THE PEOPLE OF PALESTINE
The population of Palestine is divided into three parts, desert, village
and city. The desert population is the original Arab stock of pastoral
nomads.[49] The village population is the agricultural society of the
country, and the cities are the meeting places of these two with the
population of other countries. The Bedawy population of the desert is
the subject of much praise on the part of all writers. All who speak of
the Bedawîn use a certain tone of respect, even though occasion is taken
to poke fun at them for their rude ways as viewed by the dwellers in
towns. The religion of the Bedawîn is a simplified Islâm, or, as it may
perhaps be styled, a Moslemized simplicity. The encampment and the
march, herding and the raid, mark the features of a roving life over
some thousands of square miles of wild land. The different tribes have
their general boundaries in the great Syrian and Arabian deserts in
about the same way that the North American Indian once kept within
certain regions of the continent according to nations.
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The cities and villages of Palestine, so far as appearance is concerned,
vary in size merely. The houses of a small village are oftentimes just
as closely packed as the buildings in a city, so that a village will
look like a fragment knocked off a city. With us Westerners a village
may have as much land area as some cities, only the dwellings will be
far apart, the difference being in comparative density as well as in
size. In Palestine the density is about the same and the difference is
in the area. This compactness of the village became a fashion in times
of insecurity, when feuds between villages led to raids and reprisals.
The village was built as solidly as possible on rising ground. In the
middle of the core of original houses was the chief’s house, with a
lofty roof from which watch could be kept of all the surrounding country
and approaches.[50] If you wish to trace the growth of a village,
inquire for the _burj_, and probably you will be directed to the highest
spot in the village, at least to the highest house, around which the
early village clustered. If this be on top of a hill, as is frequently
the case, the growing village creeps down the slopes, the roof of one
house being the dooryard of the house above it, until the effect of a
pyramidal structure of children’s building-blocks results. In
troublesome times a watcher on the _burj_ of the village could warn his
fellows working in the outlying fields of the approach of an enemy by
the firing of a musket or by a shrill cry. All fled to the nest on the
height, and a successful attack was difficult against the heavy stone
houses and narrow lanes of the village.
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Just as among the cities there are those mostly or altogether Moslem and
others mostly or altogether Christian, so with the villages. While the
Moslem population greatly outnumbers the Christian, yet there is a very
considerable Christian population. Râm Allâh, Bayt Jâlâ, eṭ-Ṭayyibeh and
Jifnâ are Christian villages. In Bîr ez-Zayt, ‛Ayn ‛Arîk and ‛Âbûd the
Christians exceed the Moslems. In el-Bîreh and Ludd the Christians are
comparatively few. A Christian village is known from afar by its more
prosperous look, and the Christian quarters of a mixed village are also
distinguishable by the same favorable marks.
[Illustration: PEASANTS ON WAY TO MARKET WITH PRODUCE]
[Illustration: BEDAWÎN HORSEMAN]
Christian villages have powerful ecclesiastical establishments behind
them which work energetically to secure rights for their constituents.
Church life in the country is political life, and church dignitaries are
adepts in politics. The wealth and cleverness of the church are employed
to hold fast all traditions and all concessions which favor the
Communion and to hinder excessive injustice from overtaking the members.
There results a firm bond of union between the native membership and the
ecclesiastical establishment. The Communion is a religious nation, as it
were.
The Christian native is not subject to army service, as only Moslems are
thus eligible. This disability works to the industrial advantage of the
Christians, who pay an extra tax or tribute in lieu of service.
Centuries of this condition of things have developed the industrial
abilities of the Christian population in spite of discriminations
against them in the courts and in administration. A kind of religious
status is now recognized in the relations between the Moslem and the
Christian peasants. The Moslem stands hard by his faith and the
Christian of the Greek Orthodox Church will scorn the thought that
Christ and the Bible may be for Moslems.
Religious sects in the East remind one of volcanic islands; they are
either ablaze with the fierce fires of an eruption or else they are
overlaid with the ashes of an extinct fire. Between crazy fanaticism and
cold inanition there are no warm impulses of unselfish evangelism.
The Semitic peasant has always been a conservative. In many ways he is
to-day much like what the Canaanite occupier of the land must have been.
Each wave of conquest or shower of civilization has left its effect, but
underneath the Palestine peasant is a primitive Semite. Until within a
few score years religion of one sort or another has usually come to him
at the point of the sword. He has often adopted the veneer of a new
faith in order to escape death. So it was when Joshua and the Hebrew
host swept into the land, Bedawy fashion; so when Maccabean, Roman,
Moslem, Crusader, and Moslem again took control. The Palestine peasant
has worshiped the Baalim, Yahweh, Moloch, the God of Israel, the Son of
God, the God of Islâm. All the time he has kept a certain core of
Semitic custom and superstition, a sort of basic religion that has been
much the same all through these changes. But it is ofttimes impossible
to distinguish between a survival of the old and a reversion or
degeneration.
The native Christian is a shrewd business man. He is courteous even to
self-effacement. He can work hard, bargain shrewdly, save much, take
disappointment and persist. He loves his family dearly. He is humorous,
philosophic, a voluble fellow, non-secretive. He respects the Western
style of education, largely perhaps because it seems to lift people into
an easy life. Ease and grace are Eastern ideals of superiority.
If the Moslem and the Christian could be put on the same political
footing and justice done to each impartially in court practise and
taxation, I firmly believe that they would draw together, that Palestine
would in time be a country with a people and that it would be well
equipped from among its own with men of ability, competent to do its
political and social work.
In general it may be said that where the Palestine peasant has not come
into relationship with the tourist business in any form, and where he is
some little distance from any city, he is naturally simple in his tastes
and requirements, interested in novelty, sociable, hospitable,
fun-loving, hard-working, though not steady in effort.
A lone walker on the road will often sing. Whistling is almost unknown.
Peasants make a twenty-mile journey on foot with considerable ease, and
half that distance is done very commonly. Distances are always reckoned
by them in hours or days, never in miles. They often walk behind their
laden animals. Sometimes it is a donkey, bearing the plow and seed-bag
or loaded with fagots, grain, sheaves, dried figs or grapes, according
to the season. Or it may be a camel similarly laded or carrying stone;
or a mule. Seldom are horses used, except by a village shaykh or a city
official on the highway. When groups of peasants are on the road there
is much talk, often laughter, horse-play, joking, chaffing; sometimes
bickering and quarreling.
The peasant stands in awe of learning, especially of learning in the
Arabic language. He is sensitive to ridicule, and therefore loath to
make such a change in customs as would bring it on him. He is eager in
discussion, inquisitive, strong in memory and at imitating, but slow to
adopt strange ways not tested by the conditions of life to which he is
accustomed. You seldom or never find him nervous, fretful or
discontented. He never questions the wisdom of Providence. He seldom
mentions weather probabilities. He, like his Old Testament countryman,
refers all things to a First Cause. Divine cause or permission is
prominent in his explanation of any phenomena.
The personal appearance of the villagers and the look of their houses
vary with the country level at which they live. In the plains and
lowlands, where thatch and earth are more commonly used in building,
there is a population noticeably different from the dwellers in the
stone villages in the highlands. The inhabitants lower down are darker
and smaller than the hill villagers. These latter are often of good size
and development and, especially among the Christians, are frequently of
lighter color. It is not very uncommon to see sandy complexions among
them.[51] The women and girls in the best villages are often handsome.
The men are lithe of body and finely formed. Both men and women are
usually supple, slow-motioned, strong. They have dark, expressive eyes,
neutral mouths, medium foreheads, heavy features with curving lines,
browned skins and black hair. Fair complexions are admired, especially
the so-called _wheat-colored_ complexion (_ḳumḥeh_). Eyes are
distinguished by the epithets _‛asaliyeh_ (honey-colored), _koḥli_
(kohl-colored), _ghuz-laniyeh_ (gazel-like) and so on.
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Different villages and their inhabitants get reputations for doing one
or another kind of work especially well. Or they are distinguished
according to disposition, as harsh and fanatical, or as courteous and
reasonable. Some villages get a name for dulness and others for
sharpness. The villagers are known about the country by slight variation
in dress, by differing casts of countenance and peculiarities of
speech.[52]
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We must not magnify too much the differences between civilizations and
peoples, or between this people of whom we speak and our own people. The
difference is often but quantitative. They emphasize some qualities
which we possess, though in quieter color or in less distinctive
marking. Oftentimes the differences would not be apparent except that,
as we have passed rapidly from place to place, our eyes have
synchronized phenomena of different stages of culture. We see really
among these strangers many practises and notions of our own distant
forebears.
[Illustration:
WOMAN’S WORK
1. At the Cistern. 2. In the Market. 3. Bringing Brush.
]
Western people are so in the habit of pitying all the women of Asia that
they will probably go on doing so until the end of time in spite of the
facts. To our Western idea woman in the East is a pitiable, miserable
abstraction. The Turkish harem, the Indian child-widow and the deformed
Chinese foot stand for all Asia to many of us. There is probably a
large, free area of life open to thousands of the women of Asia that
does not seem cramped by comparison with the total civilization of which
they are a part. The Bedawy woman would not change places with any of
us, and the village peasant woman of Palestine enjoys life fully as well
as the male villagers. She is not supposed to enter the field marked out
by custom for male members of society, nor will the field she occupies
be intruded upon by them. She shares with the man a preference for male
children. Her position in this regard is only an exaggeration of the
condition that prevails in all modern society. She, like her brothers
and sisters the world over, is influenced by customs to which she yields
obedience a little more gracefully than do many of us. She goes about
her work cheerfully if she is well. Too often she is not well, and in a
few years drudging toil and frequent childbearing age her. Like her
sisters in other countries, she is sometimes tidy and sometimes not. She
loves her children. Whether she loves her husband or not is not easy to
discover, but she pays him proper respect and, if kind, she probably
cherishes real esteem for him. The marriage was probably not of her
choosing, and very likely not of his. Marriage is a state entered into
dutifully by all sons and daughters. It builds the tribe or great family
which is at bottom the object of a Syrian’s greatest devotion next to
himself, and often before himself.
If you awake in the early hours of morning you will hear the monotonous
rumble of the stone mills, telling that the day’s work for the women has
begun. When the spring is very small or low, and it takes a long time to
fill a jar, the women and young girls will sometimes go out before it is
light to get the first turn at the trickling stream. Long journeys are
made into the waste places to secure headloads of brush or grass-fodder.
A woman usually wears a dark blue crash dress while at work. Her legs
and feet are bare; perhaps she carries a rough pair of shoes such as the
men wear, but they are for the briers and stones outside the village.
Should she put them on within the village the other women would laugh at
her and call her proud or citified.
Unmarried women are very scarce among the peasantry. Marriage usually
comes at an early age for girls. One of the owners of a house that we
had to hire for the work of the new boys’ training school had as wife
such a mere slip of a girl that we were curious to know her age. She
couldn’t tell us how old she was, but said that she had been married
five years. A companion with her ventured the guess that her age was
thirteen years. The little wife seemed happy and was the only peasant
wife I ever saw receiving any affectionate attentions from her husband.
She was a pretty girl and seemed to be a pet in the family. She had her
own little ways of enjoying her little life. One day, when some much
poorer women from el-Bîreh were toiling on the house which her husband’s
family was building, bringing stone and mortar on their heads, Mrs.
Thirteen-years put on her best dress of blue with some Bethlehem
needlework on the breast, adorned her fingers with the rings of cheap
nickel and glass, commonly worn, and taking a piece of embroidery, stood
thus, plying her needle genteelly, where the other women were toiling at
their severer task. Many were the glances they threw at her, but when
they looked her eyes were on her handiwork.
Several statements on page 45 _f._, especially the one on army service,
need modification now. See Chapter XII. The classical work in English on
the modern life of the Bedawin is Charles M. Doughty’s Arabia Deserta
which has recently come out in a new and expensive edition.