Sid Abdallah-ben-Jemet, the famed Marabout, at whose tomb the Khrumirs assembled to oppose the French when these arrived in 1881, is, like many others, celebrated for the cure of fevers. One protects the crops, another is the special patron of fountains. In short, all these Marabouts are worshipped as lesser gods. Beneath Islamism, idolatry flourishes as in olden days; the gods have merely changed their names.
Amongst the Khrumirs, family ties are very slack, woman being regarded as a mere beast of burden. Marriage can be dissolved with the greatest facility. In many tribes a man can take to himself a wife without the intervention of any sort of authority. When the price agreed on—generally a pair of oxen—is paid, the man takes his bride home, and then invites the elders of his tribe to a banquet.
Among the Ushetta a peculiar custom holds. After their feast is concluded, the bridegroom and his friends plunder all the tents of the “duar” for edibles for another meal—continuing until they can find nothing more to devour.
The woman is usually bought without her consent being asked, and it often occurs that, just after a daughter’s marriage, the father will request the bridegroom to return the bride, as in the meantime another man has offered for her a higher price. Thus he sometimes gets double payment, as, when a couple is compelled to separate, the purchase money is not returned.
The intellectual condition of this people is of the narrowest. Scarcely a hundred can be found who can read, and few can count up to a hundred. Neither have they any knowledge of what has occurred in their own country even within the last century. Their industrial arts are primitive; even pottery-making is unknown.
The Khrumirs are extremely quarrelsome, and are always fighting among themselves. No market or feast can pass without blood being shed.
The abduction of women by armed men is common. The comparatively unattached existence of the women facilitates illegal connections. A great number of these nomads have, therefore, as mistresses married women, either in their own “duar,” or in the neighbourhood.
A Khrumir will rove at times both far and wide, and even in winter will brave snow and bad weather to reach his beloved. Formerly death was the punishment inflicted on a woman whose guilt was discovered; since the French occupation they do not venture to kill her, but she is severely chastised, or sometimes handed over to her lover, who is forced to pay to the betrayed husband the sum for which he bought her. Still women continue now, as formerly, to be the primary cause of many a murder.
For “to die in your bed” the Ushetta say “to die like a donkey.”
The vendetta with all its consequences prevails to a greater extent than in Corsica.