According to Layard,[1] "the Bedouins do not make cheese. The milk of their sheep and goats is shaken into butter or turned into curds; it is rarely or never drunk fresh, new milk being thought very unwholesome, as soon by experience I found it to be, in the desert. I have frequently had occasion to describe the process of making butter by shaking the milk in skins. This is also an employment confined to women, and one of a very laborious nature. The curds are formed by boiling the milk, and then putting some curds made on the previous day into it and allowing it to stand. When the sheep no longer give milk, some curds are dried, to be used as a leaven on a future occasion. This preparation, called _leben_, is thick and acid, but very agreeable and grateful to the taste in a hot climate. The sour milk, or _sheneena_, a universal beverage amongst the Arabs, is either buttermilk pure and diluted, or curds mixed with water.
[Illustration: THE PASS OF BUKOVA.—During the revolution of 1904, a number of Turkish soldiers, just before traversing this pass, were given coffee containing "café" by a Bulgarian coffee-seller, or keeper of a small khan. Whilst in the pass the poison began to take effect, and they realized that they had been poisoned. Fortunately for them, a peasant with three horses loaded with Yoghourt (soured milk) had taken advantage of their escort. The soldiers ate freely of the Yoghourt, which counteracted the effects of the poison.]
"The camel's milk is drunk fresh. It is pleasant to the taste, rich, and exceedingly nourishing. It is given in large quantities to the horses. The Shammar and Aneyza Bedouins have no cows or oxen, those animals being looked upon as the peculiar property of tribes who have forgotten their independence, and degraded themselves by the cultivation of land. The sheep are milked at dawn, or even before daybreak, and again in the evening on their return from the pastures. The milk is immediately turned into leben, or boiled to be shaken into butter. Amongst the Bedouins and Jebours it is considered derogatory to the character of a man to milk a cow or sheep, but not to milk the camel. The Sheikhs occasionally obtain dates from the cities. They are eaten dry with bread and leben, or fried in butter, a very favourite dish of the Bedouin...."