1890] Shdhir Ibn Nassdr 33 



of a delul. After waiting in ante-rooms all this month he made up his 

 mind to go back to his people, who have it in their power to block the 

 pilgrim road, or at least to make things very uncomfortable for the 

 pilgrims, but I proposed to him as a last resource to see Baring. This 

 he did on Tuesday, I having spoken about him the day before to Baring 

 when I lunched at the Residency. Baring received him, by Zeyd's 

 account who went with him, with all honour and sent at once for 

 Riaz and told him Shahir was under his protection, and he must see 

 justice done. Riaz then went to the Khedive, who already knew of 

 Shahir's being with me, and they sent Thabit Pasha to Shahir and an- 

 other Pasha Abderrahman, and all together went to the Emir el Haj 

 and gave him a wigging and made him acknowledge the debt. Shahir 

 is to have his money in a few days, and is, of course, highly delighted. 

 He has given me the delul, which is rather a white elephant as I shall 

 have to give him a present in exchange." 



This Shahir was a most interesting man, being a quite wild Bedouin, 

 and his father, the chief Sheykh of the most important tribe between 

 Mecca and Medina, the hereditary occupants of the mountain passes 

 through which the pilgrimage yearly has to pass. From very early 

 times they have been subsidized by the Caliphs and Sultans who have 

 been responsible for the safe conduct of the pilgrims to grant a free 

 passage, but of late years the subsidy had remained unpaid through 

 the dishonesty of the agents entrusted with its delivery, a neglect which 

 brought about much trouble, and occasionally loss of life, through the 

 hostility of the tribe. Shahir had had little dealing with civilization, 

 even that of Mecca, and found himself more at home with us than at 

 Cairo, sharing Zeyd's tent on the desert edge outside our garden wall. 

 He was a wonderful camel-rider, performing strange feats of agility 

 with his delul, but was unable to ride a horse, for the Harb are not 

 horse owners, at least not that section of the tribe which inhabits the 

 Hedjaz. When he left us to return to his home by sea from Suez, his 

 delul, an Udeyhah, remained with me, I giving him in exchange £50, a 

 very full price, for the expense of his journey. 



Another matter which I took up that winter with Lord Cromer was 

 one that lay at the root of all sound progress in Egypt, as it does 

 wherever a Mohammedan population finds itself subjected to a Christian 

 government, that of its demoralization by drink. I am no fanatic on 

 the question of drink in Europe, where the use of wine and strong 

 drinks stands in no direct opposition, except by its abuse, to morals. 

 But in Mohammedan lands the case is entirely different. There the 

 abstention from wine is a fundamental principle of the moral code, and 

 those who transgress on this point become reprobate in their own eyes, 

 and lose all sense of decency and decorum. This was beginning to 

 show itself markedly in Egypt as a consequence of the establishment 



