Abdallah ibn Aoun, the son of Mohammed, who succeeded his father in 1858, and reigned for nineteen years, was a man of considerable ability, and he is credited with having had views of so advanced a nature as to include the opening of Hejaz to European trade.  Nor was his brother, who in 1877 became Grand Sherif, of a less liberal mind.  Though of less ability than Abdallah, he is described as eminently humane and virtuous, and it is certain that, with the exception of his hereditary enemies, the Zeyds, he was universally beloved by the Hejazi.  So much was this the case that, in the year following the disastrous Russian war, when Constantinople seemed on the point of dissolution, the Arabs began to talk openly of making El Husseyn ibn Aoun Caliph in the Sultan’s place.  I have not been able to ascertain that El Husseyn himself indulged the ambitious project of his friends, for he was eminently a man of peace, and the Caliphal title would hardly have given him a higher position than he held.  But it is certain that his popularity gave umbrage at Constantinople, the more so as Abd el Hamid could not and dared not depose him.  El Husseyn, too, became specially obnoxious to the reactionary party, when it resolved at last to quarrel with England, for he and his family persisted in remaining on friendly terms with the British Government on all occasions when the interests of Indian subjects of her Majesty’s came in question at the Haj.  For this reason, principally, it would seem his death was resolved on to make room for the agent of a new policy.

On the 14th of March, 1880, Jeddah was the scene of a solemn pageant.  The Haj was just over, and the seaport of Mecca crowded with pilgrims was waiting for the Grand Sherif, the descendant of the prophet and the representative of the Sacred House of Ali, to give the blessing of his presence to the last departing votaries.  Travelling by night from Mecca, El Husseyn and his retinue appeared at dawn outside the city walls, and when it was morning, mounted on a white mare from Nejd, and preceded by his escort of Koreysh Arabs and the Sultan’s guard of honour, he rode into the town.  The streets of Jeddah are narrow and tortuous, and the way from the gate to the house of Omar Nassif, his agent, where he was accustomed to alight, was thronged with pious folk, who struggled for the privilege of kissing his feet and the hem of his Arab cloak.  He had nearly reached the place when an old beggar from the crowd pushed his way forward asking loudly for alms in the name of God.  It was an appeal not to be denied, and as the Sherif turned to those near him to order a contribution from the bag kept for such distributions, the old man rose upon him, and drawing a ragged knife (so it was described to me) struck him in the belly.  At first, even those who saw the deed hardly knew what had happened, for El Husseyn did not fall or dismount, and without speaking rode on to the house.  There he was lifted from his mare and carried to an upper chamber, and in the course of some hours he expired.