From end to end of the valley, a
howling tumult arose.
On the Darb el Ma'ala, or Medina Road, a caravan bearing the annual
_mahmal_ gift of money, jewels, fine fabrics, and embroidered
coverings for the Ka'aba temple, cut loose with rifles and old
blunderbusses. Dogs began to bark, donkeys to bray, camels to spit and
snarl. The whole procession fell into an anarchy of hate and fear.
The vast camp of conical white tents in the Valley of Mina spewed out
uncounted thousands of _Hujjaj_ (pilgrims), each instantly transformed
into a blood-lusting fiend. From the Hill of Arafat; from Jannat el
Ma'ale Cemetery; from the dun, bronzed, sun-baked city of a hundred
thousand fanatic souls; from the Haram sanctuary itself where mobs of
pilgrims were crowded round the Ka'aba and the holy Black Stone;
from latticed balcony and courtyard, flat roof, mosque, and minaret,
screams of rage shrilled up into the baked air, quivering under the
intense sapphire of the desert sky.
Every crowded street of the bowl-shaped city, all converging toward
the Sacred Enclosure of the Haram, every caravanserai and square,
became a mass of howling _ghuzzat_, or fighters for the faith.
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