File 756/1917 Pt 2-3 ‘ARAB BULLETIN Nos 66-114’ [‎277r] (562/834)

6 no
1804 he over})owered Medina, and caused all the treasures to he
carried off from the grave of the Prophet. The great pilgrim
caravans, the official Turkish and Egyptian ones as well as those
of Persia and the Yemen, ceased. It was not that the Wahhabis
wanted to suppress the pilgrimage itself ; but they could not
endure that the pilgrims should tread upon Arabian soil in the
unauthorized company of foreign soldiers. Arab national feeling,
embodied in the Wahhabis, was no longer willing to tolerate
Turkish and Egyptian tutelage, much less armed intervention.
In two successive years, 1806-7, the Mecca Caravan was com
pletely stripped. In 1809 Sand made his entry into the two
holy towns as a pilgrim ; and in 1810, on the same occasion, he
caused the grave of Mohammed at Medina to be opened ; all
jewels, swords, lamps, and other treasures to be taken away to
Deraiyya and the black stone of the Kaaba to be broken in pieces.
Though the Wahhabi movement had thus, at the summit of its
power, subdued the whole peninsula by blood and arms and
filled the courts of Stambul and Teheran with terror, it already
bore within it the germ of decay.
The heaping up of countless treasures in the capital necessarily
induced a corruption of simple customs ; luxury, favouritism and
pride were the order of the daju As an example, Sand was not
ashamed to wear a gold-embroidered mantle worth two hundred
thousand piastres. Oppression, spoliation and the high blood-tax
called forth discontent among the tribes and drove some of them
to emigrate. Only a renewed threat from without could hold the
Wahhabite state together. The storm was not long in coming.
The plundering of the holy places ; the violation of Mohammed’s
grave ; the slaughter of so many believers and the tangible loss
of the Asiatic provinces were bound eventually to waken the
Sublime Porte from its careless slumber. Mohammed Ali Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders.
of Egypt, later to become viceroy, was chosen as the suitable
scourge for the Beduins, and entered on the project gladly. Did
it not afford him the opportunity of using this campaign as a
school for the building up of an army experienced in war,
indispensable to him for his secret plans in other directions ?
What the Romans had to suffer in their ignominious expedition
to South Arabia under Aeliu's Gallus (25-24 b.c.), and perhaps
similarly the Assyrian conquerors of an earlier age—befell the
Egyptians; hunger and thirst; the inclemency of the land and
climate ; epidemics, rapid exhaustion of man and beast ; difficulty
of transport; and untrustworthiness of guides—proved far more
dangerous enemies than the Beduin hordes.
In October 1811, the Egyptian land army, supported by a
fleet brought together with difficulty, set forth for Arabia. At
its head was Mohammed Ali’s youthful son, Tusun Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. , only
sixteen years old. The first advance against the enemy failed
completely. At the next, in 1812, things went better, when
Medina, Hanakiyya, Jeddah and Mecca were occupied. In 1813
Mohammed Ali went to the front himself, and—not without