Medina

“ Medina's faction preached it openly.
KING
Be cursed he and his faction. Oh how I labour
For these preventions! But so cross is fate
My ills are ne'r hid from me, but their cures.
What's to be done?
QUEEN
That which being left undone,
Your life lies at the stake. Let them be breathless
Both brat and mother.
KING
Ha!
MALATESTE
She plays true music Sir.
The mischiefs you are drenched in are so full,
You need not fear to add to them. Since now
No way is left to guard thy rest secure,
But by a means like this.
LOPEZ
All Spain rings forth
Medina's name, and his confederates. ”

“ For endurance and activity there is no one like José Medina between the sea and the Pyrenees. You think him safe in Mallorca and look! He lands one morning from the steamer, jumps into a motor-car, and in five minutes—whish!—he is gone like the smoke of my cigarette. He will drive his car through our mountains by tracks, of which the guardia civil does not even know the existence. ”

“ Hemmed in by ever present dangers, and hearing only vague reports of the conflagration that was sweeping Medina, he was constantly on tiptoe with hopeful yet fearful expectation. If his body was still held at Mecca, his unbridled imagination was free to range toward the beloved north, where both Medina and Jerusalem lay; and one morning he astounded his townsmen by declaring that, during the preceding night, he had performed his devotions in the Temple of Solomon at Jerusalem. The obliging Gabriel, he said, had borne him on a winged steed over Medina to the Temple ”

“ Medina had an ‘exact design, a clever pencil, and good colouring, he drew and painted historical subjects very well, and had a fine taste in landskip, and would have made a good history painter had he lived where suitable encouragement was to be had.’ The excellence of some of Medina's portraits is much disguised by the stiffness of his postures. Medina died at Edinburgh on 5 Oct. ”

“ If all mankind went one way, and the men of Medina went another way, verily I would go the way of the men of Medina. The Lord be favourable unto them, and bless them, and their sons, and their sons’ sons, for ever!’ And the ‘Helpers’ wept upon their beards, and cried with one voice, ‘Yea, we are well satisfied, O Prophet, with our lot.’ To retain the allegiance of the Refugees and the Helpers was never a trouble to Moḥammad; the only difficulty was to rein in their zeal and hold them back from doing things of blood and vengeance on the enemies of Islám. ”

“ José Medina neither assumed an ignorance of the German leanings of the port officials nor expressed any assent. But, as if he had realised the thought which must be passing in Hillyard's mind, he said:
"You know very well, señor, that I should be mad if I gave help to the Germans. I am in your hands. You and France have but to speak the word, and every felucca of mine is off the seas. But what then! There are eighteen thousand men at once without food or work thrown adrift upon the coast of Spain. Will not Germany find use for those eighteen thousand men?" ”

“ Thus situated, Medina was originally a city of agriculturists, not like Mecca a city of merchants; nor, apart from the indispensable trade in provisions, has it ever acquired commercial importance like that which Mecca owes to the pilgrimage. [2] Landowners and cultivators are still a chief element in the population of the city and suburbs. The latter, who are called Nakhāwila, and more or less openly profess the Shī‛a opinions, marry only among themselves. The townsmen proper, on the other hand, are a very motley race. [3] New settlers remain behind with each pilgrimage ”

“ While he was explaining this, in rather an apologetic tone, Medina was called away. There followed a summons to Walker to attend upon the Governor-General, and I found myself left quite alone in the midst of the gaping, muttering rabble. This was no throng of simple, hospitable rustics such as I had met and liked in the North Province; but a stable and kitchen mob, the low scullions and hostlers and lackeys of a great man, puffed with reflected pride and saucy with second-hand arrogance. ”

“ Thirty or forty families with their cattle occupy a single courtyard (ḥōsh) , and form a kind of community often at feud with its neighbours. The several clans of Medina must have lived in much the same way at the time of the Prophet. The famous cemetery called Baḳīʽ el-Gharḳad, the resting-place of a multitude of the “companions” of the Prophet, lies immediately to the west of the city. ”

“ Others, when their weapons broke, sprang at their enemies with their naked hands and tore out their throats as hounds tear out the throat of a deer. Such was the battle of the Medina, fought on August 18, 1813. Of the eight hundred and fifty Americans who went into action only ninety-three came out alive. If the battle itself was a bloody one, its aftermath was even more so, the Spanish cavalry pursuing and butchering without mercy all the fugitives they could overtake. ”

“ Success here might be so great a thing, so great a saving of lives, so dire a blow to the enemy. Somehow that day slowly dragged its burning hours to sunset, the coolness of the evening came, and the swift darkness upon its heels, and once more, high up on the hillside, the vigil was renewed. And at half-past one in the morning, far away at sea, a green light, bright as an emerald, flashed thrice and was gone.
"Did I not say to you, 'Have courage'?" said José Medina.
"Quick! the Lanterns!" replied Hillyard. "The red first! Good! Now the white. So! And the red again. Now we must wait!" ”

“ I have friends too in every town, Englishmen who love both England and Spain, Spaniards who love both Spain and England. We will put, if you permit, your agents in touch with my friends."
"Yes," said José Medina innocently. "How shall we do that? We must have lists prepared."
Hillyard smiled gently.
"That is not necessary, señor. We know your agents already. If you will secretly inform them that those who speak in my name," and he took his card from the table, and gave it into Medina's hands, "are men to be trusted, it will be enough." ”

“ Done in the best style of Sir John de Medina, a famous foreign artist, who in those days resided in Edinburgh, and who now sleeps there in a quiet corner of the old Greyfriars Kirk-yard, a miniature of Lucy in a gold locket, with a braid of her black hair, was White's best solace; and for many an hour he lay in his swinging hammock, apart from all, gazing upon the soft features Medina's hand had traced. This miniature cost our poor subaltern half-a-year's pay ”

“ So much Martin Hillyard already knew; he learnt now that José Medina had provided the great opportunity. To snatch him with his two hundred motor feluccas and his eighteen thousand men from the English—here was something really worth doing.
"What beats me," said Hillyard, "is why they didn't try to get at you before."
"They didn't," said Medina.
Rosa, it seemed, used the argument which is generally sound; that the old and simple tricks are the tricks which win. She discovered the hotel at which José Medina stayed in Madrid, and having discovered it she went to stay there herself. ”

“ José Medina flung up his hands.
"I will not argue with you. We are not made of the same earth."
Hillyard's face changed to gentleness.
"Pretty nearly, my friend," he said, and he laid a hand on José Medina's shoulder. "For we are good friends—such good friends that I do not scruple to drag you into the same perils as myself."
Hillyard had not wasted his time during those three years when he loafed and worked about the quays of Southern Spain. He touched the right chord now with an unerring skill. Hillyard might be the mad Englishman, the loco Inglés! ”

“ It may be necessary here to recall to the reader not fresh from the study of the Prophet's life, the state of parties at the present juncture. The Men of Medina were the old inhabitants of the City who had received Mohammad on his escape from Mecca, and supported his cause2; they now embraced practically the whole native population of Medina, since the party that opposed him on his first arrival had gradually succumbed before his growing power. ”

“ Upon this the people of Medina came to Ali in the evening, earnestly entreating him to consider the condition of their religion. But as he still declined to accept the caliphate, and desired them to think of some other person, they said, “We adjure thee by God! dost not thou consider in what condition we are? Dost not thou consider the religion? Dost not thou consider the distraction of the people? Dost thou not fear God?” ”

“ At Mecca he is a persecuted, struggling, and unsuccessful preacher, but at Medina he rapidly becomes the most powerful person in the commonwealth. He organises the service of religion, but he also gives new life to the community in other ways, terminating its feuds, uniting all its forces in the service of Allah, and by his decisions in the cases which are brought to him laying the foundation of a new jurisprudence. A pure theocracy was set up at Medina, and he as the prophet was its sole organ and administrator. ”

“ What is the price of dates at Mekka or Medina? is always the first question asked by a Bedouin who meets a passenger on the road. Of these dates a considerable part is brought to Medina from distant quarters, and especially from Fera, a fertile valley in the possession of the Beni Aamer tribe, where there are numerous date-groves: it is three or four days journey from Medina, and as many from Rabegh in the mountains. The dates are brought from thence in large baskets, in which they are pressed together into a paste, as I have already mentioned. ”

“ Probably the numerous Jews in Medina had shaken the ancient idolatry of the people. An invitation was sent to him to come and rule in the name of his God in Medina.
He did not go at once. He parleyed for two years, sending a disciple to preach in Medina and destroy the idols there. Then he began sending such followers as he had in Mecca to Medina to await his coming there; he did not want to trust himself to unknown adherents in a strange city. This exodus of the faithful continued, until at last only he and Abu Bekr remained. ”

“ With these exceptions there are no settled villages between Maʽan and Medina, the stations on the pilgrim road being merely small fortified posts with reservoirs, at intervals of 30 or 40 m., which are kept up by the Turkish government for the protection of the yearly caravan.
The southern part of the province is more favoured by nature. Medina is a city of 25,000 to 30,000 inhabitants, situated in a broad plain between the coast range and the low hills across which lies the road to Nejd. ”

“ You were certainly there," returned José Medina, and he was no longer speaking either with doubt or with the exaggerated politeness of a Spaniard towards a stranger. He was not even speaking as caballero to caballero the relationship to which, in the beginning, Hillyard had most wisely invited him. He was speaking as associate to associate, as friendly man to friendly man. "On that night you were certainly with me! No, let me think! There were five men, yes, five and a boy from Valencia—Martin."
He pronounced the word in the Spanish way as Marteen. ”

“ It may be calculated that only one- third of the pilgrims who visit Mekka go also to Medina. The Egyptian caravan of pilgrims seldom passes by the town. [Whenever the Egyptian caravan passes by Medina, it is always on its return from Mekka, and then remains, like the Syrian, for three days only. In going from Cairo to Mekka, this caravan never visits Medina.] Medina has pilgrims during the whole year, there being no prescribed season for visiting the tomb; and they usually stay here about a fortnight or a month. ”

“ It is not thus that delicate questions are approached in Spain. Even the blackmailer does not dream of bluntly demanding money, or exposing his knowledge that he will get it. He pleads decently the poverty of his family and the long illness of his mother-in-law; and with the same decency the blackmailed yields to compassion and opens his purse. There is a gentlemanly reticence to be observed in these matters and Hillyard was well aware of the rules. He struck quite a different note.
"I shall speak frankly to you, Señor Medina, as one caballero to another"; and José Medina bowed and smiled. ”

“ They urged that nothing could be of so great use to his person and cause, as this service of theirs, and consequently none could pretend to have so great a right of naming a successor. The inhabitants of Medina, with no less vehemency, urged that the prophet and their religion were as much obliged to them as to the others, because they had received him in his flight, and by their help and assistance put him in a capacity of making head against his powerful enemies ”

“ Navagiero, who visited Medina some six years later, when it was rebuilt, bears unequivocal testimony to its commercial importance. "Medina è buona terra, e piena di buone case, abondante assai se non che le tante ferie che se vi fanno ogn' anno, e il concorso grande che vi è di tutta Spagna, fanno pur che il tutto si paga più di quel che si faria.... ”

“ It is from hence that Medina is supplied with fruits: lemon and orange trees, pomegranates, bananas, vines, peach, apricot, and fig trees, are planted amidst the date and nebek trees, and form as thick groves as in Syria and Egypt, while their shade renders Koba a delightful residence. The kheroa (Ricinus, or Palma Christi,) is likewise very common here. The village is frequently visited by the people of Medina; parties are continually made to spend the day, and many sick people are carried to enjoy the benefits of a cooler atmosphere. ”