405
TAFYLE.
of Djowabere (), supply the Syrian Hadj with a great quantity
of provisions, which they sell to the caravan at the castle El Ahsa ;
and the profits which they derive from this trade are sometimes
very great. It is much to be doubted whether the peasants of
Djebal and Shera will be able to continue their field-labour, if
the Syrian pilgrim caravan be not soon re-established. The
produce of their soil hardly enables them to pay their heavy tribute ¬
to the Bedouins, besides feeding the strangers who alight at
their Menzels : for all the villages in this part of the country
treat their guests in the manner, which has already been described. ¬
The people of Djebal sell their wool, butter, and hides
at Ghaza, where they buy all the little luxuries which they stand
in need of ; there are, besides, in every village, a few shopkeepers ¬
from El Khalyl or Hebron, who make large profits.
The people of Hebron have the reputation of being enterprising
merchants, and not so dishonest as their neighbours of Palestine ¬
: their pedlars penetrate far into the desert of Arabia, and
a few of them remain the whole year round at Khaibar in the
Nedjed.
The fields of Tafyle are frequented by immense numbers of
crows ; the eagle Rakham is very common in the mountains, as are
also wild boars. In all the Wadys south of the Modjeb, and
particularly in those of Modjeb and El Ahsa, large herds of
mountain goats, called by the Arabs Beden (), are met with.
This is the Steinbock, or Bouquetin of the Swiss and Tyrol Alps:
they pasture in flocks of forty or fifty together; great numbers of
them are killed by the people of Kerek and Tafyle, who hold their
flesh in high estimation. They sell the large knotty horns to the
Hebron merchants, who carry them to Jerusalem, where they are
worked into handles for knives and daggers. I saw a pair ofthese
horns at Kerek three feet and a half in length. The Arabs told
