At Two Hours And A Quarter Is A
Fine Spring; Two Hours And A Half, The Village Khanzyre (Arabic), Which
Is Larger Than Oerak And Ketherabba.
Here we stopped a whole day, our
Sheikh having a house in the village, and a wife, whom he dared not
carry to Kerek, having another family there.
In the evening he held a
court
[p.397] of justice, as he had done at Ketherabba, and decided a number
of disputes between the peasants; the greater part of these were
concerning money transactions between husbands and the families of their
wives; or related to the mixed property of the Arabs in mares, in
consequence of the Bedouin custom of selling only one-half, or one-third
of those animals.
August 6th.———Khanzyre is built on the declivity of one of the highest
mountains on the eastern side of the Dead sea; in its neighbourhood are
a number of springs whose united waters form a rivulet which irrigates
the fields belonging to the village, and an extensive tract of gardens.
The villages of this country are each governed by its own Sheikh, and
the peasants are little better than Bedouins; their manners, dress, and
mode of living are exactly the same. In the harvest time they live in
the mountains under tents, and their cattle is entrusted during the
whole year to a small encampment of their own shepherds. In the
afternoon of this day we were alarmed by loud cries in the direction of
the opposite mountain. The whole of our party immediately mounted, and I
also followed. On reaching the spot from whence the cries came, we found
two shepherds of Khanzyre quite naked; they had been stripped by a party
of the Arabs Terabein, who live in the mountains of Hebron, and each of
the robbers had carried off a fat sheep upon his mare. They were now too
far off to be overtaken; and our people, not being able to engage the
enemy, amused themselves with a sham-fight in their return home. They
displayed superior strength and agility in handling the lance, and great
boldness in riding at full speed over rugged and rocky ground. In the
exercise with the lance the rider endeavours to put the point of it upon
the shoulder of his adversary, thus showing that his life is in his
power. When the parties become heated, they often bear off upon their
lances the turbands of their adversaries, and carry them
[p.398] about with insolent vociferation. Our Sheikh of Kerek, a man of
sixty, far excelled all his people in these youthful, exercises; indeed
he seemed to be an accomplished Bedouin Sheikh; though he proved to be a
treacherous friend to me. As I thought that I had settled matters with
him, to his entire satisfaction, I was not a little astonished, when he
took me aside in the evening to announce to me, that unless he received
twenty piastres more, he would not take charge of me any farther.
Although I knew it was not in his power to hinder me from following him,
and that he could not proceed to violence without entirely losing his
reputation among the Arabs, for ill-treating his guest, yet I had
acquired sufficient knowledge of the Sheikh’s character to be persuaded
that if I did not acquiesce in his demand, he would devise some means to
get me into a situation which it would have perhaps cost me double the
sum to escape from; I therefore began to bargain with him; and brought
him down to fifteen piastres.
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