Page 8 - A Hand book of Arabia Vol 1 (iii) Ch 4,5

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CLIMATE 09

ueariT OO3 than 80°, and the air damp. Mecca, owing to its
l„u- elevation (700 to 850 ft.) and its background of naked slopes,
is worst off, and is an undesirable summer residence, being like
furnace on a^still day ; but Medina, with a mean temperature
of little over 70°, is healthy throughout the year. Ta’if is the most
salubrious of the Hejaz towns ; it shares the keen dry air which
purifies all the cential steppe-lands, except in spots where water is
over-abundant near the surface, as at Kheibar. The latter oasis
like Mecca and the coastal settlements, suffers from intermittent
fevers ; Mecca itself has a bad name also for dysenteric and other
epidemic diseases. The highlands behind Mecca and about Ta’if
know occasional frost even during summer nights.

Pobulation

The population, settled and unsettled (most of the latter being
at one season in the province, at another out of it on the E.), may
lie guessed at well under a million. Only about one-sixth is either •:
urban or ‘on^he land ’, five-sixths being Bedouins, wholly or partly
nomadic, who, generally speaking, are poverty-stricken and there­
fore predatory. The principal tribal groups, which range Hejaz,
are from N. to S. as follows :
fn the extreme north are the Huweitat and the Beni ‘Atlyah,
closely allied, sharing each other’s dims, and ranging all Midian,
properly so-called, as well as ‘ Petraea ’ from Ma'an down to Dar
• l-Hamraon the Hejaz Railway. Their southern limit is the upland

• an plain through which runs the Wejh-Tebuk track. Some small
’. clans come also into Midian from the NW. ; the Sherarat
infringe on it slightly from NE. ; and small groups of Huteim camp
11 |lt‘ Pr°perly it is Huweitat and ‘Atlyah country.

(i '^mediately south of Midian and in the region north of ‘ Hejaz ’
On the strictly religious limitation of that term to the provincial
UcTt of the ‘ Haramein ’) range the Mawahib (Moahib) and the
!,the former inland, in the southern ‘Aweiridh harrah country
;lncl h ^ec^in Salih and El-‘Ala, the latter on the coast north of,
tribe • 0u^’ Wejh, where their paramount chief resides. Neither
^ numerous, and the Mawahib are very few.
"liich' lr} 0r^er on the coast come the Juheinah, a Tihamah tribe
|1;ls s, 1Uchides more settled and half-settled elements, and therefore

H’jJI ?Ny,n more subservience to Ottoman authority than most
Its chief lives inland, near Yambo'.
, J‘?z tnbes “ As in the case
,,
f thc Bilii
the rights of the Juheinah extend up to the Hejaz
o 2