The above sketch is intended rather to draw attention to a people well worthy of study than to form an exhaustive account of their manners and customs. In language, in dress, in religion, and in customs, they represent in the nineteenth century a living picture of that peasantry amongst whom Christ went about doing good; and, indeed, the resemblance is equally striking when they are compared with the earlier inhabitants of the land, from the days of Samuel downwards; and the parallel is so remarkable that it seems justifiable to dub the Fellahîn by the simple title of “modern Canaanites.”
CHAPTER XXII.
THE BEDAWÎN.
THE last two chapters have been devoted to the settled population of the villages in Palestine, the antiquity of the race being evidenced by the language and customs. The peasantry must not be confounded with the Bedawîn or nomadic tribes, living in the uncultivated districts; for the two nations are quite separate branches of the Semitic people, and they themselves acknowledge the distinction. The Bedawi speaks with the greatest contempt of the Fellâh, and rarely, if ever, do intermarriages occur, as both sides would consider themselves degraded by the alliance. The Fellahîn call the nomadic people Arabs, and the nomads call themselves Bedawîn, both names being derived from their place of abode—the wild lands of the broad southern and eastern plateaux.
The narrow peninsula of cultivated hills, in which the settled population lives, is surrounded by the broad sea of desert, over which the Arab delights to roam. Thus from the great Moab plateau and from the mountains of Gilead, from the southern Desert of Wanderings, and from the western plain of Sharon, the wave of nomadic life is constantly lapping against the mountains of the Fellahîn. This wave has its ebb and flow, which even in the last five years has been very marked. In time of peace the Government is strong, and the Arabs are driven back to the deserts; but in time of war the outlying encampments of the great eastern and southern tribes encroach upon the village lands, and the armed horsemen extort blackmail from the border towns and hamlets. On the whole, however, the settled people seem to be gaining ground, and especially in Lower Galilee; in the Sharon Plain the Bedawîn are mere shadows of their forefathers, only a few miserable tents of degraded Arabs, whom the peasants call “cousins of the gipsies,” being left to represent the once powerful tribes which, under Akil Agha, were the terror of Palestine. These small encampments, surrounded as they are in Philistia by the arable land, resemble the pools left by the retreating tide on the shore of the sea, which, unless the wave return, must gradually disappear.
The time-honoured conflict between two races is noticed, as it is almost unnecessary to observe, in the Bible records. The Arabs are mentioned in the Old Testament (Neh. iv. 7), and the hosts of Midian, with their countless camels, were no doubt the ancestors of the modern Bedawîn. The nomadic people are most interesting to the student of the earlier Jewish history, before the consolidation of the nation in Samuel’s time; for if among the peasantry we find a vivid picture of the life and customs of the later period, it is from the Bedawîn that we learn most that can throw light on the Patriarchal times, and on the life of Abraham and of his immediate descendants.
A study of the Arabs is carried on under difficulties west of Jordan. The great tribes are found either east of the river, or in the desert of the Tih, and in order to form a really good estimate of Arab character, it would be necessary to live in these remote districts for many years, following the migrations of one of the great tribes. The Arabs of the Jordan Valley are probably not of pure blood, and seem in some cases to have been mixed up with negroes, flying to the deserts from Damascus and other towns. The tribes are very small and scattered; many are offshoots of the Sugr and ’Anezeh nations, whose countless tents stretch away far into the Eastern desert; others have migrated from the north, and one tribe—the Tâ’amireh—is of Fellâh origin, though now nomadic.