408 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1953 



tainly less affected by pressure of population than they were by the 

 appearance of the tax collector. A long and difficult trail leading 

 to an inconspicuous agglomeration of houses meant that it was not 

 easily accessible to the tax collector and that consequently the in- 

 habitants could enjoy a modicum of prosperity and peace of mind. 

 The defense factor was also important. From a vantage point such 

 as Dahr enjoys, it is easy to espy visitors from afar, both those who 

 are welcome and those who are not. And like thousands of other 

 villages, Dahr has, with the years, achieved a kind of protective 

 coloring, forming an appropriate little piece in the mosaic of cul- 

 tural and natural landscapes. Each house in the village seems to 

 have been built where the fancy of the owner dictated. Villages in 

 general seem to the western eye to be a confused, incoherent mass of 

 mud or stone houses, huddled together without plan or order, in a 

 maze of crooked, blind alleys, narrow, winding footpaths, and dark, 

 forbidding passageways. 



LAND 



The possession of land, even in small, fragmented tracts, has lit- 

 erally and from time immemorial meant life to the Near Eastern 

 peasant, because land has meant wheat, and wheat means bread — 

 "the bread of life." "All else will pass away, the land remains," is 

 an Arab proverb. The Arab peasant will go to almost any lengths 

 to get land, and once he has it he will make terrible sacrifices in order 

 to keep it, for land means bread, and bread is life; it is the life of the 

 peasant today, and it has been for countless generations before him. 

 His attachment to the land is a mixture of profound love and 

 reverential awe; he is aware of its frailties, he knows just how far he 

 can depend on it, and how it will react to his loving care through the 

 beating rain, or the searing drought, or the battering hail ; he reveres 

 it because it has supported the long line of his ancestors before him, 

 and it will in turn be a big factor, no matter how fragmented, in the 

 support of his children after his death. For many centuries a man 

 without land was a prey to the cruelty of the tyrant, just as last year's 

 leaves are blown about at the vagaries of the wind. But a man with 

 land was like a great oak tree, with roots deep in the ground ; he could 

 weather the storms, the acts of God, as well as the irrational acts of 

 his fellowman, for roots in the land gave strength to him and to his 

 family — they gave him "his daily bread." 



The wealth of Dahr is land. The villagers own and farm some 

 200 unirrigated acres, but this is land that makes many of the aban- 

 doned fields of New England look rich and inviting by comparison. 

 Here it is planted in wheat, barley, lentils, or millets, but the land is 

 not in broad fields. A field is a tiny strip a yard or so wide, or a 



