مجموعة ٦/ ٩ "تقارير جدة يناير ١٩٣١ -" [ظ‎‎١‎٥‎٣] (٨٠٢/٣٠٧)

187. Sheikh Abdullah Suleyman, the Minister of Finance, visited Jedda on
the 21st June to preside at the official inaugural ceremony of the new Jedda
customs building. Local notables and Government officials composed the
assemblage and speeches laudatory of Ibn Saud were delivered. No foreign
representatives were, as far as is known, invited. The new building is said to be
commodious and a great improvement on the former premises.
188. The Minister of Finance, in his other capacity of Deputy Minister of
Defence, is said to have been active during the month in effecting the concentration
of stocks of ammunition and other Government munitions in Taif. Consignments
of ammunition are reported to have arrived from Asir, but these reports are a
little difficult to reconcile with recent prevalent rumours of the situation in that
province.
189. On or about the 26th June some 300 Saudi soldiers left Jedda by the
launch Riyadh for Qunfidha and Jizan. In official circles this movement was
represented as a normal one of garrison relief in Asir. Rumour, however, was
persistent that trouble had recently arisen over the collection of “ Zakat ” from the
tribes and that Saudi tax gatherers, to the number of fifteen, had been killed by
the Beni Malik or the Abadil. The same rumourists would have us believe that
the late Amir of Jidan, Sheikh Hamad Ash-Shuwayir (vide paragraph 185 above)
did not die of a fever, but met a violent end at the hands of the Masariha tribe.
190. The Umm-al-Qura of the 7th June contained particulars of a new
project, the “ Mashru-al-Qirsh,” the piastre project, on the model of a recent
Egyptian experiment. The funds collected by this enterprise were to be devoted
to objects of national concern. The article was suitably vague and it is doubtful
whether the project will ever amount to anything.
191. Mr. Twitched arrived in Jedda by sea from Yanbu on the 30th June,
accompanied by Mr. E. D. McDermott, a director of the syndicate, and a
Mr. Shanks, of whom the former is believed to be leaving for England by next
boat; It is credibly reported that a subsidiary company to the Saudi Arabian
Mining Syndicate is about to be formed.
192. A recent feature of considerable economic significance has been the
steady appreciation of the Saudi silver rival over the past few months. The
selling rates of exchange for rials per £ gold during the last three months have
been as follows :—
April 1
May 1
June 1
June 30
Rials.
21
20i
20
17, 18
Whether the rise may be attributed to a tendency to hoard silver currency by the
inhabitants of this country with the object of taking advantage of a better rate
on the approach of the pilgrimage season, an explanation which it is difficult
to accept, or to the rise in the price of the metal in the world’s silver markets, or
to some undetected economic influence, the effect on the cost of living of foreign
residents in this country has already become appreciable. (In this connexion,
vide paragraph 145 of the last report.)
193. Regulations were published on the 21 st June and were communicated
separately at the same time to the Legation by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs
containing a list of the Red Sea ports of Saudi Arabia to which sailing vessels,
plying on these coasts, were to be restricted. The measure, which is designed to
check smuggling, is virtuous enough though, as far as remoter stretches of coast
are concerned, it will probably be impossible of application by the present jejune
Saudi preventive administration.
194. Two schools are reported to have been established during the month, a
school at Riyadh which, by Royal permission, is to bear the style of the Amir’s
School, and a primary school at Medina.
195. The narrower austerities of the Wahhabi creed have never flourished
in the alien soil of the Hejaz. Observers have recently not been slow to note an
increasing latitudinarianism, even beneath the sacred walls of the Holy Haram
itself. Committees of Virtue are said to be in process of dismemberment, and the
merchant of Mecca and Jedda now devotes himself more sedulously to his com
mercial than to his religious exercises. Townsmen smoke freely in the streets of
Mecca, and solace their hours of ease in the coffee-houses of their choice with