They Preserve Their National Dress, Language, And Customs, And Live In Their

[P.374] houses as they would under tents in the Desert.

Of all Eastern nations, the Arabian Bedouins perhaps are those who abandon their national habits with most reluctance. In Syria, in Egypt, and in the Hedjaz, settlements are seen, the members of which have become cultivators for several centuries back; yet they have adopted only few of the habits of peasants, and still pride themselves on their Bedouin origin and manners.

The Medinans have not the same means of gaining a living, as the Mekkans. Although this town is never free from foreign pilgrims, there is never that immense influx of hadjys which renders Mekka so populous for several months in the year, and which makes it a market for all parts of the East. The hadjys who come to Medina are seldom merchants, or at least do not go there for mercantile pursuits, and therefore leave on the coast their heavy baggage. Even the Syrian merchants who pass with the great caravan seldom engage in trade, unless it be for some camel-loads of tobacco and dried fruits. The Medina trade is therefore merely for home consumption, and to supply the neighbouring Bedouins with articles of dress and provisions. These are received by way of Yembo, and come almost exclusively from Egypt. No great merchants are settled in Medina: the trade is merely retail; and those who possess capital, generally invest it in goods, as usual throughout Syria and Egypt, there not being any public institution like banks, or trading societies, or national funds, from which the capitalist might derive interest for his money. The Turkish law rigorously forbids the taking of interest; and even if it were otherwise, there is not any government nor any class of men to which the people would intrust considerable sums. The investment of capital in landed property is also liable to great risk. [By a decree of Mohammed Aly in 1813, the purchase of land in Egypt is rendered impracticable; for it orders all the Moltezims (or landed proprietors who shared in the possession of villages and grounds, and who formed a class living on their rents in the country towns,) to receive their yearly revenue from the Pasha's treasury, where they suffered every kind of humiliation and injustice; and the whole of the soil was declared to be the property of government, or in other words of Mohammed Aly himself, who leaves the cultivation of it to the fellahs on his own terms. It happened lately that the Fellahs, who farmed five thousand acres belonging to the village of Damkour near Cairo, were deprived of their leases on the land being declared public property, because the Pasha wished to sow clover for his cavalry upon the soil that the Fellahs had possessed. Landed property in Syria also subjects the owner to great inconveniences: he is oppressed by every governor of a district, and by every soldier who passes; he suffers in his receipts from the extortions of the Pashas, which generally fall more heavily upon the cultivator than upon the monied man:

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Words from 143583 to 144106 of 182297