ABSTRACT
The decrepit mail steamer dropped her anchor in the inner harbour of Jedda and it rattled down through the blue water into a doubtless familiar resting-place in the dim coral world below. The Jeddawis had no sympathy for Wahhabi puritanism. To them it seemed a most dangerous creed for a country whose sole source of income was the annual pilgrimage. Face to face with their new rulers the Jeddawis wondered what life had in store for them. These Wahhabis from the desert did not laugh. They were deadly serious. Their law was the divine command, directly taken from Allah’s revelation to the Prophet. The only ones that laughed and ventured to speak aloud and show good-humoured interest in this new fate of the country were the foreigners, the Christians who were free from Wahhabi interference provided their behaviour in public was seemly.
