AN INTERESTING RAILWAY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2849, 21 October 1908, Page 79

AN INTERESTING RAILWAY.

CABBYING NEW IDEAS TO ! MAHOMETANS. A railway of remarkable -interest, which E6 from Damascus to Medina, where a.hornet lies buried, was formally opened September 1. Medina is the first that the Turkish lgrim reaches of the two great holy ties of Islam, and the Hedjaz Railway destined-, when completed, to link Conantinople .wdbh Mecca (says the Maneater .<3a*rdian}, Tt follows the pilgrim ate -which for 1200 yeazs has been painUy tseddeii by- the feet of the faithful . o& Afeia Minor and tihe Mediterranean. ' > now planned it wall subserve the con- ! nience of only' a section, and the lesser otdon,. of the Mahometan world. When c. Bagdad railway connects Damascus iih. the valleys - of *he Tigris and the lphrates the Mahometans of Persia will ; t« a speedy and convenient road to j coca, but until tiien they will probably I ntinu-e to follow tibe< old! caravan routes j lick cross the- Arabian desert. — A Pious Railway. — • This railway haer been built entirely by alto met an ononey, * and for years -it has • en an act of piety to subscjiibe to the nds, and a million .pounds have been ! Reoted. J How keen has been the zeal may be ) tihered from <3» munificent gift of «n dJon prince, wiho has undenbaken to \ Iray the ccot. of *he i EUutioo.,aifc- Medina, ' id as a first instalment' has handed over j 35,000 (ad* the. Goasidjain). Every ' lrkdfeih; officer arid srfdtter hae been eecget serve yrSh. the btOtJbalions .whoare enged on the work of conatructian, .and «n ifae most -deeply ' bitten of the corpt officials ■ before 'the revolution kept I eir hands off <uhe funds of the sacred ! ilway. j —A Kailway Withoult a DoflW>. — The project conceived and pursued in is spmt has been executed witbi re- > wkable and accelerated Speed. The ie has' been carried over 800 miles from i unaecuß to Medina in less than seven J ara, J and F^jropeane, jwho-were at firafc dinefcl to ridtenle the whole undertakg,do not now doubt that the remaining, ction of 285 tmSles will be completed iitbin aoot/her two yeara. The Hedjaz id way will ftben be one of the cheapesfc"*he history of railway cofDßtniction, d — what ia .probably withouit precedent a; railway without a debt or a capital on Mch to pay interest. The land has 9t nothing. The southern portion of c route as practically uninhabited, and longs to the Suilltan ; the.noiTtihern was .private ownership, but the owners adaly surrendered their interests in order assist the sacred work. — T< Make Pilgrimages Safe. — Tlie Jabour was done by T^urkish troop* , d sttbsariptions iha-ve covered the cost of a-terial.iaod of the saiaries of tihe German gineers who were responsible for tihe ane, arid who supervised their execution it<il lihe immediate neighbonriiood of the cred city — wtactt is taboo to the Euroan — iwas reached. It is worth noticing ait the only opposition to tihe raihray me from itihe chiefs of the Hedjaz proace, and tfteir objections are intedligable not exactly creditable. For centuries c pilgrim cftravans have offered <rich portuniitiets for exactions. Tlie days nnlicensed and unchecked plundering c ended when the pilgrim travels by am under .the wardiens'hdp of the SuMen's oops, and with them (passes( passes away a eoanIto Islam. It is under the aegis of irkey thait the line lias been buiilt, and c prestige of making tho sacred cities ore accessible and freeing them from the outrge of the ibundit wall accrue to Tury. That is a cdrcum'stance which Abdul amid did not ignore when, he lend himIf to ike task. — Ite Straitei^cal Importance. — The foiwkling of the Hedjaz nailwav is hardly Jess strategical and !po].itieal than Sdgious signdfieance. it puts Arabia more direct control from Constanjople than it h-as ever been, and wlhen be Bagdetid ra-tfotfay <is completed 1 the lrki'sh Empire will have a con&ifitency d co-ordination that it has never tiherto knowm in its ihdstory, and tihe nitral awbhoarity will be proportionately rengthened. The reactaon cannnit fail extend beyond tfhe limits of the Turkish J\pire and be felt- in every Moslem oomcn>Hy. The Sultan of Turkey claims to i the Khalif, the reli^aoue head of Islam, bd d'he representative of the Prophet. ialt claim has been disputed , but the oeties of -legal casuistry are -pretty cerin to fade before t-fo? solid fact that the i3t«n ltemcefortiii will wield a control er the- eacred cities which none of bis edecessops enjoyed. — What the Railway Does. — The Hedjaz railway has deetroved the nri-nutapendenice of Mecca and Medina. id, bj' converting them into subOT'bs of ] onstantinople, has given *he most signal ] Hnon&tration of the validity of the Sul- i n's claim to be Khalif. *We may be , rite certain that <the new order in Tut- j iy will extract the utmost profit from j is adtusrtion, for he Young Turks are ' (rewd enough to make that came excel - .!«« g£ the Suljtftn'a eoTereica Htri-

' bates which we in England have made of tbe sovereign attributes, of the King. j The Hedjaz Railway will in another way react upon Islam. Mecca is the gathering place of Mahometans from every corner of the globe ; it is the great mart i and exchange of the ideas of the Mahometan world; it collects them like a great reservoir, to redistribute them in a thou- | sand streams throughout every Islamic 1 land. — New Ideas at Mecca. — "The Hedjaz Railway, had the old order subsisted, would have made Mecca the i agency for the circulation of the Sultan's : despotic and reactionary politics. It will now be the agency for the circulation and popularisation of the ideas of a new and" reformed Turkey. The Mahometans of the Turkish Empire and of the Mediterranean ooasts in closest contact with Turkey will furnish the most numerous as well as the ' most influential contingent to the annual assemblies at Mecca, and the word will pass from them to the other Mahometans. It is singular that a revolution in the spirit of Weßtern Islam should coincide with a revolution in organisation which so considerably increases the influence of Western Islam over the rest of the Mahometan world. It : & a, coincidence, to which England, who ?ules 60,000,000 Mahometans in India, cannot be indifferent." At the opening ceremony, among other i striking speeches was one by an Egyptian, j-Ali Kiftmil, who expressed his rejoicing that the Prophet had not permitted the railway to reach the Holy City before the ivfcalif had granted a Constitution to his " The tragedy of this great event is that I the' man. who really created the railway — j Izzet Pasha — va> now in hiding in London, 1 he having fled from Turkey at the grant- | ing of the new Constitution.