"The camel's milk is drunk fresh. It is pleasant to the taste, rich, and exceedingly nourishing. It is given in large quantities to the horses. The Shammar and Aneyza Bedouins have no cows or oxen, those animals being looked upon as the peculiar property of tribes who have forgotten their independence, and degraded themselves by the cultivation of land. The sheep are milked at dawn, or even before daybreak, and again in the evening on their return from the pastures. The milk is immediately turned into leben, or boiled to be shaken into butter. Amongst the Bedouins and Jebours it is considered derogatory to the character of a man to milk a cow or sheep, but not to milk the camel. The Sheikhs occasionally obtain dates from the cities. They are eaten dry with bread and leben, or fried in butter, a very favourite dish of the Bedouin...."
The practice is now the same as it was in scriptural times, when milk was looked upon as the principal article of diet, and throughout the Scriptures there are copious references to milk in different forms, some of which are of peculiar interest at the present day.
It may be noticed, for example, that milk is absent from the sacred offerings amongst the Hebrews, and this was ascribed by the late Professor Robertson Smith to the fact that all ferments were excluded from presentation at the altar,[2] it being recognised that, owing to the hot climate, milk of all kinds became rapidly sour, and in this way came to be looked upon as only fit for consumption when in that condition. It has been suggested that the prohibition referred to is on the same level as the prohibition of the use of blood, "as milk has sometimes been regarded as a kind of equivalent for blood, and containing the sacred life."[3] To this day the wandering tribes of Arabia consider the milk of their camels and flocks more refreshing when it has been slightly fermented or soured by being poured into a milk-skin on the inside of which are still sticking sour clots from the previous milking, and there shaken for a brief period; but this slightly soured milk (the Oxygala of Pliny) is known widely in the East simply as leben (milk). The name is also applied to what we term buttermilk.[4]
Kabyles Souring Milk
In the north of Africa the use of soured milk is common, and the illustration shows Kabyles shaking a skin full of milk so as to sour it. The skin has previously been used for the same operation, and, as a consequence, clots of milk are left from the previous day's use, and thus fermentation is set up.
The use of milk-skins for the carrying of milk is not confined to one country, as, while it is common all over the north of Africa, it is also known in the Pyrenees and in some parts of the Balkan Peninsula, the object being identical in each case; and when it is intended to make butter from the milk, the skin is simply rocked between the knees until the butter separates, a process of butter-making which was also used after the introduction of earthenware churns.[5] Dried soured milk is also used by the Arabs, and it is reconstituted when required by rubbing it up with a little water, and it is known as Meeresy.[6] The ordinary soured milk is the common article of diet, and is looked upon as being necessary at every meal, and travellers frequently refer to the use of this product, as a few references will show.
Amongst the peasants at the present day, soured milk is known as _yoghourt_, a word which is spelt differently according to the locality in which it is used. The method of preparation is practically the same everywhere, and a short description of the process as now carried out in one place would, with slight modifications, apply to the general method adopted all over the East.