MARITAL JEALOUSY 



contempt, " not even doing them the honour of being 

 jealous of them." In the oasis of Gofsa cuckolds used 

 to be openly ridiculed and never took serious offence ; 

 " in fact it was customary to select as kaidone of those 

 who had been most compromised in this respect." 1 

 An interesting relic of the hospitality which lends a 

 wife to a guest is found among the Mohammedan 

 Krumirs. A stranger visiting the tribe is received by 

 one of the tribesmen and lodged in the same tent with 

 his host's wife. But the husband mounts guard at the 

 door, gun in hand, and the least movement on the 

 stranger's part during the night draws upon him the 

 husband's menaces, and often even death at his hands. 

 The influence of Islam has not been sufficient to put 

 an end to the ancient guest-right, though it has reduced 

 it to an empty ceremony. 2 



Mohammed imposed no ascetic regard for con- 

 tinence upon his followers if they belonged to the male 

 sex, but he displayed less concern towards the desires 

 and appetites of the women. His modern adherents, 

 at all events among the Bedouins, however, have 

 remedied all that. Community of women, rather than 

 polygamy, Mr. Palgrave who travelled among them 

 tells us, is their connubial condition. It is emphatically 

 a wise Bedouin child who knows his own father. 

 Their current saying with reference to sexual matters 

 is " dogs are better than we are/' and the traveller 

 from his own observation gives them " credit for 

 having so far at least spoken the truth the whole 

 truth and nothing but the truth." 3 This account is 

 with all its emphasis vague. A native writer cited by 



1 Bruun, 296. 2 Bertholon, Arch. Anthr. Crim. viii. 609. 



3 Palgrave, Arabia, i. 10. 



