306 SOCIAL «!TATr OF THF ARABS, 



CHAPTER VIH. 



SOCIAL STATE OF THE ARABS. 



National Character oF the Arabs— Their Family Pride— Orders 

 of Nobility— Their Domestic Life— Their Tents— Furniture- 

 Mode of Encamping — ^^Dress — Personal Appearance — Acute- 

 ness of their Senses— Sagacity in tracing Footsteps — Their 

 Arms — Food and Cookery — Manner of Eating — Diseases — 

 Wealth and Industry — Marriage — Divorce — Education of 

 their Children — Funerals — Modes of Salutation— Hospitality 

 Warfare— Robbery and Theft — The Blood-revenge — Amuse- 

 ments — Poetry and Music— Learning — Medicine — Supersti- 

 tions — Language — Arts— Commerce — Proposed Steam Route 

 Dy the Euphrates and the Red Sea — Px:)pulation— Cloncludmg 

 Reflections. 



Climate, government, and education are in every 

 country the great agents that form and modify the 

 character of nations. Nowhere are their effects 

 more strikingly exempHfied than in Arabia. To the 



the Porte has ceded by a recent treaty (May, 1833) the whole 

 of Syria, including Tripoli, Aleppo, Damascus, and Jerusalem ; 

 besides the command of the harbours in the Red Sea, and the 

 sacred privilege of conducting the pilgrim-caravans. Ibrahim, 

 by pushing his victories in* the late S>Tian campaigns almost to 

 the gates of Constantinople, has acquired fresh laurels as a 

 conqueror, and a new title to be Sheik el Haram of Mecca. 

 Under these circumstances the Bedouins, of whom not fewer 

 than 5370 are now serving in the armies of the pasha, can have 

 no immediate prospects of reasserting their independence. The 

 successes of Ibrahim led to a serious conflict, in the month of 

 June, 1832, between the Turkish and Arab regiments stationed 

 at Mecca. Of the former UOO were sabred in the streets. The 

 battery that overlooks the city was made to play upon the 

 mosque, where the mutinous Turks had taken fuge, and with 

 such effect, that the walls were pierced, one of the pillars broken 

 down, and several persons killed. 



