The Effects Of This Custom
Are Most Pernicious, For Though Celibacy Exists In The East It Is By No
Means Synonymous With Chastity.
Here it springs from a morbid sense of
honour, and arose, it is popularly said, from an affront taken by a
Sharif against his daughter’s husband.
But all Arabs condemn the practice.
[FN#7] I use this word as popular abuse has fixed it. Every Orientalist
knows that Badawin (Bedouin) is the plural form of Badawi, an “ism
al-nisbah,” or adjective derived from Badu, a Desert. “Some words
notoriously corrupt,” says Gibbon, “are fixed, and as it were naturalised,
in the vulgar tongue.” The word “Badawi” is not insulting, like “Turk” applied to
an Osmanli, or “Fellah” to the Egyptian. But you affront the wild man by
mistaking his clan for a lower one. “Ya Hitaymi,” for instance, addressed
to a Harb Badawi, makes him finger his dagger.
[FN#8] This coarseness is not a little increased by a truly Badawi
habit of washing the locks with—[Arabic]. It is not considered wholly
impure, and is also used for the eyes, upon which its ammonia would act
as a rude stimulant. The only cosmetic is clarified butter freely
applied to the body as well as to the hair.
[FN#9] “Kurun” ([Arabic]) properly means “horns.” The Sharifs generally wear
their hair in “Haffah” ([Arabic]), long locks hanging down both sides of
the neck and shaved away about a finger’s breadth round the forehead and
behind the neck.
[FN#10] This traveller describes the modern Mesopotamian and Northern
race, which, as its bushy beard—unusual feature in pure Arab blood—denotes,
is mixed with central Asian. In the North, as might be expected, the
camels are hairy; whereas, in Al-Hijaz and in the low parts of
Al-Yaman, a whole animal does not give a handful fit for weaving. The
Arabs attribute this, as we should, to heat, which causes the longer
hairs to drop off.
[FN#11] “Magnum inter Arabes et Africanos discrimen efficit [Greek].
Arabum parvula membra sicut nobilis aequi. Africanum tamen flaccum,
crassum longumque: ita quiescens, erectum tamen parum distenditur.
Argumentum validissimum est ad indagandam Egyptorum originem: Nilotica
enim gens membrum habet Africanum.”
[FN#12] Whereas the Saxon thumb is thick, flat, and short, extending
scarcely half way to the middle joint of the index.
[FN#13] A similar unwillingness to name the wife may be found in some
parts of southern Europe, where probably jealousy or possibly Asiatic
custom has given rise to it. Among the Maltese it appears in a truly
ridiculous way, e.g., “dice la mia moglie, con rispetto parlando, &c.,”
says the husband, adding to the word spouse a “saving your presence,” as if
he were speaking of something offensive.
[FN#14] Dr. Howe (Report on Idiotcy in Massachusetts, 1848,) asserts
that “the law against the marriage of relations is made out as clearly as
though it were written on tables of stone.” He proceeds to show that in
seventeen households where the parents were connected by blood, of
ninety-five children one was a dwarf, one deaf, twelve scrofulous, and
forty-four idiots—total fifty-eight diseased!
[FN#15] Yet the celebrated “Flying Childers” and all his race were
remarkably bred in.
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