Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope/Volume 2/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
Conscription in Syria—Inviolability of consular houses—Panic and flight of the people of Sayda—Protection afforded by Lady Hester—Story of a boy—Mustafa the barber—Cruelty to mothers of Conscripts—Conscription in the villages —Lady Hester’s dream—Inhabitants of Sayda mulcted—Lady Hester’s opinion of negresses—Severity necessary in Turkey—Case of Monsieur Danna—Captain Y.—Mustafa Pasha’s cruelty.
November 18, 1837.—The conscription for Ibrahim Pasha’s army, called the nizàm or regular troops, was going on at this time, and created much distress in the towns and villages. Forced levies were unknown previous to the conquests of that ambitious prince; as it was customary for the pashas to keep in their pay mercenary troops, composed chiefly of Albanians, a nation that for some centuries had sent its hordes into different parts of the Turkish empire, under the guidance of enterprising chieftains, to seek military service. There were also Bosnians, Kûrds, and some Mograbýns or Moors: these, with the Janissaries or standing militia. had exempted the inhabitants in general from enlistment; and, although the martial and turbulent disposition of the Mohametans had frequently manifested itself in their provincial insurrections and in the petty contentions between neighbouring chieftains, yet a man always went to the camp from choice and from the hopes of booty, and quitted it when tired of the service. But Ibrahim Pasha, among the innovations which he found it necessary or politic to introduce for the furtherance of his father’s views, saw that his whole dependance must be on the adoption of a conscription, after the manner of France and other European states. He had already drained Egypt, in this manner, of all her able-bodied youths; and, to supply the constant waste of men carried off by war and disease, he had, since his first taking possession of Syria, made an annual levy after harvest time.
At first, the idle, vagabond, thievish, and ardent part of the population supplied the numbers he required; and, as fast as they could be collected, they, were shipped off to Egypt; where, marched to the Hedjàz and to distant wars, the major portion of them left their bones, whilst some gained rank and lucrative situations, and a few returned to tell the story of their exploits. For with Ibrahim there was no defined term of service; once a soldier, every man continued so until death or desertion broke the chain. In the same way the Egyptian conscripts were sent into Syria: so that no sympathy, in either case, existed between the troops and the people amongst whom they were quartered, which acted as a direct check upon the spirit of insurrection.
So far, everything had gone on peaceably, and the quiet portion of the inhabitants rejoiced in seeing their neighbourhood cleared of such troublesome rabble. But latterly the conscription had begun to fall on the families of shopkeepers, tradesmen, small farmers, and the like: and it will be seen that, of all the changes introduced by Ibrahim Pasha into the government of the country, the conscription became the most odious.
The first intimation people had of the levies this year was one evening, when, as the inhabitants of Sayda were coming out of their mosques, gangs of soldiers suddenly appeared at the doors, and laid hands on all the young men. At the same moment, similar measures had been taken at the coffee-houses, and nothing was to be seen but young fellows dragged through the streets, or running off in all directions to, secrete themselves in some friend’s house, stable, vault, or the like. The city gates were closed, and there was no outlet for the fugitives: but Sayda, although walled in, has many houses with windows looking on the fields; and from these, during the night, some let themselves down and escaped to the gardens, or villages, or to Mount Lebanon. The next day the city wore the appearance of a deserted place: the shops were closed, and consternation reigned in every face. The panic became general.
It is customary in Turkish towns to consider consular residences as inviolable; a point on which, from apprehension of tumults and for personal safety, the consuls have ever been very tenacious. France possesses, from a long date, a khan or factory-house in Sayda, wherein the subjects of that nation reside. It is a square building with one gateway, containing a spacious quadrangle, surrounded by vaulted warehouses, and, over these, commodious habitations with a handsome corridor in front. It may be compared to a quadrangle of a college at the Universities. To this khan many of the young men fled, being admitted out of compassion, and in some cases for a consideration of a more tangible nature.
The number of conscripts for Sayda, as was made known afterwards, had been rated at one hundred and eighty. When the first press was over, the government found the quota had not yet been half supplied: but the secret of the deficiency was kept, and it was given out that no more would be wanted. A smiling face was assumed by the commandant and his staff, and every expression of sympathy was in their mouths, to demonstrate the cessation of all farther oppressive measures. By calming the people’s fears in this way, information was obtained as to those concealed in the French khan, and scouts were sent about the country to get tidings of the fugitives.
In the mean time, the caverns and excavations, once the beautiful sepulchres of the ancient Sidonians, in which the environs of Sayda abound, were converted into hiding-places, all well known to the peasantry and gardeners : but no soul was found capable of betraying the fugitives. Some were concealed by the Christian peasants in cellars, although the punishment of detection was a terrible bastinadoing. At the end of about a fortnight, when everything seemed calm again, all of a sudden the fathers of those who were known to be in the French khan were seized in their dwellings and shops, and brought before the motsellem or mayor. They were told that their sous’ hiding-places were known, and that means would be resorted to for forcing them to come out, if they, the fathers, did not immediately use their paternal authority to compel them. Anxious to save their children, they strenuously denied any knowledge of their places of concealment. Then it was that the dreadful work of bastinadoing began. From the windows of the east side of the khan was visible the open court in the front of the motsellem’s gate, where, according to the Eastern custom, he often sat to administer justice or injustice, as the case might be, and through those windows the sons might behold their aged fathers, writhing with agony under that cruel punishment, until pain and anguish extorted the appeal of, "Come forth, for mercy’s sake! and save a father’s life." Some yielded to the call, and some thought only of their own safety.
As happens always in all Turkish matters, much bribery arose from this state of tribulation. Nobody in these countries is inaccessible to a bribe. Many were the men in office who received gratifications of vast sums to favour the exemption or escape of individuals. Substitutes could hardly be got, even at the enormous premium of 10,000 piasters each, or £100 sterling; such a dread had the natives of being expatriated and subjected to military discipline! for in Ibrahim Pasha’s army the drill is indeed a terrible ordeal. There, inadvertency, slowness of apprehension, or obstinacy, is not punished by a reprimand, a day's imprisonment, or double drill; but the poor recruit is, at the moment, thrown on the ground, and lacerated without mercy by the korbàsh.
Among the fugitives, there were two young men, the sons of a respectable shopkeeper, who, during twenty years, had been employed, more or less, by Lady Hester: these two fled for refuge to Jôon. No notice was taken of the circumstance by the government; and, after remaining about six weeks under her protection, they returned to Sayda, where they remained unmolested. Her ladyship’s servants also enjoyed an exemption from the press; and, had she chosen to avail herself of the dilemma in which these unfortunate young men were placed, she might easily have ensured their servitude without pay, by the mere threat of turning them adrift: in which case they would have been compelled to remain upon any conditions she might have thought proper to propose.
An old Turk presented himself, one day, at my gate with his son, a boy about fourteen years of age, and, with earnest entreaties, begged me to take the son as my servant, no matter in what capacity, and for nothing. I asked him how he could be apprehensive for a stripling, too young to carry a musket; but he told me that his age was no safeguard. "Alas! said he, "these unprincipled Egyptians will lay hold of him; for there are other kinds of service besides carrying a gun: you do not know them as well as we do." I was very unwillingly obliged to refuse the man’s request; for how could a stranger violate the laws of a country in which he resided, any more than he could harbour a deserter in France, for example, where he would be brought to justice for so doing? But some of the agents of European powers do not scruple, in these parts, to enrich themselves by affording protection to Turkish deserters, contrary to the edicts of a sovereign prince, and then set up, as an excuse, the want of civilization in Mahometan countries.
A woman, the widow of Shaykh Omar ed dyn, came also on a donkey to beg Lady Hester’s intercession with the commandant for one of her sons, a lad, who had been pressed in the streets. Lady Hester sent out word to her that she could not mix herself up in the business, and desired me to give her 500 piasters—I suppose to help her to buy him off. This son, Lady Hester told me, was a beautiful boy, and that she once had him in her house, but could not keep him—he was too handsome! *** A sad picture this of the morals of the Syrian Turks, and yet a true one!
November 20.—After a succession of sunny days, finer and warmer than an English summer, the wind got up at the change of the moon, and it blew a gale. The effect of gloomy weather in climates naturally so genial as that of Syria is perhaps more impressive than in one like that of England, where clouds and fogs are so common. I was therefore in a fit humour to listen to the melancholy stories of her ladyship’s secretary, Mr. Micha el Abella, who had been absent a day or two to see his father and mother at Sayda. He told me that the press for recruits continued with unabated severity, and that the .military commandant and motsellem were resorting to measures, which, I thank God, are unknown in England! From imprisoning and bastinadoing fathers, with a view to make them, produce their children, a measure which had already induced several families to abandon their homes, they now proceeded to bastinado the neighbours and acquaintances of the fugitives, in order to wring from them the secret of their hiding-places.
The reader is already in some degree familiar with the name of Mustafa, the barber, well-known in Sayda for his skill in shaving, phlebotomizing, and curing sores and wounds. He had four or five sons, and he had taken his donkey and ridden up to Jôon to beg of Lady Hester Stanhope to admit one or two of them into her household, in order to save them from the conscription. In the interim, two others had taken refuge in the French khan, and one had fled to Tyr; but the father said he expected hourly to be seized and put to the torture, if some means were not afforded him for protecting his children. "A letter from the Syt mylady to the commandant," added Mustafa, "would be sufficient to save my two boys who are in the French khan, and it is so easy for her to write it. Lady Hester, being ill, could not see Mustafa, and I went to her and stated his supplication. She considered the matter over, and, as Mustafa was rather a favourite, she said at first—"I think I will write to the commandant; for poor Mustafa will go crazy if his children are taken away from him. I have only to say that I wish the commandant to bakshysh" (make a present of) "these boys to me, and I know he will do it:" then, reflecting a little while, she altered her mind. "No, doctor," says she, "it will not do: I must not do anything in the face of the laws of the country; and, besides, I shall have all the fathers and mothers in Sayda up here. Go, tell him so." I did, and Mustafa returned very much dispirited to Sayda.
He had scarcely got back to his shop, when, as he had anticipated, he was summoned before the motsellem, and questioned about his children. With an assumed air of cheerfulness and submission, he answered that they were within call, and, if necessary, he would fetch them immediately. The motsellem, by way of precaution, was about to send a guard of a couple of soldiers, to see that no trick was played him; but Mustafa, laughing, exclaimed—“ Oh ! don't be afraid of me : I shan’t run off. That man" (pointing to a small merchant of his acquaintance standing by)—"that man will be bail for my appearance." The man nodded his head, and said—"There is no fear of Maalem Mustafa: I will be responsible for him."
Mustafa went towards his house, and, as soon as he was out of sight, looking round to make sure that he was not followed, he hurried to one of the outlets of the town, entered a lane between the gardens, and, mounting again on his own donkey, which he had left with a friend in case of such an emergency, rode off. Not appearing within the expected time, search was made for him, and, when he was not to be found, the man, who so incautiously vouched for his reappearance, was seized, bastinadoed, and thrown into gaol. Mustafa, in the mean time, had taken the road to Jôon,—not to Lady Hester’s residence, but to Dayr el Mkhallas, the monastery, where he had a good friend in the abbot, and was immediately sheltered in a comfortable cell. Nor did he, when he heard what cruelties had been inflicted on his bail, move one inch from his retreat, but there remained for about six weeks, until, by negociations with the commandant and by the sacrifice of a good round sum, he was informed that his children were safe, and that he might return unmolested.
The secretary told me that, in some cases, mothers were suspended by the hair of their head, an to make them confess where their children were concealed. Surely such horrors are enough to make men hold these sanguinary tyrants in abhorrence, who, whatever their pretended advances towards civilization may be, never suffer it to soften the barbarity of their natures. Of civilization, they have borrowed conscription, custom-houses, quarantines, ardent spirit and wine-drinking, prostitution, shop licensing, high taxation, and some other of our doubtful marks of superiority; but whatever is really excellent in an advanced state of society they have forgotten to inquire about. The secretary added that, when down at Sayda, he had seen a lad, nursed in the lap of luxury, the only child of respectable parents, at drill on the parade outside of the town, with two soldiers who never quitted him. The drilling was enforced by cuts of the korbash. So long as the recruits remain in Sayda, their parents are allowed to supply them with a meal and other little comforts; but, when transported to Egypt, and perhaps to the Hedjàz, they are exposed to hardships unknown to European troops. Their pay is fifteen piasters (3s. 2d. English) a month.
After the expiration of two or three weeks, the shaykhs or head-men of the villages in Mount Lebanon, received orders to levy their contingent of recruits, and pretty much the same scenes were acted over again. From the village of Jôon eight conscripts were required ; for, although the population might be five hundred persons, there were but few Mahometan families. No sooner had the estafette, who brought the order, alighted at the Shaykh’s door, than the mussulman peasants to a man seemed to guess what its contents were, and every one who thought himself liable to serve made off to the forests. Among the lads put down on the roll were two, the brothers of Fatôom and Sâada, Lady Hester’s maids. The girls fell on their knees, kissed her feet and the hem of her robe, and prayed her, for God’s sake, to save them. Lady Hester returned the same answer she had done to Mustafa, the barber, and to the other applicants, that she could not act contrary to the laws of the country, and that they must take their chance.
Three or four days had elapsed, when, quitting my house in the morning to go to Lady Hester’s, I found that all her people were full of an extraordinary dream she had had. She had seen in her vision a man with a white beard, who had conducted her among the ravines of Mount Lebanon to a place, where, in a cavern, lay two youths apparently in a trance, and had told her to lead them away to her residence. She attempted to raise them, and at the same moment the earth opened, and she awoke. As soon as I saw Lady Hester, she recounted to me her dream to the same effect, but with many more particulars. Being in the habit of hearing strange things of this kind from her, I thought nothing of it, although I well knew there was something intended by it, as she never spoke without a motive.
Next morning I saw, as I passed the porter’s lodge, two peasant lads sitting in it, and, as soon as I got to Lady Hester’s room, she asked me if I had observed them.—"Isn’t it wonderful, doctor," said Lady Hester, "that I should have had exactly the same dream two nights following, and the second time so strongly impressed on my mind, that I was sure some of it would turn out true: and so it has. For this very morning, long before daylight, I had Logmagi called, and, describing to him the way he was to go in the mountain until he should come to a wild spot which I painted to him, I sent him off; and, sure enough, he found those two lads you saw, concealed, not in a cavern, but in a tree, just where I had directed him to go.
"They are two runaway conscripts, and, although I know nothing of them, yet I seem to feel that God directed me to bring them here. Poor lads! did you observe whether they looked pale? they must be in want of nourishment; for the search that is going on everywhere after deserters is very hot. Logmagi himself had no very pleasant duty to perform; for, if they had mistaken him for a man in search of them, one against two in the heart of the mountain ran some risk of his life. You know, one deserter the other day wounded three soldiers who attempted to take him, and another killed two out of five, and, although taken, was not punished by the Pasha, who exchanged willingly an athletic gladiator, who had proved his fighting propensities, for two cowards."
These lads, whom Lady Hester pretended not to know, were the two brothers of Fatôom and Sâada: they were put into a room in an inner enclosure, where they had comfortable quarters assigned them, and were kept for two months hid from observation; by which means they escaped the conscription of that year. At the end of their term, they were one day turned out, told they might go home in safety, and warned that, if ever they made their appearance near the house, they would be flogged. Such were Lady Hester’s eccentric ways; and just as they were wasting their breath in protestations of gratitude, they were frightened out of their senses. No doubt, the reason was that, as from their long stay in the premises, they were more or less acquainted with every locality, it might be that they had formed plans to carry off stolen goods, which Lady Hester thus had the foresight to frustrate. She never told me that her dream was an invention, but I believe that it was.
In addition to the loss of a son, or a husband, or a brother, which the dozen families of Jôon (for there were no more) had to complain of, these same families were taxed at the rate of one, two, or three hundred piasters each, in order to furnish the equipment of the soldiers draughted from among them. For, under the pretext of sending off each recruit with a good kit and with a little money in his pocket, a benevolence tax was invented, the greatest part, of which, after the parings of the collectors, went to the Pasha’s treasury, and the half-naked recruit was left to take his chance. Oh! that a European soldier could see what these men are compelled to live on—how they sleep, how they are flogged—and how they are left to die!—and yet suicide is unknown among them.
The bastinado in Sayda was succeeded by mulcts. An order was published by the Pasha, that those whose sons had concealed themselves, or did not appear by a certain day, should be taxed collectively 1,300 purses, a sum more than enough to pay for substitutes. An appeal was made to Ibrahim Pasha to lessen the fine, but the result never came to my knowledge.
November 19.—I had taken to my house to read the book that Sir Gore Ouseley had sent Lady Hester Stanhope, and I related to her the anecdote of the old woman and the copper dish.[1] This threw a gleam of satisfaction over her countenance. "Ah!" said she, and she made a sigh of pleasurable feeling, "these are the people I like; that’s my sort: but the people now-a-days, who call themselves gentlemen, and don’t know how to blow their nose!—when the first peer of the realm will go about bragging what a trick he has played some poor woman whom he has seduced! Cursed be the hour that ever the name of gentleman came into the language! I have seen hedgers and ditchers at my father’s, who talked twice as good sense as half the fine gentlemen now-a-days—a pack of fellows, that do little else than eat, drink, and sleep. Can one exist with such persons as these? or is it to be supposed that God can tolerate such brutalities?"
I sat by, as I was accustomed to do, on such occasions, mute; knowing that a word uttered at that moment would only increase her irritation, instead of appeasing it. She went on: "And whilst you show no more sensibility than that wall, here am I, a poor dying creature" (and then she wept so that it was piteous to hear her), "half killed by these nasty black beasts. Last night, instead of coming refreshed out of my bath, soothed by a gentle perspiration, I was drier than ever, with my mouth parched, my skin parched, and feebler than I was yesterday. But they will all suffer for it; not here, perhaps, but in the other world: for God will not see a poor miserable creature trampled under foot as I have been."
As she grew a little calm, I expressed my regret to see her so annoyed and tormented by her servants. The conversation then turned on blacks: and I asked— "Are they then never susceptible of feeling: can kind treatment never work on their sensibility?"—"Doctor," answered Lady Hester, "they have neither one nor the other: it is a bit of black skin, which the people of the country say you must work on with the korbash, and with nothing else. I recollect an aga, who told me that he had a black slave, who, when he first bought her, one day got hold of his poniard, and seemed as if she was going to stab him with it. He started up, seized his sabre, and gave her a cut or two; then, with a switch, beat her pretty handsomely. From that day she became fond of him, faithful, and so attached, that, when he wanted to sell her, she would not be sold, but always contrived that the contract should be broken by her swearing she would kill herself, throw herself over the terrace, or something, that made the buyer refuse to take her.
"I recollect another story. There were five European travellers coming down the banks of the Nile on horseback, when they saw an aga, who was sitting in the open air, lay hold of a black woman by the hair of her head, throw her down, and flog her most unmercifully with the korbash. One of the party was a German count, or something, who, being what you call a humane man, said he must interfere; but the others told him he had better not. However, he did: and what was the consequence? why, the woman immediately jumped up, called him an impudent rascal, slapped his face with her slipper, hooted him, and followed the party until she fairly frightened them by her violence.
"No, doctor, they do not like mild people. They always say they want no old hens, but a jigger" (I believe her ladyship meant some ferocious animal) "for their master. As for what you say, that the common people of this country stand in respect of nobody, I can tell you that they do. You should have seen the Shaykh Beshyr, how they respected him. When I was at his palace. I recollect, one day. one of his secretaries brought in a bag of money. 'Is it all here?' said the Shaykh, with a terrible, cross, frowning face. 'It is, your felicity,' said the man. 'Very well,' said the Shaykh, still with the same fierce countenance; and I asked him what he put on such a severe look for to a very pleasing-looking man. 'Why,' answered he, 'if I did not, I should be robbed past imagination: if I said to him, I am much obliged to you, sir; you have given yourself a great deal of trouble on my account, and the like compliments, he would go away and chuckle in his own mind to think his peculations were not suspected; but now he will go, and say to himself, I will bet an adli some one has told the Shaykh of the five hundred piasters that were left for me at my house: I must send directly, and desire they may be returned—or, he knows about the tobacco that was brought me by the peasant; I had better get rid of it; and so on. Their peculations are past all bounds, and they must be kept under with a rod of iron.'
"There was Danna, the poor old Frenchman, who lost his trunk with all his doubloons in it: do you think he would ever have found them, if the Emir Beshyr had not sent Hamâady to that village about a league off—what do you call it?—where the robbery was committed ? He assembled all the peasants, men and women, and he told them—'Now, my friends, Monsieur Danna does not want anybody to be punished, if he can help it; therefore, you have only to produce the money, and nothing farther will be said: for the money was lost here, and some of you must know where it is.' To see what protestations of innocence there were, what asseverations! and from the women more than the men. So Hamâady, finding that talking was of no use, heated his red-hot irons and his copper skull caps, and produced his instruments of torture ; and, seeing that the women were more vociferous than the men, he selected one on whom strong suspicions had fallen, and drove a spike under her finger-nails. At the first thrust, she screamed out—' Let me off! let me off! and I will acknowledge all.' She then immediately confessed—would you believe it?—that the curate’s son had robbed Danna, and she had shared the money with him.
"Now, tell me, was it best that the old Frenchman should die of starvation, or that the rascally thief of a woman, who had induced the curate’s son to commit the robbery, should be punished, as a warning to others? If such severe punishments were not used among them, we should not sleep safe in our beds. How well is it known that they have with pickaxes opened a roof, and thrown in lighted straw to suffocate people, that they might rob in security.
"I recollect once, when Captain Y. was here, I was showing him the garden; and, seeing some lettuces which were badly planted, he said to me, 'That’s not the way to plant lettuces: they should be so and so.'—'Yes,' I replied, 'I have told the gardener so a hundred times, and he will never listen to me.'—'Oh! oh!' said he, 'won’t he? Let me bring a boatswain’s mate to him, and I'll soon see whether he will or not.'—'You are very good,' was my answer; 'but then I should lose your company for half a day, and I had rather have no lettuces than do that.
"When I first came to this country, you know perfectly well that I never behaved otherwise than with the greatest kindness to servants. You ask me why I don’t now try gentle measures with them, rewarding the good, and merely dismissing the idle and vicious: my reply is, 1 did so for years, until I found they abused my forbearance in the grossest manner. Do you think it would frighten the rest, were I to turn away one or two? no such thing. Why, upon one occasion, four of them, after they had received their wages, and had each got a present of new shawls, new girdles, and new kombázes, all went off together, clothes, wages and all, in the night. It is by degrees I am become what I am; and, only after repeated trials and proofs of the inefficiency of everything but severity, that I am grown so indifferent, that I do nothing but scold and abuse them.
"But you talk of cruelty: it is such men as Mustafa Pasha, who was one of those who besieged Acre when Abdallah Pasha was firmanlee" (proscribed), “that you should call cruel; he was indeed a sanguinary tyrant. Doctor, he made a noise sometimes like the low growl of a tiger, and his people knew then that blood must flow. It was his custom, when the fit was on him, to send for some poor wretch from prison, and kill him with his own hand. He would then grow calm, smoke his pipe, and seem for a time quieted. But he was a shrewd man, and a clever pasha. He wrote with his own hand (which pashas never do, except on particular occasions) a letter to the Shaykh Beshyr, desiring him to pay marked attention to me. The Shaykh was highly flattered with the distinction shown him.”
The recollection of the Pasha’s civility and the Shaykh Beshyr’s letter recalled her thoughts to what she had proposed to do at the beginning of the evening, which was to write an answer to Sir Gore Ouseley, and to thank the Oriental Translation Fund Society for their present. This was done in a letter from which the following are extracts:—
To the Right Hon. Sir Gore Ouseley, Bart.
Djoun, on Mount Lebanon,
November 20, 1837.
Forgotten by the world, I cannot feel otherwise
than much flattered by the mark of attention which
it has pleased the society of learned men to honour
me with. I must therefore beg leave, in expressing
my gratitude, to return them my sincere thanks.
You must not suppose that I am the least of an
Arabic scholar, for I can neither read nor write one
word of that language, and am (without affectation) a
great dunce upon some subjects. Having lived part
of my life with the greatest philosophers and politicians of the age, I have been able to make this
observation , that all of them, however they may dispute and ingeniously reason upon abstruse subjects, have, in moments of confidence, candidly declared
that we can go no farther. Here we must stop—all
is problematical: therefore I have wished, however it
may appear presumptuous, to go farther and remove
some of these stumbling-blocks, not by erudition, but
by trusting to some happy accident.
It is extraordinary that many of this nature have occurred to me during my residence in the East. First, many proofs of the fallacy of history; next, the denial of many curious facts, which are even scouted as gross superstitions, and are pretended to be doubted, because no one knows how to account for them, but which real knowledge can clearly substantiate. Then there is a gap in history which ought to be filled up with the reign of Malek Sayf (a second King Solomon), and his family, and after him with that of Hamzy, the sort of Messiah of the Druzes, who is expected to return in another form. I once saw a work, which clearly proved the Pyramids to be antediluvian, and that Japhet was aware the deluge was to be partial, as he placed that which was most valuable to him in another quarter of the world.
The Bedoween Arabs may be divided into two distinct classes, original Arabs, and the descendants of Ismael, whose daughter married the ninth descendant of the great Katàn, out of which germ sprang the famous tribe of the Koreish, subdivided into many tribes, and which are a mixture of Hebrew blood. One of the most famous tribes was that of the Beni Hasheniz, from which spring the Boshnàk and the Beni Omeyn, the Irish, always famed for the beauty of their women. The Scotch are likewise Koreish—the nobility descending from the King Al Yem (and his court), father of Gebailuata, who headed the 50,000 horse, when they took their flight from the Hedjáz, after a quarrel with the Caliph Omar. They resided some time in Syria; but, when the town of Gebeili became inadequate to contain their numbers, many took themselves off to the Emperor Herculius,[2] towards Antioch and Tarsus.
You must look over the Scotch titles and names of persons and places, and you will see how many there are, who, it is plain to perceive, are of Arabic origin; and you will soon observe the relation they bear either to circumstances, former employments, propensities, or tastes.
You cannot expect, as when a Frenchman remains forty years in England, and can neither pronounce nor spell a name, that, during such a lapse of time, many of these names should not have undergone changes; but their origin is yet evident.
The Duke of Leinster’s motto (Croom Aboo—his father’s vineyards) has a grand signification, alluding to the most learned of works, of which only two copies exist, and which was not well understood even by the great Ulemas until about five hundred years afterwards, when Shaikh Mohadeen of the Beni Taya found out the key.
If the philosopher of chance should have presumed to have offered a little heterogeneous information to the learned, you, sir, must forgive me. Your star denotes you to be of admirable good taste and great perspicuity, and therefore well calculated to investigate the subjects I have had the honour to lay before you.
You will forgive me for having used the pen of another, but my sight and state of health will not at all times allow of my writing a long letter.