Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile/Volume 1/Book 1/Chapter 11
CHAP. XI.
Occurrences at Jidda — Visit of the Vizir — Alarm of the Factory — Great Civility of the English trading from India — Polygamy — Opinion of Dr Arbuthnot ill-founded — Contrary to Reason and Experience—— Leave Jidda.
THE port of Jidda is a very extensive one, consisting of numberless shoals, small islands, and sunken rocks, with channels, however, between them, and deep water. You are very safe in Jidda harbour, whatever wind blows, as there are numberless shoals which prevent the water from ever being put into any general motion; and you may moor head and stern, with twenty anchors out if you please. But the danger of being lost, I conceive, lies in the going in and coming out of the harbour. Indeed the observation is here verified, the more dangerous the port, the abler the pilots, and no accidents ever happen.
There is a draught of the harbour of Jidda handed about among the English for many years, very inaccurately, and very ill laid down, from what authority I know not, often condemned, but never corrected; as also a pretended chart of the upper part of the Gulf, from Jidda to Mocha, full of soundings. As I was some months at Jidda, kindly enter tained, and had abundance of time, Captain Thornhill, and some other of the gentlemen trading thither, wished me to make a survey of the harbour, and promised me the assistance of their officers, boats, and crews. I very willingly undertook it to oblige them. Finding afterwards, however, that one of their number, Captain Newland, had undertaken it, and that he would be hurt by my interfering, as he was in some manner advanced in the work, I gave up all further thoughts of the plan. He was a man of real ingenuity and capacity, as well as very humane, well behahaved [sic], and one to whom I had been indebted for every sort of attention.
God forgive those who have taken upon them, very lately, to ingraft a number of new soundings upon that miserable bundle of errors, that Chart of the upper part of the Gulf from Jidda to Mocha, which has been tossed about the Red Sea these twenty years and upwards. One of these, since my return to Europe, has been sent to me new dressed like a bride, with all its original and mortal sins upon its head. I would beg leave to be understood, that there is not in the world a man more averse than I am to give offence even to a child. It is not in the spirit of criticism I speak this. In any other case, I would not have made any observations at all. But, where the lives and properties of so many are at stake yearly, it is a species of treason to conceal one's sentiments, if the publishing of them can any way contribute to safety, whatever offence it may give to unreasonable individuals.
Of all the vessels in Jidda, two only had their log lines properly divided, and yet all were so fond of their supposed accuracy, as to aver they had kept their course within five leagues, between India and Babelmandeb. Yet they had made no estimation of the currents without the *[1] Babs, nor the different very strong ones soon after passing Socotra; their half-minute glasses upon a medium ran 57"; they had made no observation on the tides or currents in the Red Sea, either in the channel or in the inward passage; yet there is delineated in this map a course of Captain Newland's, which he kept in the middle of the channel, full of sharp angles and short stretches; you would think every yard was measured and sounded.
To the spurious catalogue of soundings found in the old chart above mentioned, there is added a double proportion of new, from what authority is not known; so that from Mocha, to lat. 17° you have as it were soundings every mile, or even less. No one can cast his eyes on the upper part of the map, but must think the Red Sea one of the most frequented places in the world. Yet I will aver, without fear of being contradicted, that it is a characteristic of the Red Sea, scarce to have soundings in any part of the channel, and often on both sides, whilst ashore soundings are hardly found a boat-length from the main. To this I will add, that there is scarce one island upon which I ever was, where the boltsprit was not over the land, while there were no soundings by a line heaved over the stern. I must then protest against making these old most erroneous maps a foundation for new ones, as they can be of no use, but must be of detriment. Many good seamen of knowledge and enterprise have been in that sea, within these few years. Let them say, candidly, what were their instruments, what their difficulties were, where they had doubts, where they succeeded, and where they were disappointed? Were these acknowledged by one, they would be speedily taken up by others, and rectified by the help of mathematicians and good observers on shore.
Mr Niebuhr has contributed much, but we should reform the map on both sides; though there is a great deal done, yet much remains still to do. I hope that my friend Mr Dalrymple, when he can afford time, will give us a foundation more proper to build upon, than that old rotten one, however changed in form, and suppofed to have been improved, if he really has a number of observations by him that can be relied on, otherwise it is but continuing the delusion and the danger.
If ships of war afterwards, that keep the channel, shall come, manned with slout and able seamen, and expert young officers, provided with lines, glasses, good compasses, and a number of boats, then we shall know these soundings, at least in part. And then also we shall know the truth of what I now advance, viz. that ships like those employed hitherto in trading from India (manned and provided as the best of them are) were incapable, amidst unknown tides and currents, and going before a monsoon, whether southern or northern, of knowing within three leagues where any one of them had ever dropt his sounding line, unless he was close on board some island, shoal, remarkable point, or in a harbour. Till that time, I would advise every man sailing in the Red Sea, especially in the channel, where the pilots know no more than he, to trust to his own hands for safety in the minute of danger, to heave the lead at least every hour, keep a good look-out, and shorten sail in a fresh wind, or in the night-time, and to confider all maps of the channel of the Arabian Gulf, yet made, as matters of mere curiosity, and not fit to trust a man's life to. Any captain in the India service, who had run over from Jidda into the mouth of the river Frat, and the neighbouring port Kilfit, which might every year be done for L. 10 Sterling extra expences, would do more meritorious service to the navigation of that sea, than all the soundings that were ever yet made from Jibbel Zekir to the island of Sheduan.
From Yambo to Jidda I had slept little, making my memoranda as full upon the spot as possible. I had, besides, an aguish disorder, which very much troubled me, and in dress and cleanliness was so like a Galiongy (or Turkifh seaman) that the *[2] Emir Bahar was astonished at hearing my servants say I was an Englishman, at the time they carried away all my baggage and instruments to the custom-house. He sent his servant, however, with me to the Bengal-house, who promised me, in broken English, all the way, a very magnificent reception from my countrymen. Upon his naming all the captains for my choice, I desired to be carried to a Scotchman, a relation of my own, who was then accidentally leaning over the rail of the stair-case, leading up to his apartment. I saluted him by his name; he fell into a violent rage, calling me villain, thief, cheat, and renegado rascal; and declared, if I offered to proceed a step further, he would throw me over stairs. I went away without reply, his curses and abuse followed me long afterwards. The servant, my conductor, screwed his mouth, and shrugged up his shoulders. "Never fear, says he, I will carry you to the best of them all." We went up an opposite stair-case, whilst I thought within myself, if those are their India manners, I shall keep my name and situation to myself while I am at Jidda. I stood in no need of them, as I had credit for 1000 sequins and more, if I should want it, upon Yousef Cabil, Vizir or Governor of Jidda.
I was conducted into a large room, where Captain Thornhill was sitting, in a white callico waistcoat, a very high-pointed white cotton night-cap, with a large tumbler of water before him, seemingly very deep in thought. The Emir Bahar's servant brought me forward by the hand, a little within the door; but I was not desirous of advancing much farther, for fear of the salutation of being thrown down stairs again. He looked very steadily, but not sternly, at me; and desired the servant to go away and shut the door. "Sir, says he, are you an Englishman?" — I bowed. — "You surely are sick, you should be in your bed, have you been long sick?" — I said, "long Sir," and bowed. — "Are you wanting a passage to India?" — I again bowed. — "Well, says he, you look to be a man in distress; if you have a secret, I shall respect it till you please to tell it me, but if you want a passage to India, apply to no one but Thornhill of the Bengal merchant. Perhaps you are afraid of somebody, if so, ask for Mr Greig, my lieutenant, he will carry you on board my ship
directly, where you will be safe." — "Sir, said I, I hope you will find me an honest man, I have no enemy that I know, either in Jidda or elsewhere, nor do I owe any man any thing." — "I am sure, says he, I am doing wrong, in keeping a poor man standing, who ought to be in his bed. Here! Philip! Philip!" — Philip appeared. "Boy," says he, in Portuguese, which, as I imagine, he supposed I did not understand, "here is a poor Englishman, that should be either in his bed or his grave; carry him to the cook, tell him to give him as much broth and mutton as he can eat; the fellow seems to have been starved, but I would rather have the feeding of ten to India, than the burying of one at Jidda."
Philip de la Cruz was the son of a Portuguese lady, whom Captain Thornhill had married; a boy of great talents, and excellent disposition, who carried me with great willingness to the cook. I made as aukward a bow as I could to Capt. Thornhill, and said, "God will return this to your honour some day." Philip carried me into a court-yard, where they used to expose the samples of their India goods in large bales. It had a portico along the left-hand side of it, which seemed designed for a stable. To this place I was introduced and thither the cook brought me my dinner. Several of the English from the vessels, lascars, and others, came in to look at me; and I heard it, in general, agreed among them, that I was a very thief-like fellow, and certainly a Turk, and d--n them if they should like to fall into my hands.
I fell fast asleep upon the mat, while Philip was ordering me another apartment. In the mean time, some of my people had followed the baggage to the Custom-house, and some of them staid on board the boat, to prevent the pilfering of what was left. The keys had remained with me, and the Vizir had gone to sleep, as is usual, about mid-day. As soon as he awaked, being greedy of his prey, he fell immediately to my baggage, wondering that such a quantity of it, and that boxes in such a curious form, should belong to a mean man like me; he was therefore full of hopes, that a fine opportunity for pillage was now at hand. He asked for the keys of the trunks, my servant said, they were with me, but he would go instantly and bring them. That, however, was too long to stay; no delay could possibly be granted. Accustomed to pilfer, they did not force the locks, but, very artist like, took off the hinges at the back, and in that manner opened the lids, without opening the locks.
The first thing that presented itself to the Vizir's sight, was the firman of the Grand Signior, magnificently written and titled, and the inscription powdered with gold dust, and wrapped in green taffeta. After this was a white sattin bag, addressed to the Khan of Tartary, with which Mr Peyssonel, French consul of Smyrna, had favoured me, and which I had not delivered, as the Khan was then prisoner at Rhodes. The next was a green and gold silk bag, with letters directed to the Sherriffe of Mecca; and then came a plain crimson-sattin bag, with letters addressed to Metical Aga, sword bearer (or Seiictar, as it is called) of the Sherriffe, or his great minister and favourite. He then found a letter from Ali Bey to himself, written with all the superiority of a Prince to a slave.
In this letter the Bey told him plainly, that he heard the governments of Jidda, Mecca, and other States of the Sherriffe, were disorderly, and that merchants, coming about their lawful business, were plundered, terrified, and detained. He therefore intimated to him, that if any such thing happened to me, he should not write or complain, but he would send and punish the affront at the very gates of Mecca. This was very unpleasant language to the Vizir, because it was now publicly known, that Mahomet Bey Abou Dahab was preparing next year to march against Mecca, for some offence the Bey had taken at the Sherriffe. There was also another letter to him from Ibrahim Sikakeen, chief of the merchants at Cairo, ordering him to furnish me with a thoufand sequins for my present use, and, if more were needed, to take my bill.
These contents of the trunk were so unexpected, that Cabil the Vizir thought he had gone too far, and called my servant in a violent hurry, upbraiding him, for not telling who I was. The servant defended himself, by saying, that neither he, nor his people about him, would so much as regard a word that he spoke; and the cadi of Medina's principal servant, who had come with the wheat, told the Vizir plainly to his face, that he had given him warning enough, if his pride would have suffered him to hear it.
All was now wrong, my servant was ordered to nail up the hinges, but he declared it would be the last action of his life; that nobody opened baggage that way, but with intention of stealing, when the keys could be got; and, as there were many rich things in the trunk, intended as presents to the Sherriffe, and Metical Aga, which might have been taken out, by the hinges being forced off before he came, he washed his hands of the whole procedure, but knew his master would complain, and loudly too, and would be heard both at Cairo and Jidda. The Vizir took his resolution in a moment like a man. He nailed up the baggage, ordered his horse to be brought, and attended by a number of naked blackguards (whom they call soldiers) he came down to the Bengal house, on which the whole factory took alarm.
About twenty-six years before, the English traders from India to Jidda, fourteen in number, were all murdered, sitting at dinner, by a mutiny of these wild people. The house has, ever since, lain in ruins, having been pulled down and forbidden to be rebuilt.
Great inquiry was made after the English nobleman, whom nobody had seen; but it was said that one of his servants was there in the Bengal house; I was sitting drinking coffee on the mat, when the Vizir's horse came, and the whole court was filled. One of the clerks of the custom-house asked me where my master was? I said, "In heaven." The Emir Bahar's servant now brought forward the Vizir to me, who had not dismounted himself. He repeated the same question, where my master was? — I told him, I did not know the purport of his question, that I was the person to whom the baggage belonged, which he had taken to the custom-houfe, and that it was in my favour the Grand Signior and Bey had written. He seemed very much surprised, and asked me how I could appear in such a dress? --"You cannot ask that seriously, said I; I believe no prudent man would dress better, considering the voyage I have made. But, besides, you did not leave it in my power, as every article, but what I have on me, has been these four hours at the custom-house, waiting your pleasure."
We then went all up to our kind landlord, Captain Thornhill, to whom I made my excuse, on acount of the ill usage I had first met with from my own relation. He laughed very heartily at the narrative, and from that time we lived in the greatest friendship and confidence. All was made up, even with Yousef Cabil; and all heads were employed to get the strongest letters possible to the Naybe of Masuah, the king of Abyssinia, Michael Suhul the minister, and the king of Sennaar.
Metical Aga, great friend and protector of the English at Jidda, and in effect, we may say, sold to them, for the great presents and profits he received, was himself originally an Abyssinian slave, was the man of confidence, and directed the sale of the king's, and Michael's gold, ivory, civet, and such precious commodities, that are paid to them in kind; he furnished Michael, likewise, with returns in fire-arms; and this had enabled Michael to subdue Abyssinia, murder the king his master, and seat another on his throne.
On the other hand, the Naybe of Masuah, whose island belonged to the Grand Signior, and was an appendage of the government of the Basha of Jidda, had endeavoured to withdraw himself from his allegiance, and set up for independency. He paid no tribute, nor could the Basha, who had no troops, force him, as he was on the Abyssinian side of the Red Sea. Metical Aga, however, and the Basha, at last agreed; the latter ceded to the former the island and territory of Msuah, for a fixed sum annually; and Metical Aga appointed Michael, governor of Tigré, receiver of his rents. The Naybe no sooner found that he was to account to Michael, than he was glad to pay his tribute, and give presents to the bargain; for Tigré was the province from which he drew his sustenance, and Michael could have over-run his whole territory in eight days, which once, as we shall see hereafter, belonged to Abyssinia. Metical's power being then universally acknowledged and known, the next thing was to get him to make use of it in my favour.
We knew of how little avail the ordinary futile recommendations of letters were. We were veteran travellers, and knew the style of the East too well, to be duped by letters of mere civility. There is no people on the earth more perfectly polite in their correspondence with one another, than are those of the East; but their civility means little more than the same sort of expressions do in Europe, to shew you that the writer is a well-bred man. But this would by no means do in a journey so long, so dangerous, and so serious as mine.
We, therefore, set about procuring effective letters, letters of business and engagement, between man and man; and we all endeavoured to make Metical Aga a very good man, but no great head-piece, comprehend this perfectly. My letters from Ali Bey opened the affair to him, and first commanded his attention. A very handsome present of pistols, which I brought him, inclined him in my favour, because, as I was bearer of letters from his superior, I might have declined bestowing any present upon him. The English gentlemen joined their influence, powerful enough, to have accomplished a much greater end, as every one of these have separate friends for their own affairs, and all of them were desirous to befriend me. Added to these was a friend of mine, whom I had known at Aleppo, Ali Zimzimiah, i. e. 'keeper of the holy well at Mecca,' a post of great dignity and honour. This man was a mathematician, and an astronomer, according to their degree of knowledge in that science.
All the letters were written in a style such as I could have desired, but this did not suffice in the mind of a very friendly and worthy man, who had taken an attachment to me since my first arrival. This was Captain Thomas Price, of the Lion of Bombay. He first proposed to Metical Aga, to send a man of his own with me, together with the letters, and I do firmly believe, under Providence, it was to this last measure I owed my life. With this Captain Thornhill heartily concurred, and an Abyssinian, called Mahomet Gibberti, was appointed to go with particular letters besides those I carried myself, and to be an eye-witness of my reception there.
There was some time necessary for this man to make ready, and a considerable part of the Arabian Gulf still remained for me to explore. I prepared, therefore, to set out from Jidda, after having made a considerable stay in it.
Of all the new things I yet had seen, what most astonished me was the manner in which trade was carried on at this place. Nine ships were there from India; some of them worth, I suppose, L. 200,000. One merchant, a Turk, living at Mecca, thirty hours journey off, where no Christian dares go, whilst the whole Continent is open to the Turk for escape, offers to purchase the cargoes of four out of nine of these ships himself; another, of the same cast, comes and says, he will buy none, unless he has them all. The samples are shewn, and the cargoes of the whole nine ships are carried into the wildest part of Arabia, by men with whom one would not wish to trust himself alone in the field. This is not all, two India brokers come into the room to settle the price. One on the part of the India captain, the other on that of the buyer the Turk. They are neither Mahometans nor Christians, but have credit with both. They sit down on the carpet, and take an India shawl, which they carry on their shoulder, like a napkin, and spread it over their hands. They talk, in the mean time, indifferent conversation, of the arrival of ships from India, or of the news of the day, as if they were employed in no serious business whatever. After about twenty minutes spent in handling each others fingers below the shawl, the bargain is concluded, say for nine ships, without one word ever having been spoken on the subject, or pen or ink used in any shape whatever. There never was one instance of a dispute happening in these sales.
But this is not yet all, the money is to be paid. A private Moor, who has nothing to support him but his character, becomes responsible for the payment of these cargoes; his name was Ibrahim Saraf when I was there, i. e. Ibrahim the Broker. This man delivers a number of coarse hempen bags, full of what is suppofed to be money. He marks the contents upon the bag, and puts his seal upon the string that ties the mouth of it. This is received for what is marked upon it, without any one ever having open ed one of the bags, and, in India, it is current for the value marked upon it, as long as the bag lasts.
Jidda is very unwholesome, as is, indeed, all the east coast of the Red Sea. Immediately without the gate of that town, to the eastward, is a desert plain filled with the huts of the Bedowèens, or country Arabs, built of long bundles of spartum, or bent grass, put together like fascines. These Bedowèens supply Jidda with milk and butter. There is no stirring out of town, even for a walk, unless for about half a mile, in the south fide by the sea, where there is a number of stinking pools of stagnant water, which contributes to make the town very unwholesome.
Jidda, besides being in the most unwholesome part of Arabia, is, at the same time, in the most barren and desert situation. This, and many other inconveniencies, under which it labours, would, probably, have occasioned its being abandoned altogether, were it not for its vicinity to Mecca, and the great and sudden influx of wealth from the India trade, which, once a-year, arrives in this part, but does not continue, passing on, as through a turnpike, to Mecca; whence it is dispersed all over the east. Very little advantage however accrues to Jidda. The customs are all immediately sent to a needy sovereign, and a hungry set of relations, dependents and ministers at Mecca. The gold is returned in bags and boxes, and passes on as rapidly to the ships as the goods do to the market, and leaves as little profit behind. In the mean time, provisions rise to a prodigious price, and this falls upon the townsmen, while all the profit of the traffic is in the hands of strangers ; most of whom, after the market is over, (which does not last six weeks) retire to Yemen, and other neighbouring countries, which abound in every sort of provision.
Upon this is founded the observation, that of all Mahometan countries none are so monogam as those of Jidda, and no where are there so many unmarried women, altho' this is the country of their prophet, and the permission of marrying four wives was allowed in this district in the first instance, and afterwards communicated to all the tribes.
But Mahomet, in his permission of plurality of wives, seems constantly to have been on his guard, against suffering that, which was intended for the welfare of his people, from operating in a different manner. He did not permit a man to marry two, three, or four wives, unless he could maintain them. He was interested for the rights and rank of these women; and the man so marrying was obliged to shew before the Cadi, or some equivalent officer, or judge, that it was in his power to support them, according to their birth. It was not so with concubines, with women who were purchased, or who were taken in war. Every man enjoyed these at his pleasure, and their peril, that is, whether he was able to maintain them or not.
From this great scarcity of provisions, which is the result of an extraordinary concourse to a place almost destitute of the necessaries of life, few inhabitants of Jidda can avail themselves of the privilege granted him by Mahomet. He therefore cannot marry more than one wife, because he cannot maintain more, and from this cause arises the want of people, and the large number of unmarried women.
When in Arabia Felix, where every sort of provision is exceedingly cheap, where the fruits of the ground, the general food for man, are produced spontaneously, the supporting of a number of wives costs no more than so many slaves or servants; their food is the same, and a blue cotton shirt, a habit common to them all, is not more chargeable for the one than the other. The consequence is, that celibacy in women is prevented, and the number of people is increased in a fourfold ratio by polygamy, to what it is in those that are monogamous.
I know there are authors fond of system, enemies to free inquiry, and blinded by prejudice, who contend that polygamy, without distinction of circumstances, is detrimental to the population of a country. The learned Dr Arbuthnot, in a paper addressed to the Royal Society*[3], has maintained this strange doctrine, in a still stranger manner. He lays it down, as his first position, that in femine masculino of our first parent Adam, there was impressed an original necessity of procreating, ever after, an equal number of males and females. The manner he proves this, has received great incense from the vulgar, as containing un unanswerable argument. He shews, by the casting of three dice, that the chances are almost infinite, that an equal number of males and females should not be born in any year; and he pretends to prove, that every year in twenty, as taken from the bills of mortality, the same number of males and females have constantly been produced, or at least a greater proportion of men than of women, to make up for the ha vock occasioned by war, murder, drunkenness, and all species of violence to which women are not subject.
I need not say, that this, at least, sufficiently shews the weakness of the argument. . For, if the equal proportion had been in femine masculino of our first parent, the consequence must have been, that male and female would have been invariably born, from the creation to the end of all things. And it is a supposition very unworthy of the wisdom of God, that, at the creation of man, he could make an allowance for any deviation that was to happen, from crimes, against the commission of which his positive precepts ran. Weak as this is, it is not the weakest part of this artificial argument, which, like the web of a spider too finely woven, whatever part you touch it on, the whole falls to pieces.
After taking it for granted, that he has proved the equality of the two sexes in number, from the bills of mortality in London, he next supposes, as a consequence, that all the world is in the same predicament; that is, that an equal number of males and females is produced every where. Why Dr Arbuthnot, an eminent physician (which surely implies an informed naturalist) should imagine that this inference would hold, is what I am not able to account for. He should know, let us say, in the countries of the east, that fruits, flowers, trees, birds, fish, every blade of grass, is commonly different, and that man, in his appearance, diet, exercise, pleasure, government, and religion, is as widely different; why he should found the issue of an Asiatic, however, upon the bills of mortality in London, is to the full as absurd as to assert, that they do not wear either beard or whiskers in Syria, because that is not the case in London. I am well aware, that it may be urged by those who permit themselves to say every thing, because they are not at pains to consider any thing, that the course of my argument will lead to a defence of polygamy in general, the supposed doctrine of the Thelypthora *[4]. Such reflections as these, unless introduced for merriment, are below my animadversion; all I shall say on that topic is, that they who find encouragcment to polygamy in Mr Madan's book, the Thelypthora, have read it with a much more acute perception than perhaps I have done; and I shall be very much mistaken, if polygamy increases in England upon the principles laid down in the Thelypthora.
England, says Dr Arbuthnot, enjoys an equality of both sexes, and, if it is not so, the inequality is so imperceptible, that no inconvenience has yet followed. What we have now to inquire is, Whether other nations, or the majority of them, are in the same situation? For, if we are to decide by this, and if we should happen to find, that, in other countries, there are invariably born three women to one man, the conclusion, in regard to that country, must be, that three women to one man was the proportion of one sex to the other, impressed at the creation in femine of our first parent.
I confess I am not fond of meddling with the globe before the deluge. But as learned men seem inclined to think that Ararat and Euphrates are the mountain and river of antediluvian times, and that Mesopotamia, or Diarbekir, is the ancient situation of the terrestrial paradise, I cannot give Dr Arbuthnot's argument fairer play*, than to transport myself thither; and, in the same spot where the necessity was imposed of male and female being produced in equal numbers, inquire how that case stands now. The pretence that climates and times may have changed, the proportion cannot be admitted, since it has been taken for granted, that it exists in the bills of mortality in London, and governs them to this day; and, since it was founded on necessity, which must be eternal.
Now, from a diligent inquiry into the south, and scripture-part of Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Syria, from Mousul (or Nineveh) to Aleppo and Antioch, I find the proportion to be fully two women born to one man. There is indeed a fraction over, but not a considerable one. From Latikea, Laodicea ad mare, down the coast of Syria to Sidon, the number is very nearly three, or two and three-fourths to one man. Through the Holy Land, the country called Horan, in the Isthmus of Suez, and the parts of the Delta, unfrequented by strangers, it is something less than three. But, from Suez to the straits of Babelmandeb, which contains the three Arabias, the portion is fully four women to one man, which, I have reason to believe, holds as far as the Line, and 30° beyond it.
The Imam of Sana*[5] was not an old man when I was in Arabia Felix in 1769; but he had 88 children then alive, of whom 14 only were sons.— The priest of the Nile had 70 and odd children; of whom, as I remember, above 50 were daughters.
It may be objected, that Dr Arbuthnot, in quoting the bills of mortality for twenty years, gave most unexceptionable grounds for his opinion, and that my single assertion of what happens in a foreign country, without further foundation, cannot be admitted as equivalent testimony; and I am ready to admit this objection, as bills of mortality there are none in any of these countries. I shall therefore say in what manner I attained the knowledge which I have just mentioned. Whenever I went into a town, village, or inhabited place, dwelt long in a mountain, or travelled journies with any set of people, I always made it my business to inquire how many children they had, or their fathers, their next neighbours, or acquaintance. This not being a captious question, or what any one would scruple to answer, there was no interest to deceive; and if it had been possible, that two or three had been so wrong-headed among the whole, it would have been of little consequence.
I then asked my landlord at Sidon, (suppose him a weaver,) how many children he has had? He tells me how many sons, and how many daughters. The next I ask is a smith, a tailor, a silk-gatherer, the Cadi of the place, a cow-herd, a hunter, a fisher, in short every man that is not a stranger, from whom I can get proper information. I say, therefore, that a medium of both sexes arising from three or four hundred families indiscriminately taken, shall be the proportion in which one differs from the other; and this, I am confident, will give the remit to be three women to one man in 50° out of the 90° under every meridian of the globe.
Without giving Mahomet all the credit for abilities that some have done, we may surely suppofe him to know what happened in his own family, where he must have seen this great disproportion of four women born to one man; and from the obvious consequences, we are not to wonder that one of his first cares, when a legislator, was to rectify it, as it struck at the very root of his empire, power, and religion. With this view, he enacted, or rather revived, the law which gave liberty to every individual to marry four wives, each of whom was to be equal in rank and honour, without any preference but what the predilection of the husband gave her. By this he secured civil rights to each woman, and procured a means of doing away that reproach, of dying without issue, to which the minds of the whole sex have always been sensible, whatever their religion was, or from whatever part of the world they came.
Many, who are not conversant with Arabian history, have imagined, that this permission of a plurality of wives was given in favour of men, and have taxed one of the most political, necessary measures, of that legislator, arising from motives merely civil, with a tendency to encourage lewdness, from which it was very far distant. But, if they had considered that the Mahometan law allows divorce without any cause assigned, and that, every day at the pleasure of the man; besides, that it permits him as many concubines as he can maintain, buy with money, take in war, or gain by the ordinary means of address and solicitations, — they will think such a man was before sufficiently provided, and that there was not the least reason for allowing him to marry four wives at a time, when he was already at liberty to marry a new one every day.
Dr Arbuthnot lays it down as a self-evident position, that four women will have more children by four men, than the same four women would have by one. This assertion may very well be disputed, but still it is not in point. For the question with regard to Arabia, and to a great part of the world besides, is, Whether or not four women and one man, married, or cohabiting at discretion, shall produce more children, than four women and one man who is debarred from cohabiting with any but one of the four, the others dying unmarried without the knowledge of man? or, in other words, Which shall have most children, one man and one woman, or one man and four women? This question I think needs no discussion.
Let us now consider, if there is any further reason why England should not be brought as an example, which Arabia, or the East in general, are to follow.
Women in England are commonly capable of child-bearing at fourteen, let the other term be forty-eight, when they bear no more; thirty-four years, therefore, an English woman bears children. At the age of fourteen or fifteen they are objects of our love; they are endeared by bearing us children after that time, and none I hope will pretend, that, at forty-eight and fifty, an English woman is not an agreeable companion. Perhaps the Iast years, to thinking minds, are fully more agreeable than the first. We grow old toge ther, we have a near prospect of dying together; nothing can present a more agreeable picture of social life, than monogamy in England.
The Arab, on the other hand, if she begins to bear children at eleven, seldom or never has a child after twenty. The time then of her child-bearing is nine years, and four women, taken altogether, have then the term of thirty-six. So that the English woman that bears children for thirty-four years, has only two years less than the term enjoyed by the four wives whom Mahomet has allowed; and if it be granted an English wife may bear at fifty, the terms are equal.
But there are other grievous differences. An Arabian girl, at eleven years old, by her youth and beauty, is the object of man's desire; being an infant, however, in understanding, she is not a rational companion for him. A man marries there, say at twenty, and before he is thirty, his wife, improved as a companion, ceases to be an object of his desires, and a mother of children; so that all the best, and most vigorous of his days, are spent with a woman he cannot love, and with her he would be destined to live forty, or forty-five years, without comfort to himself by increase of family, or utility to the public.
The reasons, then, against polygamy, which subsist in England, do not by any means subsist in Arabia; and that being the case, it would be unworthy of the wisdom of God, and an unevenness in his ways, which we shall never see, to subject two nations, under such different circumstances, absolutely to the same observances. I consider the prophecy concerning Ishmael, and his descendants the Arabs, as one of the most extraordinary that we meet with in the Old Testament. It was also one of the earliest made, and proceeded upon grounds of private reparation. Hagar had not sinned, though she had fled from Sarah with Ishmael her son into the wilderness. In that desert there were then no inhabitants, and though Ishmael's *[6] succession was incompatible with God's promise to Abraham and his son Isaac, yet neither Hagar nor he having sinned, justice required a reparation for the heritage which he had lost. God gave him that very wilderness which before was the property of no man, in which Ishmael was to erect a kingdom under the most improbable circumstances possible to be imagined. His †[7] hand was to be against every man, and every man's hand against him. By his sword he was to live, and pitch his tent in the face of his brethren.
Never has prophecy been so completely fulfilled. It subsisted from the earliest ages; it was verified before the time of Moses; in the time of David and Solomon; it subsisted in the time of Alexander and that of Augustus Cæsar; it subsisted in the time of Justinian,— all very distant, unconnected periods; and I appeal to the evidence of mankind, if, without apparent support or necessity, but what it has derived from God's promise only, it is not in full vigour at this very day. This prophecy alone, in the truth of which all sorts of religions agree, is therefore of itself a sufficient proof, without other, of the Divine authority of the scripture.
Mahomet prohibited all pork, and wine; two articles which must have been, before, very little used in Arabia. Grapes, here, grow in the mountains of Yemen, but never arrive at maturity enough for wine. They bring them down for this purpose to Loheia, and there the heat of the climate turns the wine sour before they can clear it of its fæces so as to make it drinkable; and we know that, before the appearance of Mahomet, Arabia was never a wine country. As for swine, I never heard of them in the peninsula, of Arabia, (unless perhaps wild in the woods about Sana,) and it was from early times inhabited by Jews before the coming of Mahomet. The only people therefore that ate swine's flesh must have been Christians, and they were a sect of little account. Many of these, however, do not eat pork yet, but all of them were oppressed and despised every-where, and there was no inducement for any other people to imitate them.
Mahomet then prohibiting only what was merely neutral, or indifferent to the Arabs, indulged them in that to which he knew they were prone.
At the several conversations I had with the English merchants at Jidda, they complained grievously of the manner in which they were oppressed by the sherrifFe of Mecca and his officers. The duties and fees were increased every voyage; their privileges all taken away, and a most destructive measure introduced of forcing them to give presents, which was only an inducement to oppress, that the gift might be the greater. I asked them if I should obtain from the Bey of Cairo permission for their ships to come down to Suez, whither there were merchants in India who would venture to undertake that voyage? Captain Thornhill promised, for his part, that the very season after such permission should arrive in India, he would dispatch his ship the Bengal Merchant, under command of his mate Captain Greig, to whose capacity and worth all his countrymen bore very ready testimony, and of which I myself had formed a very good opinion, from the several conversations we had together. This scheme was concerted between me and Captain Thornhill only; and tho' it must be confessed it had the appearance of an airy one, (since it was not to be attempted, till I had returned through Abyssinia and Nubia, against which there were many thousand chances,) it was executed, notwithstanding, in the very manner in which it had been planned, as will be after stated.
The kindness and attention of my countrymen did not leave me as long as I was on shore. They all did me the honour to attend me to the water edge. If others have experienced pride and presumption, from gentlemen of the East-Indies, I was most happily exempted from even the appearance of it at Jidda. Happy it would have been for me, if I had been more neglected.
All the quay of Jidda was lined with people to see the English salute, and along with my vessel there parted, at the same time, one bound to Masuah, which carried Mahomet Abd el cader, Governor of Dahalac, over to his government,
Dahalac *[8] is a large island, depending upon Masuah, but which has a separate firman, or commission, renewed every two years. This man was a Moor, a servant of the Naybe of Masuah, and he had been at Jidda to procure his firman from Metical Aga, while Mahomet Gibberti was to come with me, and was to bring it to the Naybe. This Abd el cader no sooner was arrived at Masuah, than, following the turn of his country for lying, he spread a report, that a great man, or prince, whom he left at Jidda, was coming speedily to Masuah; that he had brought great presents to the Sherriffe and Metical Aga; that, in return, he had received a large sum in gold from the Sherriffe's Vizir, Yousef Cabil; besides as much as he pleased from the English, who had done nothing but feast and regale him for the several months he had been at Jidda; and that, when he departed, as this great man was now going to visit the Imam in Arabia Felix, all the English ships hoifted their colours, and fired their cannon from morning to night, for three days successively, which was two days after he had sailed, and therefore what he could not possibly have seen. The consequence of all this was, the Naybe of Masuah expected that a man with immense treasures was coming to put himself into his hands. I look therefore upon the danger I escaped there as superior to all those put together, that I have ever been exposed to: of such material and bad consequence is the most contemptible of all weapons, the tongue of a liar and a fool! Jidda is in lat. 28° 0' 1" north, and in long. 39° 16' 45" east of the meridian of Greenwich. Our weather there had few changes. The general wind was north-west, or more northerly. This blowing along the direction of the Gulf -brought a great deal of damp along with it; and this damp increases as the season advances. Once in twelve or fourteen days, perhaps, we had a south wind, which was always dry. The highest degree of the barometer at Jidda, on the 5th of June, wind north, was 26° 6', and the lowest on the 18th of same month, wind north-west, was 25° 7'. The highest degree of the thermometer was 97° on the 12th of July, wind north, the lowest was 78° wind north.
- ↑ *.This is a common sailor's phrase for the Straits of Babelmandeb.
- ↑ * Captain of the port.
- ↑ * Philosoph. Transact. Vol. 27. p. 186.
- ↑ * A late publication of Dr Madan's, little understood, as it would seem.
- ↑ * Sovereign of Arabia Felix, whose capital is Sana.
- ↑ * Gen. xv. 18.
- ↑ ‡ Gen. xvi. 12.
- ↑ * The island of the Shepherds.