230 Bedouin Tribes of the Enphratcs. [ch. xxvn. 



in a minority or his independence hampered. No 

 one therefore in the desert has the least cause to 

 complain of tyranny, for the remedy is always at 

 hand. Thus it constantly happens that, when party 

 feeling has run high in a tribe, the minority, instead 

 of submitting their opinion to that of the majority, 

 retires from the main body and lives apart, without 

 the secession being treated by these as an act of 

 treason or hostility to the state. Even a single 

 individual may retire unquestioned, to pitch his 

 tents where he will ; and in time of peace it is rare 

 to find more than fifty or a hundred families living 

 together in daily intercourse. Even when there is 

 war, it is rather the fear of being attacked in detail 

 than any duty towards the tribe which keeps its 

 members together. The Eoala, while we were with 

 them, were assembled to the number of twelve thou- 

 sand tents on the plain of Saighal, for war was going 

 on, but they told us that five hundred tents had 

 remained in Nejd, when the main body marched 

 north, owing to a disagreement between a certain 

 sheykh and the supreme sheykh of the tribe, Ibn 

 Shaalan. They spoke, however, with no bitterness 

 of the secession, though it had weakened them in 

 an hour of danger, nor did they question the right 

 of the minority to do as it pleased. 



The individual then is the basis, from which one 

 should start in a review of the political system of 

 the desert. Each man's tent, to paraphrase the 

 English boast, is his castle, where he is free to do 



