The Horses of the Sahara and the Manners of the Desert

by E.‏ Daumas

THE ARAB ARISTOCRACY.

"Take a thorny shrub," said the Emir Abd-el-Kader to me one day, "and water it for a whole year with rose-water, and it will still yield nothing but thorns. But take a date-tree, and leave it without water, without cultivation, and it still will produce dates." From the Arab point of view the nobles are this date-tree, and the common people that thorny shrub. In the East, great faith is placed in the power of blood and in the virtue of race. The aristocracy is regarded not only as a social necessity, but as an absolute law of nature. No one ever dreams of revolting against this truism, which is accepted by all with a placid resignation. The head is the head and the tail the tail, is what the lowest of the Arab shepherds would say.

In addition to this long descended and sacred nobility composed of the sherifs, or descendants of the Prophet, there are two distinct classes of aristocracy—the one the aristocracy of religion, the other the aristocracy of the sword. The marabouts and the djouad—for such are their designations—the former deriving their position from their piety, the latter from their courage, the former from prayer, the latter from battle, regard each other with an implacable hatred. The djouad reproach the marabouts with the offences which in all countries are eagerly attributed to religious orders that aim at the direction of human affairs. They accuse them of ambition, of intriguing, of underhand proceedings, and of an insatiable covetousness for the good things of the earth masked by a pretended love of Allah and of Heaven. One of their proverbs declares "From the zaouïa[^[94]] a serpent is ever issuing." From this it appears that the Arabs, while chaunting the praises of the aristocracy, do not hesitate, sound Believers as they are, to speak the truth with regard to their priesthood. The marabouts, on the other hand, charge the djouad with violence, rapine, and impiety. This last accusation furnishes them with a terrible weapon of offence. They stand in the same relation towards their rivals as did the clergy of the Middle Ages towards the lay nobles who, notwithstanding the imposing appearance of their warlike power, could yet be reached by an anathema. In like manner, if the djouad exercise an influence over the people through the memory of perils encountered and blood shed, and all the prestige of military achievements, the marabouts on their part are armed with the omnipotence of religious faith acting on popular imagination. More than once has a marabout, feared or loved by the people, imperilled the power and even the life of a djieud.[^[95]] Nevertheless it is the djieud whom I now propose to portray, because the life of the desert is especially the life of the warrior. To exhibit at one glance a noble of the Sahara in all the pomp, noise, and animation of his existence, it is necessary to depict the interior of a great tent at the moment when the day begins, from eight o'clock to noon.

The poets of antiquity have many a time described the crowd of clients who were wont to inundate the porticoes of a patrician palace in ancient Rome. A great tent in the desert in these days resembles in its way the luxurious mansions painted by Horace and Juvenal. Gravely seated on a carpet, with that dignified demeanour which is the peculiar privilege of Orientals, the chief of the tribe receives in their turn all who come to invoke his authority. This one complains of a neighbour who has endeavoured to seduce his wife, that one accuses a wealthy man of refusing to pay a debt, another is anxious to recover some cattle that have been stolen from him, while a fourth demands protection for his daughter whom a brutal husband maltreats in the most shameful manner. The first quality in a chief is patience. Assailed on all sides by violent recriminations, he lends an attentive ear to each, and strives to heal the wounds of every description which are disclosed to him. "A man in authority," says an eastern apophthegm, "ought to imitate the physicians who never apply the same remedies to all diseases." In these "beds of justice" that recall the primitive manner in which our ancient kings disposed of the private interests of their subjects, the Arab chief employs the utmost sagacity, the greatest force of character, with which he may have been endowed. To some he gives orders, to others advice: to no one does he refuse the aid of his wisdom and influence. Nor has he need only of the quality that Solomon demanded of the Lord. Wisdom must be combined with generosity and valour. The highest praise that can be awarded is to say of him that "his sabre is always drawn, his hand always open." He must never weary of practising the somewhat ostentatious, and yet at the same time noble and touching, charity, enjoined by the Mussulman law as an obligation on all Believers. His tent must be a refuge for the unfortunate, nor may any one die of hunger in his neighbourhood; for the Prophet hath said: "Allah will never accord his mercy but to the merciful. Believers, give alms, if it be only the half of a date. Whoso gives alms to-day shall be amply recompensed to-morrow."

If a warrior loses the horse that was his sole strength, if a family is robbed of the flocks that furnished its subsistance, it is to the chief, and to the chief alone, the sufferers address themselves. However strong may be the love of pelf, it never goes so far as to make him risk the loss of his influence; and the Arab noble, while in so many respects resembling the Baron of the Middle Ages, differs from him in one essential point—he abhors gambling. Neither cards nor dice ever wile away the leisure hours in a tent. An Arab chief may neither indulge in play, nor lend money at usurious rates of interest. The only way in which he may turn his money to account, is by indirect participation in some commercial enterprise. He hands over a certain sum to a merchant, who trades with it, and, at the end of so many years, divides with the lender the profits he has gathered. It must not, however, be supposed that riches are therefore despised by Orientals. With them, as in every other part of the world, wealth is one of the indispensable conditions of power. Whoever falls into poverty, falls also very quickly into obscurity, while he who makes a fortune enters upon the path of honours. But, in order to follow out an ambitious career, it is by the right arm rather than by industry that wealth must be acquired. When a warrior has made a number of razzias that have brought him at the same time glory and gold, he is surnamed Ben-Deraou, "the son of his arm," and may aspire to the highest dignities of the tribe. This brings us back to the quality which should be the groundwork of every noble Arab's soul—valour.

"Nothing," said Abd-el-Kader, "throws out so well as blood the dazzling whiteness of a burnous." An Arab chief, like our captains in the olden times, should be more valiant than all his men at arms. He must distinguish himself by warlike feats as much as by his bearing at fantasias. His influence would be for ever lost if he were suspected of faintness of heart. But it is the reality, not the appearance, which the Arabs appreciate. What they admire is a spirit nobly tempered, and not the frame of a mere giant, or athlete. This is the place to combat the widely spread prejudice that a lofty stature and bodily strength make a deep impression upon them. Such is far from being the case. They take pleasure in man's being robust, patient of thirst and hunger, and capable of enduring severe fatigue; but they care very little for tallness of stature, or for muscular force like that of our porters, or showman's Hercules. They reserve their esteem for activity, address, and courage. It little matters to them whether a man be tall or short; and not unfrequently, while looking at some Colossus whose huge proportions are being vaunted in their presence, they may be heard to murmur sententiously: "What to us is the stature or strength! Let us see the heart. After all, it may be only the skin of a lion on the back of a cow."

But notwithstanding this admiration of valour, there is no point of honour among the Arabs such as prevails among ourselves. In their eyes there is no cowardice in retreating before superior numbers, or even in fleeing before an enemy of inferior strength, if there is nothing to be gained by fighting. They often laugh among themselves at our chivalrous scruples. Fond as they are of riding at furious speed, and of the noisy discourse of fire-arms, they nevertheless desire to have some object of public utility as their motive for battle. Full of ardour so long as Fortune leads them on, they disperse and disappear as soon as she betrays them. In forming, therefore, their judgment of acts of bravery, there are many essential points of difference between them and ourselves. Their respect for courage never urges them to excessive severity towards those who are deficient in that quality. A coward will never rise to any post of dignity in his tribe, but neither will he be an object of contempt. They will merely say of him, with that absence of anger which usually accompanies fatalism: "It was not the will of Allah that he should be brave. He is to be pitied rather than blamed." A man of faint heart is expected, however, to redeem his shortcomings by the prudence of his counsels, and above all by an unfailing generosity.

Braggadocio is treated with greater contempt than cowardice. "If thou sayest that the lion is an ass, go and put a halter on him," is an oriental proverb in very general use. In spite of the heat of their blood and the hyperbolical character of their speech, the Arabs demand from true courage that dignified silence which they regard so highly. In this respect they have nothing in common with the nations with whom they fought in the time of the Cid; nor yet under the head of single combats, which are entirely unknown among them. A tradition, which probably dates from the crusades, asserts that in the olden time illustrious chiefs met each other in single combat, but the oldest members of the tribes of the present day have no personal recollection of anything of the kind. If a man deems himself seriously affronted, he avenges himself by assassination. There are individuals with easy consciences and complacent dispositions who, for a very moderate sum, will rid you of an enemy. But if the aggrieved happens to be more sparing of his gold than of his life—his hand being more ready to strike than his purse to open—he watches his opportunity to fall upon the man who has wronged him. He kills him, or is killed by him. In the former case it is a common thing to bequeath to another the debt of blood; for, in the absence of duelling, private revenge is in a very flourishing condition among the Arabs, and descends from generation to generation. Among them still prevail those family feuds which formerly dyed red the pavements of Italian cities, and which even in the present day stain the soil of an island of France.

The ordinary causes of the Arab vendetta are disputes as to wells, pasturage and landmarks, the rape of a young wife or daughter, the murder of a jealous husband, of a successful rival, or of a woman who has refused compliance,—or rivalries of chiefs, whose quarrel is espoused, first of all, by their relations, friends, and clients, then by the whole tribe, and at last by the tribes in alliance with them. As a natural consequence of the absence of the duello, private disputes are settled by assassination, and the feud, being transmitted from kin to kin and constantly provided with new fuel, goes on to eternity. The vendetta is either of a private or public nature, according as the injury to be avenged affects an individual or a tribe. If from any cause a man happen to lose his life through the act of a chief, or even of a humble member of a neighbouring tribe, the homicide can arrange the affair legally by paying the dya, or blood money, to the heirs of the deceased. The dya is the same as the Wehrgeld of the Germans, with this difference—that not only is it legal, but from its first institution it assumed a religious character. According to the tolbas, it may be traced back to Abd-el-Mettaleb, the grandfather of Mohammed, and was indirectly the cause of the birth of the Prophet. Abd-el-Mettaleb, chief of the tribe of the Koreishites, had no children, and in his despair he offered up the following prayer to Allah: "Lord, if thou wilt bestow upon me ten sons, I swear to sacrifice one of them unto thee as a thanksgiving offering." Allah heard his prayer and made him ten times a father. Faithful to his vow, Abd-el-Mettaleb left it to the drawing of lots to decide who should be the victim. The lot fell upon Abd-Allah; but, the tribe opposing this sacrifice, it was resolved by the chiefs that, instead of Abd-Allah, ten camels should be set aside as a stake and recourse again had to lots until they turned up in favour of the lad, ten camels being added to the first for every time the lots had been unfavourable. It was not until the eleventh trial that Abd-Allah was redeemed, and one hundred camels were sacrificed in his place. Some time afterwards Allah manifested His satisfaction with this exchange, for He caused Mohammed his Prophet to be born to Abd-Allah; and ever since then the price of an Arab's life has been fixed at one hundred camels. Circumstances, however, sometimes occur to reduce this high standard.

There is scarcely an instance on record of a homicide who has paid the dya being otherwise proceeded against, or of the parents or the children of the deceased hesitating to accept this satisfaction. But if he be too poor to pay it, or if the Government has thought fit to interfere in the matter, he is condemned to suffer like for like, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life. When I was consul for France at Mascara, in 1837, accredited to Abd-el-Kader, I had an opportunity of witnessing the application of the lex talionis in its utmost rigour. Two children having quarrelled in the street, their fathers interposed, and from insults proceeded to threats, until one of them, gradually becoming infuriated, drew his knife and stabbed his adversary, who fell down dead upon the spot. The latter received five wounds; one on his right, a second on his left, breast, two in the stomach, and the fifth in the back. A mob collected, and the shaoushs, or police agents seized the murderer and led him before the hakem, or mayor of the town. The aoulemas, or doctors of the law, immediately assembled, and constituted themselves a tribunal. In less than half an hour the witnesses were heard, and the culprit was sentenced to undergo the full penalty of the lex talionis at the hands of his victim's brother. At a signal given by the Cadi, two shaoushs bound his wrists together with a rope, and, placing themselves on either side of him, conducted him, preceded by the executioner, to the market-place, thronged at the time by two or three thousand Arabs. However horrible might be the singular drama about to be acted, it furnished me with an opportunity for a rare experience, and I succeeded in overcoming the instinctive repugnance, which I at first felt, to being present. By the time I reached the spot, the shaoushs, by dint of freely plying their sticks, had forced back the crowd to the circumference of a spacious circle, the centre of which was occupied by the executioner and his victim, the one with his knife in his hand, the other calm and indifferent to what was about to happen. According to the sentence, the murderer was to receive as many stabs as he had inflicted, and in the same order and in the same parts of the body as the man he had murdered. When all was ready,—and the preparations were merely what I have described,—a shaoush raised his staff, by way of signal. The Arab with the knife immediately rushed on his victim, and stabbed him first on the right and then on the left breast, but evidently without touching the heart, for the poor wretch cried aloud: "Strike! Strike! But think not that it is thou who takest my life. Allah alone takes away life." The punishment, however, was continued with horrible fury, and the criminal, whose entrails protruded from two fresh wounds he received in the belly, never ceased to revile his executioner. There still remained one other blow to give. The wounded man turned round of himself, and the blade of the knife disappeared entirely in his loins. He staggered, but did not fall. "Enough! Enough!" cried the mob. "He gave only five blows, and he ought not to receive more." The execution was over, and the unfortunate man who underwent all this torture had still sufficient strength to return to his own house on foot. M. Warnier, physician to the consulate, arrived there almost at the same instant as himself, and while he was endeavouring to sew together the gaping mouths of the two wounds in the belly, the patient kept crying aloud: "Oh! I pray you, heal me! They say thou art a great physician; prove it, heal me, so that I may kill that dog!" It was all in vain, for that night he died.