576 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 



Tribes such as the Thageef, the Qoreish, and the Hodheil 

 are divided into villagers (Khadhr) in the cultivable 

 Wadies, and wandering mountaineers who are shepherds 

 and woodsmen. The Thageef occupy the mountains and 

 fertile valleys all round Taif, the Leeya and the hills 

 beyond it, the great southern mountain of the Ourneit, 

 the seat of the Beni Sufyan, and the tangled region of 

 the Tuweriq, north-west of Taif as far as the plateau of 

 Hadda on the summit of Mount Kara, where they join 

 the Qoreish. The Qoreish and the Hodheil, who are 

 similar in customs and closely allied, are mainly wild 

 mountaineers. The Qoreish are found on the plateau 

 of Hadda and in the mountains of Arafa not the lowly 

 Mount Arafa of religious celebrity, but the wild hilly 

 region that rises above the valleys of Mecca and Mina. 

 The Hodheil lie on both sides of the Qoreish. We were 

 among the settled Hodheil at Sola, and in returning 

 we passed through their country as we descended from 

 Mount Kara down Wady Na aman. They hold the upper 

 part of this valley, with the hills of Kabkab, which 

 dominate it on the right. Unlike the nomads of the 

 central plateau, these mountaineers fight on foot. Though 

 they are so near the centres of civilisation, the wild 

 seclusion of their mountains has preserved them from 

 change, and the blood feuds which make exogamy 

 almost an impossibility have maintained among them a 

 distinctly marked tribal type. My eye did not become 

 sufficiently practised to catch all the minute signs by 

 which a tribesman can be identified the cut of his sandals, 

 the way in which the long black locks hang behind the 

 ear i n one tribe plaited, in another free the length 

 of the dirk, and so forth. But some marks are not difficult 

 to grasp. The lance is one of these. That of the Qoreish 

 and also of the Hodheil, who are not readily to be dis 

 tinguished from the Qoreish, and share their most striking 

 peculiarities, is a rumh or javelin of a man s height, with 

 a long narrow blade, inlaid with brass, and an equally 



