Page 26 - A Hand book of Arabia Vol 1 (iii) Ch 4,5

108 HEJAZ

The Porte, however, maintained its own forces in Hejaz under
the exclusive command of its own officers. The normal garrison,
including the Emir’s own guard of 500 men, was about 7,000 with
3 batteries, of which force a large part was usually stationed along
the Hejaz Railway line, the proper garrisons of Mecca, Medina,
Jiddah, Yambo4, and Ta’if being kept much below strength. The
result was that only the chief centres of settled population and the
Hejaz Railway line were effectively and continuously held. Other
lines of communication were all precarious. The road from Medina
to Yambo4, for example, required a strong escort, and the pilgrim
tracks from Medina to Mecca were more often closed by the Harb
than open, payments of surra notwithstanding. The direct road
from Mecca to Ta’if by ‘Arafat was notoriously unsafe, and even on
the Jiddah road, in the intervals between block-houses, murders and
highway robberies were of common occurrence.
Side by side, however, with this foreign government there has
existed the very real, though mediatized, authority of the Emir
(or 4 Grand Sherif ’) of Mecca. This Emirate, whose institution—
one of the results of the decline, of the early Caliphial regime in the
Moslem world—dates from the tenth century, was, until the last
years of the eighteenth century, the sole dc facto power in Hejaz,
having in that century cast off all but a shadow of dependence on
the Porte, which kept a precarious hold on Jiddah alone.
The Wahabite invasion, however, followed by the imposition of
Egyptian rule upon .Hejaz, brought about a change. Mohammed
4Ali of Egypt reduced the Emir to a cipher, and when the Porte
resumed direct control of Hejaz, in 1840, its firmer hand and the
internecine dissensions of the Sherifial clans and families in Mecca
prevented the Emirate from recovering its eighteenth-century
position. It did, however, gradually improve its status, having
retained the loyalty of the Bedouins of West-Central Arabia^ The
Emir’s allowance was increased by the Porte to a princely income,
with which, and with private means largely derived from lands in
Egypt and Mesopotamia, he maintained a large household and
a strong body-guard. He was recognized as the chief executive 1
officer in Mecca itself, and as enjoying an extra-territorial indepen­ :
dence there and at Ta’if, with the right to keep official represen­
\
tatives to watch his own and Meccan interests at Jiddah, Medina,
and elsewhere. In spite of the strengthening of Ottoman power in
Hejaz by ‘Othman Pasha in 1886, the astute Emir, “Aun er-Raflq,
kept and increased his privileged position, the relation between Vali
and Emir being not unlike that between a Resident and a Rajah in a \
mediatized native state of India. Although the Porte could not, the