—rghy
bzfa
tsḳu
thshki
jṣlâ
ḥḍmû
khṭnî
dḍh or ẓh
dh w

The use of y final and of ô as aids to pronunciation will be of obvious import. When a foreign word occurs in the book for the first time it is put in italics.

CONTENTS

Chapter I
Introductory. Remarks on the country of Western Palestine: historical, topographical and geological; distances, levels, rock composition, hills, valleys, caves, soil, etc. The waters: rivers, lakes, the watershed, the Shephelah, ponds, springs, cisterns, reservoirs and pools. The seasons: wet and dry, the rainfall, sun, drought, the weather according to the months, effect on health and on food supply, harvest. The winds. Flora: trees and flowers. Fauna: wild animals, birds. Scenery: appearance of cities and villages in Palestine. Sites, buildings, gardens, roads, paths, wilderness, agricultural matters, ripening fruit, vineyards, care of the soil, walls, watch-towers, terraces, orchards, olives, figs, pomegranates, etc.Page [11].
Chapter II
General characteristics of the population of Palestine. The Bedawîn or nomads. The village and its people. Moslems and Christians: their distribution, their mutual relations. Description of the peasant man and the peasant woman.Page [43].
Chapter III
Village Life. Introductory. The tribe: how constituted, its fellowship and significance. The family within the tribe. Importance of a strong family. Marriage in family and tribe: marriage settlement, qualities of a good wife, customs and ceremonies preliminary to marriage, wedding festivities and the celebration. The status of the new wife. An anomalous state of affairs. A disappointed lover. Children: boyhood and girlhood, importance of sons, birth, announcing the newly-born, naming the child. The midwife, care of babies, attention to children in health and in sickness, clothing, growing up, play, amusements and work, training. Family and personal names.Page [51].
Chapter IV
Village Life. The houses of the peasants: structure, arrangement, conveniences, utensils and furnishings. Foods: their preparation and storing, eating customs. Costumes; male attire, female attire. Household industry: division of labor between members, women’s work, house, oven, field and wilderness. Health data: poverty and superstition as foes to health, treatment of the sick, common ailments, diseases, hospitals and medical assistance. The dumb and the blind. Treatment of the insane, the leprous. Death, mourning, burial, graves. The cholera and its ravages in Palestine in 1902, attendant evils, famine and quarantines.Page [75].
Chapter V
Village Life. Religion. The religious basis of the peasant life. Country shrines venerated by the peasantry, saints, tombs, lamps, ruined churches, mosks, reverence for patriarchs and prophets, sacred trees. Superstitions concerning localities, minor superstitions, hair, doorways, food, evil eye. Prayer of women. Fatalism. Moslem prayer. Neby Mûsâ procession. Ramaḍân, Bairam. Eastern and Western Churches, organization, priesthood. Fasts, feasts, proselyting. The Samaritans and their Passover.Page [110].
Chapter VI
Village Life. Business. The Palestine peasant as a worker. Farming the first business of the village. The transition from the life of the nomad to the life of the peasant. Fellaḥîn. Land holdings and titles. Farming rights. Crops and sowing, work animals and their management, care of the standing crops, tares, mists, simultaneous reapings, harvest-time, threshing and cleaning. Grape season, vineyard districts, use of the fruit, raisins, export trade in raisins, care of vineyards, watch-towers in vineyards and orchards. The olive crop and its care. Flocks of sheep and goats, the young, varieties, the shepherd. The wool business and kindred industries, spinning and weaving. Undeveloped agricultural possibilities. The village market, shops, stores, bargaining and trade customs, measures and weights, currency, accounts, money-lending, village crier, the go-between, the shaykhs in business capacity. Transport and travel in the country, roads and vehicles. Stone and building trades, the materials and the tools. Miscellaneous trades, peasants in the city for business or for hire, dealers in antiquities and their ways.Page [130].
Chapter VII
Village Life. Social privileges and customs. The elements that contribute to these, kinship, religious association, party traditions, proximity. Predominance of kinship as a factor. The influence of religion as a factor. Diversions of the peasant, conversation and the amenities, calling and calls. Greetings, salutations, colloquial address, business talk and discussion. Guest-house and its uses, coffee-making, food for guests. A roofing-bee. Play, games, celebrations. Hunting. Gipsies. Quarrels as an anti-social and social factor. Revenge, etc.Page [158].
Chapter VIII
Village Life. Intellectual matters. The state of learning, revival, services of the press in the Levant. Education, schools, missionary influence. Languages heard in the country, native and foreign. The peasant’s pride in his mother tongue. The Arabic language, its beauty and symmetry, literature, dialects, idioms, colloquialisms, exclamatory remarks, gestures, curses, proverbs.Page [170].
Chapter IX
Village life in the concrete. Description of actual villages, Râm Allâh and el-Bîreh.Page [187].
Chapter X
Village life in the concrete, continued, with some village environs. Eṭ-Ṭîreh, Khullet el-‛Adas, ‛Ayn ‛Arîk, Kefr Shiyân, ‛Ayn Ṣôba, Baytîn, Khurbet el-Moḳâtîr, Dayr Dîwân, eṭ-Ṭayyibeh, Jifnâ, ‛Ayn Sînyâ, Bîr ez-Zayt, ‛Âbûd, Mukhmâs.Page [213].
Chapter XI
The village in its external relations. Attitude of villagers to the city and city people, now and formerly. Administration of the village from the city. The peasant and the government, taxes, private and official settlement of disputes. Postal service, native and foreign, telegraph. Passage of news and rumor. Travel, hindrances, quarantines, coastwise shipping, railway travel, peasant travel, pilgrimage travel, Russian pilgrims and the peasantry, other European pilgrim parties, tourists, traveling passes, transference of parcels, baggage, money, banking, consular service, the desire of the natives to emigrate.Page [225].
Chapter XII
Recent events. Effects of the revolution. Syrians and the World War. Syrian ability. Schools and education. The new administration; certain functions and methods. Archæological interests. The Arabian problem. Arabia and its people, social customs, politics, poets, prophet and religion.Page [242].

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
A Siloam Woman, Her Infant on Her Back and Produce on Her Head[Frontispiece]
River Auja of Jaffa[20]
Donkey at the Threshing Floor With a Load of Wheat[28]
Wild Anemones From Wady El-Kelb[32]
A Vineyard at Râm Allâh[36]
Râm Allâh Man and a Basket of Olives[38]
Stretch of Olive Trees on Road to Ayn Sînyâ[38]
A Bedawy House[42]
Bedawy Drinking[42]
Peasants on Way to Market With Produce[44]
Bedawin Horseman[44]
Woman’s Work[48]
Bringing Home the Bridal Trousseau[54]
Girls at Play Carrying Headloads of Grass in Imitation of the Women[54]
Washing a Child[58]
A Swaddled Infant[58]
Three Kinds of Houses—Mud, Dry-Stone, Stone-and-Mortar[68]
Household Utensils[76]
Bread-Making Utensils[82]
In a Dooryard. Women Cleaning Wheat[94]
On Top of an Oven. Women Sifting Wheat[94]
Pottery[114]
On the Way to Jerusalem. For the Neby Musa Procession[126]
A Neby Musa Contingent Arriving Within the Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem[126]
Farming Implements[130]
A Sower[132]
Children Gleaning[132]
Threshing[140]
A Threshing Scene in the Old Pool at Bethel[140]
1. Hand Spinning 2. Reeling 3. Straightening Threads For Loom[142]
Various Articles Made of Skin: Bottles, Bags, Pouches and Buckets[150]
A Market Scene: Peasantry Near David’s Tower, Jerusalem[154]
Women at the Spring[164]
Fountain at Nazareth[164]
A House-Roofing Bee (Et Tayyibeh)[172]
A Râm Allâh Matron at Her own door[187]
Camel Carrying a Rope Net Filled With Clay Jars[194]
Râm Allâh, as Entered by the Sinuous, Walled Lane From the East[194]
Little Girls of the Village[196]
The Village of Râm Allâh and Outlying Vineyards[204]
El-Bireh (From the South)[212]
Vineyards and Stone Watch Towers[220]
Peasant Plowing[220]
Primitive Rug Weaving (Bedawin)[230]
Straw Mat and Basket Making: Jifna Woman[230]

The PEASANTRY of

PALESTINE