After coffee, a platter of what the Arabs call dibs was set on the ground, with about a dozen bread-cakes like those before described. This dibs is the scum of boiled juice of grapes, in French raisiné, and has much the taste and appearance of treacle: it is a favourite dish with all the Arabs. We were invited to eat by ourselves; the emir having probably eaten before our arrival.
In the mean time, the princess, wife of Mahannah, with her daughter and her black slaves, were employed in unloading the cooking-utensils, carpets, &c., from the camels. This done, the daughter took a pickaxe in her hand, and went in search of roots for firing, the plain producing no other fuel. In about half an hour she returned, bearing an enormous load bound up in her woollen cloak, which would have fatigued the shoulders of an English porter. She was a girl of about seventeen, with tolerably good features, a muddy brown complexion, and teeth as white as snow.
Preparations were now made for supper. As the tent of the emir is the resort of all strangers who arrive from different quarters, there were seldom fewer than a dozen persons to be fed besides his own family, which was also very numerous. An immense flat boiler, containing not less than twelve gallons, was placed on the fire, and half filled with rice, water, and butter. The water collected from holes in the rock, and from puddles, and brought in goat-skins, was as muddy as that of a horsepond. The mixture was boiled until the water was evaporated, and consequently the mud incorporated. When cooked, it was served up reeking in the same boiler. It was eaten in the same manner that has been already described, a second and a third set succeeding the first: whilst the boys stood round, like so many dogs, to catch a pellet, occasionally given them by their fathers.
To conclude what may be said on the repasts of the Bedouins, it cannot be denied that they approach nearer to beasts in their manner of eating than any other people. To give an example: a horseman, on a showery day, arrives, and alights at the tent; and his first care is to dry his feet at the fire, and wipe them with his hands. Dinner or supper happens to be served at the same instant, and he seats himself to handle his food with the same fingers that have just served so nasty a purpose: it being understood that he seldom can, and never does, wash them. Is a stranger at table? Politeness demands that the host should heap up the rice in the dish before him, or, if it be meat, should tear it from the bones and hand it to him; which it would be an affront in the stranger to refuse. Does the repast consist (which is often the case) of bread and melted butter? he breaks the bread and works it up for his guest with the butter: all which operations are executed with the hands. In fine, those who have seen the Drûzes of Mount Lebanon devour raw meat, or the chimney-sweepers of London swallow black pudding, still have never witnessed such a meal as the repasts of the Bedouins.
Coffee was served, pipes were lighted, and, as we were just arrived from Hamah, whence we were supposed to have brought tobacco with us, we had much ado to withstand the bold and frequent requests to fill the pipes of our neighbours. A conversation on the politics of the plain concluded the evening. The prince retired to his wife, while the rest of the party betook themselves, each on the spot where he sat, to sleep; merely drawing his cloak over his face, and putting his wallet under his head, both to serve as a pillow, and to prevent its being pilfered.
An Arab never undresses but to clean himself from vermin. The clothes he has he wears until they either fall off his back in rags, or fresh plunder, or a present from his chief, supplies him with a better suit. Few of them have more than a shirt and a sheepskin pelisse—going without frock, stockings, and boots. These three latter articles, indeed, not many can afford, and many care not for. Their sheepskin is of the greatest use to them, serving instead of a bed to sleep on, and as a covering from wet and cold at all seasons.
It may not be improper to say a few words in order that it may be better understood by the reader what the title Emir implies. Mahannah el Fadel might be said to command that tract of country which extends from Hamah down to Damascus, and backwards as far as Palmyra, perhaps beyond; but it is impossible for a stranger to learn or mark out any precise boundaries for a people, the nature of whose possessions, and even of whose existence, is so uncertain, both from the vicissitudes of their fortune, and from their wandering habits. He was chieftain of the tribe of the Melhem, and had in subjection to him other tribes, all of which go by the general name of Anizy Arabs. What the nature of his authority over them was I could not ascertain; such as it was, he succeeded to it at his father’s death, not as an hereditary right, but from the preponderance that his family had had the art to secure to itself. This preponderance seems to be owing to several causes; for the family was very numerous, and succeeding emirs had the means, by various intermarriages with the rich shaykhs of the tribe, to combine a vast extent of interests in the chief of it.
But, although a prince, Mahannah did not seem to be a single jot more polished than his meanest herdsman. Perhaps any excess of urbanity, any appearance of dignity, would only tend, among a rude people, to weaken his power instead of strengthening it: on common occasions he was, therefore, but one of the herd. His tent was larger but had not more splendour; his mare was not more richly caparisoned than that of others, nor did he seem to me to be distinguished by his external appearance from that of the commonest Bedouins round him. Equality, no doubt, does not reign among them; but how far the assumption of much authority would be followed by the desertion of such as thought themselves oppressed by it, I will not venture to say. The security which laws afford the weak against the strong certainly does not exist here in the same extent as in cities, and all the boasted advantages of their seeming equality only enable the aggrieved to retire from the aggressor.
Neither did the dignity we may attribute to the person of a chieftain seem better protected. Had a Bedouin presumed to insult Mahannah, had he dared to dispute his commands, where was the remedy? He might, indeed, as he was often said to do, in the fury of passion, inflict the chastisement which the culprit merited with his own hand, or he might brood over the insult until an opportunity occurred of revenging it. There was no protection against theft but watchfulness, no surety against murder but that worst of all laws, the law of retaliation.
Mahannah levied a toll of about the value of eighteen-pence a head, and two dollars for each camel-load on all caravans that passed through or by his territory. I was told that he annually received a present of six shillings a head from all the merchants of Damascus, Aleppo, and the towns between them. He levied contributions of corn, of provisions, of dress, upon the villages of the desert, such as Palmyra (which is said to pay him one thousand five hundred piasters in money, and to the same amount in clothes), Carietayn, Sedad, and others. Hamah paid him 150 camel-loads of wheat, which he generally distributed among his friends. Besides this, he scrupled not, when his necessities were pressing, to demand of the governors or rich individuals with whom he was friendly, articles of dress, horses, and the like: nor did he fail, generally, to weary the liberality of his most generous friends.