238 NORTH-EAST AFRICA. 



a cow or a camel. Women are mentioned wlio have thus obtained all the 

 husband's possessions and then abandoned them after having effected their ruin. 

 The Beja women, and especially those of the Beni-Amer, have generally a remark- 

 able fellow-feeling ; directly one of them has a grievance they all share in her 

 indignation. By virtue of the female customs, the wife should never show any 

 apparent affection for the husband. She is bound to treat him with contempt and 

 to rule him with threats and severity, and should he interfere with the household 

 arrangements without having consulted his wife, the offence is considered unpar- 

 donable. It is frequently necessary to appeal to the "man of honour," whose 

 duties as an intermediary have rendered him the " brother " of the wife, and his 

 advice is always respectfully listened to. At the same time, although they have 

 to complain of the control and often even of the violence of their wives, the 

 husbands are after all the superiors in virtue of their love of work, bravery, and 

 trustworthiness. The henpecked man who seeks the assistance of a woman is 

 sure of finding in her an indefatigable defender. 



The social status of the Beja woman evidently points to a former matriarchal 

 government. The Arab authors who spoke of the Bejas of the tenth to the 

 fourteenth century, relate that these people reckoned their genealogies from the 

 side of the women, and that the inheritance passed from the son to the sister and 

 from her to the daughter to the exclusion of the sons. The annals of the kingdom 

 of Meroë, like those of Senaar, show what an important part woman has played in 

 UjDper Nubia, ever since the time of Queen Candace. Amongst the Hadendoas 

 the women have never to undergo public accusation ; if a crime has been com- 

 mitted by one of them everybody keeps silence, the men alone being answerable 

 for the charge. Of all the " Arab " tribes that which is usually cited as univer- 

 sally practising the strange custom of the " fourth day free," doubted by only one 

 traveller, d'Escayrac de Lauture, are the Hassanieh Bejas of the Nilotic Mesopo- 

 tamia and Kordofan. By this custom, the women are only married for a certain 

 number of days in the week, generally reserving every fourth day, on which she 

 claims perfect freedom to do just as she pleases. 



Under the Arab rule the Bejas have readily acquired aristocratic manners. 

 The noble families of native or foreign origin, who can trace back their genealogy 

 to a long line of ancestors, enjoy considerable personal authority over the body of 

 the people, who support them and offer up sacrifices on their tombs. Moreover, it 

 is they who own the slaves — captives or sons of captives, who have not yet entered 

 into the community of free men by embracing Islam. The nobles frequently 

 take to wife girls of inferior status, but a common man can never marry into a 

 noble family, unless the holiness of his life, a miracle, or some prediction justified 

 by the event, have enabled him to be classed amongst the sheikhs, also called fakih, 

 and thus become the equal of the upper classes. In certain regions of Upper 

 Nubia there exist entire colonies of " saints," who, like the nobles, fatten at the 

 expense of the tribe. In order to insure their power over the nomad populations, 

 the Egyptian governors had taken care to rely upon the political and religious 

 chiefs of the country, and it was by the intervention of these latter that the 



