Both Are Alternately Brave To Desperation, And Shy Of
Danger.
Both are remarkable for nervous and powerful eloquence; dry
humour, satire, whimsical tales, frequent tropes; boasts, and ruffling
style; pithy proverbs, extempore songs, and languages wondrous in their
complexity.
Both, recognising no other occupation but war and the
chase, despise artificers and the effeminate people of cities, as the
game-cock spurns the vulgar roosters of the poultry-yard.[FN#57] The
[p.119] chivalry of the Western wolds, like that of the Eastern wilds,
salutes the visitor by a charge of cavalry, by discharging guns, and by
wheeling around him with shouts and yells. The “brave” stamps a red hand
upon his mouth to show that he has drunk the blood of a foe. Of the
Utaybah “Harami” it is similarly related, that after mortal combat he
tastes the dead man’s gore.
Of these two chivalrous races of barbarians, the Badawi claims our
preference on account of his treatment of women, his superior
development of intellect, and the glorious page of history which he has
filled.
The tribes of Al-Hijaz are tediously numerous: it will be sufficient to
enumerate the principal branches of the Badawi tree, without detailing
the hundred little offshoots which it has put forth in the course of
ages.[FN#58]
Those ancient clans the Abs and Adnan have almost died out. The latter,
it is said, still exists in the neighbourhood of Taif; and the Abs, I
am informed, are to be found near Kusayr (Cosseir), on the African
coast, but not in Al-Hijaz.
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