مجموعة ٦/ ٩ "تقارير جدة يناير ١٩٣١ -" [ظ‎‎٣‎١‎٢] (٨٠٢/٦٢٥)

143. No Hejazi statistics of local or overland pilgrims are kept. In
they are not called pilgrims at all, but the Arabic equivalent of tramp or hobo*
since they bring no money into the country. Such are the \emenis ot whom
5,000 are said to have come to Mecca this year. The estimated total of these and
more local pilgrims is 20,000.
Departure.
144. There was an exceptional glut of pilgrims at Jedda during the last
part of April. The slender funds of the majority were exhausted by high prices
and extortion. The great idea was to get away by the first boat available. Large
numbers moreover, were unable to afford the visit to Medina, which is generally
paid after the pilgrimage to Mecca. Consular and shipping staffs have
consequently been working since the 20th April at considerably highei pressuie
than usual, in spite of the smaller pilgrimage.
Hajj Regatta.
145. Another successful meeting was added on the 17th April to the long
list of Hajj regattas with which, since before living memory, the waiting pilgrim
ships and the European community of Jedda have filled in the time while the
Moslems are in Mecca. The oldest captain could remember a time when torty-
two ships lay at anchor. This year there were only eight, seven British and one
French. The usual regatta meeting was held at the British Legation, the usual
luncheon on board the regatta flagship, steamship Boulac, and a programme
of nine pulling and sailing events was carried through harmoniously, with the
\aluable assistance of H.M.S. “Hastings.” Ships were dressed overall on the
16th to the 19th April for the four days’ pilgrimage festival, the Id-al-Azha.
Salutes, however, are only fired by the shore battery, which fired them incessantly.
Chapter VIII.— -Slavery.
Manumissions.
146. One male and two female slaves who took refuge in the Legation
in April were manumitted on the 20th and repatriated to the Sudan, then
country of origin.
Slave Trade.
147. The signature of the Italo-Hejazi Treaty (paragraph 59) was.
accompanied by an exchange of letters, in the first of which the Italian
plenipotentiary opined that his Government considered it necessary that Ibn
Saud’s Government should assume the obligation of co-operating with fkem m
suppressing the slave trade. Similarly, his Government desired that their
representatives at Jedda should have powers of manumission and icpatriation.
They trusted that Ibn Saud would appreciate their attitude. The slave-owners
representative replied, however, that, while appreciating the Italian Govern
ment's humane sentiments, he had to explain that the suppression of the illicit
trade in slaves constituted one of the most important questions to which Ibn
Saud’s Government had directed their attention, that His Majesty was personally
interested in preventing the import of slaves into his country, and that his
Government would persevere to this end. As to manumission, the Government
were themselves of their own initiative endeavouring to reach the end enjoined
by Islamic law, with its principles of supreme justice and its pure sentiment
of humanity. They could not grant powers of manumission to the Italian
representative because such action was their own sole and exclusive right. This
Italian face-saving and Hejazi clap-trap will no doubt be published with the
treaty as evidence of good faith on both sides. A further exchange of notes
agreed that the most-favoured-nation treatment accorded to Italy by the Hejaz-
Nejd did not include the “favourable treatment which, for reasons which are
generally known, has been granted to a third Power in the matter of slavery”—
the British right of manumission secured by the Treaty of Jedda.
148. Nevertheless, Aden has received a report that, on the 10th April, a
slave boy of 14 was brought to Jizan—he is thought to have been landed on the
Subeyhf coast east of Perim and to have been brought overland into Asir—and
was kept in the house of a local sheikh for sale. Thereupon, it was said, certain