Jeddah, I argued, the seaport of Mecca
and only forty miles distant from that famous centre of the Moslem
universe, would be the most convenient spot from which I could obtain
such a bird's-eye view of Islam as I was in search of; and I imagined
rightly that I should there find myself in an atmosphere less provincial
than that of Cairo, or Bagdad, or Constantinople.
Jeddah is indeed in the pilgrim season the suburb of a great metropolis,
and even a European stranger there feels that he is no longer in a world
of little thoughts and local aspirations. On every side the politics he
hears discussed are those of the great world, and the religion
professed is that of a wider Islam than he has been accustomed to in
Turkey or in India. There every race and language are represented, and
every sect. Indians, Persians, Moors, are there,--negroes from the
Niger, Malays from Java, Tartars from the Khanates, Arabs from the
French Sahara, from Oman and Zanzibar, even, in Chinese dress and
undistinguishable from other natives of the Celestial Empire, Mussulmans
from the interior of China. As one meets these walking in the streets,
one's view of Islam becomes suddenly enlarged, and one finds oneself
exclaiming with Sir Thomas Browne, "Truly the (Mussulman) world is
greater than that part of it geographers have described.
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