[p.113] to information than ask directly. It offends some Badawin, besides denoting ignorance and curiosity, to be asked their names or those of their clans: a man may be living incognito, and the tribes distinguish themselves when they desire to do so by dress, personal appearance, voice, dialect, and accentuation, points of difference plain to the initiated. A few dollars suffice for the road, and if you would be respectable, a taste which I will not deprecate, some such presents as razors and Tarbushes are required for the chiefs.
The government of the Arabs may be called almost an autonomy. The tribes never obey their Shaykhs, unless for personal considerations, and, as in a civilised army, there generally is some sharp-witted and brazen-faced individual whose voice is louder than the generals. In their leonine society the sword is the greater administrator of law.
Relations between the Badawi tribes of Al-Hijaz are of a threefold character: they are either Ashab, Kiman, or Akhwan.
Ashab, or comrades, are those who are bound by oath to an alliance offensive and defensive: they intermarry, and are therefore closely connected.
Kiman,[FN#50] or foes, are tribes between whom a blood feud, the cause and the effect of deadly enmity, exists.
Akhawat, or brotherhood, denotes the tie between the stranger and the Badawi, who asserts an immemorial and inalienable right to the soil upon which his forefathers fed their flocks. Trespass by a neighbour instantly causes war. Territorial increase is rarely attempted, for if of a whole clan but a single boy escape he will one day assert his claim to the land, and be assisted by all the Ashab, or [p.114] allies of the slain. By paying to man, woman, or child, a small sum, varying, according to your means, from a few pence worth of trinkets to a couple of dollars, you share bread and salt with the tribe, you and your horse become Dakhil (protected), and every one must afford you brother-help. If traveller or trader attempt to pass through the land without paying Al-Akhawah or Al-Rifkah, as it is termed, he must expect to be plundered, and, resisting, to be slain: it is no dishonour to pay it, and he clearly is in the wrong who refuses to conform to custom. The Rafik, under different names, exists throughout this part of the world; at Sinai he was called a Ghafir, a Rabia in Eastern Arabia, amongst the Somal an Abban, and by the Gallas a Mogasa. I have called the tax black-mail; it deserves a better name, being clearly the rudest form of those transit-dues and octrois which are in nowise improved by progress. The Ahl Bayt,[FN#51] or dwellers in the Black Tents, levy the tax from the Ahl Hayt, or the People of Walls; that is to say, townsmen and villagers who have forfeited right to be held Badawin. It is demanded from bastard Arabs, and from tribes who, like the Hutaym and the Khalawiyah, have been born basely or have become nidering. And these people are obliged to pay it at home as well as abroad. Then it becomes a sign of disgrace, and the pure clans, like the Benu Harb, will not give their damsels in marriage to brothers.