- Project Runeberg -  Notes taken during a journey through part of northern Arabia, in 1848 /
26

(1850) Author: Georg August Wallin
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[-Arabs,-]{+26 Dr. Wallin’s Route in Northern Arabia.

Arabs,+} and children are produced in whose features it is often
quite impossible to recognize tlic African type. In al-Gawf
(Jauf), for instance, I knew an old woman of genuine negro blood,
who, by a husband of her own race, had borne perfect negro children,
while by another, a native Arab, she had a family who were fair,
with true Arab features.

The Mutawallidin may be said generally to be more industrious
than the Bedooins ; or, at least, their pride is not so great as to
make an agricultural or a laborious life humiliating to them : for
that reason, and from their want of the strength and courage of
the Arabs to undergo the hardships of the desert, they prefer a
residence in the villages, where they arrange with the Bedooins
for the care of their date-plantations, or contrive to gain a
livelihood in some other way. As, however, they are subjected to heavy
exactions by their masters, who despise them, and are perhaps
unthrifty themselves, they seldom attain wealth and prosperity.
The price of slaves being very low in al-liigaz (Hijaz), the towns
and villages there are full of them ; and I was told that the greater
part of the large and fruitful date-plantations in Kheibar,
belonging principally to the Fukara (Fukara) Bedooins of the ’Eneze
(’Anezeh) tribe, are kept and cultivated by Mutawallidin. In
Tebook (Tebuk) nearly a third part of the population consists of
them ; and their general employment there, as well as that of the
other inhabitants, is the cultivation of gardens and trading with
the Bedooins and pilgrims, who usually halt there for one or two
days on their road to and from Mekka.

Tebook, like most Arab communities, is governed more by
traditional laws and customs than by the regular Mohammedan
Code ■* and though the people generally show great reverence for
the rites and precepts of their religion, and are better acquainted
with its doctrines than the Bedooins, they prefer the more liberal
law of the latter, as better suited to their way of life. The posts
of sheikh and ’akid, invested with the highest civil and military
authority in every tribe, are here, as among the Bedooins,
hereditary. These chiefs in free consultation with the oldest and
wisest, or, as it frequently happens, with the whole of the
population, regulate the affairs of the village, and settle all disputes and
disagreements between its inhabitants and the neighbouring
Bedooins. The people of this place are not, as in those dependent
on the Egyptian government, subjected, in the management of
their concerns, to the interference of the Turks quartered in the
small castle in their village. The castle, although having the outward
appearance of a stronghold meant to ward off sudden attacks of
hostile tribes, may rather he considered as a storehouse for the

See Appendix, p. 54.

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