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[-pended-]{+Dr. Wallin’s Route in Northern Arabia.
21
pended+} on the middle pole of the tent at the time of sunset, when
the camels and flocks return from pasture. This custom was
observed every evening, throughout the tribe, in the tents of the
sheikhs and others whose means enabled them to possess a.
hell; but upon my inquiring its meaning, I could get no other
information than that it was an old custom with them thus to
hail the return of the camels and the mystic hour of descending
night.
There are not, as far as I could learn amongst the nomadic
Bedooins, nor in the towns or villages in the interior of Arabia,
persons professing any other religion than the Islam ; nor did I ever
hear, in those parts of Arabia which I visited, mention made of
tribes or of individuals suspected to he attached in secret to another
creed. The reason of this does not seem to lie in the bigotry of
the inhabitants, whom I have always found to be more tolerant
than other Muslims ; but, probably, in the exact conformity of the
Islam to the circumstances of the country in which it originated,
and in the absolute poverty of the desert tending to discourage
immigration, and, perhaps also, in the extreme simplicity of life
among the Bedooins disinclining the more refined inhabitants of
the surrounding countries to seek intercourse with them.
Like most of the tribes which were not forced to adopt the
reformed doctrines of the Wahhabiye (Wahabiyeh) sect during the
period of its ascendant power in Arabia, the Ma’aze (Ma’azeh)
are, in general, grossly ignorant in the religion they profess, and
I scarcely remember ever meeting with a single individual of the
tribe who observed any of the rites of Islam whatever, or possessed
the least notion of its fundamental and leading dogmas; while the
reverse might, to a certain degree, he said of those Bedooins who
are, or formerly were, Wahhabiye (Wahhabiyeh).
After passing some days in the tent of the chief sheikh, Ibn
’Atiya (’Atiyah), 1 left the tribe in company with two Bedooins.
We started from al-Zawiie (Zawiyeh), where, after an almost daily
change of ground since 1 had been with them, their tents were
then pitched, and following the side of the l.larra (Harrah) range,
with a N.N.E. course, arrived, in 8 li., at Wadi ’Uweinid (Wadi
’Uwe’inid), a ravine resembling the dry bed of a torrent, and
descending from the higher part of the range, in a N.N.W.
direction, between hillocks and ridges covered with loose sand, upon the
plain of al-lTisma (Hisma). This ravine has a well of tolerably
good water, and much herbage and brushwood. On its northern
border is the burying place of the Ma’aze (Ma’azeh) tribe, where,
from ancient times, their sheikhs and other persons of
consideration have been customarily buried. Its entrance towards
al-l.lisma (Hisma) is tilled with immense stones, which appear to
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