i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEJAZ 491 



prejudices, but purely by a very keen sense of self-interest. 

 Thus I found no difficulty raised against my copying 

 ancient inscriptions in the Upper Hejaz, although in 

 other parts for example, in Hadramaut such an act 

 would give rise to great suspicion and angry feeling. There, 

 if I recollect aright, an inscription copied by Wellsted 

 was supposed to have enabled the English to take Aden. 

 Here it was merely thought ridiculous that one should take 

 an interest in half-obliterated legends which no one could 

 read, or should care to undergo the fatigues of a journey 

 to Taif in the cold of winter when people were going about 

 with chapped hands, and the vineyards and orchards 

 showed none of their summer glory. 



I am afraid that this letter is to prove very discursive, 

 but while I am on the subject I may as well say a little 

 more on the extreme bigotry with which the inhabitants 

 of the Hejaz are generally credited, and of which the 

 notorious massacre of Christians at Jeddah in 1858 is 

 naturally regarded as sufficient evidence. In the first 

 place, it ought to be remembered that that massacre 

 had very little to do with religion. Its real causes were 

 the anger of the people at threatened interference with 

 the slave trade, jealousy of the growing competition of 

 European traders and steamships, and alarm at recent 

 events in India. It is characteristic of Mohammedanism 

 that all national feeling assumes a religious aspect, inas 

 much as the whole polity and social forms of a Moslem 

 country are clothed in a religious dress. But it would be 

 a mistake to suppose that genuine religious feeling is at 

 the bottom of everything that justifies itself by taking 

 a religious shape. The prejudices of the Arab have their 

 roots in a conservatism which lies deeper than his belief 

 in Islam. It is, indeed, a great fault of the religion of 

 the Prophet that it lends itself so readily to the prejudices 

 of the race among whom it was first promulgated, and 

 that it has taken under its protection so many barbarous 

 and obsolete ideas, which even Mohammed must have 



