to his own sweet will; they seldom chastise and seldom praise. Trained
from birth in the hard school of nomad life, fatigue and danger do
contribute much to his education. Burckhardt says, “I have seen parties
of naked boys playing at noonday upon the burning sand in the middle
of summer, running until they had fatigued themselves, and when they
returned to their fathers’ tents they were scolded for not continuing
the exercise. Instead of teaching the boy civil manners, the father
desires him to beat and pelt the strangers who come to the tent; to
steal or secrete some trifling article belonging to them. The more
saucy and impudent children are the more they are praised since this is
taken as an indication of future enterprise and warlike disposition.
Bedouin children, male and female, go unclad and play together until
their sixth year. The first child’s festival is that of circumcision.
At the age of seven years the day is fixed, sheep are killed and a
large dish of food is cooked. Women accompany the operation with a
loud song and afterward there is dancing and horseback riding and
encounters with lances. The girls adorn themselves with cheap jewelry
and tent-poles are decorated with ostrich feathers. Altogether it is a
gala-day.
[Illustration: CHURNING BUTTER IN A BEDOUIN CAMP.]
The Bedouin children have few toys but they manage to amuse themselves
with many games. I have seen a group of happy children, each with a pet
locust on a bit of string, watching whose steed should win the race.
The boys make music out of desert-grass winding it in curious fashion
to resemble a horn, and calling it _Masoor_. In Yemen and Nejd a sling,
like David’s, with pebbles from the brook is a lad’s first weapon.
Afterward he acquires a lance and perhaps an old discarded bowie-knife.
The children of the desert have no books.[95] But, of paper, they
have the Book of Nature. This magnificent picture book is never more
diligently studied than by those little dark eyes which watch the sheep
at pasture or count the stars in the blue abyss from their perch on a
lofty camel’s saddle in the midnight journeyings.
When the Bedouin lad grows up, and begins to swear by the few
straggling hairs on his chin, he cannot read a letter, but he knows men
and he knows the desert. The talk heard at night around the Sheikh’s
tent or the acacia-brush fireside is much like the wisdom of the book
of Job. A philosophy of submission to the world as it is; a deification
of stoicism or patience; a profound trust that all will end well at
last. Sad to say even the little nomads, with their ignorance of all
religion, share in the fanatical antagonism of their elders toward the
Christian religion and Christians. One of their games, in Nejd, is to
draw a cross on the desert sand and then defile it; they learn that
all outside the pale of Mohammed’s creed are _kafirs_ and to please
Allah are glad to throw stones at any wayfaring Nasrani. Little do
the Bedouins and still less do their children, however, know of the
religion of Islam. The Koran is not a book for children’s minds and of
such is not the kingdom of Mohammed.
The Bedouin child early puts away childish things. To western eyes
the children of Arabia appear like little old men and women; and the
grown-up people have minds like children. This is another paradox
of the Arab-character. At ten years the boy is sent to drive camels
and the girl to herd sheep; at fifteen they are both on the way to
matrimony. He wears the garb of a man and boasts a matchlock; she takes
to spinning camel hair and sings the songs of the past. Their brief
childhood is over. In the towns marriage takes place even earlier; and
there are boys of eighteen who have already divorced two wives.
Among the Bedouins polygamy is not common nor is it among the poorer
Arabs of the towns. The marriage ceremony among the Bedouins is
as simple as it is long and complex among the townsmen. After the
negotiations which precede the marriage contract, the bridegroom comes
with a lamb in his arms to the tent of the girl’s father and there
cuts the lamb’s throat before witnesses. As soon as the blood falls on
the ground the contract is sealed; feasting and dancing follow, and
at night the bride is conducted to the bridegroom’s tent where he is
awaiting her arrival. Dowrys are paid more generally and more largely
in the towns than in the desert. Among certain Arab tribes a demand
of money for the hand of a bride would be deemed scandalous. From a
western standpoint the women of the Bedouin stand on a higher platform
of liberty and justice than those of the towns where the Koran has
done its work on one half of society to repress intellect and degrade
affection, and sensualize the sexual relation to the last degree. On
the other hand divorce is perhaps more common among the Bedouins,[96]
than among the city Arabs. Burckhardt met Arabs not yet forty-five
years of age who were known to have had above fifty wives. Concerning
the marriage-contract in the towns, the ceremony, the divorce
proceedings, and the methods by which that is made legal which even the
lax law of Islam condemns, the less said the better.
On the position of women in Arabia we quote four unimpeachable
witnesses who have nothing in common save their knowledge of the
subject; there is truth on both sides where they differ; where they
agree there is no question of certainty as to the fact.
DOUGHTY, the Christian explorer, whose volumes are a mine of
information says:[97] “The female is of all animals the better, say
the Arabians, save only in mankind. Upon the human female the Semites
cast all their blame. Hers is, they think, a maleficent nature, and
the Arabs complain that ‘she has seven lives.’ The Arabs are contrary
to womankind, upon whom they would have God’s curse; some, they say,
are poisoners of husbands and there are many adulteresses.... The
_horma_ [_i. e._, woman] they would have under subjection; admitted
to an equality, the ineptitude of her evil nature will break forth.
They check her all day at home and let her never be enfranchised from
servitude. The veil and the jealous lattice are rather of the obscene
Mohammedan austerity in the towns; among the mild tent-dwellers in the
open wilderness the housewives have a liberty as where all are kindred;
yet their hareem are now seen in the most Arabian tribes half-veiled.”
BURCKHARDT, the time-honored authority on things Arabian, writes: “The
Bedouins are jealous of their women, but do not prevent them from
laughing and talking with strangers. It seldom happens that a Bedouin
strikes his wife; if he does so she calls loudly on her _wasy_ or
protector who pacifies the husband and makes him listen to reason....
The wife and daughters perform all the domestic business. They grind
the wheat in the handmill or pound it in the mortar; they prepare the
breakfast and dinner; knead and bake the bread; make butter, fetch
water, work at the loom, mend the tent-covering and are, it must be
owned, indefatigable. While the husband or brother sits before the tent
smoking his pipe.”
LADY ANN BLUNT, who travelled among the tribes of the Euphrates
valley with her husband, speaks thus from a woman’s standpoint. “Of
the Bedouin women a shorter description will be enough. As girls they
are pretty in a wild picturesque way and almost always have cheerful,
good-natured faces. They are hard-working and hard-worked, doing all
the labor of the camp.... They live apart from the men but are in no
way shut up or put under restraint. In the morning they all go out to
gather wood for the day, and whenever we have met them so employed they
have seemed in the highest possible spirits.... In mental qualities the
women of the desert are far below the men, their range of ideas being
extremely limited. Some few of them, however, get real influence over
their husbands and even, through them, over their tribes. In more than
one Sheikh’s tent it is in the woman’s half of it that the politics of
the tribe are settled.”
SNOUCK HURGRONJE, the Dutch traveller who spent an entire year
(1884-85) in Mecca thus characterizes the position of women in Arabian
towns:[98]
“What avail to the young maiden the songs of eulogy which once in
her life resound for her from the mouth of the singing-woman, but
which introduce her into a companionship by which she, with her whole
sex, is despised? Moslem literature, it is true, exhibits isolated
glimpses of a worthier estimation of woman, but the later view, which
comes more and more into prevalence, is the only one which finds
its expression in the sacred traditions, which represent hell as
full of women, and refuse to acknowledge in the woman, apart from
rare exceptions, either reason or religion, in poems, which refer
all the evil in the world to the woman as its root; in proverbs,
which represent a careful education of girls as mere wastefulness.
Ultimately, therefore, there is only conceded to the woman the
fascinating charm with which Allah has endowed her, in order to afford
the man, now and then in his earthly existence, the prelibation of the
pleasures of Paradise, and to bear him children.”
The poems which revile womankind, and of which the Dutch traveller
speaks, are legion. Here are two examples in English translation from
Burton:
“They said, marry!—I replied,—
Far be it from me
To take to my bosom a sackful of snakes.
I am free why then become a slave?
May Allah never bless womankind.”
“They declare woman to be heaven to man;
I say, Allah, give me Jehannum, not this heaven.”
Three kinds of dwellings are found in Arabia. There is the _tent_, the
date-palm hut, and the house built with mortar of stone or mud-brick.
The tent is distinctive, in a general sense, of the interior and of
Northern Arabia; the palm-hut of the coast and of South Arabia; while
houses of brick and mortar exist in all the towns and cities. The
evolution of the house is from goats’-hair to matting, and from matting
to mud-roof. Each of these dwellings is called _beit_, “the place where
one spends the night.”
The Bedouin tent[99] consists of nine poles, arranged in sets of three
and a wide, black goats’-hair covering so as to form two parts; the
men’s apartment being to the left of the entrance and the women’s
to the right, separated by a white woollen carpet hanging from the
ridge-pole. The posts are about five to seven feet in height; the
length of the tent is between twenty and thirty feet, its depth at the
most is ten feet. The only furniture consists of cooking utensils,
pack-saddles, carpets, water-skins, wheat-bags and millstones.
The date-palm hut is of different shapes. In Hejaz and Yemen it is
built like a huge beehive, circular and with a pointed roof. In Eastern
Arabia it consists of a square enclosure with hip-roof generally steep
and covered with matting or thatch-work. At Bahrein the Arabs are very
skillful in so weaving the date-fronds together and tightening every
crevice that the huts keep out wind and rain-storms most successfully.
The average size date-hut can be built for twenty or thirty Rupees
(seven to ten dollars) and will last for several years.
The stone-dwellings of Arabia are as different in architecture and
material as circumstance and taste can make them. In Yemen large
castle-like dwellings crown every mountain and frown on every valley;
stone is plentiful and the plan of architecture inherits grace and
strength from the older civilization of the Himyarites. In Bagdad,
Busrah and East Arabia Persian architecture prevails, with arches,
wind-towers, tracery and the veranda-windows. While the architecture
of Mecca and Medina takes on its own peculiar type from the needs
of the pilgrimage. Generally speaking the Arabs build their houses
without windows to the street, and with an open court; the harem-system
dictates to the builder, even putting a high parapet on the flat-roof
against jealous eyes. Bleak walls without ornament or pictures are
also demanded by their surly religion. All furniture is simple and
commonplace; except where the touch of western civilization has
awakened a taste for mirrors, marble-top tables and music-boxes.
In dress there is also much variety in Arabia. Turkish influence is
seen in the Ottoman provinces and Indian-Persian in Oman, Hassa and
Bahrein. The Turkish _fez_ and the _turban_ (which are not Arabian) are
examples. The common dress of the Bedouin is the type that underlies
all varieties. It consists of a coarse cotton shirt over which is worn
the abba or wide square mantle. The headdress is made with a square
cloth, folded across and fastened on the crown of the head by a circlet
of woollen-rope called an _‘akal_. The color of the garment and its
ornamentation depends on the locality; likewise the belt and the
weapons of the wearer. Sandals of all shapes are used; shoes and boots
on the coast indicate foreign influence. The dress of the Bedouin woman
is a wide cotton gown, with open sides, generally of a dark blue color,
and a cloth for the head. The veil is of various shapes; in Oman it has
the typical Egyptian nose-piece with only the middle part of the face
concealed; in the Turkish provinces of East Arabia, thin black cloth
conceals all the features. Nose and earrings are common. All Arab
women also tattoo their hands and faces as well as other parts of their
bodies, dye with henna and use antimony on their eyelashes for ornament.
The staple foods of Arabia are bread, rice, ghee (or clarified butter,
which the Arabs call _semu_) milk, mutton and dates. These are found
everywhere and coffee is the universal beverage. Other foods and
fruits we have considered in our study of the provinces. Tea is now
widely used but was known scarcely anywhere less than twenty years
ago. Tobacco is smoked in every village and the Bedouins also are
passionately fond of the weed; even the Wahabi religious prohibition
did not drive out desire for the universal narcotic. There is one
article of food we have left unmentioned, _locusts_. These are quite a
staple in the grocers’ shops of all the interior towns of Arabia. They
are prepared for eating by boiling in salt and water, after which they
are dried in the sun. They taste like stale shrimps or dried herring.
The coast-dwellers still live largely on fish and in the days of
Ptolemy they were called _Ichthiophagoi_.
XXVII
ARABIAN ARTS AND SCIENCES
Even Islam could not suppress the Arab’s love for music nor diminish
his regard for the great poets of “the days of ignorance.” For be it
known that, although one can buy Austrian mouth-organs in the bazaar
at Jiddah, and harmonicas from Germany in the toy-shop at Hofhoof,
music is generally held by Moslems, even to-day, to be contrary to
the teaching of the prophet. Mafia relates that when he was walking
with Ibn Omar, and they heard the music of a pipe the latter put his
fingers into his ears and went another road. Asked why, he said: “I was
with the prophet, and when he heard the noise of a musical pipe, he
put his fingers into his ears; and this happened when I was a child.”
Thus it comes to pass that by the iron law of tradition, more binding
to the pious Moslem ofttimes than the Koran itself, the Mohammedan
world considers music at least among the doubtful amusements for true
believers. And yet both before and after the advent of the morose
legislator, Arabia has had its music and song. But music in Mohammedan
lands is ever in spite of their religion, and is never, as is the case
with Christianity, fostered by it.
Among the ancient Arabs poetry and song were closely related. The
poet recited or chanted his own compositions in the evening mejlis,
or more frequently at the public fairs and festivals, especially the
national one held annually at Okatz. Here it was that the seven noble
fragments still extant of their earliest literature were first read
and applauded, and accounted worthy (if this part of the story be not
fabulous) to be suspended, written in gold, in the Kaaba.
It is unfortunate that the Arabs, with all their wealth of language
and literature, have no musical notation, so that we can only surmise
what their ancient tunes may have been. Were the early war songs of
Omar and Khalid sung in the same key as this modern war chant of the
Gomussa tribe, as interpreted by Lady Ann Blunt?
[Illustration: Music score]
[Illustration: Music score]
And did Sinbad the sailor sing the same tune on his voyages down the
Persian Gulf to India which now the Lingah boatmen lustily chant as
they land the cargo from a British India steamer? Or was it like
this sailors’ song on the Red Sea? To both of these questions the
only answer is the unchangeableness of the Orient; and this puts the
probability, at least, so far that the sailors of to-day could easily
join in Sinbad’s chorus.
The people of Jauf, in Northern Arabia, are most famous for music at
the present day, according to Burckhardt. They are especially adept
at playing the _Rebaba_. This may well be considered the national
instrument of music. It is all but universal in every part of the
peninsula, and as well-known to all Arabs as the bag pipe is to the
Scotch. I have heard the highland shepherd boys of Yemen play on a set
of reed-pipes rudely fastened together with bits of leather thong.
The drum _tabl_, is common among the town Arabs, and is used at their
marriage and circumcision feasts; but all over the desert one only
hears the rebaba. It is simplicity itself in its construction, when
made by the Bedouins; the finer ornamental ones are from the cities. A
box frame is made ready, a stick is thrust through, and in this they
pierce an eye-hole for a single peg; a kidskin is then stretched upon
the hollow box; the string is plucked from a mare’s tail, and setting
under it a bent twig for the bridge, their music is ready.
Time and measure are often very peculiar and hard to catch, but they
are kept most accurately, and Ali Bey gives an example which he says,
“exhibits the singularity of a bar divided into five equal portions, a
thing which J.J. Rousseau conceived to be practicable, but was never
able to accomplish.” Here it is as he gives it; it strikingly resembles
the boatmen’s song at Bahrein:
[Illustration: Music score]
The singing one commonly hears, however, is much more monotonous than
this, and the tune nearly always depends on the whim of the performer
or singer, sometimes, alas, on his inability to give more than a
certain number of variations!
Antar, one of their own poets, has said that the song of the Arabs is
like the hum of flies. A not inapt comparison to those who have seen
the “fly bazaar” in Hodeidah or Menamah during the date season, and
heard their myriad-mouthed buzzing. Antar, however, lived in the “times
of ignorance,” and most probably referred to the chanting of the camel
drivers, which is bad enough. Imagine the following sung in a high
monotonous key with endless repetition.
“Ya Rub sallimhum min el tahdeed
Wa ija’ad kawaihum ’amd hadeed.”
That is to say, being freely interpreted:
“Oh Lord, keep them from all dangers that pass
And make their long legs pillars of brass.”
To a stranger that which seems most peculiar in Arab song is their
long drawn-out tones at the close of a bar or refrain, sometimes
equivalent to three whole notes or any number of beats. Doughty did
not appreciate it, apparently, for he writes “Some, to make the
stranger cheer, chanted to the hoarse chord of the Arab viol, making
to themselves music like David, and drawing out the voice in the nose
to a demensurate length, which must move our yawning or laughter.”
There are, however, singers and singers. I remember a ruddy Yemen lad
who sang us _kasidahs_ during a heavy rain-storm in an old Arab café
near Ibb. The singer was master of his well-worn rebaba, and its music
seemed to overmaster him. Now his hand touched the strings gently, and
then again swept over them with a strong nervous motion, awakening
music indeed. His voice, too, was clear and sweet, although I was
not enough versed in Arabic poetry to catch the full meaning of his
words. It may have been the surroundings or the jovial companionship
of friendly Arabs after my Taiz seclusion and a weary journey up the
mountain passes, but I have never heard sweeter music in Arabia, and
have often heard worse elsewhere. God bless that travelling troubadour
of Yemen!
Here is a Mecca song for female voices, as given by Ali Bey in his
travels (1815), and a second sung by the women of Hejaz in a more
monotonous strain:
[Illustration: Music Score]
Such songs are called _asamer_; love-songs are called _hodjeiny_,
and the war song is known as _hadou_. Arabic prosody and the science
of metres is exceedingly extensive and seemingly difficult. What we
call rhyme is scarcely known, and yet every verse ends with the same
syllable in a stanza of poetry.
In Mecca as well as in other “religious” centres there is a sort of
sacred-music of which Hurgronje gives several specimens. They are
chants in honor of the prophet or prayers for him which are sung at the
_Moleeds_ or festivals in memory of Mohammed. Here are two of them.
[Illustration: Music score. Interspersed with text.
{Sal la ’llah a la Mu-hammad
{Pray for mo-ham-med, O God,
Sal-la ’llah ’a-laih-wa-sal-lam
Pray, O God, for him and peace.
]
[Illustration: ditto
Mar-ha-ba-ya, nur-el ain-ni mar-ha-ba
mar-ha-ba jid el Hu-sain-i mar-ha-ba
mar-ha-ba ya mar-ha-ba-ya, mar-ha-ba-a-a-a-a.
Most generally, however, music is looked upon as decidedly secular,
especially all instrumental music. The desert Arabs know no religious
song and only sing of love and war in their old wild way. It is only
at a distance from the mosque and away with the caravan, that Ghanim
clears his throat and sings in a voice that can be heard for a mile as
we leave him behind:
[Illustration: Music score]
The Arabs of the desert have a reading-book all their own called
_Athar_; and a writing all their own called _wasm_. No Bedouin so
ignorant but he can read _Athar_ and none so dull but he can write his
_wasm_.
[Illustration: TRIBAL MARKS or WASMs of the ARABS.]
_Athr_ or _ilm el athar_ is the science of footsteps; and like the free
Indians of America, the Arab is keen to study and quick to judge from
sand tracks of both men and animals. The genuine Arab who has made
_athar_ a study can tell the track of a friend from that of a foe, and
can distinguish the tribe or even the clan; he knows from the depth of
the footprint whether the camel was loaded or lame; whether the man
passed yesterday or a week before; from the regularity or irregularity
he judges of fatigue or of pursuit. If the camel’s forefeet dig deeper
than the hind he concludes the animal had a weak breast; from the offal
he knows whence the camels came and the character of their pasture.
Burckhardt writes of instances where camels were traced six days’
journeys after being stolen, and identified.
To identify property it must be marked, therefore, the kindred science
of _wasm_ has its place. A _wasm_ is a Bedouin trade-mark or ideograph
to label his property, real and personal. Their origin is unknown,
although Doughty says that they ofttimes resemble Himyaritic letters
and may therefore come from Yemen. Each family or tribe has its own
cattle-brand or token. Not only is personal property such as cattle
marked with the _wasm_ but the Bedouin put their mark on rocks near
favorite wells or pastures. These signs are the only certain records
of former occupation of tribes. Many of the tribes have two or three
different _wasms_; these belong to family groups.