550 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880- 



structed for defence. The walls of the yard are high, the 

 dwelling-houses provided with loopholes, and placed so as 

 to serve as flanking towers. Most of the cultivated patches 

 have also regular towers of refuge not very strongly built 

 often, indeed, mainly composed of mud but barred 

 and loopholed, and provided with a barbican. I was 

 told that these provisions for defence extend all through 

 the Hejaz that is, from Taif upwards. The villagers 

 of Wady Luqem are not proprietors, but farmers, and 

 of the Oteibe tribe. In appearance they are still Bedouins, 

 and even in Taif the townsmen are almost as prone to 

 war as the nomads. Continuing to ascend the Wady 

 we approached Taif from the north. The Wady opens 

 into a small plain, with a background of noble mountains 

 dominated by the great mass of Barad in the south-west. 

 In the midst of the plain lies Taif, surrounded by villages 

 and gardens, with the handsome summer-houses of the 

 grandees of Mecca. In the foreground is the great white 

 palace of Shubra, the residence of the Shereef Aly Pasha, 

 encircled by the most famous orchards of the Hejaz, and 

 almost dwarfing the little town behind. From Shubra 

 a straight avenue of tamarisks leads between orchards 

 and wheat fields to the northern gate of Taif. Above 

 the dusky line of crumbling mud-built walls rise a few 

 tall houses similar in style to those of Mecca and Jeddah, 

 and in the upper part of the city a lofty square citadel 

 with round corner towers. A Turkish sentinel, his hands 

 and feet all chapped with frost, received us at the gate, 

 and directed us across a desolate-looking square to the 

 house which, by directions of the Shereef, had been fitted 

 up for my reception. But the further account of what 

 I saw at Taif must be left for another letter. 



VII. TAIF 



Taif, says old Edrisi, is a small city, populous, irrigated 

 by sweet waters, with a salubrious climate, abounding 



