Arab tribes

“ These Arabs are of the Sheeah sect of Mussulmans, and belong to the great tribes of Rubbiyah and Ahl Maidan. Each tribe has innumerable subdivisions, with distinct names and separate and independent Sheikhs. They live in mat huts and in small black tents. Their chief wealth consists in vast herds of buffaloes, and they are, on the whole, notwithstanding the wretched appearance of their [Pg 456] dwellings and the scanty clothing of both men and women, richer than most Arab tribes. ”

“ Throughout all its history the east-Jordan land has witnessed the constant transition of Arab tribes from the nomadic life of the desert to the more settled civilization, of agricultural Palestine. Here on the eastern heights that overlook the Jordan valley and the land of Canaan the traveller still finds the Arab tents and flocks of the nomads beside the plowed fields of the village-dwellers. ”

“ From the earliest dawn of history they have always been strongly tempted by the wealth of the settled communities within reach, and appear in the oldest records as robber bands. Sometimes predatory excursions were followed by settlement, and the invading tribes learned the culture of those amongst whom they settled: all the Semitic groups other than the Arabs had formed such settlements before the 7th century A.D., and these groups are distinguished one from another, and all from the parent stock, simply by the cultural influences due to the earlier inhabitants of the lands they entered ”

“ The Arabs to-day occupy, besides Arabia, a part of Mesopotamia, the western shores of the Red Sea, the eastern coast of the Persian Gulf and the north of Africa. The finest type of the race is found in south Arabia among the Ariba Arabs, among the mountaineers of Hadramut and Yemen and among the Bedouin tribes roaming over the interior of central and northern Arabia. The Arabs of the coasts and those of Mesopotamia are hybrids, showing Turkish, Negroid and Hamitic crossings. The people of Syria and Palestine are hybrids of Arab, Phoenician and Jewish descent. ”

“ Such are some of the Bedouins; but the most formidable Arab tribes have always been the Hemyarites of Yemen; a restless and enterprising people, whose migrations have been 48chiefly directed to Africa, and especially to the valley of the Nile; a region which they have invaded and more or less occupied from the earliest times, through the reigns of the Pharaohs, Ptolemies, and Cæsars, down to a recent period of our own era. ”

“ For the most part, the Arab tribes have been reluctant to avail themselves of their new powers, and where they have done so the hasty reversal of the traditions of centuries has proved demoralizing to the natives, without any sufficient equivalent in the way of healthy French colonization. ”

“ The position of Arabia, between the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates and Tigris, where agriculture and civilisation came into bloom at an early period, and which were the oldest seats of trade and industry, brought the Arab tribes who wandered along the borders of these river valleys into connection with Egypt and Babylon. Barter had to supply all that could not be obtained by freebooting. The nomads required corn, implements, and weapons; Egypt and Babylon were in need of horses, sheep, goats, and camels. ”

“ We now come to some of the manners and customs of the Arabs, which are not restricted to certain tribes, but are characteristic of the Arab nature. Some of them are remarkable for the fact that they have survived through many centuries, and have resisted the influence of a comparatively new religion, and the encroachments of a gradually advancing civilization. ”

“ Eratosthenes tells us that the Arab tribes lying next to the Syrians and Jews were agricultural, but beyond them lay a sandy and poor soil, with nothing but a few palms, acacias, tamarisks, and wells of water. This district, as far as the Euphrates, was inhabited by the Nabatæans, Agræans, and Chaulotæans, tribes who kept camels and lived in tents. [429] Artemidorus of Ephesus calls Arabia rich in cattle, lions, panthers, wolves, wild asses, and camels; the inhabitants were wandering herdmen, who gained a subsistence from their camels ”

“ An Arab is ever true to his bread and salt; once eat with him, and a knot of friendship is tied which cannot easily be loosened.
Arabs have been truly described as a distinct class of mankind. In the bashaw’s dominions, they have never been entirely subdued: violent attempts at subjugation have often deprived them of tracts of their vast territories; whole tribes have been annihilated; but, as a people, they have ever remained independent and free. ”

“ The Arab folk, sparsely distributed over the Syrian desert and forming the majority of the inhabitants of the featureless downs of Mesopotamia, represent the ebbing of the last tide of Semitic invasion. In the sandy waste of their western extension, their tribes, shifting perpetually from seat to seat, like the dunes around which they roam, consist of Bedouin or “tent men.” The contribution of these nomads to society is as insignificant as the yield of the unproductive lands of their wandering. ”

“ Tripoli in Barbary is Turkish, but the trading steamships, the hotels and most of the merchants, are French. Tunisia and Algeria are French through and through, and Morocco may yet become French.
All these Arab lands are peopled with natives of the same tongue, speech and sentiments, though they belong to widely differing tribes.
First of all, be it understood that the Arab of North Africa is no wild, savage, untamed manner of man, but virtually a highly civilized one, so far as tradition goes, whether he be Berber, Kabyle or Nomad. ”

“ Regularly once a year, during the three peaceful months when war and even blood revenge were held sacrilegious, the tribes met at Ukádh (Ocaz) and other fairsteads, where they held high festival and the bards strave in song and prided themselves upon doing honour to women and to the successful warriors of their tribe. Brief, the object of Arab life was to be—to be free, to be brave, to be wise; while the endeavours of other peoples was and is to have—to have wealth, to have knowledge, to have a name; and while moderns make their “epitome of life” to be, to do and to suffer. ”

“ The warlike Arab tribes fought and brawled among themselves in ceaseless feud and strife. The negroes trembled in apprehension of capture, or rose locally against their oppressors. Occasionally an important Sheikh would effect the combination of many tribes, and a kingdom came into existence—a community consisting of a military class armed with guns and of multitudes of slaves, at once their servants and their merchandise, and sometimes trained as soldiers. ”

“ The colour of those who reside in Barbary, is a deep, but bright brunette, essentially unlike the sallow tinge of the mulatto. The Arabs of the desert are more or less swarthy, according to their proximity to the negro states, until, in some tribes they are found entirely black, but without the woolly hair, wide nostril, and thick lip, which peculiarly belong to the African negro.
The Arabs are universally cultivators of the earth, or breeders of cattle, depending on agricultural pursuits alone for subsistence. To use a common proverb of their own, "the earth is the Arab's portion." ”

“ The abandonment of great cities and the ruin of many tribes contributed to the apparent nationalization of the Arab peoples. Though the traditional jealousy and hostility of the two branches, the Yemenites and Maadites or Ishmaelites, remained, the Arab world had attained by the levelling process of common misfortune the superficial unity it presents to-day. The nation thus formed, never a nation in the strict sense of the word, was distinctively and thoroughly Semitic in character and language, and has remained unchanged to the present day. ”

“ Hence their diversity of worship: some tribes making Kanaloa, some Kane, some Kali, some Atea the chief of their deities and the originator of all things. Hence some tribes continued the Arab practice of circumcision, while others did not. Hence the Arab institution in social life of independent yet confederated communes among some tribes, while the monarchial or feudal system obtained among others. Hence the Arabic type of truncated pyramids in the shape of their temples, side by side with the Hindu practice of promenading their god in gorgeous processions. ”

“ The Arabs of Tripolttana. If the Berber element prevails on the highlands and plateaux, the Arabs, of more or less mixed stock, have acquired the ascendancy on the plains. These nomad tribes naturally prefer the vast steppe lands, where they can move about with their flocks, changing their camping-grounds at pleasure, according to the abundance of water and pasturage. The Arab has no love of the forest, which he fires, in order that timber may give place to herbage, and his glance be not obstructed by the leafy branches. ”

“ Meanwhile the desert outside, though untenanted by any settled population, is roamed over by the Bedouin tribes, who form the bulk of the Arab race. These occupy for the most part the Nefûds, where alone pasture in any abundance is found; but they frequent also every part of the upland districts, and being both more warlike and more numerous than the townsmen, hold every road leading from town to town, so that it depends upon their good will and pleasure, to cut off communication for the citizens entirely from the world. ”

“ From Mecca to the Euphrates, the Arabian tribes were confounded by the Greeks and Latins, under the general appellation of Saracens, a name which every Christian mouth has been taught to pronounce with terror and abhorrence.
Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part II.
The slaves of domestic tyranny may vainly exult in their national independence: but the Arab is personally free; and he enjoys, in some degree, the benefits of society, without forfeiting the prerogatives of nature. ”

“ THE BADAWIN OF AL-HIJAZ. THE Arab may be divided into three racesa classification which agrees equally well with genesitic genealogy, the traditions of the country, and the observations of modern physiologists. [FN#1]
[p.77] The first race, indigens or autochthones, are those sub-Caucasian tribes which may still be met with in the province of Mahrah, and generally along the coast between Maskat and Hazramaut. [FN#2] The Mahrah, the Janabah, and the Gara especially show a low development, for which hardship and privation alone will not satisfactorily account. ”

“ The nearest approach I have ever seen to the symmetry of ancient sculpture was among the Arab tribes of Ethiopia. Our Saxon race can supply the athlete, but not the Apollo. ”

“ They are the unfortunate people, many of whoso tribes have recently come into collision with the British forces in the Suakin district, but who continue to be spoken of as '* Arabs" by those states- men who are unable to recognise more than two races in Egj-ptian Sudan, that is, the Negro and Arab. ”

“ The Arabs have developed in the most healthy and marked manner the characteristic features of the Semitic race. Their roving life in the deserts under the burning sun and amid tempests and whirlwinds of sand has strengthened and hardened them. Surrounded in pathless isolation by beasts of prey and hostile tribes, every one was dependent on his own watchfulness and keenness, on his courage and resolution, on his horse and his lance. ”

“ The oldest descriptions of the Arabs fit the Bedouins of our day. Unquenchable feuds are still dividing the several tribes, the possession of a pasturing place or of a well still determines the welfare of many families, and blood-feuds and hospitality still are the vices and virtues of this people of nature. Wherever along their frontiers the Arabs come in contact with foreign nations war is the result. The children of Abraham divided among themselves the rich and fertile countries, while Ishmael and his tribe were cast out into the desert. ”

“ The Arabs are, beyond question, one of the most ancient races of men in existence; [3] and {22} have, of all others, perhaps, best preserved their national independence, and their distinctive character and manners. Divided from the most remote times into tribes that either wandered in the desert or were collected together in cities, and obedient to chiefs who in the same person united the warrior and the magistrate, they have never been subjected to foreign domination. ”

“ In the south of Arabia and along the sea-shore, where the land is fertile and inviting, they live much as other nations do, and when, a thousand years ago, Arabs conquered vast and wealthy countries both in Europe and Asia, and in Africa too, they not only became model husbandmen, but built some of the finest cities in the world, had wise and strictly enforced laws and took the lead in literature and science. Very different are the scattered nomadic tribes which still roam the steppes of Eastern Russia, of Siberia and Central Asia. ”

“ The real Arabs, indeed, are those who encamp in the desert, who live in complete liberty, and only acknowledge as their superiors the chiefs of their tribes. Those likewise are real Arabs, who live habitually in a state of war, who kill for the sake of robbing their victims, and who steal whatever comes in their way ”

“ But to his enemies he is relentless. He has none of the barbarity of the savage races, like the Zulus or the Masai. He is refined, even in his cruelty. Above all, he is a man of brains.
Because of their craftiness, their cunning and their courage, the Arab races have existed from the very beginnings of time. We read in the most ancient history that exists--in the history of the Pharaohs--of how the Egyptian towns in the valley of the Nile were walled against the incursions of the Arabs. ”