To present one’s self at the tent doorway, or to lay hold of the supports, or cords, at the entrance of an Arab’s “house of hair,” is recognized as an ever-effective appeal for hospitality in the East. Even an enemy can thus secure the protection of the home sanctuary.[153]
In the excavation of Tell-el-Hesy, in Southwestern Palestine, supposed to cover the remains of ancient Lachish,[154] Dr. Petrie discovered various ornamented door-jambs. In one case a simple volute on a pilaster slab suggested to Dr. Petrie “a ram’s horn nailed up against a wooden post;” and “he sees in this the origin of the type of the ‘horns of the altar,’[155] so often mentioned in temple architecture.”[156] If Dr. Petrie be correct in this thought, the horns of the altar were first of all at the house doorway, above the threshold altar.
One of the fundamental laws of the Afghans makes it incumbent on a host to “shelter and protect any one who in extremity may flee to his threshold, and seek an asylum under his roof.” Property or life must be sacrificed in his behalf, if need be. “As soon as you have crossed the threshold of an Afghan you are sacred to him, though you were his deadly foe, and he will give up his own life to save yours.” A favorite poem of the Afghan, entitled, “Adam Khan and Durkhani,” tells of a son who killed his father because that father had betrayed a refugee who sought the sanctuary of his threshold. And all Afghans honor the memory of that son.[157]
Among the Arabs of the Syrian desert, when a man would leave his own tribe and join himself to another, he takes a lamb or a goat with him, and presents himself at the entrance of the tent of the shaykh of the tribe he would find a home in. Slaying the animal there, and allowing its blood to run out on the ground at the threshold of the tent, he makes his appeal to the shaykh to accept him as a member of his tribe, or as a son by adoption. And this appeal has peculiar force, as a voice by blood.[158]
When a man among these tribes is in peril of his life, pursued by an enemy, he can similarly make an appeal for sanctuary at the threshold altar of a shaykh’s tent, with a like outpouring of the blood of an animal brought by him; and protection must be granted him by the shaykh. It is as though he had laid hold of the “horns of the altar.” So, again, when a man would be reconciled with an enemy who has cause for bitter hostility, he goes to the tent of that enemy and sacrifices an animal at the threshold, with an appeal for forgiveness. This offering of a threshold sacrifice secures his safety.