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-Mr. Palgrave calls it Oneyzah,-which is stated by the French writers to have contained, at the time of the Egyptian conquest, about 30,000 inhabitants, and to have carried on a very considerable trade. Burckhardt also mentions that there were many wealthy merchants in that town. Mr. Palgrave, however, was unable to visit Aneyzeh, because when he was at Bereydah, from which it is not far distant, it was besieged, or rather imperfectly blockaded, by the troops of Feysul, the Wahaby sovereign, whose authority had not been re-established there since the expulsion of the Egyptians. Before the travellers left Arabia, they learned that after a protracted and gallant resistance, Aneyzeh had fallen, and had suffered all the barbarities usually perpetrated on such occasions by the Wahabys,-barbarities which, in the case of a town taken by assault, were not unknown in Europe a few centuries ago. Bereydah is, next to Aneyzeh, the most important town of Kaseem. Mr. Palgrave estimates its population at about 20,000; it is also the seat of a considerable trade, foreign and domestic, but of its nature or extent our traveller gives no intelligible idea. The Wahabys had, not many years before, regained possession of the place, and, if Mr. Palgrave's detailed account of the manner in which it was effected be correct, by a series of the foulest and most cold-blooded acts of treachery and cruelty; but as he seems to have obtained his information from the bitterest enemies of the Wahabys, and to have imbibed all their hatred of those Mohammedan reformers, in addition to his own original aversion, his statements must

be received with caution.

At Bereydah the travellers unexpectedly encountered a Persian Haj caravan, returning from Medinah towards Meshed Ali, which had been deserted by its Wahaby conductor, and was detained to be fleeced by the Wahaby governor. This affords Mr. Palgrave an occasion, of which he never fails to avail himself, to speak of the Persian nation in terms of contempt and aversion. The bitterness of his language is such as to suggest the idea of personal resentment, and to make it almost amusing. We cannot help suspecting that he must, somehow or other, have encountered personal mortification at the hands of a Persian. The encounter with the Persian caravan, however, turned out to be a very fortunate event. He had been endeavouring to obtain at Bereydah guides and camels to convey him to Riad, but in vain; for no one fancied a journey in that direction. "This is Nejed," said an elderly man of whom they had demanded information; "he who enters does

not come out again!" At length, in the Persian pilgrim camp, they stumbled upon the man who, probably of all the men in Arabia, was the fittest for their purpose-Aboo Eysa in Arabia, but known by another name in his native city of Aleppo; a political refugee; an unsuccessful commercial adventurer; a Mohammedan of the loosest texture; a Wahaby at Riad; a latitudinarian elsewhere; a man of tact and ability, of a kindly disposition and an easy temper; a general favourite, and a privileged character; who knew everybody, and was acceptable to all. He proved to be a faithful friend and guide; so useful and valuable, indeed, that their acquaintance with him in a great measure determined the future course of the travellers.

At Bereydah also, the party with which they were to travel was augmented and dignified by the addition of "Mohammed Alleeesh-Shiräzee, the Persian representative at Meshed 'Alee, and now entrusted with the headship of the national pilgrimage." This person was proceeding to Riad to announce to Feysul the misconduct of the conductor, who had deserted, and of Mohanna, the governor of Bereydah, who had fleeced the Persian Haj caravan. "The Naib," for such was his official designation, was evidently a Persian of the "Hajji Baba" class, whom Mr. Palgrave seems to have mistaken for a Persian gentleman.

From Bereydah there were two routes leading to Riad; the one through Woshim, by the way of Shakra, was the more direct, but in the present state of the country, with the war at Aneyzeh in progress, they preferred the more circuitous and the safer line by the way of "Zulphah," the Zelfy or Zelfeh of other writers. Had they taken the route by Shakra, Mr. Palgrave might perhaps have discovered that the great battle between the armies of Ibrahim Pacha and Abd-Allah, the Wahaby ruler, which he describes as having been fought not far from Shakra, and as having lasted two days, is altogether fabulous. Mr. Palgrave must have been the dupe of some Arab wag, who amused himself with hoaxing the Damascene doctor, for no such battle was fought by those commanders during the war. In fact the Wahaby army never encountered the army of Ibrahim in the field. But our author's account of the military operations, and the proceedings of the Egyptian army and its commander, is throughout ludicrously inaccurate in what it states, and unaccountably defective in what it omits. It would be intolerably tedious to go through it in detail and point out all its errors and omissions. Hardly one operation or transaction is cor

rectly stated, and some of the most important are not alluded to.

Zulphah is a considerable town, and the emporium of a considerable trade between the countries lying eastward, or rather north-eastward, towards the Euphrates and Bagdad, and the countries lying westward towards the Hejaz, but here, as elsewhere, Mr. Palgrave does not occupy himself with such material and sublunary things. "The proper study of mankind is man," and Mr. Palgrave, accepting this dictum, narrows it to man as he is, and thinks it is no part of that study to inquire what are the circumstances and conditions in and on which he exists as he is. In this particular instance, however, he is not to blame, for the inhospitable governor refused to take any hint, and the travellers, "Naib" and all, had to encamp or bivouac in the open air near the gate.

Here they found themselves in the vicinity of an encampment of a peculiar race of nomades, who wander over the deserts on the borders of Syria and Arabia. They are known as the Solibah or Selibah, a name supposed to be derived from the word Seleeb, signifying a cross. Hence some have supposed that they were Christians of a degenerated type, and Mr. Palgrave inclines to that opinion: but it is well known that they are a remnant of the ancient Sabæans.

with the writings of Burns, and reading
this sneer at Lamartine's "rich and inven-
tive imagination," we were reminded of
those lines:-

"O wad some power the giftie gie us
To see ourselves as others see us,
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
And foolish notion."

In the narrative of Colonel Pelly's jour ney from Koweit to Riad, we find it stated that "Snakes, lizards, and insects abounded." Mr. Palgrave therefore may be quite as much in error as he supposes M. Lamartine to be. At all events, "Men who live in glass houses ought not to be the first to throw stones."

.

"The

On the fourth day they passed the large
and prosperous villages of Hafr, and Thom-
eyr, and Hootah, which we are told is "a
large and busy locality."
inhabitants are not only active traders, but
diligent agriculturists, and the country
around is planted and tilled to a notable
distance."
They distance." Then, during the same day's
journey: "We left behind us many other
villages and hamlets of less note, near and
far." At sunset they arrived at Horey-
melah, with an estimated population of
10,000, stated to have been the birthplace
of Mohammed Ibn-abd - ul - Wahab, who
founded and transmitted his name to the
Wahaby sect. Whether born there or not,
and the question is a disputed one, we think
there is no doubt that he settled there on
his return from Damascus, and there ma-
tured and first began to teach the doctrines
which are identified with his name. He
sought the protection of Saoud, chief of
Derayeh, about 1746, not about 1760, as
Mr. Palgrave supposes, and died in 1787,
at the advanced age of ninety-five, having
outlived his patron and disciple Saoud
twenty-two years, seen his son and successor,
Abd-ul-Azeez, in the full career of his con-
quests, seen his son and successor, the
second Saoud, already a distinguished mili-
tary leader; and having seen the Wahaby
doctrines and the Wahaby kingdom dom-
inant in the peninsula of Arabia.

From Zulphah the traveller proceeded from town to town: first to Ghat, rather a village than a town; then to Mejmaa, with a population of ten or twelve thousand; the third day to Toweym, with twelve or fifteen thousand inhabitants, having passed during the day by Djelajil, a considerable town. It was during his halt at Toweym that Mr. Palgrave, who rarely touches upon anything relating to natural history, while commenting on the general exemption from insect plagues in Central Arabia, with one offensive exception, proceeds as follows:-

"Snakes in Nejed are no less rare than in Ireland or Malta. In an elegant romance published by M. Lamartine under the title of the Journal of Fath-Allah Sey' yir, companion of the ill-fated Lascaris, a work already alluded to, these reptiles are spoken of as very common in Central Arabia; nay, appalling to think of,

M. Lamartine's hero discovers a whole thicket

full of their sloughs, of all colours and sizes, -a sort of serpents' cloak-room, I suppose. Happy the travellers who possess so rich and so inventive an imagination! a few boa-constrictors make no bad variety, at least in a narrative. But I was not favoured with any such visions, Nol' vedi, ne credo che sia.'"Vol. i. p. 355.

Passing from thence through the ruins of Eyanah and by those of Derayeh, the travellers at length arrived at the goal of their journey, at Riad, the capital of Feysul, sovereign of the Wahabys.

Mr. Palgrave, who tells us that he went to Central Arabia supposing it to be inhabited almost exclusively by nomades, must have been greatly surprised to find himself lodged every night in or near a considerable town or village, and to pass so many more Mr. Palgrave seems to be acquainted in the course of his journey from Bereydah

P

to Riad; but of those towns which he names there is not one the existence of which has not been well known for more than forty years. Most of them were mentioned nearly a century ago by Niebuhr, and in the early part of this century by Burckhardt, as well as by M. Corancez, many years French Consul at Aleppo and at Bagdad, in his Histoire des Wahabys, a work in which he was assisted by M. Silvestre de Sacy, and which is much esteemed in France. They have been noticed more recently and more fully, and their position determined with a closer approximation to accuracy, by M. Mengin* and MM. Langlés and Jomard, who lent him their assistance, and who received valuable aid, which they freely acknowledge, from Sheikh Abd-ur-Rahman, a grandson of Ibn-Abd-ul-Wahab, the founder of the Wahaby sect. He resided in Egypt, probably as a prisoner at large, or a hostage, and is described as a remarkably intelligent man, who was thoroughly acquainted with all parts of his native country, and who was learned in the learning of the Arabs. Yet this is the country which Mr. Palgrave imagines he has been the first to reveal to us; and which the readers of his clever and amusing book are led to suppose was unknown till he vis

* In order to illustrate the proximate accuracy of the maps prepared in 1823 for M. Mengin's work by the French geographers, it may be stated that, without the aid of any astronomical observations in the interior of Arabia, and relying solely on a variety of routes and other available information, they deduced the result that the latitude of Derayeh must be about 25° 15', and the longitude about 44° 10' E. of Paris,-equal to 46° 30' 15" E. of Greenwich. Colonel Pelly has now ascertained that the latitude of Riad is 24° 38' 34", and the longitude 46° 41' 48". But we know that Derayeh is about twenty-one miles north of Riad, which, added to the latitude of Riad, would give for that of Derayeh 24° 59' 34", or within 15' 26" of the latitude assigned to it by the French geographers. Derayeh is believed to be a little to the west of north from Riad; but supposing them to be on the same meridian, then the longitude, as given by the French geographers, would be 11' 35" less than Colonel Pelly's observations would make it. When we remember that greater errors than these have often been detected in maps of countries that are well known and much frequented, we can form some estimate of the extent and accuracy of the information from which a result so nearly approximating the true position of a place several hundreds of miles from any ascertained point could have been deduced, and also of the admirable care

and skill with which that information was used.

Derayeh, from its central position geographically, and from its being the capital, to which many converging routes led, was the most important point to be determined, and was, as it were, the key to all the rest; the close approximation to accuracy in determining that central point, goes a considerable way, therefore, to assure us of the general accuracy of the whole.

ited it. Far from filling up a "blank in the map of Asia," he has hardly added a name to those which were previously known, unless, perhaps, those of a few villages which may have grown up during the last forty years, and which are of no great importance. He has not discovered, so far as we can find out, any one town, or considerable place, the existence and proximate position of which was not as well known before he went to Arabia as it is now. But since the evacuation of the country by the Egyptians, we had not received, from any European, an account of its condition, and we did not know what changes might have occurred in the interval. That deficiency Mr. Palgrave has in some measure supplied, bringing down our information to a recent date; and we marvel to find how little change there has been.

The Egyptian conquest of Nejd, the overthrow of the Saoud dynasty, and with it of Wahaby domination, the subsequent efforts to expel the invaders, the revolutions, contests, and assassinations that followed their expulsion, resulted in restoring the dynasty deposed by foreign military force, and in re-establishing the Wahaby dominion. The inhabitants had returned to their towns and villages, their shops and warehouses, their fields and gardens, and, if Palgrave favours us with, the population is we may judge by such indications as Mr. about as numerous and as prosperous as it was before the country had been desolated and its inhabitants decimated by an enemy as merciless as the Wahabys themselves, and more brutal. Without the hearty concurrence of the great bulk of the population, and of the leading men amongst them, those results could hardly have been so rapidly obtained.

Mr.

The complete re-establishment of the native Arab government in its former authority, over almost every part of the extensive and dissimilar possessions from which it had been driven, and the increase of its power during the reign of the present ruler, Feysul, all appear to indicate that the existing government, whatever may be its defects, is on the whole that which the great majority of the governed have chosen. Palgrave predicts the overthrow of the Wahaby power at no remote date; but although this is a pretty safe prediction in Arabia, where nothing has for ages been permanent but anarchy, we suspect that "the wish was father to that thought." A reaction may no doubt be produced by intolerable misgovernment; or a disputed succession, which our author seems to count upon with confidence, may shake the Wahaby power. Much will depend on the wis

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'He had not the opportunity of seeing much of the manners and customs of the natives generally, but he had the honour of three interviews with the chief, and found him one of the most remarkable chiefs he had ever met with

in Asia; a man of exceeding dignity, self-confidence and repose. He always spoke of himself in the plural number, and treated his visitor with the respect which was due to him. At the first interview he confined himself to mere questions of etiquette, and said to Colonel Pelly that it was a curious place for an English officer to come to; that they were much cut off from external communication by the physical features of their country; that they were enough for themselves, had no foreign relations, and wished for none, especially with the English. In contimation, he said it might be considered extraordinary that a man of his calibre should be content to live in Riadh, and lead the dull life he did, but he said he felt himself every inch a king, and did not wish for anything more than e possessed. He then explained that he be longed to the strictest sect of the Mohammedans, and that it was his sect which had "retrieved the Mohammedan religion from falling away from its original purity. He said they had their political and religious differences, and added, that although in their political differences

*See Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, issued 26th August 1865 (p. 295.)

they were not accustomed to punish the persons of opponents, in religious warfare they killed everybody. He then proposed to Colonel offered him every comfort that he could possibly Pelly that he should become a Mussulman, and desire in the Wahabee capital. He (Colonel Pelly) in reply said he was exceedingly flattered by the offer, but he was a servant of the Government, which restricted him from many things that might otherwise be agreeable to him. At the second interview there was something in his manner which impressed Colonel

Pelly with the idea that he was a Freemason. His manner that day was exceedingly friendly. He entirely set aside all the ceremonies of the previous day, and entered into a long conversation, which terminated most kindly. He invited the Colonel to visit any part of the country he liked, and also to see his stud, the most perfect breed of Arabian horses in the world. At that time the horses happened to be at a place about a day and a half's journey off, but the Colonel had not time to visit them, or rather, circumstances induced him to return to the Persian Gulf. Had it not been for the ill-disposed men who surrounded the chief, he should have been and could have given a detailed statement of glad to have explored the whole of the country, the latitudes and longitudes of every important point. His minister is not a pure Arab, but the son of a Georgian slave by a negro father, and he is a man worthy of such descent. In fact, he proved exceedingly unpleasant. stole everything he could lay his hands on. The interpreter's buttons and neckcloth were the first things he coveted; but not content with them, he stole the Colonel's cheroots, and smoked them in his presence, and that in a country where it is death to be caught smoking tobacco. Yet in the presence of the chief this man sat with the stoicism of an old Greek. never spoke, and if asked any question he called on the name of the Prophet and of God, and spoke in the most fanatical and solemn manner possible, declaring it was impossible to conduct the affairs of Nejed if anybody smoked, or if the Wahabee power was allowed to fall off in any degree."

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There is nothing here to remind one of Mr. Palgrave's portrait of Feysul. No intimation that he was " stone blind; " no indication that the "chief" was "sinking into a dotage well befitting a tyrant of seventy.' Yet it appears that Mr. Palgrave was present at the meeting of the Royal Geographical Society at which Colonel Pelly gave the account of his visit to Riad and his interviews with the Wahaby chief, from which we have taken the above extracts, and that he had nothing to object to the statement.

He observed, amongst other things, that— "What Colonel Pelly had just said about the Court of Riadh is so exact a description, both of the Court itself, and of the persons who compose it, as to leave nothing except the certitude that, whenever the influence of the prime minister and of a few other fanatics can be

brought under, we shall be enabled to know | stances, but, for our own part, we prefer further, and to determine more accurately, Colonel Pelly's. every detail that remains."

Which of these descriptions of Feysul are we to accept? Is he really "stone blind?" If he be, it is surely remarkable that, even in an abridged report of Colonel Pelly's statement, there should be no allusion to the fact, more especially when regarded in connexion with what the Colonel tells us of the impression which Feysul made upon him. Was he sinking, in 1862, into " a dotage well befitting a tyrant of seventy?" Then he must have rallied in a miraculous manner, to have been, in 1865, the man described by Colonel Pelly. Mr. Palgrave had no personal audience, it appears, of Feysul, and we do not know that he ever saw that august personage, but he remained fifty days at Riad, in frequent and even intimate intercourse, as he tells us, with one or two of Feysul's sons, with his prime minister, his minister for foreign affairs, bis treasurer, his chief kadee, and other persons about the Wahaby court. Then Aboo Eysa, his most intimate friend, his guide and confidant, had, it appears, several interviews with the Wahaby sovereign while Mr. Palgrave and he were together at Riad. His means of obtaining correct information regarding Feysul were therefore at least as good and trustworthy as with reference to anything that did not come under his own observation. If he is misinformed about Feysul, as he appears to have been, how can we rely on any information obtained by him through similar channels? Colonel Pelly's visit to Riad might have been expected to confirm such of the statements of the preceding traveller as admitted of confirmation without minute inquiry, but it overturns Mr. Palgrave's allegation that M. Lamartine romanced when he spoke of snakes as numerous in Central Arabia; and it also overturns the allegation that Feysul is such as Mr. Palgrave represented him to be. Then Aboo Eysa's patron and our traveller's friend, the prime minister Mahboob (described as a reckless sort of youth, the son of a Georgian slave-woman, nominally by a negro father, but really a son of Feysul), who possessed the best collection of books seen at Riad, and at whose K'hawah our traveller spent much of his time, turns out, whatever may be his origin, to be a low blackguard, a shameless hypocrite, and a thief, who stole buttons and cigars. In short, the portraits drawn of the same persons by Colonel Pelly and Mr. Palgrave have not, we must say, any striking resemblance one to another. This may be due to a variety of circum

Of the institutions, whatever may be their nature or form, by which the machinery of a government that rules an enormous extent of country inhabited by a turbulent population must be carried on, by what means or through what channels the impulse given at the centre is conveyed to the extremities,what, in short, is the organization by means of which Feysul rules his vast kingdom, Mr. Palgrave gives no intelligible account of. He tells, indeed, of Wahaby spies in all quarters, Egypt, Oman, and elsewhere abroad, as well as at Riad and in the dependent districts; but how or by whom they are instructed, or how the information they transmit is turned to account for the advantage of the Wahaby government, we are left to conjecture. It can hardly be by Mahboob, the youthful, reckless, and not very trustworthy prime minister, who smokes tobacco and steals buttons. If Feysul is in his dotage, Mahboob, such as Colonel Pelly describes him, and the rest, including AbdAllah, the heir-apparent, such as Mr. Palgrave represents them to be, how is his majesty's government carried on? This Mr. Palgrave neither explains, nor attempts to explain. He speaks of the Wahaby government as highly centralized and despotic. Of course every despotic government must be highly centralized: but the more complete the centralization the greater must be the amount of work done at the centre; and we should like to know who, of the persons described by Mr. Palgrave, does, or can be supposed capable of doing that work. We confess that his account is to us, in this respect, altogether unintelligible. But as we know that Feysul's government is carried on, that its influence is felt everywhere in Central Arabia, and its authority obeyed; that such as are hostile to it fear it; and that it is able to suppress revolt, and even to undertake conquests, not on land only, but, as Mr. Palgrave assures us, beyond seas, there must be some organization, some machinery, some occult governing power, which Mr. Palgrave has not only not told us of, but the existence of which seems hardly to be compatible with his account of the court, and the persons who compose it.

There is one institution, indeed, of which he gives us, more suo, a full and amusing account. The "Zelators," such being the nearest word in literal translation of their Arabic designation, are twenty-two in number. "On these twenty-two Feysul conferred absolute power for the extirpation of whatever was contrary to Wahabee doctrine and practice, and to good morals in general,

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