Reviews of A Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia, 1862-63 by William Gifford Palgrave, Published 1865 [‎20r] (39/42)

B:
Review.
MR. PALGRAVE'.S JOURNEY THROUGH'
ARABIA *
Most important were the facts contaitVed i«
the account given by ,the Hungarian Vambery
o£ his Travis in Central Asia, jjut that sdv-
drit travelled as a dervish, or m such a way
that it , was almost impossible for him to make
a note or drawing on tHe road; 'his route lay
through a country already partially known,
and now being, fully opened up by Russian sol
diers ; and he composed his Work in what was
to him a foreign tongue. Much .more in^
tense is the interest, and far more valuable and
novel' the facts, of the ^Narrative now before us,
Mr. Palgrave is a more accomplished schol
ar and' man of the world than M. r Vambery,,
while he pritea bis mptb(?r tongue atjd,that in its
purest, and.,occasionally m9,st eloquent, form. Our
ignorance of Central Asia was full and accurate
knowledge compared .with the utter erroiicous-
ness o-f our fancier about Central Arabia. And
Mr. Palgrave travelled in thp character of a Syrian
Christian physician^whifih gave hi in facilities for
studywig,: and recording; on the spot, the,nature
of.. the country,: people and . life which he so
acntfely observed and was enabled; to appreciate
by his great Arabic scholarship, his Indian ex
perience and ten years' of work in Syria a«
a J6shit, His book, moreover, has an especial
interest for' AngloUrtdians as - th<* production
of one Who - was dn Indian officfer. The Bengal
Captain, Speke, following the Bombay Captain,
Burton,- opened np the Isile'country. The Bom
bay' officer, Palgrave, fias for the first time
done for Ceiiiral Arabia whatlhtr!earned Cius- .
i ten -N'K.bnhr, to .whose mfem'oty he deJ;: '■
volumes, did for its Eastern and Soutbern shores.
Every page contains a new fact Or an able and
interesting discussion.
William Gifford Palgrave, son of Sir F. Pal
grave the well known writer The lowest of the four classes into which East India Company civil servants were divided. A Writer’s duties originally consisted mostly of copying documents and book-keeping. on early English
history, after feceiviug his education at the
Charterhouse and distinguishing himself at Ox
ford, was an officer of the 8th Bombay Native
Infantry. When M India he seems to have vis
ited all thqse parts of the Peninsula which
extend from Sindh to Tanjore. The movement
which .Hi:, Newman headed led,, him. to the
Roman Catholic Church, and he becanie a priest
in what was, at its institution, the most intellec
tual of all the Romish orders, the Jesuits. In
that ordef h6 laboured as a missionary for teri Or
twelve years in Syria, but the teachings' of Loyola
and his modern representatives can have had r uo
abiding efi'ect on his mind, if we may judge from
the reverent freedom, ifnd healthy tone of his
remarks on. theological and ethical questions.
Like Mr. Arnold, and others of the more intellec
tual of the Oxford perverts, he became what it
is now the fashion to term a" revert," about
the time that the Pope published his Encycli
cal, or after he had oompleted his journey, but
before he wrote ^his Narrative. Why .particu
larly he went to Arabia, and with the assist
ance and under the patronage of Louis Napoleon,
does not clearly appear. His journey, be tells
us, was "with the purpose of observing rather
than of pablishing." ''The men of the land
rather than the laud of the men*' were his main
object of research. His attention was directed
to "the moral, intellectual and political condi
tions of living Arabia." His object appears to
have been of a combined missionary and politic
al character. He more than once alludes to an
intention of writing farther on the subject of hia
explorations, but he nowhere states if the results
of his mission were satisfactory to the ruler of
the Erench. Does Louis Napoleon dream of
forming an alliance with that tolerant and able
monarch Telal, so as to put down the Wahabees
and regenerate Arabia through Egypt and Syria 1
I-s the Arabian to be added to the Eastern Ques
tion ? This is the only solution we can give of
several passages in Mr. Palgrave's book. The
following is an account of his interview with the
King, to whom he thought it prudent to com
municate bis real designs;—
Thus encouraged, I began, and gave a brief but
'clear account of the cirenmstances and object of our
journey, whence an(4 whither, what we desired, and
what expected. A conversation -of at least an hour
ensued ; it consisted principally of interrogations On
Telal's part, and of explanations and answers on ours.
His Queries were ahvaya to the point; his remarks
ooiwfte but ancoBimouiy shrewd, and going to the
bottom of things Much that I said was Hiet-half-
way by assent, on other points he suggested difficul
ties or proposed modifications. He took particular
care net to commit himself by assurances of ad her-
"ig to any definite line of conduct, and we of course
avoided witk equal BcrupuJosity all appearance of a
desire to lead him farther or faster than he chose to
follow. But he insisted much on the necessity of
entire Secrecy, saying, '• Were what now passes be
tween us to be known at large, it might be as much
us your lives are worth, and perhaps mime also: 5 ?
In the course of this, interview I took the opportu
nity to mention certain ambiguous and sinister re
ports which I had been told circulated regarding us
among some classes of the people. " Does the town
gay bo ?" exclaimed Tela! in an half-scornful voice 5
and then placing his hand on his breast, added, with
a gesture and a tone that Louis XIV. in council
miahfc have envied, " I am the town!" subjoining,
"Never fear; from none of my subjects shall you
ever again hear the like. But," continued he, " there
are others for whom I cannot answer equally well."
The " others" were the Wahabees. Mr. Pal-
grave's change of belief, and his appointment
Prussiau Consul General in Bagdad, remove all
■prospect of his becoming an agent of Louis Napo
leon.
Mr. Palgrave landed at Gaza on the coast of
Palestine, but made his final start from Maan, a
village On the great pilgrim road frond Damascus
to Mecca, His companion was Barakat, a Coelo
Syrian Christian of great d at 'ing. He himself
travelled in the character of a Syrian Christian
also ; he professed to be a doctor and Barakat
was his servant. Besides the stock of medicines
with which he furnished himself, he had a collec
tion of siich articles as a pedlar sellsj intending
in the first part of his journey to act in that
capacity. He coiidemns in strong and just lan
guage the folly as well as the sin of those who.
like Vambery, adopt the disguise of a dervish.
This : character forces them " to turn for weeks
and months together this most sacred and awful
bearings of man towards his Creator into a deli
berate and truthless mummery," and by pre
venting them from taking notes and leading
them to look at everything through this Mus-
suTman disguise, shuts ' them out from the best
means of observing and of recording what they
see. Had Mr. Palgrave been known as s, European
he would probably not have escaped. But as a
damascene Christian, and above all as a learned
doctor, he was everywhere welcomed, had entr6e
into the houses, libraries and records of kings and
their ministers, and enjoyed leisure to write up
his journals and elaborate his researches. At the
same time, he overlooks the consideration that
what suited Arabia would not be equally well
adapted to Cfentral Asia,
Thus prepared Palgrave and Barakat, under the
names of Spleem-El-Eys and Barakat Esh-Shamee,
left Maan on their south-east journey through
Arabia to Bahrein in the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. , in June
1862. They were accompanied by three Bedo
uins, and mounted on dromedaries, a dromedary
being to a camel what a high-bred horse is to a
hack, and not a different species. He chose the
hottest season of the year as best fitted to disarm
suspicion of his European origin, The first part
of their journey lay through the desert known
popularly as Arabia Petrsea to Djowf, the begin
ning of the kingdom of Telal. Once for all it
should be understood that the interior of Arabia,
or Nejed, is a highly cultivated and prosperous
country, consisting of the two great sovereign
ties of Shomer and the Wahabees, with the
Syrian desert to the north, and the Great
Sandy desert on the south. There is Oman
with its Sultan, whom we improperly term
the Imam of Muscat, on the south-east coast;
while the west coast consists of Yemen with our
settlement of Aden, and the Hejaz, running up
to the peninsula of Sinai, with Mecca and Medi
na. Hardly had our travellers left Maan when
the sun rose and the Bedouins, whom Mahome-
danism has but sightly impressed during the past
twelve centuries, prostrated themselves in the
old Sabaean worship before the sun, nor desisted
till its full orb was above the horizon. After twelve
days' journey through the great Syrian waste,
during, which they bad nearly perished in the
Semoom—to be distinguished from the Sirocco—
and had been welcomed by wandering Bedouins,
the party reached Djowf, the first cultivated and
semi-civilised part of Northern Arabia. The
people have advanced half-way in civilisation
between the nomades and the citizens of Hayel
the capital of King Telal, who may well be des
cribed as the Akbar of Arabia. The people showed
the merchants—for here they were not doctors—
great good will, and after ten days' pleasant inter-
5 W 2
coirse with the leading men and the viceroy
Hanood, fliey set off for the capital. This
cdild be reached only through the Nefood, or
satd passes, which- are offshoots of' the great
ocian of' 'sand that covers' about or;e-third of
tb peninsula. Through the hot' reddish sand,
fa 1 worse than the Syrian waste, they approach-
edtlie'piateau of Djebel Shomer. Up they went
between the sierras whose course from north
east to south west crosses two-thirds of the up-
p«r peninsula, and then, winding through
mrrow defile, they found themselves on the verge
o< a large plain encircled by mountains with
Ha'yel, the capital, before them. Here is a picture
which revolutionises our ideas'of Arabia ;—
At scarce a quarter of an hour's march, lay the
t«wn of HS'yel snrronnded by fortifications of about
tvemy feet in height, wi h bastion-towers, some
nund, some square, and large folding gates at in-
tsrvals; it offered the same shdv^ of freshness and
even of something like irregular /elegance that had
before struck us in the villages on our way. But
this was a full-grown town, and its area might
leadily hold three hundred thousand inhabitants or
nore, were its street^ and houses close packed like
(hose of Brusse's or Paris. 'But the ifbmber of citizens
does not, in fact, exceed twenty or'twenty-two thons-
»nd. thanks to the many large gardens, open spaces,
and even plantations, included within the outer
walls, while the immense palace of the monarch
ilone, with its pleasure grounds annexed, occupies
about oiiti-tenth of the en rive [city. Our attention
was attracted by a lofty tower, some seventy feet
iq height, of recent construction and oval form, be
longing to the royal residence. The plain all around
the town is studded with isolated houses and gardens,
the property of wealthy citizens, or of members of
the Kingly family, and on the far-off skirts of the
plain appear the groves belonging to Kafar, 'Adwah,
and other villages, placed at the openings of the moun
tain gorges that conduct to the capital. The town
walls and bnildings shone yellow in the evening sun,
and the whole prospect was one of thriving security,
delightful to view, thousih wanting in the peculiar
luxuriance of vegetation offered by the valley of
Djowf. A few Bedouin tents lay clustered close by
the ramparts, and the great number of horsemen,
footmen, camels, asses, peasants, townsmen, boys,
women, and other like, all passing to and from their-
various avocations, gave cheerfulness and animation
to the scene.
This is the capital of the Shomer tribe whieh,
though never conquered by the Mussulman Ca-
lipbs, was for some time subject to the first
Wahabee empire till that was extinguished by
Ibrahim Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. . Here so recently as 1830 Abdal-
lah, of one of the noblest families, obtained the
supremacy, though paying nominal tribute to
Feysul, the Wahabee sovereign. He built a vast
palace and created almost a new city. Dying in
1S45, his eldest son Ttlal copipleted bis plans,
and reigns over North Arabia, with such wis
dom, rectitude and success that Mr, Palgrave says
—"among all rulers 01; governors, European
or Asiatic, with whose acquaintance I have
ever cbai;ced to be honoured, L know few equal
in the true art of government to Telal, soa of
'Abd-Allah-ebn-Rasheed." He is troubled only
by his uncle Obeyd, who-is at the head of
the Wahabee faction. His minister is Zamil,
whom the first king raised from beggary, and
who is the worthy servant of such a sover
eign. 'Telal professes to be the vicegerent of
the Sultan at Constantinople, but never sends
him a penny of tribute. It would be well if
the country from Djowf to the Danube were
half as well ruled as is the kingdom of Shomei*.
Mr. Palgrava was so successful as a physician
in Hayel that it was with difficulty he could
get away. Obeyd only was his enemy and, under
the guise of friendship, gave him a letter of
introduction to the heir-apparent of the Waha
bee kingdom, which would have ensured his
death, had he not opened and kept it. Europe
will, we trust, yet hear more of the wise and
able Telal, and his progressive kingdom of Shomer
Oa 8th September Mr. Palgrave and his Syrian