A TRIBE OF DESERT WARRIORS.

Hokitika Guardian, 22 October 1924, Page 4

A TRIBE OF DESERT WARRIORS.

ARABS TV HO ARE INVADING TR ANSJOR DANI A.

(By an Eastern Traveller ill “ London

Daily Mail.”) LONDON, September 80. Anyone who from the great ridge of hills above Jerusalem looks eastward to where the wide landscape is shut in by the mountains of Moab must feel a certain sense of mystery and menace in the finality with which that straight, sandy barrier, like a great curtain hanging from half the height of the zenith, closes the scene. Those mountains arc a harrier between east and west, the watershed of two worlds. They seem to fence off uncomprehended dangers from western civilisation, much as artificial dykes keep the sea out of Holland. One of the perils hidden behind that mountain wall is the unruly ami turbulent power of the Wahabi kingdom, whoso warriors have once again during the last lew days invaded Transjordania. The Wahabis have made the history of Arabia and its adjacent lands for the last 1.70 years. For more than a century past they have regularly troubled the peace of the Near East.

They are a race of Arabs inhabiting a tract of country more or less in the centre of Arabia, aild their capital, Riyadh, is some eight or nine fiundigg-j miles south-west of the Jordan valley. They are a tribe of soldiers and religious fanatics, and perhaps they are the only Moslems left who still seriously regard the “ jihad,” or religious war against non-Moslems, as a duly incumbent on all true believers. The founder of the sect, from whom its name is derived, was a certain MOII- - lbn Abdul Waluib. a religious ascetic who nourished in the early years of the eighteenth century.- He set out to he a reformer of the Mahommedan religion, and there is much in his Puritanical outlook—his coudeiiMiatioii of indulgence in wine and tobacco and the wearing of fine clothes and jewels, and his hatred of elaborate ritual in religion— which recalls tin- austere regime of the Puiitans in England. At Riyalid the whole population as-

sembles several times a day for pub] prayers in the great mosque, and so ere punishment is inflicted on abxcn

The wild fanatics who adopted the Puritanical tenets of Abdul Waliab succeeded in conquering large tracts of territory. In 1.H0.T their ruler. Sand, was even aide to capture Mecca, the Holy City itself, where he made a bonfire in the courtyard of the great mosque out of all the tobacco, pipes, jewels, silk, and other aids to luxury, as In* conceived ii. on which he could lay his hands. Retween ISIO and ISIS' the conquests of the Wahabis were cut short by tlie* campaigns of Moliainod Ali ) Iho Albanian general of the Turkish .Sultan and the first Khedive of Egypt, and his. sitborbinate commanders, and their country reduced to a nominal dependency on Turkey. The cruelty ami treachery of the Turks in these, campaigns 101 l an undying legacy of hatred behind, and the Wahabis were ready enough in the late war to rebel against Turkey. Today they are free and independent and —it must he added—eminently dangerous people. Together with a similar measure of Puritanism, they have all the fighting qualities of Cromwell's I riiiisides.