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This travel book seems to have several title variations,
but I am settling on Travels in Arabia;
comprehending an account of those territories in Hedjaz which the Mohammedans
regard as sacred. (US
Edition) (UK Edition)
It is by a Swiss adventurer named Johann Ludwig
Burckhardt who knew Arabic and traveled disguised as an Arab. (He should not be confused with English
writer Charles Montagu Doughty who wrote a travel book with a similar title.) This is a book put together from Burckhardt's
letters and papers home and published posthumously in 1829. Now armchair
traveler, you can rediscover it!
Here is a caveat.
You have to page through tedious notes on the assembling and publication
of the book before you finally come to the book. Then you will find the original page numbers
are inserted in brackets for some reason beyond my understanding and each time
that causes a paragraph to appear even in the middle of a sentence! You will notice that in the excerpt
below. It is OK, you get used to it . . .
The price of every thing had
risen here to an unusual height, the imports from the interior of Arabia having
entirely ceased, while the whole population of the Hedjaz, now increased by a
Turkish army and its numerous followers, and a host of pilgrims who were daily
coming in, wholly depended for its supply upon the imports from Egypt. My
little stock of money was therefore spent during my illness, and before I was
sufficiently recovered to walk out. The Greek captain, though he had shown
himself ready to afford me the common services of humanity, was not disposed to
trust to the
[p.3] honour or
respectability of a man whom he knew to be entirely destitute of money.
This privation causes him to sell his slave and travel in
the guise of a "reduced Egyptian gentleman."
He went on the Hadj and there is some question as to
whether he converted to Islam.
I have heard people exclaim
in the mosques at Mekka, immediately after prayers, “O brethren, O faithful,
hear me! I ask twenty dollars from God, to pay for my passage home; twenty
dollars only. You know that God is all- bountiful, and may send me a hundred
dollars; but it is twenty dollars only that I ask. Remember that charity is the
sure road to paradise.” There can be no doubt that this practice is sometimes
attended with success.
Quite a find, such an early travelers tale from an area
much in the news today. Any
understanding we can gather of people elsewhere helps us understand our own
selves better. I have turned on the
television and heard preachers instructing their electronic flock to pray
exactly as is quoted above.
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