Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah Volume Ii Part 7

[p.87] keystone to the arch. Secondly, there is the terrible blood-feud, which even the most reckless fear for their posterity. And, thirdly, though the revealed law of the Koran, being insufficient for the Desert, is openly disregarded, the immemorial customs of the Kazi al-Arab (the Judge of the Arabs)[FN#18] form a system stringent in the extreme.

The valour of the Badawi is fitful and uncertain. Man is by nature an animal of prey, educated by the complicated relations of society, but readily relapsing into his old habits. Ravenous and sanguinary propensities grow apace in the Desert, but for the same reason the recklessness of civilisation is unknown there. Savages and semi-barbarians are always cautious, because they have nothing valuable but their lives and limbs. The civilised man, on the contrary, has a hundred wants or hopes or aims, without which existence has for him no charms. Arab ideas of bravery do not prepossess us. Their romances, full of foolhardy feats and impossible exploits, might charm for a time, but would not become the standard works of a really fighting people.[FN#19] Nor would a truly valorous race admire

[p.88] the cautious freebooters who safely fire down upon Caravans from their eyries. Arab wars, too, are a succession of skirmishes, in which five hundred men will retreat after losing a dozen of their number. In this partisan-fighting the first charge secures a victory, and the vanquished fly till covered by the shades of night. Then come cries and taunts of women, deep oaths, wild poetry, excitement, and reprisals, which will probably end in the flight of the former victor. When peace is to be made, both parties count up their dead, and the usual blood-money is paid for excess on either side. Generally, however, the feud endures till, all becoming weary of it, some great man, as the Sharif of Meccah, is called upon to settle the terms of a treaty, which is nothing but an armistice. After a few months' peace, a glance or a word will draw blood, for these hates are old growths, and new dissensions easily shoot up from them.

But, contemptible though their battles be, the Badawin are not cowards.

The habit of danger in raids and blood-feuds, the continual uncertainty of existence, the desert, the chase, the hard life and exposure to the air, blunting the nervous system; the presence and the practice of weapons, horsemanship, sharpshooting, and martial exercises, habituate them to look death in the face like men, and powerful motives will make them heroes. The English, it is said, fight willingly for liberty, our neighbours for glory; the Spaniard fights, or rather fought, for religion and the Pundonor; and the Irishman fights for the fun of fighting. Gain and revenge draw the Arab's sword; yet then he uses it fitfully enough, without the gay gallantry of the [p.89] French or the persistent stay of the Anglo-Saxon. To become desperate he must have the all-powerful stimulants of honour and of fanaticism. Frenzied by the insults of his women, or by the fear of being branded as a coward, he is capable of any mad deed.[FN#20] And the obstinacy produced by strong religious impressions gives a steadfastness to his spirit unknown to mere enthusiasm. The history of the Badawi tells this plainly. Some un.o.bserving travellers, indeed, have mistaken his exceeding cautiousness for stark cowardice. The incongruity is easily read by one who understands the principles of Badawi warfare; with them, as amongst the Red Indians, one death dims a victory. And though reckless when their pa.s.sions are thoroughly aroused, though heedless of danger when the voice of honour calls them, the Badawin will not sacrifice themselves for light motives. Besides, they have, as has been said, another and a potent incentive to cautiousness. Whenever peace is concluded, they must pay for victory.

There are two things which tend to soften the ferocity of Badawi life.

These are, in the first place, intercourse with citizens, who frequently visit and entrust their children to the people of the Black tents ; and, secondly, the social position of the women.

The Rev. Charles Robertson, author of a certain

[p.90] "Lecture on Poetry, addressed to Working Men," a.s.serts that Pa.s.sion became Love under the influence of Christianity, and that the idea of a Virgin Mother spread over the s.e.x a sanct.i.ty unknown to the poetry or to the philosophy of Greece and Rome.[FN#21] Pa.s.sing over the objections of deified Eros and Immortal Psyche, and of the Virgin Mother-symbol of moral purity-being common to every old and material faith,[FN#22] I believe that all the n.o.ble tribes of savages display the principle. Thus we might expect to find, wherever the fancy, the imagination, and the ideality are strong, some traces of a sentiment innate in the human organisation. It exists, says Mr. Catlin, amongst the North American Indians, and even the Gallas and the Somal of Africa are not wholly dest.i.tute of it. But when the barbarian becomes a semi-barbarian, as are the most polished Orientals, or as were the cla.s.sical authors of Greece and Rome, then women fall from their proper place in society, become mere articles of luxury, and sink into the lowest moral condition. In the next stage, "civilisation," they rise again to be "highly accomplished," and not a little frivolous.

[p.91]Miss Martineau, when travelling through Egypt, once visited a harim, and there found, among many things, especially in ignorance of books and of book-making, materials for a heart-broken wail over the degradation of her s.e.x. The learned lady indulges, too, in sundry strong and unsavoury comparisons between the harim and certain haunts of vice in Europe. On the other hand, male travellers generally speak lovingly of the harim. Sonnini, no admirer of Egypt, expatiates on "the generous virtues, the examples of magnanimity and affectionate attachment, the sentiments ardent, yet gentle, forming a delightful unison with personal charms in the harims of the Mamluks."

As usual, the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes. Human nature, all the world over, differs but in degree. Everywhere women may be "capricious, coy, and hard to please" in common conjunctures: in the hour of need they will display devoted heroism. Any chronicler of the Afghan war will bear witness that warm hearts, n.o.ble sentiments, and an overflowing kindness to the poor, the weak, and the unhappy are found even in a harim. Europe now knows that the Moslem husband provides separate apartments and a distinct establishment for each of his wives, unless, as sometimes happens, one be an old woman and the other a child. And, confessing that envy, hatred, and malice often flourish in polygamy, the Moslem asks, Is monogamy open to no objections? As far as my limited observations go, polyandry is the only state of society in which jealousy and quarrels about the s.e.x are the exception and not the rule of life.

In quality of doctor I have seen a little and heard much of the harim.

It often resembles a European home composed of a man, his wife, and his mother. And I have seen in the West many a "happy fireside" fitter to make Miss Martineau's heart ache than any harim in Grand Cairo.

[p.92] Were it not evident that the spiritualising of s.e.xuality by sentiment, of propensity by imagination, is universal among the highest orders of mankind,-c'est l'etoffe de la nature que l'imagination a brodee, says Voltaire,-I should attribute the origin of "love" to the influence of the Arabs' poetry and chivalry upon European ideas rather than to mediaeval Christianity. Certain "Fathers of the Church," it must be remembered, did not believe that women have souls. The Moslems never went so far.

In nomad life, tribes often meet for a time, live together whilst pasturage lasts, and then separate perhaps for a generation. Under such circ.u.mstances, youths who hold with the Italian that

"Perduto e tutto il tempo Che in amor non si spende,"

will lose heart to maidens, whom possibly, by the laws of the clan, they may not marry,[FN#23] and the light o' love will fly her home. The fugitives must brave every danger, for revenge, at all times the Badawi's idol, now becomes the lodestar of his existence. But the Arab lover will dare all consequences. "Men have died and the worms have eaten them, but not for love," may be true in the West: it is false in the East. This is attested in every tale where love, and not ambition, is the groundwork of the narrative.[FN#24] And nothing can be more tender, more

[p.93] pathetic than the use made of these separations and long absences by the old Arab poets. Whoever peruses the Suspended Poem of Labid, will find thoughts at once so plaintive and so n.o.ble, that even Dr. Carlyle's learned verse cannot wholly deface their charm.

The warrior-bard returns from afar. He looks upon the traces of hearth and home still furrowing the Desert ground. In bitterness of spirit he checks himself from calling aloud upon his lovers and his friends. He melts at the remembrance of their departure, and long indulges in the absorbing theme. Then he strengthens himself by the thought of Nawara's inconstancy, how she left him and never thought of him again. He impatiently dwells upon the charms of the places which detain her, advocates flight from the changing lover and the false friend, and, in the exultation with which he feels his swift dromedary start under him upon her rapid course, he seems to seek and finds some consolation for women's perfidy and forgetfulness. Yet he cannot abandon Nawara's name or memory. Again he dwells with yearning upon scenes of past felicity, and he boasts of his prowess-a fresh reproach to her,-of his gentle birth, and of his hospitality. He ends with an encomium upon his clan, to which he attributes, as a n.o.ble Arab should, all the virtues of man. This is Goldsmith's deserted village in Al-Hijaz. But the Arab, with equal simplicity and pathos, has a fire, a force of language, and a depth of feeling, which the Irishman, admirable as his verse is, could never rival.

As the author of the Peninsular War well remarks, women in troubled times, throwing off their accustomed feebleness and frivolity, become helpmates meet for man. The same is true of pastoral life. [FN#25]

Here, between the

[p.94] extremes of fierceness and sensibility, the weaker s.e.x, remedying its great want, power, rises itself by courage, physical as well as moral. In the early days of Al-Islam, if history be credible, Arabia had a race of heroines. Within the last century, Ghaliyah, the wife of a Wahhabi chief, opposed Mohammed Ali himself in many a b.l.o.o.d.y field. A few years ago, when Ibn Asm, popularly called Ibn Rumi, chief of the Zubayd clan about Rabigh, was treacherously slain by the Turkish general, Kurdi Osman, his sister, a fair young girl, determined to revenge him. She fixed upon the "Arafat-day" of pilgrimage for the accomplishment of her designs, disguised herself in male attire, drew her kerchief in the form Lisam over the lower part of her face, and with lighted match awaited her enemy. The Turk, however, was not present, and the girl was arrested to win for herself a local reputation equal to the "maid" of Salamanca. Thus it is that the Arab has learned to swear that great oath "by the honour of my women."

The Badawin are not without a certain Platonic affection, which they call Hawa (or Ishk) uzri-pardonable love.[FN#26] They draw the fine line between amant and amoureux: this is derided by the tow[n]speople, little suspecting how much such a custom says in favour of the wild men. Arabs, like other Orientals, hold that, in such matters, man is saved, not by faith, but by want of faith. They have also a saying not unlike ours-

"She partly is to blame who has been tried; He comes too near who comes to be denied."

[p.95]The evil of this system is that they, like certain Southerns-pensano sempre al male-always suspect, which may be worldly-wise, and also always show their suspicions, which is a.s.suredly foolish. For thus they demoralise their women, who might be kept in the way of right by self-respect and by a sense of duty.

From ancient periods of the Arab's history we find him practising knight-errantry, the wildest form of chivalry.[FN#27] "The Songs of Antar,"

says the author of the "Crescent and the Cross," "show little of the true chivalric spirit." What thinks the reader of sentiments like these[FN#28]? "This valiant man," remarks Antar (who was "ever interested for the weaker s.e.x,") "hath defended the honour of women." We read in another place, "Mercy, my lord, is the n.o.blest quality of the n.o.ble." Again, "it is the most ignominious of deeds to take free-born women prisoners." "Bear not malice, O Shibub," quoth the hero, "for of malice good never came." Is there no true greatness in this sentiment?-"Birth is the boast of the faineant; n.o.ble is the youth who beareth every ill, who clotheth himself in mail during the noontide heat, and who wandereth through the outer darkness of night." And why does the "knight of knights" love Ibla? Because "she is blooming as the sun at dawn, with hair black as the midnight shades, with Paradise in her eye, her bosom an enchantment, and a form waving like the tamarisk when the soft wind blows from the hills of Nijd"? Yes!

but his chest expands also with the thoughts of her "faith, purity, and affection,"-it is her moral as well as her material excellence that makes her [p.96] the hero's "hope, and hearing, and sight." Briefly, in Antar I discern

"a love exalted high, By all the glow of chivalry;"

and I lament to see so many intelligent travellers misjudging the Arab after a superficial experience of a few debased Syrians or Sinaites.

The true children of Antar, my Lord Lindsay, have not "ceased to be gentlemen."

In the days of ignorance, it was the custom for Badawin, when tormented by the tender pa.s.sion, which seems to have attacked them in the form of "possession," for long years to sigh and wail and wander, doing the most truculent deeds to melt the obdurate fair. When Arabia Islamized, the practice changed its element for proselytism.

The Fourth Caliph is fabled to have travelled far, redressing the injured, punishing the injurer, preaching to the infidel, and especially protecting women-the chief end and aim of knighthood. The Caliph Al-Mu'tasim heard in the a.s.sembly of his courtiers that a woman of Sayyid family had been taken prisoner by a "Greek barbarian" of Ammoria.

The man on one occasion struck her: when she cried "Help me, O Mu'tasim!" and the clown said derisively, "Wait till he cometh upon his pied steed!" The chivalrous prince arose, sealed up the wine-cup which he held in his hand, took oath to do his knightly devoir, and on the morrow started for Ammoria with seventy thousand men, each mounted on a piebald charger. Having taken the place, he entered it, exclaiming, "Labbayki, Labbayki!"-"Here am I at thy call!" He struck off the caitiff's head, released the lady with his own hands, ordered the cupbearer to bring the sealed bowl, and drank from it, exclaiming, "Now, indeed, wine is good!"

To conclude this part of the subject with another far-famed instance.

When Al-Mutanabbi, the poet, prophet, and warrior of Hams (A.H. 354) started together with his

[p.97] son on their last journey, the father proposed to seek a place of safety for the night. "Art thou the Mutanabbi," exclaimed his slave, "who wrote these lines,-

"'I am known to the night, the wild, and the steed, To the guest, and the sword, to the paper and reed[FN#29]'?"

The poet, in reply, lay down to sleep on Tigris' bank, in a place haunted by thieves, and, disdaining flight, lost his life during the hours of darkness.

It is the existence of this chivalry among the "Children of Antar" which makes the society of Badawin ("d.a.m.ned saints," perchance, and "honourable villains,") so delightful to the traveller who[,] like the late Haji Wali (Dr. Wallin), understands and is understood by them. Nothing more nave than his lamentations at finding himself in the "loathsome company of Persians," or among Arab townspeople, whose "filthy and cowardly minds" he contrasts with the "high and chivalrous spirit of the true Sons of the Desert." Your guide will protect you with blade and spear, even against his kindred, and he expects you to do the same for him. You may give a man the lie, but you must lose no time in baring your sword. If involved in dispute with overwhelming numbers, you address some elder, Dakhil-ak ya Shaykh!-(I am) thy protected, O Sir,-and he will espouse your quarrel with greater heat and energy, indeed, than if it were his own.[FN#30] But why multiply instances?

The language of love and war and all excitement is poetry, and here, again, the Badawi excels. Travellers complain that the wild men have ceased to sing. This is true if "poet" be limited to a few authors whose existence

[p.98] everywhere depends upon the accidents of patronage or political occurrences. A far stronger evidence of poetic feeling is afforded by the phraseology of the Arab, and the highly imaginative turn of his commonest expressions. Dest.i.tute of the poetic taste, as we define it, he certainly is: as in the Milesian, wit and fancy, vivacity and pa.s.sion, are too strong for reason and judgment, the reins which guide Apollo's car.[FN#31] And although the Badawin no longer boast a Labid or a Maysunah, yet they are pa.s.sionately fond of their ancient bards.[FN#32] A man skilful in reading Al-Mutanabbi and the suspended Poems would be received by them with the honours paid by civilisation to the travelling millionaire.[FN#33] And their elders have a goodly store of ancient and modern war songs, legends, and love ditties which all enjoy.

[p.99]I cannot well explain the effect of Arab poetry to one who has not visited the Desert.[FN#34] Apart from the pomp of words, and the music of the sound,[FN#35] there is a dreaminess of idea and a haze thrown over the object, infinitely attractive, but indescribable.

Description,

[p.100] indeed, would rob the song of indistinctness, its essence. To borrow a simile from a sister art; the Arab poet sets before the mental eye, the dim grand outlines of picture,-which must be filled up by the reader, guided only by a few glorious touches, powerfully standing out, and by the sentiment which the scene is intended to express;-whereas, we Europeans and moderns, by stippling and minute touches, produce a miniature on a large scale so objective as to exhaust rather than to arouse reflection. As the poet is a creator, the Arab's is poetry, the European's versical description. [FN#36] The language, "like a faithful wife, following the mind and giving birth to its offspring," and free from that "luggage of particles" which clogs our modern tongues, leaves a mysterious vagueness between the relation of word to word, which materially a.s.sists the sentiment, not the sense, of the poem. When verbs and nouns have, each one, many different significations, only the radical or general idea suggests itself.[FN#37] Rich and varied synonyms, ill.u.s.trating the finest shades of meaning, are artfully used; now scattered to startle us by distinctness, now to form as it were a star about which dimly seen satellites revolve. And, to cut short a disquisition

[p.101] which might be prolonged indefinitely, there is in the Semitic dialect a copiousness of rhyme which leaves the poet almost unfettered to choose the desired expression.[FN#38] Hence it is that a stranger speaking Arabic becomes poetical as naturally as he would be witty in French and philosophic in German. Truly spake Mohammed al-Damiri, "Wisdom hath alighted upon three things-the brain of the Franks, the hands of the Chinese, and the tongues of the Arabs."

The name of Harami-brigand-is still honourable among the Hijazi Badawin.

Slain in raid or foray, a man is said to die Ghandur, or a brave. He, on the other hand, who is lucky enough, as we should express it, to die in his bed, is called Fatis (carrion, the corps creve of the Klephts); his weeping mother will exclaim, "O that my son had perished of a cut throat!" and her attendant crones will suggest, with deference, that such evil came of the will of Allah. It is told of the Lahabah, a sept of the Auf near Rabigh, that a girl will refuse even her cousin unless, in the absence of other opportunities, he plunder some article from the Hajj Caravan in front of the Pasha's links. Detected twenty years ago, the delinquent would have been impaled; now he escapes with a rib-roasting. Fear of the blood-feud, and the certainty of a shut road to future travellers, prevent the Turks proceeding to extremes. They conceal their weakness by pretending that [p.102] the Sultan hesitates to wage a war of extermination with the thieves of the Holy Land.

It is easy to understand this respect for brigands. Whoso revolts against society requires an iron mind in an iron body, and these mankind instinctively admires, however misdirected be their energies.

Thus, in all imaginative countries, the brigand is a hero; even the a.s.sa.s.sin who shoots his victim from behind a hedge appeals to the fancy in Tipperary or on the Abruzzian hills. Romance invests his loneliness with grandeur; if he have a wife or a friend's wife, romance becomes doubly romantic, and a t.i.the of the superfluity robbed from the rich and bestowed upon the poor will win to Gasparoni the hearts of a people. The true Badawi style of plundering, with its numerous niceties of honour and gentlemanly manners, gives the robber a consciousness of moral rect.i.tude. "Strip off that coat, O certain person! and that turband,"

exclaims the highwayman, "they are wanted by the daughter of my paternal uncle (wife)." You will (of course, if necessary) lend ready ear to an order thus politely attributed to the wants of the fair s.e.x. If you will add a few obliging expressions to the bundle, and offer Latro a cup of coffee and a pipe, you will talk half your toilette back to your own person; and if you can quote a little poetry, you will part the best of friends, leaving perhaps only a pair of sandals behind you. But should you hesitate, Latro, lamenting the painful necessity, touches up your back with the heel of his spear. If this hint suffice not, he will make things plain by the lance's point, and when blood shows, the tiger-part of humanity appears. Between Badawin, to be tamely plundered, especially of the mare,[FN#39] is a lasting disgrace; a man of

[p.103] family lays down his life rather than yield even to overpowering numbers. This desperation has raised the courage of the Badawin to high repute amongst the settled Arabs, who talk of single braves capable, like the Homeric heroes, of overpowering three hundred men.

I omit general details about the often-described Sar, or Vendetta. The price of blood is $800 = 200l., or rather that sum imperfectly expressed by live stock. All the Khamsah or A'amam, blood relations of the slayer, a.s.sist to make up the required amount, rating each animal at three or four times its proper value. On such occasions violent scenes arise from the conflict of the Arab's two pet pa.s.sions, avarice and revenge. The "avenger of blood" longs to cut the foe's throat. On the other hand, how let slip an opportunity of enriching himself? His covetousness is intense, as are all his pa.s.sions. He has always a project of buying a new dromedary, or of investing capital in some marvellous colt; the consequence is, that he is insatiable. Still he receives blood-money with a feeling of shame; and if it be offered to an old woman,-the most revengeful variety of our species, be it remarked,-she will dash it to the ground and clutch her knife, and fiercely swear by Allah that she will not "eat" her son's blood.

The Badawi considers himself a man only when mounted on horseback, lance in hand, bound for a foray or a fray, and carolling some such gaiety as-

"A steede! a steede of matchlesse speede!

A sword of metal keene!

All else to n.o.ble minds is drosse, All else on earth is meane."