Generally speaking, laziness is predominant in the Arab. A few work very hard, but they are in a great minority. The remainder do nothing which is not necessary for their livelihood, and those who are obliged to earn their daily bread just earn it and no more. This is partly due to the climate and partly to the precept of the Koran, which forbids man to provide for the future as, in so doing, he will lack faith in the infinite power of God alone.
Sportsmen they all are—loving a gun and a horse more than anything else in the world, and ready for any form of hunting.
These, roughly, are the good points in their character, and we must perforce turn to the other side of the picture. To the uninitiated the calm mask of haughty indifference which characterizes their faces conceals a great deal of Oriental wisdom. I do not think this is the case. From an intellectual point of view the Arab is densely stupid, very ill-read and utterly inartistic. With an Arab of good upbringing there are two subjects which he can discuss—religion and sport. If he is interested in business he will talk about his own particular line but nothing else. They have not heard of the most world-famed authors. Shakespeare, Goethe, Voltaire, are not even names to them except when they happen to have been applied to streets which they have frequented.
Music outside their own is an unknown quantity; pictures other than photographs of people they know do not exist. All that which counts for us in the literary, musical, artistic world is as complete a blank to them as a Babylonian cuneiform to an able seaman.
It is staggering sometimes to realize their ignorance. Even those who have been to the French Lycée do not seem to have absorbed anything beyond reading, writing, arithmetic and a little geography. And yet they travel abroad. They go to France, some go to England and Switzerland, and what do they bring back? A recollection of streets and people and race-meetings and gaming-tables.
“Un point, c’est tout!”
I think that the appellation of “Wise Men of the East” as it applies to Arabs must come from their profound knowledge of the Koran and its precepts, which in many ways imbues them with utterances of some depth and of a veiled meaning.
I do not say that they would be better off if they had all our Northern learning; probably not. I merely set down what is a fact about the reverse side of the impenetrable mask!
In business the Arab is honest if it is worth while. That is to say, the poor and uneducated shopman or pedler will cheat as much as possible, but the well-to-do merchant or landowner will not risk his name to gain a little more unless he is quite sure of passing undetected. This, however, applies in some degree to most races.
The nomads in their sheep deals are usually quite straight.