Nomadism

“ Pastoral nomadism has been gradually dislodged from Europe, except in the salt steppes of the Caspian depression, where a vast tract, 300,000 square miles in area and wholly unfit for agriculture, still harbors a sparse population of Asiatic Kalmuck and Kirghis hordes, leading the life of the Asiatic steppes.1115 In Asia, too, the regions of pastoral nomadism have been curtailed, but in Africa they still maintain for the most part the growing, expanding geographical forms which they once showed in Europe, when nomadism prevailed as far as the Alps and the Rhine. ”

“ Centralization versus decentralization in nomadism. Spirit of independence among nomads. Resistance to conquest. Curtailment of nomadism. Supplementary agriculture of pastoral nomads. Irrigation and horticulture. Effect of diminishing water supply. Scant diet of nomads. Checks to population. Trade of nomads. Pastoral nomads as middlemen. Desert markets. Nomad industries. Oriental rugs. Architecture of nomad conquerors. Arid lands as areas of arrested development. Mental and moral qualities of nomads. Religion of pastoral nomads. Fanaticism as a force in nomad expansion. ”

“ At sea, or in the forest, or in the snow, he sleeps as warm, dines with as good appetite, and associates as happily as beside his own chimneys. Or perhaps his facility is deeper seated, in the increased range of his faculties of observation, which yield him points of interest wherever fresh objects meet his eyes. The pastoral nations were needy and hungry to desperation; and this intellectual nomadism, in its excess, bankrupts the mind through the dissipation of power on a miscellany of objects. ”

“ In the semi-desert regions of North Africa some form of pastoral nomadism, with the social polity which comes from pastoral nomadism, was the natural result of the physical and climatic conditions, and Spain, like the lands of the eastern part of Europe, has been constantly liable to have its nascent agriculture destroyed by incursions of such pastoral nomads. ”

“ And to the lurking nomadism in our blood, and particularly in the blood of monarchs and aristocracies, we must ascribe also that incessant urgency towards a wider range{v2-145} that forces every state to extend its boundaries if it can, and to spread its interests to the ends of the earth. The power of nomadic restlessness that tends to bring all the earth under one rule, seems to be identical with the spirit that makes most of us chafe under direction and restraint, and seek to participate in whatever government we tolerate. ”

“ Nomad hordes unite for concerted action to resist encroachment upon their pastures, or for marauding expeditions, or for widespread conquest; but such unions are from their nature temporary, though a career of conquest may be sustained for decades. The geographically determined mobility which facilitates such concentration favors also dispersal, decentralization. This is the paradox in nomadism. Geographic conditions in arid lands necessitate sparse distribution of population and of herds. Pastoral life requires large spaces and small social groups. ”

“ We have seen the rulers of the primitive civilizations of the river valleys widening their area and extending their sway, and simultaneously over the less fertile areas of the earth we have seen mere tribal savagery develop into a more and more united and politically competent nomadism. ”

“ By way of variation, now and then we swept past a desert oasis, where stood a few stunted palm-trees near which a tribe of nomads had set up their black tents of goat's-hair and were spending a week-end on the river bank before trekking afresh into the heart of the desert.
Your real Arab nomad is essentially a child of nature. He spends his life in the wilderness and has a rooted objection—nay, it is, in truth, a positive terror—to visiting any town, big or little. ”

“ As ships, great and small, sail the sea, so sailed the caravans of the nomad tribes in the desert which surges on unchecked to Egypt: nomads who come and go, north and south, east and west, under the burning sun and the throbbing stars, as Allah has written their comings and goings in His book: men in white, journeying with their women, their children, and their trains of beasts, singing as they pass, and at night under the black tents resting to the music of the tom-tom and raïta. ”

“ The desert in its degree has this mollesse, physical languors, exhaustion; but its home is in the oasis-villages. The true nomad contemns the oasis-dwellers as a softened, debilitated, and corrupt race; the life of the nomad is purer, hardier, manlier; he is the master; the oasis pays him tribute. The life of the senses, however, in either form, passes away; vitality ebbs the more swiftly because of its rapid and intense play; pallor falls on the sensations, they fade, and joy is gone. ”

“ The nomads, with wild, dark faces and bare legs, shout as they bargain, unconscious alike of the din and turmoil and of their own value from a picturesque standpoint. Here are no Europeans, no odd contrasts; all is true, unspoilt. Men of the desert swarm in hundreds, but scarcely a woman is to be seen except in the market-place, where, in anticipation of a wedding to 82 take place at night, rows of them sit near a wall, veiled, and listening to passionate, triumphant music, whilst their lords stroll about, or sit in groups as far from them as possible. ”

“ Here the wandering nomads first tasted and learned to appreciate the advantages of settled agricultural life and made the gradual and natural transition from the nomadic to the agricultural state. Here also the mighty energies of the powerful western nations were put forth in a mighty effort to conquer and to hold this land, for they realized that it was their natural eastern outpost against the desert. It was here, therefore, that the militant civilization and life of the East and West met, struggled, and mingled. ”

“ Between these nomad colonies lies the bled, the immense waste of fallow land and palmetto desert: an earth as void of life as the sky above it of clouds. The scenery is always the same; but if one has the love of great emptinesses, and of the play of light on long stretches of parched earth and rock, the sameness is part of the enchantment. ”

“ A wild scene, truly, far beyond the bounds of civilization, where the foot of the white man had never trodden before, where the savage tribes had lived since the first of Time in primeval simplicity, where Nature, with lavish hand, spread her uncultured luxuriance in forest, in mountain, and in plain, under a burning, tropical sky. It was a scene far in the interior of Africa, that mysterious continent, which has yet to yield up her secrets to the dogged curiosity of European races. ”

“ They are as dry and lean as the ground on which they live, and nature in their country obliges them to lead a nomad life. Wide, simple, and dreary is the desert, and simple and free is the nomad's life. The hard struggle for existence has sharpened their senses. ”

“ Traversing a region of hoar antiquity, whose annals and legends so captivate the fancy, where turbaned nomads, happy in their felt tents, enjoy the unrestricted freedom of the desert, ours was a sensation and a pleasure unknown in the rush and turmoil and savage energy of our high-pressure civilization of Europe and America. ”

“ He is purely a shepherd, carrying with him the simplest and lightest tents, tools, and weapons for his needs. The type of society is that of the patriarchal family, for each nomad tribe consists of a group of relatives; and, under the direction of their chief, not only the men of the clan, but the women and children, all take an active part in tending the flocks and in practising the simple arts of skin-curing and the weaving of hair and wool. So long as the pasture-lands can support his flocks, the nomad is content to leave the settled agriculturist beyond the desert edge in peace. ”

“ Natives have no knowledge of how the work was accomplished. Therefore I try to set back the hands of Time and look over the land, imagining it as once covered with vegetation for herds of camels and goats, and with pools of water in the low hills. And, as a dreamer, I conjure up a picture of a past when, mayhap, a tribe of happy nomads camped in the hollow, in olden times, with everything in the neighbourhood that they required for themselves and their herds ”

“ Two days after his departure we faced the East in the conventional caravan formation, led by an ass, the emblem of good luck. Our number had been increased by approximately sixty nomads of my own tribe, the Moplahs, a number of minor-Sheiks and a rabble of desert folk, Walatu-s, Gogo-s and Humda-s. To these must be added the doolahs or black camel-boys who closed the file while Ab-Domen, on a powerful camel, held a roving commission, darting hither and yon, or to and fro as needed. ”

“ It is to the tent-dwellers of the world, however, that we apparently owe the oriental rug. This triumph of the weaver's art seems to have originated among pastoral nomads, who developed it in working up the wool and hair of their sheep, goats and camels; but it early became localized as a specialized industry in the towns and villages of irrigated districts on the borders of the grazing lands, where the nomads had advanced to sedentary life. ”

“ Their life is everywhere the same; they are nomads, who make no settled encampments, have no trade, commerce, or farming, neither flocks nor domestic animals of any kind, except a small dog, also found all over Africa, whose life is on a level with the wretched life of his master. These people live by hunting, by what they can pick up or beg from the agricultural or pastoral tribes among whom they live, and whom they supply with meat, ivory, and rubber. ”

“ So we see clans, born in the highlands of Yemen, thrust by stronger clans into the desert, where, unwillingly, they became nomad to keep themselves alive. We see them wandering, every year moving a little further north or a little further east as chance has sent them down one or other of the well-roads of the wilderness, till finally this pressure drives them from the desert again into the sown, with the like unwillingness of their first shrinking experiment in nomad life. ”

“ The young nomad always knows by what star to direct his course in order to find the tent of his adored on the trackless desert. His appearance is seldom unexpected. The nomad young lady has already divined from what quarter the hoof-tramp will sound through the nightly stillness, and has already taken up an advanced post in that direction. ”

“ The Nomad’s relation to nature is a very different one from the Agriculturist’s. But the consciousness of union among men—of their belonging to one another—was first excited at the nomadic stage; and it is therefore not surprising if a large proportion of the names of nations point back to that age.
A nation calls itself by a common name when the consciousness of the union of its members first arises. Names in which the nation confesses itself to be a wandering, restless society, point back to the nomadic stage of civilisation. ”

“ To-day it is the sense of being in the country of the nomads, the tent-dwellers, the masters of innumerable flocks and herds, whose wealth goes wandering from pasture to pasture, bleating and lowing and browsing and multiplying over the open moorland beneath the blue sky. ”

“ Every nomadic tribe, every nation, every country, has had its singer of songs, its chanter of religious hymns, its troubadour, its vagrom poet, some story-teller of the beautiful. They have vanished, and the story is now repeated by the professional poet and artist. He no longer treads the highways and the listeners no longer offer him the hospitality of a night's shelter. He lives the life of the large cities ”

“ We have traced in this history the development side by side of these two ways of living, and we have pointed out that as the civilizations grew more extensive and better organized, the arms, the mobility, and the intelligence of the nomads also improved. The nomad was not simply an uncivilized man, he was a man specialized and specializing along his own line. From the very beginning of history the nomad and the settled people have been in reaction. ”

“ On either hand, always in sight, there rose the margin of the boundless waste without life or verdure, the dreaded region of evil spirits and fierce beasts, the home of the nomads that were always ready to swoop on unprotected fields and cattle, if they did not sit down on the borders and eat up the country. ”

“ Among pastoral nomads, among whom a systematic use of their territory begins to appear, and therefore a more definite relation between land and people, we find a more distinct notion than among wandering hunters of territorial ownership, the right of communal use, and the distinct obligation of common defense. Hence the social bond is drawn closer. The nomad identifies himself with a certain district, which belongs to his tribe by tradition or conquest, and has its clearly defined boundaries. ”

“ Whenever the nomads ceased boiling over, they receded from the historians’ view. Obviously they could not have migrated and fought and burnt and slain among each other continuously. The more settled life at home, which they led most of the time, and into which they were always inclined to take over the religion, writing, and arts of the Orient, India and China, is the phase of their existence most likely to be overlooked, but which, from the point of [463] view of the history of civilization, is far more important than their evanescent conquests. ”

“ Has the great shadeless desert nothing to do with the habits of the nomade tribes who pitch their tents upon it—the fertile plain no connection with flocks and pastoral life—the mountain fastnesses with the courage that has so often defended them—the sea with habits of adventure? ”