Hadji Ali... Better Known as "Hi Jolly"

His name was Hadji Ali, a good Mohammedan name. He believed in Allah and at the muezzin's call proclaimed that Mohammed was the prophet. He was born in distant Syria in 1828, the son of an Arabian father and a Greek mother. As a youth he made the sacred pilgrimage to Mecca and embraced the beliefs of Islam. His was an honorable profession, that of camel driver, and across the white sands of his native land he trudged many a day in the hot sun and was never happier than with the camel caravans on the long marches.

That this simple Mohammedan by the name of Hadji Ali should march with the camels through a page of Arizona's history is one of those simple tricks Destiny plays on simple people. A monument on the desert at Quartzsite, Arizona, marks his page in Arizona's history and the end of life's long journey for Hadji Ali, better known to us as Hi Jolly, and may his soul rest in eternal peace!

Destiny began spinning its web around Hadji Ali as early as 1836 when an American officer suggested to his superiors in Washington, D. C., that camels would be the perfect means of travel across the des-erts of a western wilderness later to be known as Arizona. Nothing came of the suggestion at that time but seventeen years later a man with a sad face who was head of the war department and was later to become president of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, became interested in the use of camels in the West and managed to get $30,000 out of Congress for the purchase of camels and drome-daries for military purposes. Officers were sent to the Levant, camels were purchased, the services of camel drivers secured, and on August 31, 1857, the Army's camel caravan, led by that gallant officer, Lt. Edward F. Beale, started the trek across northern Arizona to plot a military road to California.

So came Hadji Ali to Arizona. The sailors and officers on the boats which brought the camels to America liked the simple, brown faced man but their American tongues weren't able to twist his name with the proper Mohammedan assonance so he became plain, likeable "Hi Jolly," and so he remained to the end of his days.

Hi Jolly and his fellows and their camels did miraculous work for the Army. "The camels are so quiet and give us so little trouble we forget they are with us," we note in Beale's journal. Noble beasts of burden that could carry six hundred pounds thirty miles a day without a murmur. True, the terrain was rough and rocky, unlike the soft white sands of Arabia, and caused the camels to suffer from sore feet. After the journey was completed to Fort El Tezon in California, they were no longer needed by the Army. The camel herd was scattered and some of the camel drivers returned to their native land. But Hi Jolly remained because he liked the land and the Americans who were friendly and laughing all the time and who meant no harm even if they mutilated his name with their raucous pronunciation.

He lived on the desert around Quartzsite and when that long sleep called Death came for Hadji Ali, better known as Hi Jolly, on December 16, 1902, he was an old, old man who had lived a full and happy life. Hadji Ali does not now answer the muezzin's call to Allah at eveningtide but his ghost still follows the ghosts of the patient camels he loved on the desert not far from Quartzsite.

The story of the Beale expedition through northern Arizona "to continue the road westward from Fort Defiance" was, though brief, an important chapter in the march of empire west. The part played in that expedition by Hadji Ali, his friends and their camels, was an illustrious part and it is well that it should be noted by the all-inclusive pen of history.

The Arizona Highway Department, to mark the historical incident, and to forever honor the final resting place of the most illustrious of the camel drivers, built in 1935 a monument over the grave of Hi Jolly at the cemetery at Quartzsite that all generations of travelers may pause for a moment and pay silent homage to a-son of Islam who became a revered and respected son of Arizona.

Not far from the grave of Hi Jolly, a great modern highway, carrying the combined traffic of U. S. Highways 60 and 70, flows gracefully through the hills and deserts, a long, slick ribbon of asphalt laid for the traveler's comfort and pleasure. This is a far cry from the camel train and the patient figure of Hadji Ali trudging westward toward the land beyond which the sun sinks into the seas... R. C.