Beja people

“ All the Bejas are Mohammedans, although most of them, like the Bedouins of Syria and the Arabian peninsula, are only so in name, in spite of the ardour with which they have enrolled themselves amongst the followers of the Mahdi, under whose guidance they have regained a certain national unity. Of all the southern Beja tribes, the most powerful is that of the Hadendoas, who roam over the Tuka steppes, between the Gash and the Atbara to the west, and the Barka to the east, although in their migrating and pillaging expeditions they often pass beyond these limits. ”

“ I lived, as may already have been seen, on the best of terms with the inhabitants of Ega. Refined society, of course, there was none; but the score or so of decent, quiet families which constituted the upper class of the place were very sociable; their manners offered a curious mixture of naïve rusticity and formal politeness; the great desire to be thought civilised leads the most ignorant of these people (and they are all very ignorant, although of quick intelligence) to be civil and kind to strangers from Europe. ”

“ THE BEJAS. 286 clans bunded together at the time of the TurkiHh invasion ; but their confederation did not lu8t long, and under the Egyptian rule the tribes have again become scattered into a multitude of communities without common concert. The Bejos, rather than the Abyssinians, are probably the " Ethiopians " of Herodotus, the civilised people who built the city of Meroe and its pyramids. In the Middle Ages the Bejas also constituted a powerful state, whose capital was Aloa, on the Blue Nile, about 12 miles above Khartum. ”

“ Their arms are very long in proportion to the rest of the body. Explorers are struck with the similarity of type between the Bejas, the Afars, the Ilm-Ormas, and even the Bantus of Southern Africa. In spite of their pretension to the title of Arabs, several of the Beja tribes have preserved the customs of the Negro populations, as regards costume and the THE 13EJAS. 287 scarring of the body. Their warriors have not yet completely ceased wearing coats of mail, while some of the tribes still use primitive weapons, amongst others a plain or spiked stick. ”

“ Ali Bey, my father-in-law, replied he, often observed there was never such a people as the English; no other nation on earth could be compared to them, and none had so many great men in all professions by sea and land: I never understood this till now, that I see it must be so, when your king cannot find other employment for such a man as you, but sending him to perish by hunger and thirst in the sands, or to have his throat cut by the lawless barbarians of the desert. ”

“ If she had indeed any sin upon her conscience connected with that fatal night, what terrible retribution must now have been hers. Were Benja living she would still be in the enjoyment of wealth, pride, power; would still be reigning at the once much-coveted Hall of Alnwick, its sole mistress. With the death of the children, all had gone from her. No human care or skill could have saved the life of her own son; but Benja?--Heaven did not call him. ”

“ The Behique or doctors of the tribe exerted an important influence. They were charged with the perpetuation of the nations history or traditions, which were taught to the children of the nobility in the form of songs which were chanted by them on feast days.
The Behique was also at the head of their religion. Their prayers were directed not to the creator by but to the Mabuya or [14] bad spirit their belief being as “God is good it is not necessary to gain his protection; the devil is bad and it is therefore better for us to adore and propitiate him so that he will work us no ill.” ”

“ In giving a general description of the manners and customs, religious rites, superstitions, &c., of the Bechuanas—the parent stock, as shown, of the Batoanas—I shall also have described those of the latter tribe; for, though they may differ in some respects, they agree in the main.
“The government of the people is at once both monarchical and patriarchal, and comparatively mild in its character. Each tribe has its chief or king, who commonly resides in the largest town, and is held sacred from his hereditary right to that office. ”

“ The Begum was very pleased, and, taking the money, she called her servants and ordered a further sum of one hundred rupees to be added to it. This money she spent on sweets, which were distributed amongst the poor.
Many years afterwards the good Begum of Sardana died, but her houses and lands are still in existence; nor does anybody living in that town forget the story of the oilman who died and lived again.1 [224]
1 The Begum’s property is now in possession of the Jesuits, and the priest who lives there is greatly beloved of the people. ”

“ At the head of a confederacy of clans stood Beja Khan Doomkee, an old and redoubtable warrior, strong in the inaccessible nature of his mountains, strong, too, in being able to throw the glamour of Islam over his raids and ravages, and stronger still in the bravery and determination of the men whose creed of plunder was strangely coupled with the old heroic virtues of that great Arab race from which they sprang. ”

“ How faithful and bounteous a spring of original life—common humanity everywhere! It is like rain and grass and the sun. To read the history of Java from the Hindu to the Dutch would lead a distant student to imagine that its people must have had every spark and airy bubble compressed out by the strong governments of fifteen centuries, and that there is left but a flat and doleful residue of homogeneous obedience. ”

“ The scene of the last part of his adventures lies in a colony in America, called Surinam, in the West Indies.
But before I give you the story of this gallant slave, 'tis fit I tell you the manner of bringing them to these new colonies; those they make use of there not being natives of the place: for those we live with in perfect amity, without daring to command 'em; but, on the contrary, caress 'em with all the brotherly and friendly affection in the world; trading with them for their fish, venison, buffalo's skins, and little rarities ”

“ Women are mentioned who have thus obtained all the husband's possessions and then abandoned them after having effected their ruin. The Beja women, and especially those of the Beni-Amer, have generally a remark- able fellow-feeling ”

“ And so, close to the wonder windows, we had seen a marriage of strange peoples, who were yet of our own old Aryan stock; whose ceremonies were already ancient when the Christians first kept faith, now transported to a new land where life was infinitely easier for them than in their own overcrowded villages; immigrants to the tropical hinterland where they rubbed elbows with idle Africans and stolid Red Indians. ”

“ The happiness of mankind seemed with him to absorb every other consideration. He was of a cheerful disposition, warm in his attachment to his friends, and in his patriotism to his country; but he was violent against people whom he considered of an opposite character. With such he kept no bounds. For the purpose chiefly of making converts to his opinion “that property in land is everyone’s right,” he got a number of young men gathered together, and formed into a debating society, which was held in the evenings in his school-room, in the Broad Garth, Newcastle. ”

“ During the Roman period the Beja were much what they are to-day, nomadic and aggressive, and were constantly at war. In 216 A.H. (A.D. 832) the Moslem governor of Assuan made a treaty with the Beja chief, by which the latter undertook to guard the road to Aidhab and pay an annual tribute of one hundred camels. This is the earliest record of a government engagement with the northern section of the Beja, now the Abābda. Ibn Batuta, early in the 14th century, mentions a king of Beja, El Hadrabi, who received two-thirds of the revenue of Aidhab, the other third going to the king of Egypt. ”

“ The stately Bey alone walks them now, and at times when the gates are firmly closed, some veiled woman with slow measured steps, and dark burning eyes, followed by some black slave, whose ugly features appear the more repugnant in that world of beauty. ”

“ The saying of the Bechuana chief, recorded by the missionary, Casalis, was probably, judging by its epigrammatic character, a proverb of his people. "One event is always the son of another," he said—a saying strikingly like that of Leibnitz. ”

“ The strange notes had their effect on the villagers, for a man came from the gate to the strangers and asked their business. The Indian interpreter, who had been carefully schooled on his way up, and who, moreover, was proud of the trust reposed in him by the formidable white men, gave a dignified and courteous answer. The white men were, he explained, creatures of another world, a world that lay beneath the rising sun; the sun was their father, and his glory was in his children's faces. They held the thunder and lightning in the hollow of their hands, and could slay men almost at a nod. ”

“ The few English people who have ever heard of Bihé at all probably imagine it to themselves as a largish town in Angola famous for its slave-market. Nothing could be less like the reality. There is no town, and there is no slave-market. Bihé is a wide district of forest and marsh, part of the high plateau of interior Africa. It has no mountains and no big rivers, except the Cuanza, which separates it from the land of the Chibokwe on the east. ”

“ Nothing was so much as named, the whole connection was sunk; they talked about clubs, muffins, afternoon performances, the effect of the Finnish soul upon the appetite, quite as if they had met in society. Nothing could have been less like society—she innocently supposed at least—than the real spirit of their meeting; yet Bight did nothing that he might do to keep the affair within bounds. When looked at by their friend so hard and so hintingly, he only looked back, just as dumbly, but just as intensely and, as might be said, portentously; ever so impenetrably, in fine, and ever so wickedly. ”

“ They may still be read with pleasure by anyone who cares for good literature and a good laugh. All I need add about the Diary is that I told Beeching to envisage himself, not as a country clergyman, for that would give away the secret, but as a retired Anglo-Indian who had come to live in a village in the south of England. This kind of man might be as interested in the villagers as he was in history and literature, and would be able to look upon them with new eyes. ”

“ And the whole organisation is an example of what can be done by courage, energy, force of character and extreme cunning allied to ferocity and cruelty; for the redoubtable Buba Gida, the owner—body and soul—of tens of thousands of slaves, is no scion of a kingly race. Mothered by a slave of the Lakka tribe and fathered by a Scrub Fulani of sorts, everything he has and is he owes entirely to his own ability. ”

“ At a time of peace, when Beys are contented to be on an equality, and no ambitious one attempts to govern the whole, there is a number of inferior officers depending upon each of the Beys, such as Kayas, Schourbatchies, and the like, who are but subjects in respect to the Beys yet exercise unlimited jurisdiction over the people in the city, and appoint others to do the same over villages in the country. ”

“ I wish my reader could have seen the air and countenance which Shîr Ali Beg put on as we approached. He swelled himself out at least into the size of the chief executioner himself, and with a tone of authority, which sufficiently indicated who and what he was, inquired for the chief of the village. A plain man, with a grey beard, humble mien, and still humbler clothing, stepped forward, and said, 'Peace be with you, Aga! I am he; I am your servant. May your footsteps be fortunate, and your shadow never be less!' And then saying, 'Bismillah! ”

“ Chain-gangs of slaves were continually passing on the decks of the steamboats, to be sold down South, and fugitives from bondage were keeping the sympathy or the hatred of the people in continual activity. Life of high pressure and in great variety was presented to Henry Ward Beecher there in the heart of the great West in the years 154of 1834-1837; life that was very real, and that called not so much for fine-spun theories as for practical forces; not for dead and formal dogmas, but for living truth, for Him who is both Life and Truth. ”

“ There was a sharp contrast between the tribal society of the Geg highlanders and the passive, oppressed Tosk peasantry, living mostly on the large estates of the beys and often represented in the political field by the beys themselves. ”

“ Other villages accuse me of partiality to you, and you all know my affection for you." (Cries of "We are your servants; we are your subjects.") "Yet I fear that there are some among you who are not faithful,—some there are even at Asheetha who do as they please, follow what leader they please, and acknowledge no other authority than their own. Tell me, whose subjects are you? Are you under the control of Noorallah Beg of Hakkari, or of Mohammed Pasha of Mosul, or of Bedr Khan Beg of Jezeerah, or of Ziner Beg?" (Cries of "We are your slaves; walk over our necks: we will die for you.") ”

“ After supper the Bey conducted me to my apartment, where coffee was brought to us by the damsels, both of whom, I learnt, were his daughters. I expressed to the Bey my warmest thanks for his hospitality, and for the great confidence he had shown by admitting me amongst his family. Upon this, he said he would relate why he had broken through the Mohammedan custom and usages and bidden me welcome in his harem. ”