The Baluchis or Biloch of Baluchistan and Western India speak an Eranian dialect akin to Persian; physically they belong to the Indo-Afghan race, but mixed with the Arabs on the south and the Jats and the Hindus on the east, with the Turks on the north and the Negroes on the south-west. The Mekrani of the coast of Baluchistan and partly of Persia are a mixture of Indo-Afghan, Assyroid, and Negro races (Fig. [134]). The Rinds (“Braves”) of the same coast of Mekran, who claim to be pure Baluchis, are only Arabs of the Kahtan tribe.[472] The nomadic Brahuis of Eastern Baluchistan, especially those of the environs of Kelat, resemble the Iranians. It is said that their language has some affinities with the Dravidian dialect. In reality, the ethnic place of this population, predominant in Baluchistan, is yet to be determined.
FIG. 134.—Natives of Mekran (Baluchistan):
on the right, Afghan type; on the left, the same with Negro intermixture.
(Phot. Lapicque.)
With the Iranian group it is customary to connect, especially from linguistic considerations, the Kurds, the Armenians, and the Ossets (p. [356]). The first-mentioned people, influenced here and there by interminglings with the Turks, physically resemble the Hajemis: sub-dolichocephalic head, 78.5 when it is not deformed (p. [176]), height above the average (1 m. 68), aquiline nose, etc. They occupy in a more or less compact mass the border-lands between Persia and Asia Minor; but they are found in isolated groups from the Turkmenian steppes (to the north of Persia) to the centre of Asia Minor (to the north-west of Lake Túz-gól). As to the Armenians or Hai, they are found in a compact body only around Lake Van and Mount Ararat, the rest being scattered over all the towns of the south-west of Asia, the Caucasus, the south of Russia, and even Galicia and Transylvania. It is a very mixed and heterogeneous ethnic group as regards physical type. The stature varies from 1 m. 63 to 1 m. 69 according to different localities, but the cephalic index is nearly uniformly brachycephalic (85 to 87). The predominant features are however formed by the Indo-Afghan, Assyroid, and perhaps Turkish and Adriatic races. Their language differs appreciably from the other Eranian tongues.[473]
2. The Semite linguistic group is represented by Arabs, Syrians, and Jews.
The Arabs occupy, besides Arabia, a portion of Mesopotamia, the shores of the Red Sea, the eastern coast of the Persian Gulf, and the north of Africa. The pure type, characterised by dolichocephaly (ceph. ind. 70), prominence of the occiput, elongated face, aquiline nose, slim body, etc., is still preserved in the south of Arabia among the Ariba Arabs, among the mountaineers of Hadramaout and Yemen (country of the ancient Himyarites or Sabeans), and among the Bedouins, descendants of the Ismaelites of the interior of Central and Northern Arabia; but the tribes which have drawn nearer the coast or the valleys of Mesopotamia show signs of interminglings with populations of a predominant Assyroid or Turkish type, without taking into account, as at Haza and on the coast of Yemen, the Negro and Ethiopic influence. Typical nomads, having in the religion founded by Mahomet a national bond of union, the Arabs make their influence widely felt over the world. Traces of the Arab type are met with not only over the whole of Northern Africa (see p. [432]), but also in Asia Minor, the Caucasus, Western Persia, in India; while numerous traces of the Arab language[474] and civilisation are found in Europe (Malta, Spain), in China, Central Asia, and in the Asiatic Archipelago. The Melkits and the Wahabits are two religious sects of Arabs.
The people of Syria and Palestine, known by the name of Syrians in the towns, of Kufar in the country, is the product of the interminglings of Arabs with descendants of Phœnicians and with Jews. It also forms the basis of numerous ethnic groups connected solely by religion, and of constituent elements often very heterogeneous: such are the Maronites of Western Lebanon, the Nestorians, the Druzes of Hermon and Djebel Hauran (Kurdish elements), among whom woman occupies a higher position than among other Asiatics; the Metouali (Shiah sect) of Tyre; the Nazareans or Ansarieh, who perhaps represent, along with the Takhtaji (Gypsy elements), the Kizilbashes and the Yezides or Yezdi (Kurdish elements) of Mesopotamia, the remains of the primitive population of Asia Minor, akin, according to Luschan, to the Armenians.[475]
The Jews are not very numerous (250,000) in Asia, and are found scattered in small groups throughout the world. Even in the country which was formerly a Jewish State, Palestine, they scarcely exceed 75,000 in number at the present day. They are found in compact groups only in the neighbourhood of Damascus, at Jerusalem, and at the foot of the mountain-chain of Safed.
It is well known that to-day the Jews are scattered over the whole earth. Their total number is estimated at eight millions, of which the half is in Russia and Rumania, a third in Germany and Austria, and a sixth in the rest of the world, even as far as Australia. The great majority of Jews are unacquainted with Hebrew, which is a dead language; they speak, according to the country they inhabit, particular kinds of jargon, the most common of which is the Judeo-German. Physically the Jews present two different types, one of which approximates to the Arab race (Fig. [21]), the other to the Assyroid. Sometimes these types are modified by the addition of elements of the populations in the midst of which they dwell;[476] but, even in these cases, many traits, such as the convex nose, vivacity of eye, frequency of erythrism (p. [50]), frizzy hair, thick under lip, inferiority of the thoracic perimeter, etc., show a remarkable persistence. The Arab type is common among the Spanish Jews who practise the Sefardi rite, among the native Jews of the Caucasus, very brachycephalic however (85.5 ceph. ind., according to Erckert and Chantre),[477] and among those of Palestine, while the Assyroid type dominates among the Jews of Asia Minor, Bosnia, and Germany. These last, like the Jews of Slav countries, practise the Askenazi rite. The Jews of Bosnia, called Spaniols, coming from Spain by Constantinople, are under average height (1 m. 63) and mesocephalic (ceph. ind. 80.1, Gluck); those of Galicia, Western Russia, and Russian Poland are shorter (1 m. 61 and 62) and sub-brachycephalic (ceph. ind. 82); those of England are of the same stature (1 m. 62), but mesocephalic (ceph. ind. 80).[478]