or **Bedouis**, a modern name of the wild Arabs, whether in Asia or Africa. When speaking of the Arabs, we should distinguish whether they are cultivators or pastors; for this difference in their mode of life occasions so great a one in their manners and genius, that they become almost foreign nations with respect to each other. In the former case, leading a sedentary life, attached to the same soil, and subject to regular governments, the social state in which they live, very nearly resembles our own. Such are the inhabitants of the Yemen; and such also are the descendants of those ancient conquerors, who have either entirely, or in part, given inhabitants to Syria, Egypt, and the Barbary states. In the second instance, having only a transient interest in the soil, perpetually removing their tents from one place to another, and under subjection to no laws, their mode of existence is neither that of polished nations nor of savages; and therefore more particularly merits our attention. Such are the Bedouins, or inhabitants of the vast deserts which extend from the confines of Persia to Morocco. They divided into independent communities or tribes, not unfrequently hostile to each other, they may still be considered as forming one nation. The resemblance of their language is a manifest token of this relationship. The only difference that exists between them is, that the African tribes are of a less ancient origin, being posterior to the conquest of these countries by the Khalifs or successors of Mahomet; while the tribes of the desert of Arabia, properly so called, have descended by an uninterrupted succession from the remotest ages. To these the orientals are accustomed to appropriate the name of **Arab**, as being the most ancient and the purest race. The term **Bedouin** is added as a synonymous expression, signifying, "inhabitant of the Desert."

It is not without reason that the inhabitants of the desert boast of being the purest and the best preserved race of all the Arab tribes: for never have they been conquered, nor have they mixed with any other people by making conquests; for those by which the general name of Arabs has been rendered famous, really belong only to the tribes of the Hedjaz and the Yemen. Those who dwelt in the interior of the country, never emigrated at the time of the revolution effected by Mahomet; or if they did take any part in it, it was confined to a few individuals, detached by motives of ambition. Thus we find the prophet in his Koran continually styling the Arabs of the desert **rebels and infidels**; nor has so great a length of time produced any very considerable change. We may assert they have in every respect retained their primitive independence and simplicity. See **Arabia**, no. 186.

The wandering life of these people arises from the very nature of their deserts. To paint to himself these deserts (says M. Volney), the reader must imagine a sky almost perpetually inflamed, and without clouds, immense and boundless plains, without housetops, trees, rivulets, or hills, where the eye frequently meets nothing but an extensive and uniform horizon like the sea, though in some places the ground is uneven and stony. Almost invariably naked on every side, the earth presents nothing but a few wild plants thinly scattered, and thickets, whose foliage is rarely disturbed but by antelopes, hares, locusts, and rats. Such is the nature of nearly the whole country, which extends six hundred leagues in length and three hundred in breadth, and stretches from Aleppo to the Arabian sea, and from Egypt to the Persian gulph. It must not, however, be imagined that the soil in so great an extent is everywhere the same; it varies considerably in different places. On the frontiers of Syria, for example, the earth is in general fat and cultivable, nay even fruitful. It is the same also on the banks of the Euphrates: but in the internal parts of the country, and towards the south, it becomes white and chalky, as in the parallel of Damascus; rocky, as in the Tih and the Hedjaz; and a pure sand, as to the eastward of the Yemen. This variety in the qualities of the soil is productive of some minute differences in the condition of the Bedouins. For instance, in the more sterile countries, that is, those which produce but few plants, the tribes are feeble and very distant; which is the case in the desert of Suez, that of the Red Sea, and the interior of the great desert called the Nadj. When the soil is more fruitful, as between Damascus and the Euphrates, the tribes are more numerous and less remote from each other; and, lastly, in the cultivable districts, such as the Pachalics of Aleppo, the Hauran, and the neighbourhood of Gaza, the camps are frequent and contiguous. In the former instances, the Bedouins are purely pastors, and subsist only on the produce of their herds, and on a few dates and flesh meat, which they eat either fresh or dried in the sun and reduced to a powder. In the latter, they sow some land, and add cheese, barley, and even rice, to their flesh and milk meats.

In those districts where the soil is stony and sandy, as in the Tih, the Hedjaz, and the Nadj, the rains make the seeds of the wild plants flourish, and revive the thickets, ranunculi, wormwood, and kali. They cause marshes in the lower grounds, which produce reeds and grasses; and the plain affords a tolerable degree of verdure. This is the reason of abundance both for the herds and their masters; but on the return of the heats, every thing is parched up, and the earth converted into a grey and fine dust, presents nothing but dry stems as hard as wood, on which neither horses, oxen, nor even goats, can feed. In this state the desert would become uninhabitable, and must be totally abandoned, had not nature formed an animal no less hardy and frugal than the soil is sterile and ungrateful. No creature seems so peculiarly fitted to the climate in which it exists. Designing the camel to dwell in a country country where he can find little nourishment, Nature (says M. Volney) has been sparing of her materials in the whole of his formation. She has not bestowed on him the plump fleshiness of the ox, horse, or elephant; but limiting herself to what is strictly necessary, she has given him a small head without ears at the end of a long neck without flesh. She has taken from his legs and thighs every muscle not immediately requisite for motion; and in short, has bestowed on his withered body only the vessels and tendons necessary to connect its frame together. She has furnished him with a strong jaw, that he may grind the hardest aliments; but lest he should consume too much, she has shortened his stomach, and obliged him to chew the cud. She has lined his foot with a lump of flesh, which sliding in the mud, and being no way adapted to climbing, fits him only for a dry, level, and sandy soil like that of Arabia: she has evidently defined him likewise to slavery, by refusing him every sort of defense against his enemies. Delicacy of the horns of the bull, the hoof of the horse, the tooth of the elephant, and the swiftness of the stag, how can the camel resist or avoid the attacks of the lion, the tiger; or even the wolf? To preserve the species, therefore, nature has concealed him in the depth of the vast deserts, where the want of vegetables can attract no game, and whence the want of game repels every voracious animal. Tyranny must have expelled man from the habitable parts of the earth before the camel could have lost his liberty. Become domestic, he has rendered habitable the most barren soil the world contains. He alone supplies all his master's wants. The milk of the camel nourishes the family of the Arab under the varied forms of curd, cheese, and butter; and they often feed upon his flesh. Slippers and harnesses are made of his skin, tents and clothing of his hair. Heavy burdens are transported by his means; and when the earth denies forage to the horse, so valuable to the Bedouin, the she camel supplies that deficiency by her milk at no other cost, for so many advantages, than a few stalks of brambles or wormwood and pounded date kernels. So great is the importance of the camel to the desert, that were it deprived of that useful animal, it must infallibly lose every inhabitant.

Such is the situation in which nature has placed the Bedouins, to make of them a race of men equally singular in their physical and moral character. This singularity is so striking, that even their neighbors the Syrians regard them as extraordinary beings; especially those tribes which dwell in the depths of the deserts, such as the Anaza, Kaibar, Tai, and others, which never approach the towns. When in the time of Shaik Daher, some of their horsemen came as far as Acre, they excited the same curiosity there as a visit from the savages of America would among us. Every body viewed with surprize these men, who were more diminutive, meagre, and swarthy, than any of the known Bedouins. Their withered legs were only composed of tendons, and had no calves. Their bellies seemed to cling to their backs, and their hair was frizzled almost as much as that of the negroes. They on the other hand were no less astonished at every thing they saw; they could neither conceive how the houses and minarets could stand erect, nor how men ventured to dwell beneath them, and always in the same spot; but above all, they were in an ecstacy on beholding the sea, nor could they comprehend what that desert of water could be.

We may imagine that the Arabs of the frontiers are not such novices; there are even several small tribes of them, who living in the midst of the country, as in the valley of Bekaa, that of the Jordan, and in Palestine, approach nearer to the condition of the peasants; but these are despised by the others, who look upon them as bastard Arabs and Rayas, or slaves of the Turks.

In general, the Bedouins are small, meagre, and tawny; more so, however, in the heart of the desert than on the frontiers of the cultivated country; but they are always of a darker hue than the neighboring peasants. They also differ among themselves in the same camp; and M. Volney remarked, that the shaiks, that is, the rich, and their attendants, were always taller and more corpulent than the common class. He has seen some of them above five feet five and six inches high; though in general they do not (he says) exceed five feet two inches. This difference can only be attributed to their food, with which the former are supplied more abundantly than the latter: And the effects of this are equally evident in the Arabian and Turkmen camels; for these latter, dwelling in countries rich in forage, are become a species more robust and fleshy than the former. It may likewise be affirmed, that the lower class of Bedouins live in a state of habitual wretchedness and famine. It will appear almost incredible to us, but it is an undoubted fact, that the quantity of food usually consumed by the greatest part of them does not exceed six ounces a day. This abstinence is most remarkable among the tribes of the Najd and the Hedjaz. Six or seven dates soaked in melted butter, a little sweet milk or curds, serve a man a whole day; and he esteems himself happy when he can add a small quantity of coarse flour or a little ball of rice. Meat is reserved for the greatest festivals; and they never kill a kid but for a marriage or a funeral. A few wealthy and generous shaiks alone can kill young camels, and eat baked rice with their victuals. In times of dearth, the vulgar, always half famished, do not disdain the most wretched kinds of food; and eat locusts, rats, lizards, and serpents broiled on briars. Hence are they such plunderers of the cultivated lands and robbers on the high-roads; hence also their delicate constitution and their diminutive and meagre bodies, which are rather active than vigorous. It may be worth while to remark, that their evacuations of every kind, even perspiration, are extremely small; their blood is so deficient of ferocity, that nothing but the greatest heat can preserve its fluidity. This, however, does not prevent them from being tolerably healthy in other respects; for maladies are less frequent among them, than among the inhabitants of the cultivated country.

From these facts we are by no means justified in concluding that the frugality of the Bedouins is a virtue purely of choice, or even of climate. The extreme heat in which they live unquestionably facilitates their abstinence, by destroying that activity which cold gives to the stomach. Their being habituated also to so sparing a diet, by hindering the dilatation of the stomach, becomes doubtless a means of their supporting such abstinences; but the chief and primary motive of this habit is with them, as with the rest. Bedouins rest of mankind, the necessity of the circumstances in which they are placed, whether from the nature of the soil, as has been before explained, or that state of society in which they live, and which remains now to be examined.

It has been already remarked, that the Bedouin Arabs are divided into tribes, which constitute so many distinct nations. Each of these tribes appropriates to itself a tract of land forming its domain; in this they do not differ from cultivating nations, except that their territory requires a greater extent, in order to furnish subsistence for their herds throughout the year. Each tribe is collected in one or more camps, which are dispersed through the country, and which make a successive progress over the whole, in proportion as it is exhausted by the cattle; hence it is, that within a great extent a few spots only are inhabited, which vary from one day to another; but as the entire space is necessary for the annual subsistence of the tribe, whoever encroaches on it is deemed a violator of property; this is with them the law of nations. If, therefore, a tribe, or any of its subjects, enter upon a foreign territory, they are treated as enemies and robbers, and a war breaks out. Now, as all the tribes have affinities with each other by alliances of blood or conventions, leagues are formed, which render these wars more or less general. The manner of proceeding on such occasions is very simple. The offence made known, they mount their horses and seek the enemy; when they meet, they enter into a parley, and the matter is frequently made up; if not, they attack either in small bodies, or man to man. They encounter each other at full speed with fixed lances, which they sometimes dart, notwithstanding their length, at the flying enemy: the victory is rarely contested; it is decided by the first shock, and the vanquished take to flight full gallop over the naked plain of the desert. Night generally favours their escape from the conqueror. The tribe which has lost the battle strikes its tents, removes to a distance by forced marches, and seeks an asylum among its allies. The enemy, satisfied with their success, drive their herds farther on, and the fugitives soon after return to their former situation. But the slaughter made in these engagements frequently sows the seeds of hatreds which perpetuate these dissensions. The interest of the common safety has for ages established a law among them, which decrees that the blood of every man who is slain must be avenged by that of his murderer. This vengeance is called Tar, or retaliation; and the right of exacting it devolves on the nearest of kin to the deceased. So nice are the Arabs on this point of honour, that if any one neglects to seek his retaliation he is disgraced for ever. He therefore watches every opportunity of revenge: if his enemy perishes from any other cause, still he is not satisfied, and his vengeance is directed against the nearest relation. These animosities are transmitted as an inheritance from father to children, and never cease but by the extinction of one of the families, unless they agree to sacrifice the criminal, or purchase the blood for a stated price, in money or in flocks. Without this satisfaction, there is neither peace, nor truce, nor alliances, between them, nor sometimes even between whole tribes: There is blood between us, say they on every occasion; and this expression is an insurmountable barrier. Such accidents being necessarily numerous in a long course of time, the greater part of the tribes have ancient quarrels, and live in an habitual state of war; which, added to their way of life, renders the Bedouins a military people, though they have made no great progress in war as an art.

Their camps are formed in a kind of irregular circle, composed of a single row of tents, with greater or less intervals. These tents, made of goat or camel's hair, are black or brown, in which they differ from those of the Turkmen, which are white. They are stretched on three or four pickets, only five or six feet high, which gives them a very flat appearance; at a distance, one of these camps seems only like a number of black spots; but the piercing eye of the Bedouin is not to be deceived. Each tent inhabited by a family is divided by a curtain into two apartments, one of which is appropriated to the women. The empty space within the large circle serves to fold their cattle every evening. They never have any intrenchments; their only advanced guards and patrols are dogs; their horses remain saddled and ready to mount on the first alarm; but as there is neither order nor regularity, these camps, always easy to surprise, afford no defence in case of an attack: accidents, therefore, very frequently happen, and cattle are carried off every day; a species of marauding war in which the Arabs are very experienced.

The tribes which live in the vicinity of the Turks are still more accustomed to attacks and alarms; for these strangers, arrogating to themselves, in right of conquest, the property of the whole country, treat the Arabs as rebel vassals, or as turbulent and dangerous enemies. On this principle, they never cease to wage secret or open war against them. The pachas study every occasion to harass them. Sometimes they contest with them a territory which they had let them, and at others demand a tribute which they never agreed to pay. Should a family of sheikhs be divided by interest or ambition, they alternately succour each party, and conclude by the destruction of both. Frequently too they poison or assassinate those chiefs whose courage or abilities they dread, though they should even be their allies. The Arabs, on their side, regarding the Turks as usurpers and treacherous enemies, watch every opportunity to do them injury. Unfortunately, their vengeance falls oftener on the innocent than the guilty. The harmless peasant generally suffers for the offences of the soldier. On the slightest alarm, the Arabs cut their harvests, carry off their flocks, and intercept their communication and commerce. The peasant calls them thieves, and with reason; but the Bedouins claim the right of war, and perhaps they also are not in the wrong. However this may be, these depredations occasion a misunderstanding between the Bedouins and the inhabitants of the cultivated country, which renders them mutual enemies.

Such is the external situation of the Arabs. It is subject to great vicissitudes, according to the good or bad conduct of their chiefs. Sometimes a feeble tribe rises and aggrandizes itself, whilst another, which was powerful, falls into decay, or perhaps is entirely annihilated; not that all its members perish, but they incorporate themselves with some other; and this is the consequence of the internal constitution of the tribes. Each tribe is composed of one or more principal families, the members of which bear the title of shaiks, i.e., chiefs or lords. These families have a great resemblance to the patricians of Rome and the nobles of modern Europe. One of the shaiks has the supreme command over the others. He is the general of their little army; and sometimes assumes the title of emir, which signifies commander and prince. The more relations, children, and allies, he has, the greater is his strength and power. To these he adds particular adherents, whom he studiously attaches to him, by supplying all their wants. But besides this, a number of small families, who, not being strong enough to live independent, stand in need of protection and alliances, range themselves under the banners of this chief. Such an union is called kabila, or tribe. These tribes are distinguished from each other by the name of their respective chiefs, or by that of the ruling family; and when they speak of any of the individuals who compose them, they call them the children of such a chief, though they may not be all really of his blood, and he himself may have been long since dead. Thus they say, Beni Temnin, Oulad Tai, the children of Temnin and of Tai. This mode of expression is even applied, by metaphor, to the names of countries; the usual phrase for denoting its inhabitants being to call them the children of such a place. Thus the Arabs say, Oulad Mafr, the Egyptians; Oulad Sham, the Syrians; they would also say, Oulad Franja, the French; Oulad Mokou, the Russians; a remark which is not unimportant to ancient history.

The government of this society is at once republican, aristocratical, and even despotic, without exactly corresponding with any of these forms. It is republican, inasmuch as the people have a great influence in all affairs, and as nothing can be transacted without the consent of a majority. It is aristocratical, because the families of the shaiks possess some of the prerogatives which everywhere accompany power; and, lastly, it is despotic, because the principal shaik has an indefinite and almost absolute authority, which, when he happens to be a man of credit and influence, he may even abuse; but the state of these tribes confines even this abuse to very narrow limits: for if a chief should commit an act of injustice; if, for example, he should kill an Arab, it would be almost impossible for him to escape punishment; the resentment of the offended party would pay no respect to his dignity; the law of retaliation would be put in force; and, should he not pay the blood, he would be infallibly affianced, which, from the simple and private life the shaiks lead in their camps, would be no difficult thing to effect. If he harasses his subjects by severity, they abandon him and go over to another tribe. His own relations take advantage of his misconduct to depose him and advance themselves to his station. He can have no resource in foreign troops; his subjects communicate too easily with each other to render it possible for him to divide their interests and form a faction in his favour. Besides, how is he to pay them, since he receives no kind of taxes from the tribe; the wealth of the greater part of his subjects being limited to absolute necessaries, and his own confined to very moderate possessions, and those too loaded with great expenses?

The principal shaik in every tribe, in fact, defrays the charges of all who arrive at or leave the camp. Bedouins. He receives the visits of the allies, and of every person who has business with them. Adjoining to his tent is a large pavilion for the reception of all strangers and passengers. There are held frequent assemblies of the shaiks and principal men, to determine on encampments and removals; on peace and war; on the differences with the Turkish governors and the villages; and the litigations and quarrels of individuals. To this crowd, which enters successively, he must give coffee, bread baked on the ashes, rice, and sometimes roasted kid or camel; in a word, he must keep open table; and it is the more important to him to be generous, as this generosity is closely connected with matters of the greatest consequence. On the exercise of this depend his credit and his power. The familiar Arab ranks the liberality which feeds him before every virtue; nor is this prejudice without foundation; for experience has proved that covetous chiefs never were men of enlarged views: hence the proverb, as just as it is brief, A close fist, a narrow heart. To provide for these expenses, the shaik has nothing but his herds, a few spots of cultivated ground, the profits of his plunder, and the tribute he levies on the high-roads; the total of which is very inconsiderable. The shaik with whom M. Volney resided in the country of Gaza, about the end of 1784, passed for one of the most powerful of those districts; yet it did not appear to our author that his expenditure was greater than that of an opulent farmer. His personal effects, consisting in a few pelisses, carpets, arms, horses, and camels, could not be estimated at more than 50,000 livres (a little above L.2000); and it must be observed, that in this calculation four mares of the breed of racers are valued at 6000 livres (L.250), and each camel at L.10 Sterling. We must not therefore, when we speak of the Bedouins, affix to the words Prince and Lord the ideas they usually convey; we should come nearer the truth by comparing them to substantial farmers in mountainous countries, whose simplicity they resemble in their dress as well as in their domestic life and manners. A shaik who has the command of 500 horse does not disdain to saddle and bridle his own, nor to give him barley and chopped straw. In his tent, his wife makes the coffee, kneads the dough, and superintends the dressing of the victuals. His daughters and kinswomen wash the linen, and go with pitchers on their head and veils over their faces to draw water from the fountain. These manners agree precisely with the descriptions in Homer and the history of Abraham in Genesis. But it must be owned that it is difficult to form a just idea of them without having ourselves been eye-witnesses.

The simplicity, or perhaps more properly the poverty, of the lower class of the Bedouins is proportionate to that of their chiefs. All the wealth of a family consists of moveables; of which the following is a pretty exact inventory: A few male and female camels; some goats and poultry; a mare and her bridle and saddle; a tent; a lance 16 feet long; a crooked sabre; a rusty musket with a flint or matchlock; a pipe; a portable mill; a pot for cooking; a leather bucket; a small coffee roaster; a mat; some clothes; a mantle of black wool; and a few glass or silver rings, which the women wear upon their legs and arms. If none of these are wanting their furniture is complete. But what the poor man stands most in need of, and what he takes most pleasure in, is his mare; for this animal is his principal support. With his mare the Bedouin makes his excursions against hostile tribes, or seeks plunder in the country and on the high-ways. The mare is preferred to the horse, because she is more docile, and yields milk, which on occasion satisfies the thirst and even the hunger of her master.

Thus confined to the most absolute necessities of life, the Arabs have as little industry as their wants are few; all their arts consist in weaving their clumsy tents and in making mats and butter. Their whole commerce only extends to the exchanging camels, kids, stallions, and milk; for arms, clothing, a little rice or corn, and money, which they bury. They are totally ignorant of all science; and have not even any idea of astronomy, geometry, or medicine. They have not a single book; and nothing is so uncommon among the Shaikhs as to know how to read. All their literature consists in reciting tales and histories in the manner of the Arabian Nights Entertainments. They have a peculiar passion for such stories, and employ in them almost all their leisure, of which they have a great deal. In the evening they seat themselves on the ground, at the threshold of their tents, or under cover, if it be cold; and there, ranged in a circle round a little fire of dung, their pipes in their mouths, and their legs crossed, they sit a while in silent meditation, till on a sudden one of them breaks forth with, Once upon a time,—and continues to recite the adventures of some young Shaikh and female Bedouin: he relates in what manner the youth first got a secret glimpse of his mistress; and how he became desperately enamoured of her; he minutely describes the lovely fair; boasts her black eyes, as large and soft as those of the gazelle; her languid and impassioned looks, her arched eye-brows, resembling two bows of ebony; her waist straight and supple as a lance: he forgets not her steps, light as those of the young feline; nor her eye-lashes, blackened with kohl; nor her lips painted blue; nor her nails, tinged with the golden coloured henna; nor her breasts, resembling two pomegranates; nor her words, sweet as honey. He recounts the sufferings of the young lover, so wasted with desire and passion, that his body no longer yields any shadow. At length, after detailing his various attempts to see his mistress, the obstructions of the parents, the invasions of the enemy, the captivity of the two lovers, &c., he terminates, to the satisfaction of the audience, by restoring them, united and happy, to the paternal tent, and by receiving the tribute paid to his eloquence, in the Ma sha allah (an exclamation of praise, equivalent to admirably well!) he has merited.

The Bedouins have likewise their love songs, which have more sentiment and nature in them than those of the Turks and inhabitants of the towns; doubtsless, because the former, whose manners are chaste, know what love is; while the latter, abandoned to debauchery, are acquainted only with enjoyment.

When we consider how much the condition of the Bedouins, especially in the depths of the desert, resembles in many respects that of the savages of America, we shall be inclined to wonder why they have not the same ferocity; why, though they so often experience the extremity of hunger, the practice of devouring human flesh was never heard of among them; and why, in short, their manners are so much more sociable and mild. The following reasons are proposed by M. Volney as the true solution of this difficulty.

It seems at first view (he observes), that America, being rich in pasturage, lakes, and forests, is more adapted to the pastoral mode of life than to any other. But if we consider that these forests, by affording an easy refuge to animals, protect them more surely from the power of man, we may conclude that the savage has been induced to become a hunter instead of a shepherd, by the nature of the country. In this state, all his habits have concurred to give him a ferocity of character. The great fatigues of the chase have hardened his body; frequent and extreme hunger, followed by a sudden abundance of game, has rendered him voracious. The habit of shedding blood, and tearing his prey, has familiarised him to the sight of death and sufferings. Tormented by hunger, he has desired flesh; and finding it easy to obtain that of his fellow-creature, he could not long hesitate to kill him to satisfy the cravings of his appetite. The first experiment made, this cruelty degenerates into a habit; he becomes a cannibal, fanguinary and atrocious; and his mind acquires all the inflexibility of his body.

The situation of the Arab is very different. Amid his vast naked plains, without water and without forests, he has not been able, for want of game or fish, to become either a hunter or a fisherman. The camel has determined him to a pastoral life, the manners of which have influenced his whole character. Finding at hand a light, but constant and sufficient nourishment, he has acquired the habit of frugality. Content with his milk and his dates, he has not desired flesh; he has shed no blood; his hands are not accustomed to slaughter, nor his ears to the cries of suffering creatures; he has preserved a humane and sensible heart.

No sooner did the savage shepherd become acquainted with the use of the horse, than his manner of life must considerably change. The facility of passing rapidly over extensive tracts of country, rendered him a wanderer. He was greedy from want, and became a robber from greediness; and such is in fact his present character. A plunderer, rather than a warrior, the Arab possesses no fanguinary courage; he attacks only to depose; and if he meets with resistance, never thinks a small booty is to be put in competition with his life. To irritate him, you must shed his blood; in which case he is found to be as obstinate in his vengeance as he was cautious in avoiding danger.

The Bedouins have often been reproached with this spirit of rapine; but without wishing to defend it, we may observe that one circumstance has not been sufficiently attended to, which is, that it only takes place towards reputed enemies, and is consequently founded on the acknowledged laws of almost all nations. Among themselves they are remarkable for a good faith, a disinterestedness, a generosity, which would do honour to the most civilized people. What is there more noble than that right of asylum so respected among all the tribes? A stranger, nay even an enemy, touches the tent of the Bedouin, and from that instant his person becomes inviolable. It would be reckoned a disgraceful meanness, an indelible shame, to satisfy even a just vengeance at the expense of hospitality. Has the Bedouin consented to eat bread and salt with his bedouins his guest, nothing in the world can induce him to betray him. The power of the Sultan himself would not be able to force a refugee from the protection of a tribe, but by its total extermination. The Bedouin, so rapacious without his camp, has no sooner set his foot within it, than he becomes liberal and generous. What little he possesses he is ever ready to divide. He has even the delicacy not to wait till it is asked: when he takes his repast, he affects to seat himself at the door of his tent, in order to invite the passengers; his generosity is so sincere, that he does not look upon it as a merit, but merely as a duty; and he therefore readily takes the same liberty with others. To observe the manner in which the Arabs conduct themselves towards each other, one would imagine that they possessed all their goods in common. Nevertheless they are no strangers to property; but it has none of that selfishness which the increase of the imaginary wants of luxury has given it among polished nations. Deprived of a multitude of enjoyments which nature has lavished upon other countries, they are less exposed to temptations which might corrupt and debauch them. It is more difficult for their Shaikhs to form a faction to enslave and impoverish the body of the nation. Each individual, capable of supplying all his wants, is better able to preserve his character and independence; and private poverty becomes at once the foundation and bulwark of public liberty.

This liberty extends even to matters of religion. We observe a remarkable difference between the Arabs of the towns and those of the desert; since, while the former crouch under the double yoke of political and religious despotism, the latter live in a state of perfect freedom from both: it is true, that on the frontiers of the Turks, the Bedouins, from policy, prefer the appearance of Mahometanism; but so relaxed is their observance of its ceremonies, and so little fervour has their devotion, that they are generally considered as infidels, who have neither law nor prophets. They even make no difficulty in saying that the religion of Mahomet was not made for them: "For (add they) how shall we make ablutions who have no water? How can we bestow alms who are not rich? Why should we fast in the Ramadan, since the whole year with us is one continual fast? and what necessity is there for us to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, if God be present everywhere?" In short, every man acts and thinks as he pleases, and the most perfect toleration is established among them.