MKMOm OF BlRCKnARDT. 91 



llcjaz had been retaken from the "Wahabis (who 

 had conquered that province almost ten years be- 

 fore), and were then in possession of Ali Pasha. At 

 the commencement of tlic war, the Pasha had 

 sustained various repulses; but circumstances had 

 turned out in his favour. Many of the Wahabi 

 chiefs had been corrupted by the gold of Egypt ; 

 Ibn Saoud, the ablest and bravest of their leaders, 

 had died of fever in April 1814 ; and his son Ab- 

 dallah was much inferior, either as a statesman or a 

 warrior, to his father. Having subdued the pro- 

 vinces on the Red Sea, Ali was at this time prepar- 

 ing an expedition under his younger son Toussoun 

 Paslia, at JMedina, for penetrating into the interior, 

 and attacking the sectarian insurgents in their own 

 capital of Deraiah. 



So far, events tended to facilitate Burckhardt's 

 Arabian tour. The only obstacle he had to en- 

 counter was some difficulty in obtaining a supply 

 of money, the letter of credit which he had brought 

 from Cairo to a person in Jiddah not having been 

 honoured, under pretext that it w^as dated eighteen 

 months back ; but the true cause perhaps was the 

 raggedness of his own appearance (his clothes by that 

 time were worn to tatters), which might have ren- 

 dered any stranger cautious in committing himself 

 by advancing money on such suspicious correspond- 

 ence. To increase his misfortunes, he was seized 

 with fever, which kept him delirious for several 

 days, and might have terminated fatally, but for the 

 attentions of a Greek captain, who had been a 



