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 24 The Turkish governors of the Hijaz had no easy task. An energetic Shereef would always be on the alert to reduce the governor's authority to the smallest measure. A weak Shereef might be submissive, but then he was powerless to control the ill-disposed elements in his family and make them innocuous, and often he would be sacrificed to the wiles of the opposition. Coöperation between the two authorities for the maintenance of peace was not dreamed of. The roads from Mecca to Medina, to Jidda, to Taʾif, were in a chronic state of insecurity, and it was not seldom that the rapacious Bedouins rejoiced in the secret support of the Shereef.

The Shereef Aun, incumbent of the dignity from 1882 to 1905, was of the energetic type, but he was, at the same time, an avaricious tyrant, whose actions suggest Cæsar's mad ambition. One