SOCIAL STATE OF THE ARABS 327 



fights and other buffooneries; while the young 

 women join in the song and the dance, taking care 

 by removing their veils to allow their lovers a hasty 

 glance of their beauty as they pass. 



Funerals in Arabia are attended with certain 

 peculiar circumstances. Some tribes bury with the 

 dead man his sword, turban, and girdle. From the 

 scarcity of linen the Bedouins not unfrequently 

 wrap the body in an abba, which serves as a wind- 

 ing-sheet. Women, but not men, wear mourning. 

 Females are hired on these occasions, and paid a 

 small sum by the hour, to howl in the most heart- 

 rending accents : sometimes they dance before the 

 house of the deceased with sticks and lances in their 

 hands, tearing their arms, faces, and hair, and be- 

 having like furies. Medina, according to Burck- 

 hardt, is the only place wiiere this absurd custom is 

 not practised. The female relatives of the family 

 accompany the bier through the streets dressed in 

 black ; and, as a further demonstration of their grief, 

 they stain their hands and feet with blue indigo, which 

 they suffer to remain for eight days. During all 

 that time they abstain from milk, alleging that its 

 white colour but ill accords with the gloom of their 

 minds. 



Though rude in manners and fierce in their gene- 

 ral character, the Arabs are not without civility and 

 politeness. Their usual salutation is the Salaam 

 aleikum (Peace be with you). Shaking hands and 

 kissing after a long absence are everjrvvhere prac- 

 tised, and sometimes it is customary to quote a pas- 

 sage of the Koran. The Bedouins know nothing of 

 those numerous court phrases and ceremonious ex- 

 pressions current in the towns. They simply wish 

 a good morning when they meet their friends upon 

 the road, or a farewell when they depart. When an 

 Egyptian hails an acquaintance, he says, " May 

 your day be white ;" and there is absolutely no other 

 reply but " May yours be like milk." These studied 



