INHABITANTS OF THE DESEET. 177 



the most desperate wars, until Mohammed supplied them with a 

 rallying-point in the creed of Islam. Thenceforth their mission was 

 to propagate the new faith by fire and sword, and bursting from their 

 rocky highlands like a torrent, they poured along the shores of the 

 Mediterranean to Gibraltar on the north, and Tangier on the south. 

 In Northern Africa they gradually mingled with the Berbers, the 

 Nuiriidians, and the Getulians, and from the fusion sprang the 

 Kabyles, the Tibbous, and the Touaregs, while the Shemites themselves 

 lost a portion of their original character. 



All the tribes of the desert are Moslems. The precepts of the 

 Koran, and certain traditional usages, are almost the only laws which 

 they recognize. 



The Koran authorizes polygamy, and the Arab women, therefore, 

 are less the wives than the slaves of their husbands, who enforce upon 

 them the strictest seclusion, and impose upon them the most arduous 

 labours. The tyranny which weighs upon the women is, however, in 

 inverse proportion to the degree of welfare and civilization of the 

 various tribes. Among the poor and almost barbarous peoples of the 

 desert, these unfortunate creatures are reduced to a condition of 

 degradation and brutishness which inspires in the European almost 

 as much disgust as pity. 



The instinct of rapine which most writers f have signalized as one 

 of the leading features of the Arab character, appears to have been 

 greatly exaggerated, or, at least, too much generalized. This vice is 

 a special result of their position, and, we must own, of the very 

 antiquated views they hold upon the " rights of man," which, indeed, 

 they sum up in much the same manner as Wordsworth's Rob Hoy: * 



" The creatures see of flood and field, 

 And those that travel on the wind ! 

 With them no strife can last ; they live 



In peace, and peace of mind. 

 " For why? because the good old rule 

 Sufficeth them, the simple plan, 

 That they should take who have the power, 



And they should keep who can." 

 * Wordsworth, " Poetical Works "Rob Roy's Grave, vol. iii., p. 21. 



12 



