346 



SOCIAL STATE OF THE ARABS. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



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 Rob- 

 bery and Theft The Blood-revenge Amusements Poetry and 

 Music Learning Medicine Superstitions Language Arts 

 Commerce Proposed Steam Routes by the Euphrates and the 

 Red Sea Population Concluding 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 exemplified than in Arabia. To 

 the first of these causes may be ascribed many of 

 the social virtues for which the natives have been al- 

 ways distinguished ; while most of the crimes, vices, 

 and prejudices, by which they are degraded, are 

 the natural fruits of the two latter. On the sea- 

 coasts and in the towns, their manners have been 

 corrupted by commerce and a free intercourse with 

 foreigners. Travellers, who have formed their opi- 

 nions from mixing exclusively with those classes, 

 have drawn a very unfavourable picture of the in- 

 habitants in general, as a nation of tyrants, hypo- 

 crites, and deceivers, plunged in a lower state of 

 ignorance and debauchery than the most barbarous 

 islanders of the South Seas. These representations 

 are no doubt partially true, but they are far from 



