ملف ١٩١٧/٧٥٦ الجزءان ٢-٣ "النشرات العربية أرقام ٦٦-١١٤" [و‎‎١‎١] (٨٣٤/٣٠)

— 424
prisoner. However, he set to work mending rifles and
manufacturing ammunition, and he received no actual illtreat-
ment until he failed to carry out some of the impossibilities
demanded of him. For example, his protests, that he could
neither manufacture guns without material and plant, nor mend
maxim-guns without component parts, were met with buffeting
and abuse, while his request to be allowed to return to Abyssinia
on the conclusion of his contract was received not only with
threats, but with actual manifestations of the most revolting-
atrocities. His last months at Tale were well nigh intolerable,
and he frequently contemplated suicide. Finally, he escaped, by
letting himself down the wall with a long rope and a grappling-
iron, only to perish on the road. Eight Bagheri who had formed
the guard oyer his quarters were executed forthwith. It is
significant of the Mullah’s distrust, that .never once did he admit
Kirsch to audience during his stay at Tale.”
The House of Sheibi (Beni Shaybali).
The Kiblah (No. 116) announces the death of the aged
Sheikh Mohammed Salih, head of the Sheibi Shaybah family, and
hereditary Keeper of the Key (or, rather, the gilt padlock) of the
Kaabah. A year ago he was appointed first Vice-President of
the King's Legislative Council, though not credited with
enthusiastic loyalty to the regime. The Keepership of the Key
now passes, by King Husein’s order, to the next brother, Abd el-
Qadir, also a member of the Legislative Council. This family—
tiie sangre azul of Mecca, as Burton called it—is of so ancient and
authentic a nobility that it puts “ Bourbon and Nassau ” into the
shade. If we smile at the popular legend which traces the family
and its privilege to an old woman (Shaybah), whom Abraham
and Isaac found in possession of the site of the new Kaabah they
had been commanded to build, and bought out with a promise of
the key to herself and her sons for ever—at the same time we
know that the Sheibi have enjoyed their privilege since Moawiya’s
day, if not the Prophet’s—generation after generation for at least
1,200 years. Perhaps, indeed, much more, for the Kaabah is
pre-Islamic, and it was the long established Meccan aristocracy
(e.g. the Umayyads) that the Prophet compromised in the matter
of the local sanctuaries. History relates that, during the anarchy
of the eleventh century, when Abbasid prestige was dying and
the Alids had not yet rivetted their grip on Mecca, the Sheibis
enriched themselves, like any Barons of mediaeval Europe, by
transferring all the gold and silver gifts from the Beit Allah to
their own private possession.