Arab

“ The Arab was a swarthy, sinewy man of forty, with all his fibres indurated and worked down to the whip-cord meagreness and rigidity of a racer, his frame presenting a perfect picture of the sort of being one would fancy suited to the exhausting motion of a dromedary, and to the fare of a desert. ”

“ The unconquered Arab laughs alike at the Persian, Greek, Roman, Turkish, and French invaders of his deserts, levies tribute on all who enter his territory, and dwells to-day, a free man, in the presence of all his brethren, as God foretold. ”

“ THE LANGUAGE OF THE ANGELS The Arabs are a proud and noble race. They are proud of their liberty and of their free open-air desert customs. They are proud of their religion and of their prophet. They are proud of their history and of their patriarchal descent. But most of all, they are proud of their language, one of the oldest and most wonderful forms of human speech. Mohammed himself in his Koran, which you know is the Moslem Bible, speaks of the Arab tongue as “the language of the angels.” ”

“ What makes a flock of sheep follow an Arab, and have to be driven by a European, I do not know. Why, if an Arab buys a kid, in a few days it follows him about, I cannot tell, but there is nothing commoner than to see Arabs walking on the roads with curly black-woolled lambs and goats walking along beside them, as only dogs, of all the animals, will do with us. ”

“ Men who wished to interest us in Arabs did not confine themselves to saying that they are monotheists or moralists; they filled our romances with the rush of Arab steeds or the colours of strange tents or carpets. ”

“ Even the English language has a number of words that came as Arab guests to the feast of reason and have been adopted into our family and put into our dictionary. When you speak of algebra, ciphers, zero, alchemy, alcove, minaret, alcohol, coffee, sofa, amber, artichokes, gazelles or magazine you are using good Arabic words which nearly every Arab would understand. ”

“ Brave and chivalrous, the Arab was always ready to defend the stranger who claimed his protection, while he would stand by a member of his own clan and defend him with his life, whether he were right or wrong. This devotion to the tribe was one of the strongest characteristics of the Arabs, and must be borne in mind if we would understand aright the early history of Islâm. ”

“ The Arabs have all these things, skins, money, cattle, so I call my Sheikhs together, and tell them what I want, and they get it: what do I care how? and then people wonder that the Arabs rob in their turn! I tell you, Madame, that the Arab is unfairly treated in every way, and that those who treat him so will suffer for it hereafter. He would assimilate with us if we would only let him. To-day, for instance, I met a friend of mine, an Arab who lives in Tclemcen, and I told him that I would bring some English travellers to see his pretty Moorish house. ”

“ The Arabic peoples first difficulty of the Arab movement was to say who the Arabs were. Being a manufactured people, their name had been changing in sense slowly year by year. Once it meant an Arabian. There was a country called Arabia; but this was nothing to the point. There was a language called Arabic; and in it lay the test. It was the current tongue of Syria and Palestine, of Mesopotamia, and of the great peninsula called Arabia on the map. Before the Moslem conquest, these areas were inhabited by diverse peoples, speaking languages of the Arabic family. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Perhaps there is no man in Africa who can travel as securely as I can—even in the Soudan I should be well received—and what other European could say as much? There must be something of the Arab in me, otherwise I shouldn't have lived amongst them so long, nor should I speak Arabic as easily as I do, nor should I look—remember, you thought I was an Arab. ”

“ I see before me distinguished representatives of the Arab race, one of the great races of the world, which has played a mighty part in history — and not only in the history of Asia and Africa, but of Europe also, for scholars cannot forget that there was a time when the Arabs, carrying their conquests along the northern shores of Africa, crossed into Spain, where they remained hundreds of years, and where they founded the Universities of Seville and Cordova, and were the masters of learning for Western Europe. ”

“ Making every allowance for prejudice and superstition, it is clear that the Arabs are fond of dark and decided colours, while they look upon light and faded colours, as well as white spots upon the head, carcase, and limbs, if broad or long, as signs of weakness and degeneracy of race. Every Arab has his own favourite coat. ”

“ The range of the mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth after every green thing.” Like the zebra that cannot be domesticated, the Arab scorns the comforts of civilized life, and adheres to the primitive dress, food, and mode of life, delighting in the sensation of freedom, scouring the deserts, sufficient with his horse and spear for every emergency. His hand also is against every man, looking on all as his natural enemies or as his [155] natural prey; in continual feud of tribe against tribe and of the whole race against all of different blood and different customs. ”

“ The Arab has changed neither his character nor his habits since the days of the patriarchs, and he affords a standing evidence of the truth of the scriptural prophecy. He regards with disdain and with proud indifference every other portion of mankind, for who can produce so ancient monuments of liberty as he who, with little intermission, has preserved it from the very Deluge? Is the land of his ancestors invaded? ”

“ A Bishareen Arab wears his hair in hundreds of minute plaits which hang down to his shoulders, surmounted by a circular bushy topknot upon the crown, about the size of a large breakfast-cup, from the base of which the plaits descend. ”

“ What does the Arab see, in this mystery of beauty, in its daily recurring 'splendour and decline? Shall we say that the rising and the setting of the sun behind the hills, may not (to the rude souls of men who have learned their all from Nature) , point out the entrance of that Paradise, which their simple faith has taught them, they shall one day enter and possess? ”

“ But even to this day aristocratic ideas prevail among the Arabs of the desert, and also among the sedentary Arabs in remoter regions. The genuine Arab has in connection with his aristocratic notions a sense of chivalry, a fine feeling for points of honour (not necessarily the same as we ourselves take) , but also a strong propensity to vanity and boasting. ”

“ The Arabs are polite, good-natured, lively, manly, patient, courageous and hospitable to a fault. They are also contentious, untruthful, sensuous, distrustful, covetous, proud and superstitious. One must always keep in mind this paradox in dealing with an Arab. ”

“ They should beware of arguing too favourably from apparent calm and submission on the part of the natives. The ocean is often smoothest before a storm; the Arab most dangerous when apparently most tranquil. Like other Orientals, he starts in an instant from torpor and indolence into the fiercest activity. “The Arab,” says a German officer, whose narrative of adventure in Africa has recently been rendered into English, “lies whole days before his tent, wrapped in his bournous, and leaning his head on his hand. ”

“ From what I've heard and read,—ay, and from something I've seen while up the Mediterranean,—a more beggarly hospitality than that called Arab don't exist on the face of the earth. It's all well enough, so long as you are one of themselves, and, like them, a believer in their pretended prophet. ”

“ The Arab face, which is not unkindly, but never smiling, expresses that dignity and gravity which are typical of the race. While the Arab is always polite, good-natured, manly and brave, he is also revengeful, cruel, untruthful and superstitious. ”

“ If the true Arabs only represent a fraction of the total Mohammedan population, variously estimated at a third and a sixth, they have imposed on the remainder their 33language, their religion, their institutions, and their customs, with the result that in a sense all are Arabs, though not of race. The pure-bred Arab is of an aristocratic type—tall, thin, muscular, and of dignified carriage. ”

“ The Arab countries, as the French, the only real masters the Arab has ever had, know them, are a broad belt bordering upon the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean, from the Dardanelles to the Straits of Gibraltar; and comprise Arabia proper, the Holy Land, Egypt, Tripoli, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. ”

“ Should the present history of the country be written by an Arab scribe, the style of the description would be purely that of the Old Testament; and the various calamities or the good fortunes that have in the course of nature befallen both the tribes and individuals, would be recounted either as special visitations of Divine wrath, or blessings for good deeds performed. If in a dream a particular course of action is suggested, the Arab believes that God has spoken and directed him. ”

“ A rosy blush overspreads the centre of each cheek; and a mole is considered an additional charm. The Arabs, indeed, are particularly extravagant in their admiration of this natural beauty-spot; which, according to its place, is compared to a globule of ambergris upon a dish of alabaster or upon the surface of a ruby.48 The eyes of the Arab beauty are intensely black, large, and long ”

“ The Arabs knew what large libraries were; and a learned man could not travel without camel-loads of dictionaries.
116. Arab. “Adim;” now called Bulghár, our Moroccan leather.
117. Arab. “Zinád,” which Lane renders by “instruments for striking fire,” and Mr. Payne, after the fashion of the translators of Al-Hariri, “flint and steel.”
118. A congener of Hasan and Husayn, little used except in Syria where it is a favourite name for Christians. The Muhit of Butrus Al-Bostání (s.v.) tells us that it also means a bird called Abú Hasan and supplies various Egyptian synonyms. In Mod. Arab. ”

“ For in the background of all is the vast peninsula of Arabia, which at long intervals fills with its wild, untamable humanity to a point beyond which it cannot support them. This has been the origin of the long succession of Semitic waves—Babylonian, Assyrian, Canaanite, Hebrew, Nabataean, Moslem—that have flowed over Mesopotamia and Palestine; there is every reason to suppose that they will be followed by others, and that the Arab will remain master at the end, as he was in the beginning. ”

“ An Arab, when he prays, throws his mat anywhere, generally, in obedience to the injunctions of the Koran, in the most conspicuous place. He puts off his shoes; stands upright; leans forward until his hands rest upon his knees; bends yet farther in prostration, and touches the earth with his forehead: he then rises erect, recites a sentence from the Koran, and goes through with similar genuflections and prostrations. In the intervals of the prostrations, he sits back, his knees to the ground, and his feet under him, and recites long passages from the Koran. ”

“ From very early times the Arabs had great delight in verses and tales, and the development of their language was certainly much influenced by this fact. In ancient times story-tellers and singers found their subjects in the doughty deeds of the tribe on its forays, in the merits of horse or camel, in hunting adventures and love complaints, and sometimes in contests with foreign powers and in the impression produced by the wealth and might of the sovereigns of Persia and Constantinople. ”

“ The Arabs were a people who lived in a country, for the most part, desert; their dwellings were tents, and their principal occupation feeding and breeding cattle, and they married with their own family. The language therefore of such a people should be very poor; there is no variety of images in their whole country. They were always bad poets, as their works will testify; and if, contrary to the general rule, the language of Arabia Deserta became a copious one, it must have been by the mixture of so many nations meeting and trading at Mecca. ”

“ Arab. "Sáhil Masr" (Misr) : hence I suppose Galland's villes maritimes.
[FN#583] A favourite simile, suggested by the broken glitter and shimmer of the stream under the level rays and the breeze of eventide.
[FN#584] Arab. "Halab," derived by Moslems from "He (Abraham) milked (halaba) the white and dun cow." But the name of the city occurs in the Cuneiforms as Halbun or Khalbun, and the classics knew it as {Greek Letters}, Beroca, written with variants.
[FN#585] Arab. "Ká'ah," usually a saloon; but also applied to a fine house here and elsewhere in The Nights. ”

“ 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. ”