560 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880- 



the fair pillars and arches speak of foreign influences. 

 In Jeddah and in Taif all is shapeless and unadorned 

 whitewash. The piazzas are sheds and the domes mere 

 camels humps. After the mosque and the citadel, the 

 chief public building of Taif is the Bath. The use of 

 the public bath is not common in this country. There 

 is none in Jeddah, and that of Taif is the recent specula 

 tion, I think, of a Turk. The inhabitants refuse to use 

 it. It is employed by visitors in summer, but the natives 

 reckon it a &quot; shame &quot; to frequent a public bath. Private 

 baths, however, are numerous. The housetop view of 

 an Arab town is always curious ; but our house being 

 small, I did not see Taif to advantage from this point. 

 The terrace of his roof is the Arab s garden, and his out 

 houses are little chambers erected on it. In Jeddah, 

 for example, the goats all live on the housetops. In 

 warm weather, part of the terrace, screened off with 

 boards and mats from the gaze of neighbours in loftier 

 dwellings, is the favourite place of the women. Dinners 

 are given on the housetop, and here the servants of ad 

 jacent houses meet to gossip. In short, the roofs are a 

 great centre of life, and their structure is as complicated 

 as their functions. You must not think of the roof of 

 a large house as a uniform plain. It is rather a minia 

 ture village, with half-a-dozen levels, and quite a variety 

 of terraces and chambers and porticos, the highest parts 

 being always reserved for the broken pottery and general 

 rubbish of the house below. There is nothing so comical 

 as a bird s-eye view of an Arabian town. 



There is one part of the town of which I have not yet 

 spoken. I mean the bazaar. The bazaar is the centre 

 of all public life, and the little pigeon-holes of shops, 

 with just room for the tradesman, his son, and a customer 

 upon the carpet, are the great centres of gossip. The 

 bazaar of Taif is interesting because it is crowded with 

 Bedouins. The great day is Thursday, which is the 

 weekly market. Here you see Thageef, Oteibe, Qoreish, 



