Beyond Bahrein the mainland stretches westward for eight hundred miles across the province of Hassa and lower Nejd and Hejaz to the Red Sea. As Jiddah is the western port, Bahrein is the eastern port for all Arabia. It is the gateway to the interior, the threshold of which is Hassa. Draw a line from Menamah to Katif, then on to Hofhoof (or El Hassa) and thence back to Menamah, and the triangle formed will include every important town or village of Eastern Arabia. North of that triangle on the coast is the inhospitable barren, thinly populated, country of the Bni Hajar; south of it is the peninsula of El Katar; westward stretches the sandy desert for five days’ marches to Riad and the old Wahabi country. The region thus bounded is really the whole of Hassa, although on maps that name is given to the whole coast as far as Busrah. But neither the authority of the Turkish government nor the significance of the word Hassa (low, moist ground) can be said to extend outside of the triangle.

The peninsula of El Katar, about 100 miles long and fifty broad, is unattractive in every way and barren enough to be called a desert. Palgrave’s pen-picture cannot be improved upon: “To have an idea of Katar my readers must figure to themselves miles on miles of low barren hills, bleak and sun-scorched, with hardly a single tree to vary the dry monotonous outline; below these a muddy beach extends for a quarter of a mile seaward in slimy quicksands, bordered by a rim of sludge and seaweed. If we look landwards beyond the hills we see what by extreme courtesy may be called pasture land, dreary downs with twenty pebbles for every blade of grass; and over this melancholy ground scene, but few and far between, little clusters of wretched, most wretched earth cottages and palm-leaf huts, narrow, ugly and low; these are the villages, or ‘towns’ (for so the inhabitants style them) of Katar. Yet poor and naked as is the land it has evidently something still poorer and nakeder behind it, something in short even more devoid of resources than the coast itself, and the inhabitants of which seek here by violence what they cannot find at home. For the villages of Katar are each and all carefully walled in, while the downs beyond are lined with towers and here and there a castle, huge and square with its little windows and narrow portals.”

The population of Katar is not large; its principal town is Bedaa’. All the inhabitants live from the sea by pearl-diving and fishing, and in the season send out two hundred boats. The whole peninsula with its wild Bedouin population is claimed by Turkey and is the dread of the miserable soldiers who are sent there to preserve peace and draw precarious pay while they shake with malaria and grow homesick for Bagdad. The Arabs are always at feud with the government and it is very unsafe outside the walls after sunset.

The usual route from Bahrein to the interior of Hassa is to cross over by boat to Ojeir on the mainland, and thence to travel by caravan to Hofhoof. In October, 1893, I took this route, returning from the capital to Katif and thence back to Menamah. Embarking at sunset we landed at Ojeir before dawn the next day and I found my way to a Turkish custom-house officer to whom I had a friendly letter from a Bahrein merchant. Ojeir, although it has neither a bazaar nor any settled population, has a mud-fort, a dwarf flagstaff and an imposing custom-house. The harbor although not deep is protected against north and south winds and is therefore a good landing-place for the immense quantity of rice and piece-goods shipped from Bahrein into the interior. A caravan of from two to three hundred camels leaves Ojeir every week. For although the Jebel Shammar country is probably supplied overland from Busrah and Bagdad, the whole of Southern Nejd receives piece-goods, coffee, rice, sugar and Birmingham wares by way of Bahrein and Ojeir.

The whole plain in and about the custom-house was piled with bales and boxes and the air filled with the noise of loading seven hundred camels. I struck a bargain with Salih, a Nejdi, to travel in his party and before noon-prayers we were off. The country for many hours was bare desert, here and there a picturesque ridge of sand, and in one place a vein of greenish limestone. When night came we all stretched a blanket on the clean sand and slept in the open air; those who had neglected their water-skins on starting now satisfied thirst by scooping a well with their hands three or four feet deep and found a supply of water. During the day the sun was hot and the breeze died away; but at night, under the sparkling stars and with a north wind it seemed, by contrast, bitterly cold. On the second day at noon we sighted the palm-forests that surround Hofhoof and give it, Palgrave says, “the general aspect of a white and yellow onyx chased in an emerald rim” As we did not reach the “emerald rim” until afternoon I concluded to remain at Jifr, one of the many suburb villages. Here Salih had friends, and a delicious dinner of bread, butter, milk and dates, all fresh, was one of many tokens of hospitality. At sunset we went on to the next village, Menazeleh, a distance of about three miles through gardens and rushing streams of tepid water. The next morning early we again rode through gardens and date-orchards half visible in the morning mist. At seven o’clock the mosques and walls of Hofhoof appeared right before us as the sun lifted the veil; it was a beautiful sight.

El Hofhoof can claim a considerable age. Under the name of Hajar, it was next to Mobarrez, the citadel town of the celebrated Bni Kindi and Abd El Kais (570 A.D.) Both of these towns, and in fact every village of Hassa, owe their existence to the underground watercourses, which are the chief characteristic of the province; everywhere there is the same abundance of this great blessing. A land of streams and fountains,—welling up in the midst of the salt sea, as at Bahrein; flowing unknown and unsought under the dry desert at Ojeir; bubbling up in perennial fountains as at Katif; or bursting out in seven hot springs that flow, cooling, to bless wide fields of rice and wheat at Mobarrez. The entire region is capable of rich cultivation, and yet now more than half of it is desert. There is not a man to till the ground, and paradise lies waste except near the villages. Elsewhere Bedouin robbers and Turkish taxes prevent cultivation. These two are the curse of agriculture all over the Ottoman provinces of Arabia.

Hofhoof itself is surrounded by gardens, and its plan gives a good idea of the general character of the towns of Arabia. A castle or ruler’s house; a bazaar with surrounding dwellings and a mud-wall built around to protect the whole. The moat is now dry and half filled in with the dÉbris of the walls, which are not in good repair. The town is nearly a mile and a-half across at its greater diameter, but the houses are not built as close together as is the custom in most Oriental towns; here is the pleasant feature of gardens inside the walls. The date-palm predominates, and indeed comes to wonderful perfection, but the nabak, the papay, the fig and the pomegranate are also in evidence. Indigo is cultivated, and also cotton, while all the region round about is green with fields of rice and sugar-cane and vegetables,—onions, radishes, beans, vetches, and maize.

The population of the city is entirely Moslem, except one Roman Catholic Christian, who is the Turkish doctor, and a half dozen Jews. The three Europeans who have previously visited and described Hofhoof are, Captain Sadlier (1819), Palgrave (1863), and Colonel Pelly (1865). The first gives the population at 15,000 and Palgrave speaks of 20,000 to 30,000. In 1871 when the Turkish expedition against Nejd took the city, they reported it to have 15,000 houses and 200 suburb villages(!) This shows the absolute uncertainty of most statistics in regard to Arabia.

El Hassa (Hofhoof) is the first stage on the direct caravan route from east Arabia to Mecca and Jiddah. Abd Er Rahman bin Salama, the Arab Sheikh, under the Turkish governor of the Rifa’a quarter of the town gave me the following information regarding this route. From Hassa to Riad is six days by camel, from Riad to Jebel Shammar nine days; to Wady Dauasir seven; and from Riad to Mecca eighteen days. That would be twenty-eight days to cross the peninsula, not including stops on the road and travelling at the rate of an ordinary caravan, i. e., three miles an hour

The Kaisariyeh or bazaar of Hofhoof is well supplied with all the usual requirements and luxuries of the Levant; weapons, cloth, gold embroidery, dates, vegetables, dried fish, wood, salted locusts, fruit, sandals, tobacco, copper-ware and piece-goods—in irregular confusion as enumerated. Public auctions are held frequently in the square or on the plain outside the walls. Here, too, the barbers ply their trade, and blacksmiths beat at their anvils under the shade of a date-hut. The Rifa’a quarter has the best houses, while the Na’athal has the largest number; the “East-end” in Hofhoof being for the rich and the “West-end” for the poor, as is proper in a land of paradoxes.

Hassa is celebrated for two sorts of manufacture; cloaks or abbas, with rich embroidery in gold and colored thread, delicately wrought and of elegant pattern, the gayest and costliest garments of Arabia; and brass coffee-pots of curious shape and pretty form, which, with the cloaks, are exported all over Eastern Arabia, even as far as Busrah and Muscat. Once trade flourished and the merchants grew rich in this land of easy agriculture and fertile soil. But intestine wars, Wahabi fanaticism and Turkish indolence, extortion and taxation have taken away prosperity, and Hassa’s capital is not what it was in the days of old, when the Carmathians held the town.

One remnant of its former glory remains; a unique and entirely local coinage called the Toweelah or “long-bit.” It consists of a small copper-bar, mixed with a small proportion of silver, about an inch in length, split at one end and with a fissure slightly opened. Along one or both of its flattened sides run a few Cufic characters, nearly illegible in most specimens, but said to read: Mohammed-al-Saood, i.e., “Mohammed of the Saood family.” The coin has neither date nor motto, but was undoubtedly made by one of the Carmathian Princes about the year 920 A.D. This Moslem sect owed its origin to a fanatic and enthusiast born at Cufa, called Carmath, who first had a following about the year 277 of the Hejira. He assumed the lofty titles, Guide, Director, the Word, the Holy Ghost, the Herald of the Messiah, etc. His interpretation of the Koran was very lax in the matters of ablution, fasting, and pilgrimage, but he increased the number of prayers to fifty daily. He had twelve apostles among the Bedouins, and his sect grew so rapidly that they could muster in the field 107,000 fanatical warriors. Cufa and Busrah were pillaged and Bagdad taken. In 929 Abu Taher stormed the Holy City of Mecca and the Carmathians took away the black stone in triumph to Katif. The centre of their power remained at Hassa for some years. Here the coin was struck, which is the only remnant of their power and fanaticism. And while the Carmathian doctrines are held in abhorrence, their little bars of copper still buy rice and dates and stick to the hands of the money-changer in the bazaar.

In former days there were gold and silver coins of similar shape. Some in silver can yet be found occasionally inscribed with the noble motto in Arabic: “Honor to the sober man, dishonor to the ambitious.” When I was in Hofhoof that strange, two-tailed copper-bar was worth half an anna and disputed its birthright in the market with rupees and Indian paper and Maria Theresa dollars and Turkish coppers. But how changed the bazaar itself would appear to the ghost of some Carmathian warrior of the ninth century who first handled a “long-bit.” Even the Wahabis have disappeared and tobacco, silk, music and wine are no longer deadly sins. Of these Moslem Puritans many have left for Riad, and the few that remain stroke their long white beards in horror at Turkish Effendis in infidel breeches smoking cigarettes, while they sigh for the golden days of the Arabian Reformer.

There is a military hospital at Hofhoof with a surgeon and doctor, but at the time of my visit there was a dearth of medicines and an abominable lack of sanitation. Few soldiers submit to hospital treatment, preferring to desert or seek furlough elsewhere, and nothing is done for the Arab population. Before my coming cholera raged here as well as on the coast, and during my short visit smallpox was epidemic and carried off many, many children. Thrice awful are such diseases in a land where a practical fanaticism, under the pious cloak of religion, scorns medicine or preventive measures.

The government of the province of Hassa is as follows. The Sandjak (Turkish for administrative division) is divided into three cazas, Nejd, Katar and Katif and a small garrison holds each of these cazas; 600 men at Hofhoof, and 300 at Katar and Katif. The governor, called Mutaserrif Pasha, resides at the capital and kaimakams or sub-governors at the other two centres. There are the usual Turkish tribunals and each Arab tribe has a representative or go-between to arrange its affairs with the governor. The principal tribes which at present acknowledge Turkish occupation and submit to their rule are: El Ajeman, El Morah, Bni Hajar, Bni Khaled, Bni Hassam, El Motter, El Harb, and El Ja’afer. The Turkish government has opened three schools in the province; the total number of pupils according to the Turkish official report is 3,540. The same report puts the entire population of the province at 250,000; this gives a fair idea of the backwardness of education even in this province which has always been remarkable for book-learning. The large mosque with its twenty-four arches and porticoes, smooth-plastered and with a mat-spread floor is always full of mischievous youth learning the mysteries of grammar and the commonplaces of Moslem theology; but the days of poetry and writing of commentaries on the Koran are in the past; even the Wahabi merchants talk of Bombay and are glad to get hold of an English primer or an atlas of the new world which is knocking at their door for admittance.

After four days spent in the city I accepted an opportunity to return northward with a caravan; I was not allowed to go, however, until after I had signed a paper, which, because of the unsafety of the road disclaimed all responsibility on the part of the Government should I come to lose life, limb or luggage. A copy of this document is in my possession, but the only foe I met in the desert was—fever. On Tuesday noon our small party set out, not going through the large town of Mobarrez as I had hoped, but turning east and reaching Kilabeejeh at two o’clock. We passed fountains and streams and fields of rice and swamps,—everything very unlike Arabia of the school-geography. In four hours, however, we were again in the midst of desert where the sun proved too hot for me and I was taken with a fever which did not leave me until I returned to Bahrein. The road continued desert all the way to Katif. On Wednesday we rode all night under the stars (because of a false alarm of robbers) until nine o’clock next morning. Then we rested at a place called, with bitter irony, Um El Hammam; there are no baths, no trees, no grass, only a shallow pit of dirty water and small shrubbery of dates. Here we spent a hot day. On Friday morning we came to the borders of Katif,—palm-groves, wells, and ancient aqueducts with curious towers and air-holes at intervals. Through gardens and around by the large square fort we came to the sea. At the custom-house, again, I found rest and refreshment.

Katif has no good name among Hassa Arabs; its location is low and marshy; “its inhabitants are mostly weak in frame, sallow in complexion, and suffer continually from malaria. The town itself is badly built, woefully filthy, damp and ill-favored in climate. Yet it has a good population and brisk trade. The inhabitants are mostly Shiahs of Persian origin and are held in abhorrence by the Wahabis and the Turks alike as little better than infidels. The present location of Katif corresponds to the very ancient settlement of the Gerrha of the Greek geographers but no exploration for ruins has ever been made. A Portuguese castle marks their occupation of this coast also during their supremacy in the gulf. Katif was taken by the Turks in 1871 and has been occupied by them ever since.

The Arabian coast north of Katif, all the way to Kuweit is without a single large settlement. Mostly barren and in the hands of the predatory and warlike tribe of Bni Hajar, it is very uninteresting and entirely unproductive.