The Peculiar
Privileges Of Their Caste Favour Their Development Of Pugnacity.
Thus,
the modern diyah, or price of blood, being 800 dollars for a common
Moslem, the chiefs demand for one of their number double that sum, with
a sword, a camel, a female slave, and other items; and, if one of their
slaves or servants be slain, a fourfold price.
The rigorous way in
which this custom is carried out gives the Sharif and his retainer
great power among the Arabs. As a general rule, they are at the bottom
of all mischief. It was a Sharif (Hosayn bin Ali) who tore down and
trampled upon the British flag at Mocha; a Sharif (Abd al-Rahman of
Waht) who murdered Captain Mylne near Lahedge. A page might be filled
with the names of the distinguished ruffians.
[FN#25] In these lines of Labid, the “Mina” alluded to must not, we are
warned by the scholiast, be confounded with “Mina” (vulg. “Muna”), the Valley
of Victims. Ghul and Rayyan are hills close to the Wady Laymun. The
passage made me suspect that inscriptions would be found among the
rocks, as the scholiast informs us that “men used to write upon rocks in
order that their writing might remain.” (De Sacy’s Moallaka de Lebid, p.
289.) I neither saw nor heard of any. But some months afterwards I was
delighted to hear from the Abbe Hamilton that he had discovered in one
of the rock monuments a “lithographed proof” of the presence of Sesostris
(Rhameses II.).
[FN#26] The “balsamon” of Theophrastus and Dioscorides, a corruption of the
Arabic “balisan” or “basham,” by which name the Badawin know it.
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