Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846Richardson, James
History
Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846
Richardson, James
Sahara -- Description and travel
over several months' journey of Desert.
The Rais is a most diligent servant of Government. One cannot help
observing, however, that the whole scope and end of governing with the
Osmanlis is--_money_. Of the people, their protection and improvement,
they rarely ever think. As the Rais is now busy in making every body book
up, some people asked me if there was much money in Tripoli? I told them
I did not think there was any money left. "The Pasha has plenty," cried
one. I took the trouble of explaining the new system, that each
functionary had a salary, granted by the Sultan, from the highest to the
lowest, and the Deftadar, after paying each his salary, sent the rest of
the money to Constantinople, where (as the Rais himself said) it was
"poured away as water." Perhaps this was speaking too freely, but the
Moslemites at times speak uncommonly free and bold for despotic
governments. The Bey of Tunis has often been menaced with hell-fire by
the Arabs, when they pleaded before him in the hall of judgment,
swearing, that if he did not deal to them justice, God would deal to him
vengeance.
The use of different terms is very curious in travelling through
North Africa, and each country has its peculiar Arabic word, the
words being all more or less classical. Perhaps no word is
so much used in Ghadames and The Mountains as the epithet
_batel_--باطل--"vain, useless," &c., and really answers in its
use to something like our tremendous "Humbug." It especially denotes
everything bad, false, and wrong, in any matter and in any body. On
the contrary, for the opposite epithet, various terms are used,
"_maleah_," "tayeb," and "_zain_," which latter term always means
pretty, as well as good. The polite Ghadamseeah are very fond of _zain_;
but it should properly apply to pretty women. The people use the term
شهر "month," for moon, instead of قمر. The ق is
not distinguished in pronunciation from غ, and I have not attempted
it in writing. Indeed, I shall avoid as much as possible distinctions
which the generality of readers cannot understand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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