A Pilgrimage to Nejd Volume Ii Part 12

In January 1815, Mehemet Ali inflicted a first serious defeat on the Wahhabi army, and Tusun having occupied Medina advanced into Kasim, in northern Nejd, where he took possession of Ras, at that time capital of the district.

Negotiations were opened from that point with the Emir Abdallah who had retired with his army to Aneyzeh; and these resulted to the astonishment of every one (for Abdallah still had a powerful army) in the Emir's submission.

It is probable that in thus yielding, Abdallah felt his position in Nejd insecure. The Bedouins though subdued had never accepted the Wahhabi rule but on compulsion, and many of them were openly siding with the Turks, while his late defeat had destroyed much of his soldier's prestige. Be that as it may, the Emir agreed to the following stringent terms at Aneyzeh.

1st. He acknowledged as suzerain the Sultan of Turkey.

2nd. He agreed to give hostages for future conduct, and even, if required, to present himself in person at Constantinople.

3rd. He would deliver over Deriyeh, his capital, to a governor appointed by the Sultan; and

4th. He would restore the jewels plundered from Medina on the occasion of his father's visit in 1810.

On these conditions peace was concluded between the Emir and Tusun, and Abdallah gave the hostages required. He did not, however, give over Deriyeh, but proceeded on the contrary to prepare it for a siege.

Neither did Mehemet Ali, when he learned that Abdallah refused to come to Egypt in person, nullify the peace. Tusun was recalled, and Ibrahim, his second son, appointed commander of the army in Arabia in his stead.

In September 1816 Ibrahim Pasha left Egypt at the head of a considerable force and proceeded to the scene of action.

The first encounter seems to have taken place at Ma' Wiyah, where Abdallah ibn Saoud attacked the Egyptian army and suffered a signal defeat. On this occasion Ibrahim Pasha put to death all prisoners taken.

The pasha then advanced with 4000 infantry and 1200 cavalry, besides contingents of the friendly Arab tribes, Beni-Khaled, Muteyr, 'Oteybah, Harb, and Suhool against Ras, which was held by a Wahhabi garrison.

Before this town Ibrahim Pasha suffered a serious check, and after besieging it for three and a half months, and losing 3000 men, he was obliged to agree to an armistice and abandon the siege. The Egyptian general, however, masking Ras, continued to advance eastwards on 'Aneyzah and the Emir retired south to Bereydah. After six days' bombardments, the forts of 'Aneyzah surrendered, and the entire district of Kasim then submitted to the Egyptian commander. Abdallah retired on Shakrah, a town in the district of Woshem, and Ibrahim Pasha took Bereydah, where he halted two months for reinforcements. During this time the pasha succeeded in detaching from the Wahhabi cause many of those Bedouins who still remained faithful to Ibn Saoud. Among the first to join the Egyptians had been Feysul-el-Dawish, Sheikh of the Muteyr, who, animated by an ancient feud with the Ibn Saouds, was readily persuaded by Ibrahim with the promise of being installed Governor of Nejd, a promise which the pasha had no intention of fulfilling.

Having received at Bereydah a reinforcement of 800 men, and two guns, as well as supplies of provisions and ammunition, Ibrahim Pasha was able to continue his advance on Shakrah at the head of 4500 Turkish, Albanian, and Moorish troops in addition to Arab contingents. About 10,000 camels accompanied the force, and the infantry soldiers were usually mounted two and two on camels. The Emir Abdallah meantime retired on his capital, wasting the country before the enemy, and sending the surplus cattle and flocks to Hasa. This was in the latter part of December, 1817. In the following month the Turkish army appeared before Shakrah, which was regularly approached under the direction of a French engineer, M.

Vaissiere, and capitulated on the 22nd of January, 1818. The lives of the garrison were spared, but they were deprived of their arms, and had to engage not to serve again under the Wahhabi Emir. Some time after, when Deriyeh had fallen, Ibrahim Pasha caused the fortifications of Shakrah to be demolished.

Abdallah ibn Saoud had now retreated to Deriyeh and before following him up to the capital Ibrahim Pasha judged it advisable to turn aside from the direct route to take the town of Dhoramah. At that place he encountered a spirited resistance, several of his men being killed. In revenge for this, the male inhabitants were put to the sword, the town pillaged and destroyed, and the women given up to the brutality of the Turkish soldiery. Only the governor and his guard, who had shut themselves in a citadel, were suffered to escape with their lives.

Detained by rains, it was March before Ibrahim Pasha advanced on Deriyeh which town he invested in April with a force of 5500 horse and foot and twelve pieces of artillery, including two mortars and two howitzers.

Shortly after, reinforcements and convoys of supplies reached the Turkish camp from Medina and Busrah. The siege operations were for some time conducted without any success to the Turkish arms, and in the latter part of the month of May an explosion having occurred by which the pasha lost all his spare ammunition, his position became extremely critical.

Indeed, the indomitable personal courage and good example of Ibrahim alone saved the army from disaster. The troops suffered much from dysentery and ophthalmia, and the Wahhabis thought to overwhelm the besiegers by a sortie in force. The attack was however repulsed and the opportunity lost to the besieged; for soon after the engagement caravans with fresh supplies of ammunition and provisions reached the Egyptian camp, and then reinforcements of infantry and cavalry. News was also received of the approach of Khalil Pasha from Egypt with 3000 fresh troops. Early in September the Emir sent a flag of truce to request an audience of the pasha. This was accorded, and the Wahhabi chief was kindly received, but was informed that the first and indispensable condition of peace was the attendance of Abdallah in person at Cairo.

The Emir asked twenty four hours for reflection, which delay was granted, and at the expiration of the time he returned to the pasha's camp and intimated his willingness to fulfil the condition imposed, provided Ibrahim would guarantee that his life would be spared. Ibrahim Pasha replied that he had no authority himself to bind the Sultan and the Viceroy on that point, but that he thought both were too generous to put him to death. Abdallah then pleaded for his family and prayed that Deriyeh and his adherents there should be spared. These terms were conceded and a peace concluded. The ill-starred Emir at once set out on his journey under a strong escort, and on reaching Cairo, was courteously received by Mehemet Ali, who forwarded him to Constantinople with a strong appeal for his pardon. The government of the Porte was, however, implacable: Abdallah ibn Saoud was paraded ignominiously through the streets of the capital for three days, and then, with his companions in captivity, was publicly beheaded.

Thus ends the first epoch of the Wahhabi rule in Nejd. During the twenty-three years which followed the destruction of Deriyeh, Nejd continued to be a province of Egypt; sometimes occupied by Egyptian troops, sometimes tributary only. When Ibrahim Pasha first appeared in Nejd, he commanded the sympathies of a great part of the population, and especially in Jebel Shammar, Kasim, and Hasa, where he was received rather as a deliverer from the Wahhabi yoke, than as a foreign conqueror.

No Turkish army had previously been seen in Central Arabia; and the Arabs of the interior, when not fanatically biased, had no special hatred of them. But the Turkish and Albanian troops left in garrison by Ibrahim soon excited by their cruelties the enmity of the people; and as early as 1822 a first ma.s.sacre of a Turkish garrison occurred at Riad, the new capital of Nejd (for Deriyeh was never rebuilt). This was followed in 1823 and 1824 by a successful rising of the Arabs under Turki ibn Saoud (see pedigree), and the re-establishment of his family as sovereign in Aared. Turki seized Riad, drove out the Egyptian troops still remaining in Nejd, and as leader of a popular movement against the foreigner, was recognized Emir by most of the tribes of Central Arabia.

For ten years-1824 to 1834-Turki consolidated his power in Nejd, Hasa, and even Oman, the whole coast of the Persian Gulf to Ras-el-Had acknowledging him and paying tribute. He, however, himself paid tribute to the Government of Egypt, which accorded countenance to his action in Arabia.

In 1834, Turki ibn Saoud was a.s.sa.s.sinated by a relative, Meshari, who was in turn put to death by Turki's son, Feysul, now recognised Emir in his father's stead.

In 1838, Feysul, having neglected or refused to pay tribute to Egypt, Mehemet Ali sent a force under Jomail Bey to depose him, and to establish Khalid, a rival claimant of the Ibn Saoud family, as Emir at Riad.

Feysul then fled to Hasa, and Khalid, supported by a portion of the people of Aared and by reinforcements from Egypt under Khurs.h.i.+d Pasha, usurped the throne, but was shortly set aside by the Egyptian commanders, who established Egyptian government throughout Nejd. Feysul meanwhile had surrendered to them, and been sent prisoner to Cairo. The second Egyptian occupation of Nejd lasted for two years. Then the greater part of the troops were recalled, and Khalid left as Valy for the Turkish government.

In 1842, Abdallah ibn Theneyan ibn Saoud headed a revolt against Khalid, who with his few remaining Egyptian troops was ejected from Riad; and Feysul, having escaped from his prison in Cairo, reappeared in Aared, and was everywhere acknowledged as Emir. From this time neither the Egyptian nor the Turkish government have exercised any authority in Nejd.

Under Feysul, whose reign lasted after his restoration for twenty-three years, nearly all the former territories of the Wahhabi empire were re-conquered. Oman in 1845 was reduced to tribute; Hasa was forced to accept Wahhabi governors, and in Feysul's last years Kasim also was conquered. Jebel Shammar, which on the overthrow of the first Nejd empire by Ibrahim Pasha had reverted to independence under the Ibn Ali family of the Beni Temim, was now also annexed nominally to the Wahhabi state. With Feysul's help, Abdallah ibn Ras.h.i.+d, Sheykh of the Shammar, established himself at Hal, and paying tribute to the Emir acknowledged his sovereignty. Only in Bahreyn were his arms unsuccessful, and that owing to the support given to the Bahreyn sheykhs by England.

In the later years of his life Feysul became blind, and the management of affairs fell to his son Abdallah, who by his fanaticism and his cruelty alienated the Bedouin population from his standard, and prepared matters for a third intervention on the part of the Turks.

Before narrating, however, the last episode of Arabian misfortune and Turkish annexation, it will be necessary to explain briefly the views and pretensions of the Ottoman Sultans with respect to Arabia.

The first appearance of the Turks in the peninsula dates from 1524, when Selim I., having conquered Egypt and usurped the Caliphate, till then held by members of the Abbaside family, took military possession of the holy places, Mecca and Medina, and annexed Yemen to his dominions.

Beyond the districts immediately bordering on the Red Sea, however, no part of Arabia proper was at that time claimed by the Sultans; and in the following century a national insurrection drove them even from these, so that with the exception of the pilgrim roads from Cairo and Damascus, the Turks made no pretension of being masters in the Peninsula.

Ibrahim Pasha's expedition had been made not in a.s.sertion of a sovereign right, but as an act of chastis.e.m.e.nt and retaliation on a hostile sect; and once the Wahhabi government crushed, little care had been taken in retaining Nejd as a possession. The sultans were at that time far too anxiously occupied with their position in Europe to indulge in dreams of conquest in Asia, and were, from a military point of view, too weak for unprofitable enterprises not absolutely necessary. But at the close of the Crimean war the Turkish army was thoroughly reorganised, thanks to the English loan, which made its equipment with arms of precision possible; and the Sultan, finding himself in the possession of unaccustomed power, used it for the reduction first of the outlying districts of the Empire which had shaken off his yoke, and next of those tribes on its borders which appeared easiest of conquest. The frontier lands of Syria and Kurdistan were thus brought back into subjection, the Euphrates and Tigris valleys, independent since the days of Tamerlane, were occupied in force, and Irak was once more placed under the Imperial system of tax and conscription. The Suez Ca.n.a.l was opened, and Arabia, accessible hitherto by land only, was now for the first time within easy reach of Constantinople. With the sense of increased power, born of full coffers and an army ready and equipped for action, new dreams of conquest came to the Imperial government. The Sultan remembered what he seemed to have forgotten, that he was heir to the Arabian caliphate, and his Ministers of the day based on this fact a claim to all Arabia. The garrisons of Mecca and the Hejaz were increased, an expedition was despatched against Yemen, and Midhat Pasha, a man of a restless, unquiet temper, was appointed Governor of Bagdad, with orders to watch his time for extending the Sultan's influence in any direction that might seem to him advisable. The opportunity soon came.

In 1865 Feysul ibn Saoud died, and the Wahhabi State which under him had regained so much of its former power, was once more weakened by internal dissension. Feysul left two sons, Abdallah and Saoud, the former a strict Wahhabi, but the latter holding liberal opinions, national rather than religious. Each put himself at the head of a party; Abdallah of the townsmen in Aared who were still fanatically attached to the reformed doctrine, and Saoud of the Bedouins. For a while they divided Feysul's inheritance between them, but coming to blows the younger brother forced the elder to fly from Aared, and Saoud established himself there as sole Emir. Jebel Shammar meanwhile and Kasim became completely independent, and Hasa and the rest of the maritime districts refused any longer to pay tribute.

In 1871 Abdallah, turned out of Aared, made his way with a few followers to Jebel Shammar, where Metaab Ibn Ras.h.i.+d was then Emir, and from that asylum (for he was treated there as a guest) put himself into communication with Midhat at Bagdad. Midhat, who saw in this circ.u.mstance an opportunity such as he had been instructed to seek, readily responded; and at once issued a proclamation in which the sovereign power of the Sultan over Nejd was a.s.sumed, and Abdallah referred to as Caimakam or Deputy Governor of that province. It was notified, moreover, that a Turkish force would be despatched from Bagdad "to restore order, and to maintain the said Caimakam against his rebellious brother."

After some opposition on the part of the Indian Government, which for many years had insisted upon absolute peace being maintained in the Persian gulf, a rule which had been agreed to by all the chiefs of the Arabian coast, including the people of Hasa and the Wahhabi government, and which had been attended with excellent results, a military expedition was despatched by sea to Hasa. It consisted of 4000 to 5000 Turkish regulars, under Nazfi Pasha, and disembarked at Katif in the month of June. Abdallah in the meantime had returned to Nejd, and having collected a body of adherents, in union with the Beni Kahtan tribe, attacked Saoud from the west; but was defeated and took refuge in the Turkish camp.

Dissensions nevertheless broke out in Riad and forced Saoud to take the field against a third rival, Abdallah ibn Turki, at whose hands he sustained a defeat, and he was in his turn forced to retire to Katr. The Turks had now occupied all the seaboard of Hasa, and the inland fort and town of Hofhuf, whence they entered into communication with this Abdallah ibn Turki, whom they named Mudir of Riad, "pending the arrival there of Abdallah ibn Feysul;" but before the end of the year, Midhat announced that in consequence of a pet.i.tion received by the Sultan from the princ.i.p.al inhabitants of Nejd {266} the Ibn Saoud family had ceased to reign, and that the country should henceforth be administered by a Turkish Governor. Nafiz Pasha was appointed in the same announcement Muteserrif or Governor of Nejd, and Abdallah was entirely put aside. The Emir Abdallah thereupon fled from the Turkish camp in Hasa to Riad.

[Picture: Fortress of Agde]

In 1872 Raouf Pasha, who had succeeded Midhat at Bagdad, opened negotiations with Saoud, and induced him to send his brother Abderrahman to Bagdad, where he was retained a prisoner till 1874.

In the same year Saoud returned to Riad, and once more ejected his brother Abdallah, who retired to Queyt, leaving Saoud in undisturbed possession till his death in 1874.

In 1873, the Turkish regular troops were withdrawn, and Bizi ibn Arear, Sheykh of the Beni Khaled and hereditary enemy of the Ibn Saouds, was left in Hasa as Ottoman Governor, with a garrison of zaptiehs.

In 1874, Abderrahman, brother of the Emir Saoud, having been released from Bagdad, raised a revolt in Hasa, and was joined by the Al Mowak, Ajman and other Bedouin tribes, with whom he marched on Hofhuf and besieged Bizi there with his garrison, many of whom were slain.

Whereupon Na.s.sr Pasha was sent from Bussora with a battalion of regulars, by sea to Hasa, at the news of whose approach Abderrahman retired to Riad. Na.s.sr then marched on Hofhuf and relieved the garrison, which were shut up in the fort; but gave the town to pillage. For several days the Turkish soldiers and their auxiliaries indulged in indiscriminate ma.s.sacre and plunder of the inhabitants; men, women and children were shot down, and women were openly treated with the brutality peculiar to such occasions. It is said in extenuation that the Turkish officers remonstrated with the Pasha, but that he replied that it was necessary to make an example.

Shortly after this the Emir Saoud died at Riad, it has been said of poison; and in 1875 Abdallah returned to Nejd, where he found Abderrahman, his half brother, established. The brothers, after some disputing, came to an amicable arrangement with respect to the chief power, Abdallah holding the t.i.tle of Emir, and Abderrahman of chief minister. Such is now the state of things at Riad. Overtures from the Turkish Government have been lately opened with the Emir, on the basis of his becoming Governor of Nejd as Turkish nominee, but have met with no response. Abdallah, it would seem, exercises little authority out of Riad, and none whatever out of Aared. He represents the party of Wahhabi fanaticism there, which is rapidly declining, and there are schemes on foot among the Bedouins and certain members of the Ibn Saoud family, for starting a new pretender in the person of one of the sons of Saoud, and claiming the protection of England. The power of the Ibn Saoud family in Arabia may, however, be considered at an end.

Hasa and the seaboard from Katr to Queyt is now held by the Turks, under whose system of stirring up tribal feuds among the Arabs, the commercial prosperity of the coast is rapidly disappearing. Piracy, under the protection of the Ottoman flag, has once more become the mode of life with the coast villagers, and intrigues have been opened with the Sheykhs of the districts eastwards, to induce them to accept similar protection on the promise of similar license.

Meanwhile all that is truly national in thought and respectable in feeling in central Arabia, is grouping itself around Mohammed Ibn Ras.h.i.+d, the Emir of Jebel Shammar, and it is to Hal that we must look for a restoration, if such be possible, of the ancient glories and prosperity of the Nejd Empire.

W. S. B.

[Picture: Pedigree of the Ibn Saouds, Emirs of Nejd]

[Picture: Pedigree of the Ibn Ras.h.i.+ds, Emirs of Jebel Shammar]

MEMORANDUM ON THE EUPHRATES VALLEY RAILWAY,

AND ITS KINDRED SCHEMES OF RAILWAY COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE MEDITERRANEAN AND THE PERSIAN GULF.

HAVING now completed the whole journey by land between Alexandretta and Bus.h.i.+re, the extreme points usually mentioned as terminuses for a Perso-Mediterranean Railway, and being, in so far, capable of estimating the real resources of the countries such a railway would serve, I make no apology for the few remarks I here offer on the subject. I do so with the more confidence because I perceive that of the many advocates these railway schemes have had, not one has taken the trouble of thus travelling over the whole distance, and that nearly all calculations made regarding them, are based on a survey of a part only of the road. It is seldom indeed that those who write or speak about a Euphrates valley railway, have done more than cross that river at Bir, or that they carry their arguments much beyond a choice of the most suitable Mediterranean port for a terminus, a kind of reasoning sufficient, no doubt, for the purpose before them, but in reality misleading. I believe, that one and all of these schemes are based upon a deficient knowledge of the facts.

A railway of this sort, to Englishmen, is naturally attractive, and presents itself to them in a double aspect, political and commercial.

Politically it has been represented as an alternative route for troops to India, more expeditious than that by Suez; commercially as a scheme that will open up a rich but neglected country to the operations of trade.

With regard to the first I would remark first that, having gone through the calculation carefully, I find that four days is the total saving between London and Calcutta which a line of railway from Scanderun or Tripoli to Bus.h.i.+re would effect, an advantage quite inadequate to the risk of trans.h.i.+pment, and the fatigue of a long desert journey; secondly that the Persian Gulf is both hotter and less healthy than the Red Sea, and that the Syrian ports of the Mediterranean are peculiarly liable to fever; and thirdly that such a line could be used for the conveyance of English troops, by permission only of whatever power might be in possession of Asia Minor.