506 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880- 



Our other two men were the gayest figures of the 

 group, Hamid and Abderrabbu, usually called Adrubbu, 

 pure Africans by blood, but born in Mecca, as Mawaleed 

 of the Shereef. It is the custom of Arabian princes to 

 form a body of dependents from their emancipated 

 slaves and their children. In a good house a slave 

 seldom remains long in bondage. The master frees him, 

 finds him a wife generally an emancipated negress 

 and sets him up in the world. The children of such a 

 union are called Mawaleed, and form a kind of clientship 

 ready at any moment to serve under their master s 

 banner, and bound to him by a strong tie of dependence. 

 Many of these families have attained to wealth and posi 

 tion, but the tie is never broken, and when a Muwalled 

 dies without natural heirs, the representative of the 

 emancipator takes the inheritance. There are chiefs 

 in Yemen Sheikh Barakat was mentioned to me as one 

 who can call up as many as four hundred of these 

 clients to ride with them on a foray. Such men often 

 buy negroes and girls in large numbers simply for the 

 purpose of liberating and marrying them, to swell the 

 numbers of their clients. Our two negroes were very 

 pleasant, handy fellows, with a smattering of education, 

 and very good gentle manners. Their dress was a 

 white tob, with gold buttons at the throat. A white 

 semada, whose heavy fringes and tassels were prettily 

 interwoven with cords of purple and blue, was secured 

 to the head by the double twist of a great rope, called 

 the ogal, of earners hair, bound with gold and silver 

 thread. Their military equipments were in pure Bedouin 

 style. The janbeeya or crooked dirk, which is the in 

 separable companion of the Bedouin, and the favourite 

 instrument of his bloody revenge, was silver hilted, and 

 cased in a heavy silver sheath, enriched with bosses and 

 chasing. The leather belt, in front of which the dirk is 

 stuck, lying obliquely across the person, was gay with 

 tassels of crimson and yellow silk. On one side was a 



