Nomads

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As nomads, they passed their lives in deserts, like wild and fierce beasts, destroying, by an excess of voluntary wickedness, the natural reason of man, and the seeds of thought and of culture implanted in the human soul. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The nomads of Africa were constrained to wander by the attacks of the gad-fly, which drives the cattle mad, and so compels the tribe to emigrate in the rainy season, and to drive off the cattle to the higher sandy regions. The nomads of Asia follow the pasturage from month to month. In America and Europe, the nomadism is of trade and curiosity ”

“ Many processions of villages on the march pass you now, flying from the terror of death—a little herd of goats and horses driven by the children, a few camels carrying the rolled-up bundles of reed-dwellings, on the top of which sit the men of the [93] family, women on foot following in the rear, a convoy of yellow dogs barking round the tiny caravan into whose narrow compass all the worldly goods of so many human beings are compressed.
But the nomads are not the only inhabitants of the valley; there are one or two more luxurious encampments. ”

“ The nomads, who had to leave their camping-place each morning and let the fire that cheered them in the night die down into a little ring of grey ashes, will 'go no more out,' but yet make endless progress within the gates. ”

“ It could not rise above the tough facts of the soil. Nomads of meager living and prosy soul, bred to the frowning desert, where there was no foaming plenty of nature, their eyes were always fixed upon the cold congruities of the earth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For, if all men began as nomads, and nomadic habits are unfavourable even to the ordinary ghost, how did the Australian and other nomads develop the Supreme Being, who, ex hypothesi, is the final fruit of the ghost-flower? If you cannot have 'an established ancestor-worship' till you abandon nomadic habits, how, while still nomadic, do you evolve a Supreme Being? ”

“ These nomads of the frozen north, scattered sparsely over the remote periphery of the habitable world, have lacked the historical importance which in all times has attached to the steppe nomads, owing to their central location. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ They increase in numbers and power, and, trekking westwards, live—for how many years or centuries we cannot tell—as a race of pastoral nomads, until somewhere in the region of the Dnieper they pass from the wandering nomad existence to some more settled life such as that which has been described. ”

“ At a period when, for the mass of mankind, ideas were transmitted orally and travelled with these wanderers along the roads, the nomads served as a link between the human groups of various districts. It would be therefore of great interest for the historian to know what were these channels of the popular thought, what life was led by those who filled such a function, what were their influence and manners. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the early history of Asia and Africa, Nomadism and Agriculture are the two antagonist facts. The geography of Asia and of Africa necessitated a nomadic life. But the nomads were the terror of all those whom the soil, or the advantages of a market, had induced to build towns. Agriculture, therefore, was a religious injunction, because of the perils of the state from nomadism. And in these late and civil countries of England and America, these propensities still fight out the old battle in the nation and in the individual. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The stable element of the population consists of more or less old-fashioned people. Round about them is the ceaseless coming and going of nomads who keep abreast with the time, who take their lodgings by the week, their houses by the month: who camp indifferently in regions old and new, learning their geography in train and tram-car. ”

“ TREATMENT OF THE SICK AND OF THE DEAD. NOW, if you inquire concerning the customs and character of this people, I will reply that a part of them are nomads, wandering during the winter in the woods, whither the hope of better hunting calls them—in the summer, on the shores of the rivers, where they easily obtain their food by fishing; while others inhabit villages. They construct their huts by fixing poles in the ground ”

“ In the deserts the impoverished Bedouins live; in the higher lands some two millions of nomads follow their sheep and goats, pitching their tents wherever there is pasture; in the valleys are several millions of people, who, with the placid contentment of the East, irrigate their garden patches, fashion simple articles of metal, and weave artistic rugs. ”

“ Where there are nomads, good grass will also be found for the grazing of their large flocks of sheep. We spent the night close to one of their encampments, and found them pleasant and hospitable enough, receiving from them dried apricots, nuts, butter, and milk. These nomads, too, have a knack of always finding a sheltered nook with a flowing stream. ”

“ NOM′AD (from Lat. nomas, from Gk. νομάς, roaming, from νέμειν, nemein, to pasture, distribute) . A term primarily applied to those peoples whose resources were chiefly flocks and herds. All the industries and conveniences of nomadic life grow out of this one fact. Grass and water are the chief essentials, hence nomads dwell always in regions where pasture is the best and water is not far to seek. Their habitations must admit of being transported from place to place, and hence consist of tents; their furniture is largely of skins; they clothe themselves in hides and woolen cloth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Although these nomads wander perpetually in the forests, moving their camp every few weeks or months, any one group attaches itself to a particular area, partly because they become familiar with its natural resources, partly because they establish friendly relations with the villagers of the region, with whom they barter jungle-produce to the advantage of both parties. ”

“ There are, of course, a great many nomads who never leave the south at all, but wander about all the year in the Sahara. The pasture is very scarce, but there is just enough for the sheep and they get all the benefit of the first autumn rains. Nomads have prejudices about moving out of their own areas and prefer to remain in a country they know. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The regularity of habits which prevail in settled populations may also have its influence in the general physical development of the people. The nomads have certain qualities cultivated [193] to excess, and others almost entirely unused. ”

“ For their languages seem to be closely allied; but in each region the nomads seem to have adopted many words from their settled neighbours, with whom they trade; and instances are known to us in which the men of the settled tribes have married women of the nomads and have adopted their mode of life, and others in which children of nomad women, married into Kenyah, Kayan, or other villages, have gone back to their mothers' people. ”

“ But for all that, their home-sickness will not down, and the dislike of the continuous wandering, the aversion to strange places, the loathing of the unorderly, irregular life of nomads strengthens their determination to turn off their road at the first opportunity and to seek the long way back to their village, in spite of the terrible Germans. ”

“ In some areas, nomads moving to less arid areas disrupt the local ecosystem and increase the rate of erosion of the land. Nomads are trying to escape the desert, but because of their land-use practices, they are bringing the desert with them. ”

“ Whether desert oasis or mountain village, all go to make up a part of the social fabric of the Sahara, and the nomad camps the other part. Each depends on the other. The nomads rely on the sedentary people for markets for the goods transported by their caravans—foreign, or products of their camps—and for such foods as are the outcome of cultivation. ”

“ There are, so to speak, the rural nomads—not confining their wanderings to any one particular locality, but ranging often from one end of the land to the other. Besides these, there are urban and suburban travellers, or those who follow some itinerant occupation in and about the large towns. ”

“ These nomads, companions of the stars in their eternal solitude, half astronomers, half sorcerers, carry their goods with them. Here in the West they continue to lead the Asiatic life of Lot and Abraham. ”