and Negroes. They are slightly made, and helow the middle size, yet hardy and
untiring in whatever they attempt. Cruelty and selfishness are their characteristic
traits, and they possess also the vices which flow from ignorance and bigotry.
The Saracens, so celebrated for their conquests, first occupied the country
between Mecca and the Euphrates; hut they spread themselves rapidly over
Africa, and soon established their kingdom in Spain, whence they were not
expelled until the sixteenth century, after a dominion .of seven hundred years.
The Saracens, who are no longer known as a nation, surpassed the contemporary
Arabians in the cultivation of literature, science and art.
The Bedouins, whose original country is northern Arabia, are among the
most primitive and characteristic people of this family. Some of their tribes pass
the spring and summer on the frontiers of Syria, seeking pasture and water: in
the autumn they purchase their winter provision of wheat and barley, and return
after the first rains into the interior of the desert. Tribes of this family inhabit
or rather ambulate the district of Balbec, and the vicinity of Homs and Palmyra.
a few pay tribute to the Pasha of Damascus, but most of them acknowledge no
superior. “The Aenzes, a powerful Bedouin tribe, are easily distinguished from
the Shemal Arabs by their diminutive size, few of them being above five feet two
or three inches in height: their features are good, their noses often aquiline, their
persons extremely well formed, and not so meagre or slight as some travellers
have reported; their deep-set. dark eyes sparkle from under their bushy black
eyebrows, with a fire unknown in our northern climes; their beard is short and
thin, but the black hair of all abundantly thick. The females seem taller in
proportion than the men; their features in general are handsome, and their deportment
very graceful. In complexion these Arabs are very tawny; the children,
however, at their birth are fair, but of a livid whiteness.”* They are a nation of
robber-shepherds, among whom wealth creates no influence, for the chief and
the meanest Arab eat daily of the same dishes, partake of the same privations, and
mingle in the same amusements. Like all Arabs they are passionately fond of
music and poetry, but whole tribes of them can neither read nor write. They
are highly courageous, but they fight rather for the acquisition of plunder than
for the love of glory.
The Wahabys, so celebrated in r e c en t times for having overrun and ,conquered
all Arabia, were at first a mere tribe of sectarian Bedouins, who derived their
name from a favorite chief. Their creed has been defined “ a mussulman puritan*
Burkhardt, Bedouins and Wahabys, p. 28.
ism and a Bedouin government, in which the great chief is both the political and
religious leader of the nation, exercising his authority in the same manner as the
followers of Mohammed did over his converted countrymen.”* Yet their chief
sectarian distinction appears to he their hostility to the domes of the mosques, and
to ornamented tombs, which they uniformly destroy with fanatical zeal. In their
moral character the Wahabys are no better than the other Bedouins.
The-Bedouins claim lineal descent from Ishmael. They are not only spread
over nearly all Arabia to the confines of Persia, hut across the entire continent of
Africa to the Atlantic ocean. They skirt the Mediterranean on the north, and
thence rove almost to the centre of the African continent. Even the territory of
Houssa is said to derive its social character from the numerous Arabs who inhabit
it. Change of locality and the lapse of time have effected no change in the habits
of this people, who, in the time of Diodorus, were forbidden by their laws “ to
sow corn, to plant fruit trees, to make use of wine, or to inhabit houses,” in order
that there might he nothing to tempt the avaricg of an enemy. They who
plundered all nations, provided against a like calamity to themselves.
The Jews or Hebrews were in their origin a pastoral nation, hut in progress
of time they established themselves in the cities of Palestine. Their physiognomy
is familiar in the receding forehead, the elongated face, and the large and aquiline
nose. Their high attainments in literature are fully attested by the sacred
writings; and their zealous attachment to their religion, and their patient endurance
of adversity, are among the most striking traits of their character. Dispersed
by a divine judgment, they are to he found almost every where on the habitable
earth, recognised by the same features, and the same undeviating form of worship.
Travellers describe a colony of black Jews at Cochin and Cranganore, in
Malabar: they, ho we vér, are not Jews by nation, hut only by conversion. The
date of their original apostacy is very ancient: they are, in fact, Hindoos in all
respects hut their religion; and Mr. Wolff informs us that “ even at this time
many of the Hindoos become converts to Judaism.”!
The Hebrews are supposed to be derived from the Chaldeans, an elder
branch of this race, whose capitol, Babylon, is among the proverbial wonders of
antiquity. Belonging to the same stock, were thé Idumeans, or Edomites,!
renowned for their dwellings excavated from the solid rock, and other architectural
remains in the recently revealed city of Petra.
* Burkhardt, Bedouins and Wahabys, p. 274. t Missionary Researches, p. 308.
% Called also the Nabathean Arabs.
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