Even a forty-room palace is none too large for Auda, who has not been strictly abstemious in his nuptial aspirations. In fact he is noted throughout Arabia for his reckless polygamy. Every Mohammedan is permitted to have four wives at one time—if he can support them. Old Auda has been married twenty-eight times and is ambitious to raise that record to fifty before he dies. But in spite of his numerous marriages he has only one son living. All the others have been killed in raids and feuds. Young Mohammed Abu Tayi was eleven years old when I saw him, but so undersized that his father could pick him up by the scruff of the neck and swing him into the saddle on his camel with one hand. When the caravan was on the march at night, his father, afraid that Mohammed when asleep would fall off the camel, often picked him up and stuffed him into one of his own saddle-bags, where the boy would spend the night. The youngster fought beside his father and Colonel Lawrence through the whole Arabian campaign.
Auda’s enthusiasm in making the Turks his enemies to the nth power—pouring into the cause all the hatred he had reserved for personal feuds—brought many of the tribes to Lawrence’s personal standard. Lawrence once remarked that Auda was somewhat like Cæsar in his ability to keep around him a free country of faithful friends, and around that a great ring of enemies. Even the renowned Nuri Shalaan, as well as many other powerful chiefs friendly to Auda, were in constant terror lest they should offend him.
The Howeitat tribe was formerly under the control of Ibn Rashid and his tribe, which long roamed the North Arabian Desert. Later, under the leadership of Ibn Jazi, the tribe broke up into discordant sections. The Abu Tayi subsection is the joint work of Auda, the fighting man, and Mohammed el Dheilan, the thinker. Ibn Jazi mistreated a Sherari guest of Auda’s, and the proud and hospitable chief was infuriated. In the fifteen-year feud that followed, Annad, Auda’s eldest son and the pride of his heart, was killed. This feud between the two sections of the Howeitat was one of Feisal’s greatest difficulties in the operations around Akaba and Maan. It drove Hamed el Arar, the Ibn Jazi leader of today, into the arms of the Turks, while Saheiman Abu Tayi and the rest of the subtribe went to El Wejh to join Lawrence and Feisal. Auda made peace with his sworn enemies at the request of Feisal, and it was the hardest thing the old man ever had to do in his life. The death of Annad killed all his hopes and ambitions for the Abu Tayi and has made his life seem a bitter failure. But Feisal ruled that his followers were to have no more blood-feuds and no Arab enemies except the adherents of Ibn Rashid in North Arabia, who have carried on perpetual and bitter warfare with all the other tribes of the desert. Feisal’s success in burying the innumerable hatchets of the Hedjaz is pregnant with promise. In all Arab minds a shereef now stands above tribes, men, sheiks and tribal jealousies. A shereef now exercises the prestige of peacemaker and independent authority.
CHAPTER XIV
KNIGHTS OF THE BLACK TENTS
After Auda, Mohammed el Dheilan is the chief figure of the Abu Tayi. He is taller than his cousin and massively built; a square-headed thoughtful man of forty-five, with a melancholy humor and a kind heart carefully concealed beneath it. He acts as master of ceremonies for the Abu Tayi, is Auda’s right-hand man, and frequently appears as his spokesman. Mohammed is greedy, richer than Auda, deeper and more calculating. Allah has endowed him with the eloquence of an Arabian Demosthenes; his tribesmen address him as “Father of Eloquence.” In a tribal council he can always be relied upon to persuade his audience to accept his views. He can wield a sword right lustily too, and is “a drinker of the milk of war” second only in prowess to the mighty Auda.
Zaal Ion Motlog is Auda’s nephew. He is twenty-five, something of a dandy, with polished teeth, carefully curled mustache, and a trimmed and pointed beard. He, too, is greedy and sharp-witted but without Mohammed’s mentality. Auda has been training him for years as chief scout to the tribe, so that he is a most daring and acceptable commander in a ghazu.
Nuri Shalaan, emir of Jauf, is not such a picturesque character as his friend and kinsman, Auda Abu Tayi, but as ruler of the Rualla Anazeh tribe, two hundred thousand strong, the largest single tribe in the desert, occupying nearly all the territory between Damascus and Bagdad, he is one of the great men of Arabia. His friendship was most vital to Hussein and Lawrence in the taking of Deraa and Damascus, and might have been of tremendous weight to Feisal now that he has been placed on the throne of Mesopotamia had he not sold himself to the French in Syria in 1919, after the war. Lawrence would not let Nuri declare war on the Turks until the last minute, because Nuri’s allegiance would have meant too many mouths to feed. Nuri Shalaan was the deadly enemy of Ibn Rashid, who coöperated with the Turks, but who since the Great War has lost his portion of Arabia to Sultan Ibn Saud of Nejd. At one time Nuri Shalaan wanted an armorer. He captured Ibn Bani of Hail, Ibn Rashid’s armorer, the most skilled man of his craft in Arabia, and put him in prison with his own smith, Ibn Zarih. He gave them both forges and tools and declared that they should languish in prison until Ibn Zarih could make swords and daggers that could not be distinguished from those of Ibn Bani. They sweated and worked and the forges were kept burning until late every night, and finally, after many weeks, Ibn Zarih produced a wonderful dagger with an edge that could almost cut the wind. Nuri was satisfied; he released his two prisoners and sent Ibn Bani back to his country with rich presents. Nuri Shalaan was an old man of seventy when the Arab revolution broke out. He was always ambitious and determined to be a leader. Thirty years ago he killed his two brothers and made himself chief of the tribe. He ruled his people with a rod of iron, and they were practically the only Bedouins who obeyed orders. If they fail him he has their heads cut off; but in spite of his cruelty his followers all admire and are proud of him. Most Arab sheiks talk like magpies, but Nuri remains silent in the tribal council and settles everything with a few final clean-cut words of decision. Until the end of the war he had preferred tent life to that of all the palaces from Bagdad to the Bosporus, and kept great state in the largest black goat’s-hair tent in the desert, where sheep were slaughtered every few minutes for the endless stream of guests. He owned the best wheat land in Syria and the finest camels and horses. He is so rich he does not know how to measure his wealth.
Motlog Ibn Jemiann, sheik of the Beni Atiyeh, south of Maan, added four thousand fighting men to King Hussein’s forces. He is hard-working and brave as a lion. He helped Lawrence blow up trains near Maan and was in the thick of the fray whenever there were railway stations to be captured or any other little jobs of a particularly dangerous nature. During the scouting around Maan, two of Lawrence’s officers were trying to find an ancient Roman road in the desert. Motlog, always eager for adventure, went with them. In the deep sand their Ford careened madly from left to right and then at one point swerved so sharply that Motlog was thrown on his head. The officers jumped out of the car and ran back to pick him up and apologize to him, thinking he would be very angry. But the old sheik brushed off the sand and said ruefully, “Please don’t be offended with me; I haven’t learnt to ride one of these things yet.” He regarded riding in a motor-car as an art that had to be mastered just like riding a camel.
The Robber Harith Clan may not have been in the good graces of Hussein before the war, but their shereef, Ali Ibn Hussein, a youth of ‘nineteen, was responsible for converting nearly the whole of the Hauran to the revolt. He was the most reckless, most impertinent, and jolliest fellow in the Arabian army. The fastest runner in the desert, he could catch up with a camel in his bare feet and swing into the saddle with one hand while holding his rifle with the other. When Ali went into battle he took off all his clothing except his drawers. He said it was the cleanest way to get wounded. He had a wild sense of humor and made jokes about the king in his presence. He was one of the two shereefs in the Hedjaz who did not stand in terror of King Hussein.