380 



SOCIAL STATE OF THE ARABS. 



poetry, he accompanies his voice with the rebaba, a 

 kind of guitar, the only musical instrument used in 

 the desert. Some tribes are more famous than others 

 for their poetical and vocal talents. The people of 

 Jof sing among the tents of the Aenezes for a trifling 

 remuneration ; and in towns there are regular pro- 

 fessors of the art, who attend at the coffeehouses and 

 lend their aid on festive occasions. A common en- 

 tertainment among the Bedouins is the reciting of 

 tales after the manner of the Arabian Nights. 



Notwithstanding the natural abilities of this peo- 

 ple, the arts and sciences are neither cultivated nor 

 encouraged. The literary splendours of the caliph- 

 ate have long been quenched. Except Abulfeda, in 

 whom the sun of Arabian learning appears to have 

 set, no historian, philosopher, or writer of any ce- 

 lebrity, has risen to dissipate the gloom with which 

 the Tartars in the thirteenth century overspread the 

 East under the banners of Zingis Khan. In al- 

 most every mosque there is a school, having a foun- 

 dation for the support of teachers and the instruc- 

 tion of poor scholars in the common elements of 

 reading, writing, and arithmetic. In large towns 

 there are academies, colleges, and other seminaries 

 of education, in which astronomy, astrology, medi- 

 cine, and some other sciences, are taught; but, from 

 the want of books and competent masters, extremely 

 little progress is made. The principal employment 

 among men of letters is the interpretation of the 

 Koran and the study of ancient Mohammedan his- 



following specimen : " Lord preserve them from all threatening 

 dangers ! Let their limbs be pillars of iron !" 



In their amatory songs the lover sometimes expresses his pas- 

 sion in epithets that sound rather oddly in European ears : " O, 

 Ghalia ! if my father were a jackass, I would sell him to purcha.se 

 Ghalia !" 



