They are not
sufficiently advanced in civilization to accept a pecuniary fine
as the price of a wife's dishonour; but a stroke of the husband's
sword, or a stab with the knife, is generally the ready remedy
for infidelity.
Although strictly Mahometans, the women are never
veiled; neither do they adopt the excessive reserve assumed by
the Turks and Egyptians. The Arab women are generally idle; and
one of the conditions of accepting a suitor is, that a female
slave is to be provided for the special use of the wife. No Arab
woman will engage herself as a domestic servant; thus, so long as
their present customs shall remain unchanged, slaves are
creatures of necessity. Although the law of Mahomet limits the
number of wives for each man to four at one time, the Arab women
do not appear to restrict their husbands to this allowance, and
the slaves of the establishment occupy the position of concubines.
The customs of the Arabs in almost every detail have remained
unchanged. Thus, in dress, in their nomadic habits, food, the
anointing with oil (Eccles. ix. 8, "Let thy garments be always
white, and let thy head lack no ointment"), they retain the
habits and formalities of the distant past, and the present is
but the exact picture of those periods which are historically
recorded in the Old Testament. The perfumery of the women already
described, bears a resemblance to that prepared by Moses for the
altar, which was forbidden to be used by the people. "Take thou
also unto thee principal spices, of pure myrrh five hundred
shekels, and of sweet cinnamon half so much, even two hundred and
fifty shekels, and of sweet calamus two hundred and fifty
shekels, and of cassia five hundred shekels, after the shekel of
the sanctuary, and of oil olive an hin: and thou shalt make it an
oil of holy ointment, an ointment compound after the art of the
apothecary: it shall be an holy anointing oil."--Exod. xxx. 23-25.
The manner of anointing by the ancients is exhibited by the Arabs
at the present day, who, as I have already described, make use of
so large a quantity of grease at one application that, when
melted, it runs down over their persons and clothes. In
Ps. cxxxiii. 2, "It is like the precious ointment upon the head,
that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard, that went down
to the skirts of his garments."
In all hot climates, oil or other fat is necessary to the skin as
a protection from the sun, where the body is either naked or very
thinly clad. I have frequently seen both Arabs and the negro
tribes of Africa suffer great discomfort when for some days the
supply of grease has been exhausted; the skin has become coarse,
rough, almost scaly, and peculiarly unsightly, until the
much-loved fat has been obtained, and the general appearance of
smoothness has been at once restored by an active smearing.
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