The Former Is, Almost Always, Some Sharp-Witted Greybeard, With A Minute Knowledge Of Genealogy And Precedents, A Retentive Memory And An Eloquent Tongue. [FN#19] Thus The Arabs, Being Decidedly A Parsimonious People, Indulge In Exaggerated Praises And Instances Of Liberality.

Hatim Tai, whose generosity is unintelligible to Europeans, becomes the Arab model of the “open hand.” Generally a high

Beau ideal is no proof of a people’s practical pre-eminence, and when exaggeration enters into it and suits the public taste, a low standard of actuality may be fairly suspected. But to convince the oriental mind you must dazzle it. Hence, in part, the superhuman courage of Antar, the liberality of Hatim, the justice of Omar, and the purity of Laila and Majnun under circumstances more trying than aught chronicled in Mathilde, or in the newest American novel. [FN#20] At the battle of Bissel, when Mohammed Ali of Egypt broke the 40,000 guerillas of Faisal son of Sa’ud the Wahhabi, whole lines of the Benu Asir tribe were found dead and tied by the legs with ropes. This system of colligation dates from old times in Arabia, as the “Affair of Chains” (Zat al-Salasil) proves. It is alluded to by the late Sir Henry Elliot in his “Appendix to the Arabs in Sind,”—a work of remarkable sagacity and research. According to the “Beglar-Nameh,” it was a “custom of the people of Hind and Sind, whenever they devote themselves to death, to bind themselves to each other by their mantles and waistbands.” It seems to have been an ancient practice in the West as in the East:

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