But it is the
mode always to appear in dagger, and the weapon, like the French
soldier’s coupe-choux, is really useful for such bloodless purposes as
cutting wood and gathering grass.
In price they vary from one to thirty
dollars.
The Badawin boast greatly of sword-play; but it is apparently confined
to delivering a tremendous slash, and to jumping away from the
return-cut instead of parrying either with sword or shield. The
citizens have learned the Turkish scimitar-play, which, in
grotesqueness and general absurdity, rivals the East Indian school.
None of these Orientals knows the use of the point which characterises
the highest school of swordsmanship.
The Hijazi Badawin have no game of chance, and dare not, I am told,
ferment the juice of the Daum palm, as proximity to Aden has taught the
wild men of Al-Yaman.[FN#44] Their music is in a rude state. The
principal instrument is the Tabl, or kettle-drum, which is of two
kinds: one, the smaller, used at festivals; the other, a large copper
“tom-tom,” for martial purposes, covered with leather, and played upon,
pulpit-like, with fist, and not with stick. Besides which, they have
the one-stringed Rubabah, or guitar, that “monotonous but charming
instrument of the Desert.” In another place I have described their
dancing, which is an ignoble spectacle.
The Badawin of Al-Hijaz have all the knowledge necessary for procuring
and protecting the riches of savage life. They are perfect in the
breeding, the training, and the selling of cattle. They know sufficient
of astronomy to guide themselves by night, and are acquainted
[p.108] with the names of the principal stars. Their local memory is
wonderful. And such is their instinct in the art of asar, or tracking,
that it is popularly said of the Zubayd clan, which lives between
Meccah and Al-Madinah, a man will lose a she-camel and know her
four-year-old colt by its foot. Always engaged in rough exercises and
perilous journeys, they have learned a kind of farriery and a simple
system of surgery. In cases of fracture they bind on splints with cloth
bands, and the patient drinks camel’s milk and clarified butter till he
is cured. Cuts are carefully washed, sprinkled with meal gunpowder, and
sewn up. They dress gunshot wounds with raw camel’s flesh, and rely
entirely upon nature and diet. When bitten by snakes or stung by
scorpions, they scarify the wound with a razor, recite a charm, and
apply to it a dressing of garlic.[FN#45] The wealthy have Fiss or
ring-stones, brought from India, and used with a formula of prayer to
extract venom. Some few possess the Tariyak (Theriack) of Al-Irak—the
great counter-poison, internal as well as external, of the East. The
poorer classes all wear the Za’al or Hibas of Al-Yaman; two yarns of
black sheep’s wool tied round the leg, under the knee and above the
ankle. When bitten, the sufferer tightens these cords above the injured
part, which he immediately scarifies; thus they act as tourniquets.
These ligatures also cure cramps—and there is no other remedy. The Badawi
knowledge of medicine is unusually limited in this part of Arabia,
where even simples are not required by a people who rise with dawn, eat
little, always breathe Desert air, and “at night make the camels their
curfew.” The great tonic is clarified butter, and the Kay, or actual
cautery, is used even for rheumatism. This counter-irritant, together
with a curious and artful phlebotomy,
[p.109] blood being taken, as by the Italians, from the toes, the
fingers, and other parts of the body, are the Arab panaceas. They treat
scald-head with grease and sulphur. Ulcers, which here abound, without,
however, assuming the fearful type of the “Helcoma Yemenense,” are
cauterised and stimulated by verdigris. The evil of which Fracastorius
sang is combated by sudorifics, by unguents of oil and sulphur, and
especially by the sand-bath. The patient, buried up to the neck,
remains in the sun fasting all day; in the evening he is allowed a
little food. This rude course of “packing” lasts for about a month. It
suits some constitutions; but others, especially Europeans, have tried
the sand-bath and died of fever. Mules’ teeth, roasted and imperfectly
pounded, remove cataract. Teeth are extracted by the farrier’s pincers,
and the worm which throughout the East is supposed to produce
toothache, falls by fumigation. And, finally, after great fatigue, or
when suffering from cold, the body is copiously greased with clarified
butter and exposed to a blazing fire.
Mohammed and his followers conquered only the more civilised Badawin;
and there is even to this day little or no religion amongst the wild
people, except those on the coast or in the vicinity of cities. The
faith of the Badawi comes from Al-Islam, whose hold is weak. But his
customs and institutions, the growth of his climate, his nature, and
his wants, are still those of his ancestors, cherished ere Meccah had
sent forth a Prophet, and likely to survive the day when every vestige
of the Ka’abah shall have disappeared. Of this nature are the Hijazi’s
pagan oaths, his heathenish names (few being Moslem except “Mohammed”), his
ordeal of licking red-hot iron, his Salkh, or scarification,—proof of
manliness,—his blood revenge, and his eating carrion (i.e., the body of
an animal killed without the usual formula), and his lending his wives
to strangers. All these I hold to be remnants of some old
[p.110] creed; nor should I despair of finding among the Badawin
bordering upon the Great Desert some lingering system of idolatry.
The Badawin of Al-Hijaz call themselves Shafe’i but what is put into the
mouths of their brethren in the West applies equally well here. “We pray
not, because we must drink the water of ablution; we give no alms,
because we ask them; we fast not the Ramazan month, because we starve
throughout the year; and we do no pilgrimage, because the world is the
House of Allah.” Their blunders in religious matters supply the citizens
with many droll stories.
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