[p.8]after transmitting the demand to the different officers of the treasury, sends the money to the Wakil, who delivers it to the applicant. This gift is sometimes squandered in pleasure, more often profitably invested either in merchandise or in articles of home-use, presents of dress and jewellery for the women, handsome arms, especially pistols and Balas[FN#13] (yataghans), silk tassels, amber pipe-pieces, slippers, and embroidered purses. They are packed up in one or two large Sahharahs, and then commences the labour of returning home gratis. Besides the Ikram, most of the Madani, when upon these begging trips, are received as guests by great men at Constantinople. The citizens whose turn it is not to travel, await the Aukaf and Sadakat (bequests and alms),[FN#14] forwarded every year by the Damascus Caravan; besides which, as has been before explained, the Harim supplies even those not officially employed in it with many perquisites.
Without these advantages Al-Madinah would soon be abandoned to cultivators and Badawin. Though commerce is here honourable, as everywhere in the East, business is slack,[FN#15] because the higher classes prefer the idleness of administering their landed estates, and being servants to the Mosque. I heard of only four respectable houses, Al-Isawi, Al-Shaab, Abd al-Jawwad, and a family from Al-Shark (the Eastern Region).[FN#16] They all deal in grain, cloth, and provisions, and perhaps the richest have a capital of twenty thousand dollars. Caravans in
[p.9]the cold weather are constantly passing between Al-Madinah and Egypt, but they are rather bodies of visitors to Constantinople than traders travelling for gain. Corn is brought from Jeddah by land, and imported into Yambu or via Al-Rais, a port on the Red Sea, one day and a halfs journey from Safra. There is an active provision trade with the neighbouring Badawin, and the Syrian Hajj supplies the citizens with apparel and articles of luxurytobacco, dried fruits, sweetmeats, knives, and all that is included under the word notions. There are few store-keepers, and their dealings are petty, because articles of every kind are brought from Egypt, Syria, and Constantinople. As a general rule, labour is exceedingly expensive,[FN#17] and at the Visitation time a man will demand fifteen or twenty piastres from a stranger for such a trifling job as mending an umbrella. Handicraftsmen and artisanscarpenters, masons, locksmiths, potters, and othersare either slaves or foreigners, mostly Egyptians.[FN#18] This proceeds partly from the pride of the people. They are taught from their childhood that the Madani is a favoured being, to be respected however vile or schismatic; and that the vengeance of Allah will fall upon any one who ventures to abuse, much more to strike him.[FN#19] They receive a stranger at the shop window with the haughtiness of Pashas, and take pains to show him, by words as well as by looks, that they consider themselves as