In former days there were gold and silver coins of similar shape. Some in silver can yet be found occasionally inscribed with the noble motto in Arabic: “_Honor to the sober man, dishonor to the ambitious._” When I was in Hofhoof that strange, two-tailed copper-bar was worth half an anna and disputed its birthright in the market with rupees and Indian paper and Maria Theresa dollars and Turkish coppers. But how changed the bazaar itself would appear to the ghost of some Carmathian warrior of the ninth century who first handled a “long-bit.” Even the Wahabis have disappeared and tobacco, silk, music and wine are no longer deadly sins. Of these Moslem Puritans many have left for Riad, and the few that remain stroke their long white beards in horror at Turkish Effendis in infidel breeches smoking cigarettes, while they sigh for the golden days of the Arabian Reformer.
There is a military hospital at Hofhoof with a surgeon and doctor, but at the time of my visit there was a dearth of medicines and an abominable lack of sanitation. Few soldiers submit to hospital treatment, preferring to desert or seek furlough elsewhere, and nothing is done for the Arab population. Before my coming cholera raged here as well as on the coast, and during my short visit smallpox was epidemic and carried off many, many children. Thrice awful are such diseases in a land where a practical fanaticism, under the pious cloak of religion, scorns medicine or preventive measures.
The government of the province of Hassa is as follows. The _Sandjak_ (Turkish for administrative division) is divided into three _cazas_, Nejd, Katar and Katif and a small garrison holds each of these cazas; 600 men at Hofhoof, and 300 at Katar and Katif. The governor, called Mutaserrif Pasha, resides at the capital and _kaimakams_ or sub-governors at the other two centres. There are the usual Turkish tribunals and each Arab tribe has a representative or go-between to arrange its affairs with the governor. The principal tribes which at present acknowledge Turkish occupation and submit to their rule are: El Ajeman, El Morah, Bni Hajar, Bni Khaled, Bni Hassam, El Motter, El Harb, and El Ja’afer. The Turkish government has opened three schools in the province; the total number of pupils according to the Turkish official report is 3,540. The same report puts the entire population of the province at 250,000; this gives a fair idea of the backwardness of education even in this province which has always been remarkable for book-learning. The large mosque with its twenty-four arches and porticoes, smooth-plastered and with a mat-spread floor is always full of mischievous youth learning the mysteries of grammar and the commonplaces of Moslem theology; but the days of poetry and writing of commentaries on the Koran are in the past; even the Wahabi merchants talk of Bombay and are glad to get hold of an English primer or an atlas of the new world which is knocking at their door for admittance.