i88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 493 



have no hesitation in saying that the religion of the Hejaz 

 is now, and probably has been from the days of Mohammed, 

 no better than an organised hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is 

 necessarily suspicious, and can readily assume the form 

 of fanaticism, but it has not that strength to resist new 

 currents of influence which belongs to genuine conviction. 

 Of late years a great many influences have tended to 

 break up the antipathies expressed in the massacre of 

 1858. It has been seen that there is no ground for jealousy 

 of European trade and European steamers, that the 

 Franks have opened to Arabia the doors of international 

 commerce, while native merchants have nothing to fear 

 from foreign competition in their own style of business. 

 Native and European merchants work side by side in 

 Jeddah with mutual advantage. Even the pilgrim traffic 

 is mainly conducted by co-operation between European 

 firms and the leading Seyyids and Mohammedan notables 

 of Jeddah. Now the whole life of an Arabian town lies 

 in its trade. There are no rentiers, no landed proprietors. 

 When the foreign merchant becomes an integral part of 

 the commercial community he has established himself 

 in the very heart of society, and exerts an influence on 

 every section of the population. This influence is partly 

 material and partly moral. The Arabs are immensely 

 impressed by the kind of power embodied in our industries 

 and trade, by the power of English knowledge to control 

 the forces of nature for the service of man. &quot; There is 

 nothing stronger than the English except God.&quot; It is 

 not our ships of war in the Red Sea that draw out this 

 acknowledgment. The Arabs, at least in the uplands, 

 are not greatly afraid of any military Power partly from 

 ignorance and partly from a just sense of the impossibility 

 of a substantial conquest of the desert. It is steamers, 

 the telegraph, the diving-bell, and things like these that 

 raise our name, or rather the possession of these inventions 

 in connection with the faculty of organisation on a great 

 scale, in which the Arabs are altogether lacking. The 



