and wholly taken up by the scrupulous exactness of devotions which permit no backward or sideward glance, he might prove an easy victim to the meditated crime. This the Persian knew; and when weeks of intercourse and strict outward orthodoxy had acquired him the full confidence of the townsmen, he one day took his stand in the ranks of evening prayer immediately behind 'Abd-el-'Azeez, went through the first two Reka'as of Islamitic devotion, and at the third, while the sultan of Nejed was bowed in prostrate adoration, plunged his sharp Khorassan dagger in his body. The blade penetrated between the shoulders, and came out at the breast; and 'Abd-el-'Azeez lay dead without a groan or struggle. His attendants caught up their swords where they lay ungirded for prayer, and unsheathed them on the assassin. The Persian, courageous from despair, defended himself awhile with the weapon yet dripping royal blood; at last he fell, and was literally hewn to pieces on the ground of the mosque, but not till he had sent three of his assailants to follow their king in death. The written engagement, countersigned by the governor of Meshid Hoseyn, was found on the corpse; and 'Abd-Allah, who was now Sultan of Nejed, swore that his first vengeance for his brother's death should be on the city that had harboured his assassin. These events took place, so far as my informants could supply a date, about 1805 or 1806. 'Abd-Allah henceforth reigned alone; his younger brother Khalid, and Theney'yan, the son of 'Abd-el-'Azeez, with the other members of the family, had no share in the royal power. Khalid left a son, by name Meshāree, the future assassin of Turkee, and already mentioned in this narrative, in which Ebn-Theney'yan and another Khalid, also nephew of 'Abd-Allah, will find subsequent mention. |