6000.  The Government pays in paper for all supplies, (even for water for the troops,) and the paper sells at the rate of forty piastres per cent.” [FN#21] The Urtah or battalion here varies from 800 to 1000 men.  Of these, four form one Alai or regiment, and thirty-six Alai an Urdu or camp.  This word Urdu, pronounced “Ordoo,” is the origin of our “horde.” [FN#22] One of the traditions, “Between my house and my place of prayers is a Garden of the Gardens of Paradise,” has led divines to measure the distance:  it is said to be 1000 cubits from the Bab Salam of the Harim to this Musalla.

[p.398]Chapter xix.

A ride to the mosque of Kuba.

The principal places of pious visitation in the vicinity of Al-Madinah are the Mosques of Kuba, the Cemetery Al-Bakia, and the martyr Hamzah’s tomb, at the foot of Mount Ohod.  These the Zair is directed by all the Olema to visit, and on the holy ground to pray Allah for a blessing upon himself, and upon his brethren of the faith.

Early one Saturday morning, I started for Kuba with a motley crowd of devotees.  Shaykh Hamid, my Muzawwir, was by my side, mounted upon an ass more miserable than I had yet seen.  The boy Mohammed had procured for me a Meccan dromedary, with splendid trappings, a saddle with burnished metal peaks before and behind, covered with a huge sheepskin died crimson, and girthed over fine saddle-bags, whose enormous tassels hung almost to the ground.  The youth himself, being too grand to ride a donkey, and unable to borrow a horse, preferred walking.  He was proud as a peacock, being habited in a style somewhat resembling the plume of that gorgeous bird, in the coat of many colours-yellow, red, and golden flowers, apparently sewed on a field of bright green silk-which cost me so dear in the Harim.  He was armed, as indeed all of us were, in readiness for the Badawin, and he anxiously awaited opportunities of discharging his pistol.  Our course lay from Shaykh Hamid’s house in the Manakhah, along and up the

[p.399]Fiumara, “Al-Sayh,” and through the Bab Kuba, a little gate in the suburb wall, where, by-the-bye, my mounted companion was nearly trampled down by a rush of half-wild camels.  Outside the town, in this direction, Southward, is a plain of clay, mixed with chalk, and here and there with sand, whence protrude blocks and little ridges of basalt.  As far as Kuba, and the Harrah ridge to the West, the earth is sweet and makes excellent gugglets.[FN#1] Immediately outside the gate I saw a kiln, where they were burning tolerable bricks.  Shortly after leaving the suburb, an Indian, who joined our party upon the road, pointed out on the left of the way what he declared was the place of the celebrated Khandak, or Moat, the Torres Vedras of Arabian History.[FN#2] Presently the Nakhil, or palm plantations, began.  Nothing lovelier to the eye, weary with hot red glare, than the rich green waving crops and the cool shade,