The day has been a very hot one, and we have had the tent propped up all round, so that it resembles a gigantic umbrella. It is pitched on a hill overlooking the Haj, and has attracted a good many visitors. The first of them was a certain Seyd Mustafa, a native of Shustar in Persia, but speaking Arabic well. He is travelling as interpreter with Ali Koli Khan, and has given us some information about the country between Bagdad and his own town. Ali Koli has several times proposed that we should go on with him from Bagdad, to pay a visit to his father in the Bactiari mountains, and Wilfrid is very much bent on doing this.
He himself is going round by the river to Bussorah, and then up the Karun to Shustar, a plan which would not suit us; but Seyd Mustafa says he will go with us by land, though it is a very difficult country to get through. The frontier between Turkey and Persia is occupied by the Beni Laam who recognise neither the Sultan nor the Shah. The Beni Laam however, ought to receive us well from our connection with the Ibn Arûks, and a visit to them would almost complete our acquaintance with the Arab tribes north of Nejd.
Next two poor women came, an old and a young one, dressed alike in white rags. They are from Bagdad, and have made the pilgrimage barefoot and begging their bread. One of them carries a tin mug, into which somebody had just thrown a handful of barley. I gave them a loaf of bread, with which they went away invoking blessings on me. They seem perfectly contented and happy.
Then we had a visit from some Bagdadis; one had been a soldier, the others shopkeepers. They were pilgrims, however, now, and not on business, as most of the Arabs here are.
Next a Dafir boy, with a lamb and a skin of fresh butter to sell, the butter mixed up with date-skins and hair, and coloured yellow with a plant called saffron. After much haggling (for stinginess in a purchaser inspires respect) we bought the lamb and the butter for a mejidie—four shillings.
Next a Jinfaneh Shammar, with a bay horse, also for sale, a Kehîlan Ajuz fourteen hands, with good jowl, good shoulder, and tail well carried, but rather small eye, thick nose, and coarse hind quarter—altogether strong with plenty of bone—aged, very much aged! We do not want him.