Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/281

Rh WAHHABEE MOVEMENT.] A R A B I A 2G1 the campaign that reduced Arabia, though only for a few years, to au Egyptian province, being well known, a very summary mention may here suffice. Tousoon Beg, son of Mehemet AH, commanded the first expedi tion. It was directed against the northern Hejaz, and landed in 1811 at Yenibo, which town the Turks took and made a base of further operations. A severe check inflicted on them by the Arabs in January 1S12 retarded their advance, but by the end of the year Tousoon stormed Medinah, and his troops made a frightful massacre of the AVahhabee garrison and inhabitants ; to which atrocity the treacherous murder of 1500 more, who after holding out long and bravely in the town castle, had surrendered on terms of safe-conduct, was soon added. Meantime the intrigues of Mehemet Ali detached the shereef Ghaleb from the Wahhabee cause; and Jiddeh was treacherously surrendered to the Turks in 1813. Mecca and the Taif district were immediately occupied by Ottoman troops. Mehemet Ali now came over in person ; and his troops having been reinforced by those of las son Tousoon, he felt himself strong enough to break his promises to the sheykh Ghaleb, whom he arrested, dis possessed of power, and sent to die in exile. For a year and a half Mehemet Ali remained at Mecca, collecting his forces for a decisive blow. Meanwhile, in 1814 Saood had died, leaving as successor his son Abd- Allah, a chief equal to his father in every respect except prudence, in which he was unfortunately deficient. Mehemet Ali having completed his preparations, left Mecca early in 1815 with a large army, and advanced towards Yemen; while the AVahhabees, who are said to have been 30,000 strong, occupied the mountain pass of Bishd on the way, and rashly hazarded a general engagement. The battle, in which Mehemet Ali displayed much personal courage, was desperate, and ended in the utter discomfiture of the Arabs, several thousands of whom were killed on the field. Mehemet Ali followed up his victory, and in a few months had reduced the entire mountainous district north of Yemen, besides taking alive as prisoners Bakrooj and Tami, two of the most renowned AVahhabee chiefs, both of whom, in violation of his promises, he made be put to death with atrocious tortures. But the exhaustion of his own soldiers obliged him to relinquish his further march south ; he returned to Mecca, and in the summer to Egypt ; Tousoon Pasha, left to conduct the war, concluded peace with the Wahhabees, and shortly after himself died of the plague. The treaty he had signed was disavowed both at Cairo and Constan tinople ; and in September 1816 the celebrated Ibrahim Pasha, adopted son of Mehemet Ali, landed at Yembo, and commenced the final campaign. For more than a year he exercised his troops in frequent but well-timed and generally successful skirmishes with those of Abd-Allah, who in person commanded the Wahhabee armies ; while his crafty diplomacy, equal to that of Mehemet Ali himself, won over tribe after tribe to the Egyptian cause. Well supplied with provisions, and his flanks covered by his Arab allies, Ibrahim, in spite of a severe repulse beneath the walls of El-Rass, subdued the entire province of Kaseem, entered Nejd on the north west by the pass of Shakrah, and in April 1818 appeared beneath the walls of the capital, Dereyeeyah, on which Abd-Allah with his forces had retreated. The siege lasted five months, and was conducted with great ability by Ibrahim, whose military skill at last triumphed over the deter mined courage of the garrison and inhabitants. Not, however, till the town had been gradually reduced to a confusion of ruinous heaps did Abd-Allah consent to surrender, and then only on honourable terms, which, as usual, the conqueror granted freely, but with no intention of observing. The Wahhabee chief was sent under strong guard to Egypt, and thence to Constantinople, where, December 19th, 1818, he was beheaded in the public square in front of St Sophia. Dereyeeyah was razed to the ground by the conqueror, and remains at this day, like Eyanch, a formless heap. The provinces of Hareek and Hasa submitted after slight resistance ; and the whole of Arabia, Oman excepted, now lay at the mercy of Ibrahim, who showed none. After a bloody series of executions and massacres, he placed garrisons in all the strongholds that he permitted to remain standing ; and Arabia had to submit to the military con scriptions and other exactions and oppressions that have ruined, and still ruin, every other province of the Ottoman empire, aggravated in this case by the licentiousness of the conquerors and the long outstanding mutual hatred of Turk and Arab. Ibrahim returning to Egypt, left Khaleel Pasha as vice-regent of Arabia, who for a while maintained despotic rule over the country. But Turkee, the younger son of Abd-Allah, who on the downfall of his family had fled to the mountainous fastnesses of Toweyk, soon organised guerilla bands, that, aided by the peasants, succeeded in rendering the central and eastern provinces of the land untenable by the Turks. The inhabitants of Hareek and Hasa were the first to throw off the yoke; and the town of Riad, celebrated as the birthplace, 1400 years before, of the prophet Muscylemah, now became the restored Wahhabee capital. Turkee, like so many other Arab rulers, fell the victim of an assassin, but his son Feysul succeeded to his ability as well as to hi? popularity and power. The Egyptian government, by this time at open war with the Ottoman, made several unavailing attempts to put down the revolt ; but the wars between Mehemet Ali and the Porte in Syria and Anatolia diverted its serious attention from the less important, because poorer, acquisitions made by Ibrahim in Arabia, till in 1842 Khoorshid Pasha, the last representative of Egyptian rule, was, partly by force, partly by craft, for Feysul was a master in both, compelled to quit his frontier residence in Kaseem ; and this populous province was re-annexed to the Wahhabee empire, while Aseer, throwing off foreign rule, returned to Wahhabeeism and independence. Hasa, Hareek, the whole of Nejd, Kaseem, and the provinces Present adjoining Yemen on the north, with Aseer, were now re-united condition under the sceptre of Feysul, and a broad belt of AVahhabee rule of central Arabia. Shomer and Jowf to the north, between Nejd and Syria, a new kingdom of a different and much more liberal character,&quot; that of the brave and clever Telal, sprung up, and has since maintained its independence. Nor have the often-repeated AYahhabec inroads on Mecca and the Hejaz been attnided with their former success. Still, within its actual though narrowed limits, the AVahhabee government has remained ve i-organised and strong, a constant menace to its neighbours, and a genuine specimen, nor a wholly unfavourable one, of Arab autoiomy. But in 1870, Feysul, already aged and blind, was assassinated, as his father had been before him, and the dissensions of his two sons, Abd-Allah and Saood, the former of whom advanced the rights of first-born, the latter those of popularity to the throne, led to a civil war, anJ gave occasion to Ottoman interference. An armed force was sent, and advanced along the shore of the Persian Gulf into the province of Hasa, where it occupied the capital, Hofhoof. AVith this, however, its success terminated, and the difficulties of crossing the &quot;Dahna&quot; desert strip seem likely to place an effectual barrier to any further progress. Aseer, however, a stronghold of AVahhabeeism, has been invaded by the Turks, who have gained there some temporary and superficial advantages, while the new kingdom of Shomer, weakened by the untimely death of its accomplished prince Telal, has also offered facilities for Turkish interference, though not of a military description. To these varied changes the kingdom of Oman has for many Orn*n. generations remained in great measure a stranger. But its capital, Mascat, was occupied by the Portuguese in 1508, who retained it till the middle of the 17th century. It was then retaken by the Yaarebah princes, who had all along maintained their power in the interior, and now for a century more became the sole though not the undisputed rulers of Oman, which was at this time often harassed by Persian invasion. In 1737 the country was formally attacked by the armies of Nadir Shah ; the principal towns were at last taken, the inhabitants massacred, and for four years Oman groaned under the Persian tyranny. A deliverer, however, appeared in the person of Ahmed Ebn-Sdood, of Yemenite o rigin, but not of ths reigning family. By a series of daring deeds he succeeded in expelling or destroying the enemies of his country, and was iu return elected Imam in the year 1741, since which time his family have occupied the throne of Oman. Under the Imam Sultan Saood and his son the Seyyid Saood, the Omanee kingdom attained its greatest splendour at the beginning of the present century. Its power then extended not only over Oman and a large tract of the Arabian mainland, but also over Bahreyn, Ormuz, Larej, Kishm, and the other islands of the Persian Gulf; besides the coast of Katar, with its celebrated pearl fisheries, on the Arab side, that of Barr-Faris, with the harbours of Linja and Bander Abbas, on the Persian, and a long strip of African sea-shore, south of Cape Guardefui, with the islands of Socotra and Zanzibar. Sultan Saood was killed in 1804, but his son, of the same name, proved his not unworthy successor ; and though unable to prevent considerable encroachments of the Nejdee AA 7 ahhabees on the north and west of his dominions, saved Oman itself from conquest and annexation. He consolidated the Arab power in Zanzibar and the east African coast ; and when he died in 1856, after reigning fifty-two years, he left the kingdom of Oman the most flourishing state in the entire Arabian peninsula. Its proximity to India has often involved this government in relations, sometimes amicable, sometimes hostile, with ourselves ; but a detail of them need not detain us here. Suffice it to say, that on the death of Sultan Saood, Zanzibar was, partly by British&quot; influence, detached from the Arab empire ; while the death of the late Imam, Thoweynee, son of Saood, who perished, assas sinated by his own son, in&quot; 1866, inaugurated a period of civil wars, from which Oman is still suffering. Her AVahhabee neighbours, too, continue their restless attempts at encroachment on her western frontier, while Katar and Bahreyn, with their pearl fisheries, have been wholly lost to the Mascat sceptre. Lastly, the Hejaz is at the present date absolutely under the Turkish government, while Aden has, ever since its first capture in