When Egypt Was Under The Unsettled Government Of The Mamelouks The
Towara Bedouins, Who Were Then Independent, Were Very Formidable, And
Often At War With The Begs, As Well As With The Surrounding Tribes.
At
present they have lost much of the profits which they derived from their
traffic with Suez, and from
The passage of caravans to Cairo; they are
kept in awe by Mohammed Ali, and have taken to more peaceful habits,
which, however, they are quite ready to abandon, on the first appearance
of any change in the government of Egypt. Even now, they pay no duty
whatever to
[p.562] the Pasha, who, on the contrary, makes their chief some annual
presents; but they are obliged to submit to the rate of carriage which
the Pasha chooses to fix for the transport of his goods. They live, of
course, according to their means; the small sum of fifteen or twenty
dollars pays the yearly expenses of many, perhaps of most of their
families, and the daily and almost unvarying food of the greater part of
them is bread, with a little butter or milk, for which salt alone is
substituted when the dry season is set in, and their cattle no longer
yield milk. The Mezeine appeared to me much hardier than the other
tribes, owing probably to their being exposed to greater privations in
the more barren district which they inhabit. They hold more intercourse
with the neighbouring Bedouins to the north than the other Towaras, and
in their language and manners approach more to the great eastern tribes
than to the other Bedouins of the peninsula.
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Words from 193945 to 194216
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