170 CHARACT6R, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS 



indemnity, yet their rapacious spirit easily extended 

 this license to other nations who could not be 

 accused of usurping their patrimony. ^^.^. 



This fierce temperament, which waged war against 

 all the world, was in no degree mitigated in their own 

 domestic broils. Though the strictes honour and 

 probity reigned amid their tents when their passions 

 were unruffled, their wrath on provocation burned 

 with double fury ; and in their sanguinary feuds, tlie 

 voice of law and humanity was ahke disregarded 

 In the times of which we now write more than two 



thousand battles have been y^^o'"^^,'!;,^ I J^.^^^X^ 

 bats ffenerallv took place between different families 

 of cST thiy often rose from trivial causes, but 

 seldom e^ded without deeds of revolting atrocity. 

 The war of the two horses, Dahes and Ghabra, 

 between the tribes of Aus (or Abs) and Dobian, 

 occasioned by a contested race, lasted forty years ; 

 during which period all industry was at a stand, and 

 thousands were either slain in pitched battles or pri- 

 vately assassinated. The war of Basus sprang from 

 the shooting of a camel which had drunk at a for- 

 bidden SDrin^^ It raged many years betAveen the 

 Ses of^cr and Taglab, until nearly all the pnn- 

 Spal men on both sides were cut off. A contemptu- 

 ous word, an indecent action, an insult offered to 

 their women or their beard, could only be exjiated 

 by the blood of the offender. The war of Nefravat, 

 which set nearly the Avhole kingdom of Gassan in a 

 flame, took its origin from the upsettmg of an old 

 woman, who had brought a basket of tributary 

 butter to one of the chiefs, the quality of which hap- 

 pened to displease his fastidious palate The most 

 wanton cruelty was sometimes inflicted on the cap- 

 tives taken in these contests. Shaerhabil made 

 them walk barefooted over heated stones, insulting 

 their miseries by promising to buy them new soles. 



> Rasmussen, Additam. ad Hist. Praecip. Reg. Arab. Notse. 

 Pococke, Specimen, p. 48. 



