Luxuries, as coffee, kammerdin, debs,* tobacco, and half a dozen lambs 200 700 about 35 or 40 pounds sterling. Among the Arabs, horses are not so numerous as might be supposed from the reports of several travellers, as well as of the country people in Syria, who indeed are but imperfectly acquainted with the affairs of the Desert. During my visits to Aeneze encampments, I could seldom reckon more than one mare for six or seven tents. The Aenezes exclusively ride their mares, and sell the male colts to the peasants and town's people of Syria and Baghdad. The Arabs of Ahl el Shemál have more horses than the Aenezes, but the breed is adulterated in some instances. Wealth, however, among the Arabs is extremely precarious, and the most rapid changes of fortune are daily experienced. The bold incursions of robbers, and sudden attacks of hostile parties, reduce, in a few days, the richest man to a state of beggary; and we may venture to say, that there are not many fathers of families who have escaped such disasters. The detail hereafter given, of Bedouin wars and robberies, will explain this assertion. It may be almost said, that the Arabs are obliged to rob and pillage. Most families of the Aenezes are unable to defray the annual expenses from their profits on their cattle, and few Arabs would sell a camel to purchase provisions: he knows, from experience, that to continue long in a state of peace, diminishes the wealth of an individual; war and plunder therefore becomes necessary. The sheikh is obliged to lead his Arabs against the enemy, if there be one; if not, it can easily be contrived to make one. But it may be truly said, that wealth alone does not give a Bedouin any importance among his people. A poor man, if he be hospitable and liberal according to his means, always killing a lamb when a stranger arrives, giving coffee to all the guests present, holding his bag of tobacco * Kammerdin, dried apricot jelly from Damascus.-Debs, a sweet jelly made of grapes. Vol. IV. No. 16. 92 always ready to supply the pipes of his friends, and sharing whatever booty he gets among his poor relations, sacrificing his last penny to honour his guest or relieve those who want, obtains infinitely more consideration and influence among his tribe, than the bakheil, or avaricious and wealthy miser, who receives a guest with coldness, and lets his poor friends starve. As riches among this nation of robbers do not confer influence or power, so the wealthy person does not derive from them any more refined gratification than the poorest individual of the tribe may enjoy. The richest sheikh lives like the meanest of his Arabs : they both eat every day of the same dishes, and in the same quantity, and never partake of any luxury unless on the arrival of a stranger, when the host's tent is open to all his friends. They both dress in the same kind of shabby gown and messhlakh. The chief pleasure in which the chief may indulge, is the possession of a swift mare, and the gratification of seeing his wife and daughters better dressed than the other females of the camp. Bankruptcy, in the usual acceptation of the word, is unknown among the Arabs. A Bedouin either loses his property by the enemy (it is then said of him wakhad helále), or he expends it in profuse hospitality. In this latter case he is praised by the whole tribe; and as the generous Arab is most frequently endued with other nomadic virtues, he seldom fails to regain, by some lucky stroke, what he had so nobly lost. The only Bedouins that can be reckoned wealthy, are those whose tribes pasture their cattle in the open plains, which have been fertilized by the rains of winter. To them belong innumerable herds of camels: the richest Bedouins of the southern plains are the Kahtan tribe, on the frontiers of Yemen. The father of a family is said to be poor among them, if he possess only forty camels; the usual stock in a family is from one hundred to two hundred. The tribes of poor Bedouins are all those who occupy a mountainous territory, where the camels find less food, and are not so prolific. Thus the Bedouin inhabitants of that whole chain of mountains, that extend from Damascus across Arabia Petræa, and along the coast of the Red Sea, as far as Yemen, are all people of little property in cattle, while all the tribes of the eastern plains possess great numbers. The account which I have already given of an Arab's yearly expenses, must be understood only of a man above the common class; many respectable families spend only half that sum. To give a specimen of the means adopted by a poor Arab to gain his livelihood, and furnish his family with provisions, my journal of an expedition in the Sinai mountains may be consulted. Poor Bedouins come from thence to Cairo, bringing their camels loaded with coals. Such a load, which requires the labour of one man for ten or fifteen days to collect, is sold at Cairo for about three dollars, after a journey of ten or eleven days. With these three dollars, the man then purchases half a load of wheat, some tobacco for himself, and a pair of shoes or handkerchief for his wife, and returns the same distance to his tent; having been above five weeks employed, together with his camel, in procuring this scanty supply for the family. On such occasion a Bedouin will gladly forfeit the only sensual pleasure he can enjoy on the road, (eating butter and smoking tobacco,) rather than return to his home without some small present for his family, for the purchase of which he sacrifices, if necessary, even his butter-skin and tobacco-pouch. Some Arab families pride themselves in having only herds of camels, without sheep or goats; but I never heard that there existed whole tribes without the latter. Those who have camels alone are mostly families of sheikhs; and in case strangers arrive for whom a lamb is to be killed, then the Arabs usually bring one for that purpose to the sheikh's tent. In some encampments, the Arabs will not permit their sheikh to slaughter a lamb on any occasion, but furnish by turns the meat for his tent. The families, who have camels only are called ahel bel, in opposition to the ahel ghanem. But in the most desperate circumstances, without camels or sheep, a Bedouin is always too proud to show discontent, or much less to complain. He never begs assistance, but strives with all his might, either as a camel-driver, a shepherd, or a robber, to retrieve his lost property. Hope in the bounty of God, and a perfect resignation to his divine will, are deeply implanted in the Arab's breast; but this resignation does not paralyse his exertions so much as it does those of the Turks. I have heard Arabs reproach Turks for their apathy and stupidity, in ascribing to the will of God what was merely the result of their own faults or folly, quoting a proverb which says, "He bared his back to the stings of mosquitos, and then exclaimed, God has decreed that I should be stung.' The fortitude with which Bedouins endure evils of every kind is exemplary in that respect they are as much superior to us as we exceed them 99 in our eager search after pleasing sensations and refined enjoyments. Wise men have always thought that the amount of evil in this world was greater than that of pleasure; it seems therefore that he is more truly a philosopher who, although he knows but few refinements of pleasure, laughs at evil, than the man who sinks under adversity, and passes his happier moments in the pursuit of visionary enjoyments. The secret hopes and expectations of the Bedouin are much more limited than those of the Arab who dwells in a town. His chief desire during a state of poverty is to become so opulent that he may be enabled to slaughter a lamb on the arrival of every respectable guest at his tent, and in this act of hospitality to rival at least, if not to exceed, all the other Arabs of his tribe. If fortune grant him the accomplishment of this desire, he then looks out for a fine horse or dromedary, and good clothes for his females: these objects once attained, he feels no other wish but that of maintaining and increasing his reputation for bravery and hospitality. For this reason it may be safely affirmed that there are among Bedouins, an infinitely greater number of individuals contented and happy with their lot, than among other Asiatics, whose happiness is almost always blighted by avarice, and the ambition of rising above their equals. The Bedouin is certainly unhappy when he feels himself so poor that he cannot entertain a guest according to his wish; he then looks with an envious eye upon his more fortunate neighbours; he dreads the sneers of friends and of enemies, who regard him as unable to honour a stranger: but whenever he can contrive to display hospitality, he feels himself upon a footing of equality with the richest sheikh, towards whom he bears no envy on account of his more numerous flocks and herds, the possession of which does not procure to him any increase either of honours or enjoyments. V. WARFARE AND PREDATORY EXCURSIONS. The Arab tribes are in a state of almost perpetual war against each other; it seldom happens that a tribe enjoys a moment of general peace with all his neighbours, yet the war between two tribes is scarcely ever of long duration; peace is easily made, but again broken upon the slightest pretence. The Arab warfare is that of partisans; general battles are rarely fought: to surprise the enemy by a sudden attack, and to plunder a camp, are chief objects of both parties. This is the reason why their wars are bloodless; the enemy is generally attacked by superior numbers, and he gives way without fighting, in hopes of retaliating on a weak encampment of the other party. The dreaded effects of "blood-revenge," which shall be hereafter noticed, prevent many sanguinary conflicts: thus two tribes may be at war for a whole year without the loss of more than thirty or forty men on each side. The Arabs, however, have evinced on some occasions great firmness and courage; but when they fight merely for plunder, they behave like cowards. I could adduce numerous instances of caravan-travellers and peasants putting to flight three times their number of Arabs who had attacked them: hence, throughout Syria, they are reckoned miserable cowards, and their contests with the peasants always prove them such; but when the Arab faces his national enemy in open battle, when the fame and honour of his tribe are at stake, he frequently displays heroic valour; and we still find among them warriors whose names are celebrated all over the desert; and the acts of bravery ascribed to them might seem fabulous, did we not recollect that the weapons of the Arabs allow full scope to personal prowess, and that in irregular skirmishing the superior qualities of the horse give the rider incalculable advantages over his enemies. Thus we read in the history of Antar that this valiant slave, when mounted upon his mare Ghabara, killed with his lance, in a single battle, eight hundred men. However incredulous respecting the full amount of his statement, I may here be allowed to mention the name of a modern hero, whose praise is recorded in hundreds of poems, and whose feats in arms have been reported to me by many ocular witnesses. Gedoua Ibn Gheyan el Shamsy is known to have slain thirty of his enemies in one encounter; he prided himself in having never been put to flight, and the booty which he took was immense. But his friends alone benefited by this, for he himself continued always poor. His life at last was sacrificed to his valour. A war broke out in the year 1790, between the Ibn Fadhel and Ibn Esmeyr tribes, while most of the Aenezes engaged themselves on one side or the other. After many partial encounters, the two sheikhs, each with about five thousand horsemen, met near Mezerib, a small town on the Hadj road, nearly fifty miles from Damascus, on the plain of Hauran, and both determined on a general battle that should terminate the war. The armies were drawn up in sight of each other, |