" The permanent
population, too, of Jeddah is a microcosm of Islam. It is made up of
individuals from every nation under heaven. Besides the indigenous Arab,
who has given his language and his tone of thought to the rest, there is
a mixed resident multitude descended from the countless pilgrims who
have remained to live and die in the holy cities. These preserve, to a
certain extent, their individuality, at least for a generation or two,
and maintain a connection with the lands to which they owe their origin
and the people who were their countrymen. Thus there is constantly
found at Jeddah a free mart of intelligence for all that is happening in
the world; and the common gossip of the bazaar retails news from every
corner of the Mussulman earth. It is hardly too much to say that one can
learn more of modern Islam in a week at Jeddah than in a year elsewhere,
for there the very shopkeepers discourse of things divine, and even the
Frank Vice-Consuls prophesy. The Hejazi is less shy, too, of discussing
religious matters than his fellow Mussulmans are in other places.
Religion is, as it were, part of his stock-in-trade, and he is
accustomed to parade it before strangers. With a European he may do this
a little disdainfully, but still he will do it, and with less disguise
or desire to please than is in most places the case.
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