Concerning the origin of the tribes and people that now inhabit the Arabian peninsula there is disagreement among the learned. It is generally held that the original tribes of Northern Arabia are descendants of Ishmael. This is also the tradition of all Arab historians. As to the South Arabians, who occupied their highlands with the Hadramaut coast for centuries before the Ishmaelites appeared on the scene there are two opinions. Some believe them to be descendants of Joktan (Arabic Kahtan) the son of Heber and therefore, like the Northern Arabs, true Semites. Others think that the earliest inhabitants of South Arabia were Cushites or Hamitic; while some German scholars hold that in the earlier Arabs the children of Joktan and of Cush were blended into one race.

Among the Ishmaelites are included not only Ishmael’s direct descendants through the twelve princes,[91] but the Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, Midianites and probably other cognate tribes. The names of the sons of Ishmael in relation to their settlements and the traces of these names in modern Arabia is a subject which has been taken up by Bible dictionaries but which still offers an interesting field for further study. The Arabs themselves have always claimed Abrahamic descent for the tribes of the north. The age-long, racial animosity between the Yemenites and Maadites seems to confirm the theory of two distinct races inhabiting the peninsula from very early times; and they remain distinct until to-day in spite of a common language and a common religion. “The animosity of these two races to each other is unaccountable but invincible. Like two chemical products which instantly explode when placed in contact, so has it always been found impossible for Yemenite and Maadite to live quietly together. At the present day the Yemenite in the vicinity of Jerusalem detests the Maadite of Hebron, and when questioned as to the reason of their eternal enmity has no other reply but that it has been so from time immemorial. In the time of the Caliphs the territory of Damascus was desolated by a murderous war for two years, because a Maadite had taken a lemon from the garden of a Yemenite. The province of Murcia in Spain was deluged with blood for seven years because a Maadite inadvertently plucked a Yemenite vine-leaf. It was a passion which surmounted every tie of affection or interest. ‘You have prayed for your father: why do you not pray for your mother?’ a Yemenite was asked near the Kaaba. ‘For my mother!’ said the Yemenite, ‘How could I? She was of the race of Maad.’”[92]

The Yemenites at a very early period founded the strong and opulent Himyarite Kingdom. The Himyarites were the navigators of the East and they were celebrated for their skill in manufacture as well as for enterprise in commerce; they had a written language, inscriptions in which were discovered all over south Arabia during the present century. The Maadite or Ishmaelite Arabs on the contrary were more nomad in their habits and were masters of the caravans which carried the enormous overland trade by the two great trunk-lines of antiquity, from the East to the West. One of these lines extended from Aden, (Arabia Emporium of Ptolemy) along the western part of the peninsula and through Yemen to Egypt; the other extended from Babylon to Tadmor and Damascus. A third route, nearly as important, was also in the hands of the Ishmaelite Arabs, by Wady Rumma and Nejd to the old capital of the Himyarites, Mareb.[93] These caravans unified the Arabian peninsula and fused into one its two peoples; the northern Arabs receiving somewhat of the southern civilization and the southern Arabs adopting the language of the north. But the decline in the caravan trade brought disaster to Arabia; the ship of the desert found a competitor in the ships of the sea. Old settlements were broken up, great cities, which flourished because of overland trade, were abandoned and whole tribes were reduced from opulence to poverty. In this time of transition, long before the birth of Mohammed, the Arabic nation as it is known to modern history seems to have been formed.

The modern Arabs classify themselves into Bedouins and town-dwellers; or, in their own poetic way, ahl el beit and ahl el h’eit, “the people of the tent,” and “the people of the wall.” But this classification is hardly sufficient, although it has been generally adopted by writers on Arabia. Edson L. Clark, in his book, The Arabs and the Turks, gives five classes: “Beginning at the lowest round of the ladder we have first the sedentary or settled Arabs. .. who though still many of them dwelling in tents have become cultivators of the soil. By their nomadic brethren these settled Arabs are thoroughly despised as degraded and denationalized by the change in their mode of life. Secondly, the wandering tribes in the neighborhood of the settled districts, and in constant intercourse with their inhabitants. Both these classes, but more especially the latter, are thoroughly demoralized.... The third class consists of the Arabs of the Turkish towns and villages; but they too are a degenerate class both in language and character.... The fourth class consists of the inhabitants of the towns and villages of Arabia proper, who by their peculiar situation have remained more secluded from the rest of the world than even the wandering tribes.... Finally the great nomadic tribes of the interior, still preserving unchanged the primitive character, habits and customs of their race.” This last class and this alone are the real Bedouins.

In addition to this classification according to civilization there is the universal genealogical classification; and no people in the world are fonder of genealogies than the Arabs. The names of tribes and families go back, in many cases to pre-islamic days. The earliest tribal-names, therefore, are either taken from animals or totem-names, like Panthers, Dogs, Lizards, e. g., Anmar Kilab, Dibab, etc.; place-names transformed afterward by the genealogists into ancestors, e. g., Hadramaut, Hauab; or from idols and idol-worship, e. g., Abd el Kais, Abd al Lat, etc. But the later system of genealogies as given by the Arabs are utterly unreliable because they are so evidently artificial. The backbone of the system was the pedigree of Mohammed and this is notoriously untrustworthy. “Dummy ancestors” were inserted in order to connect a particular but unimportant tribe with a distinguished one, and Hamdani himself tells us that he found it a common practice of obscure desert groups to call themselves by the name of some more famous tribe.[94]

Character is difficult to define. To depict the moral physiognomy of a nation and their physical traits in such a way that nothing important is omitted and no single characteristic exaggerated at the cost of others. This difficulty is increased in the case of the Arabs, by their twofold origin and their present twofold civilization. That which is true of the town-dweller, is not always true of the Bedouin and vice versa. Moreover the influence of the neighboring countries must be taken into account. Eastern Arabia has taken color by long contact with Persia; this is seen in speech, architecture, food and dress. Southern Arabia, especially Hadramaut, has absorbed East Indian ideas. While Western Arabia, especially Hejaz, shows in many ways its proximity to Egypt. Not losing sight of these distinctions, which will account for many exceptions to the general statements made, what is the character of the Arabs?

Physically, they are undoubtedly one of the strongest and noblest races of the world. Baron de Larrey, surgeon-general of the first Napoleon, in his expeditions to Egypt and Syria, says: “Their physical structure is in all respects more perfect than that of Europeans; their organs of sense exquisitely acute, their size above the average of men in general, their figure robust and elegant, the color brown; their intelligence proportionate to their physical perfection, and without doubt superior, other things being equal, to that of other nations.”

The typical Arab face is round-oval, but the general leanness of the features detracts from its regularity; the bones are prominent; the eyebrows long and bushy; the eye small, deep-set, fiery black or a dark, deep brown. The face expresses half dignity, half cunning, and is not unkindly, although never smiling or benignant. The teeth are white, even, short and broad. The Arabs have very scanty beards as a rule, but those of the towns often cultivate a patriarchal beard like the traditional beard of the prophet. The figure is well-knit, muscular, long-limbed, never fat. The arms and legs are thin, almost shrunken, but with muscles like whip-cords. As young men the Bedouins are often good-looking, with bright eyes and dark hair, but the constant habit of frowning to protect the eyes from the glare of the sun, soon gives the face a fierce aspect; at forty their beards turn grey and at fifty they appear old men.

It is a common mistake to consider the Arabs democratic in their ideas of society. The genuine Arab was and is always an aristocrat. Feuds originate about the precedence of one family or tribe over another; marriage is only allowed between tribes or clans of equal standing; the whole system of sheikh-government is an aristocratic idea; and as final proof there still exists a species of caste in South Arabia, while in North Arabia the Ma’adan Arabs of Mesopotamia and the Suleyb of the desert are little better than Pariahs as regards their neighbors. It is with a heavy heart that any Arab sees set over him a man of less noble extraction than himself. The religion of Arabia has made its people fanatics, although according to NÖldeke, “fanaticism is characteristic of all Semitic religions.” But he forgets the real distinction between intolerance of another religion on ethical grounds as in the case of Judaism, and the infinitely hard, one-sided, crude exclusiveness of Islam.

The Arabs rarely have the power of taking in complex unities at a glance; the talent for arrangement is absent. An Arab carpenter cannot draw a right angle, nor can an Arab servant lay a tablecloth square on the table. The old Arab temple called a cube (Kaaba) has none of its sides or angles equal; their houses show the same lack of the “carpenter’s eye” to-day. Streets are seldom parallel, even the street, so-called, was not straight in Damascus. The Arab mind loves units, not unity; they are good soldiers, but poor generals; there is no partnership in business; and no public spirit; each man lives for himself. That is the reason why Yemen cannot shake off the yoke of the Turk, and this explains why the smallest towns in Arabia have a great many little mosques. The Arab has a keen eye for particulars, great subjectivity, nervous restlessness, deep passion and inward feeling, and yet joined with strong conservatism and love of the past. In everything he follows old models and traditions; witness their poetry and their tent-life—in Arab phrase, termed their “houses of hair” and their “houses of poetry.” As a result of their language-structure, the Arabs have naturally a strong tendency to a pointed, sharp speech of epigrammatic brevity, but also go to the other extreme of ornate tautology. The former is characteristic of the desert; the latter of the towns. Eloquence and poetry are still worshipped. The only fine art which Arabs admire is that of caligraphy; and those who have seen finished specimens of an Arab master-penman, must acknowledge that in them are all the elements of painting and sculpture.

The Arabs are polite, good-natured, lively, manly, patient, courageous and hospitable to a fault. They are also contentious, untruthful, sensuous, distrustful, covetous, proud and superstitious. One must always keep in mind this paradox in dealing with an Arab. As Clark expresses it, “an Arab will lie and cheat, and swear any number of false oaths, in a pecuniary transaction; but when once his faith is pledged he can be implicitly trusted, even to the last extremity.” There are Arab oaths such as wallah, which are intended to confirm falsehoods and signify nothing. There are others, such as the threefold oath, with wa, bi and ti as particles of swearing, which not even the vilest robber among them dare break. Grammatically, the two oaths are nearly the same.

Robbery is a fine art among the nomads; but the high-minded Arab robs lawfully, honestly and honorably. He will not attack his victims in the night; he tries to avoid all bloodshed by coming with overwhelming force; and if his enterprise miscarries, he boldly enters the first tent possible, proclaims his true character and asks protection. The Dakheil, or privilege of sanctuary, the salt covenant, the blood covenant and the sacredness of the guest, all prove that the Arabs are trustworthy. And yet, in the ordinary affairs of life, lying and deception are the rule and seldom the exception. The true Arab is niggardly when he buys, and will haggle for hours to reduce a price; and yet he is prodigal and lavish in giving away his goods to prove his hospitality.

According to Burckhardt, the Arab is the only real lover of the Orient; if he limits this to the Bedouin-Arab he is correct. In matters of love and marriage the Arab of the towns is what Mohammed, the Meccan merchant was, after the death of the old lady Khadijah. But Arabic poetry of the times of ignorance does occasionally breathe the true tale of love and chivalry; and the desert Arabs as a rule are not polygamists nor given to divorce.

It was a law among the ancient Arabs that whoever sheds the blood of a man owes blood on that account to the family of the slain. This law of blood-revenge was confirmed by the Koran and is a sacred right everywhere in Arabia. An Arab is considered degenerate who accepts a fine or any consideration save blood for blood. This law is both the cause of continual feuds, and tends to terminate them without much bloodshed. Arabs of the town and of the desert will quarrel for hours without coming to blows; it is not cowardice that prevents an open encounter, but the fear of shedding blood and blood-revenge.

Family life among the Arabs is best studied by looking at child-life in the desert and at the position of women among the Bedouin and the town-dwellers. In no part of the world does the newborn child meet less preparation for its reception than among the Bedouin. A land bare of many blessings, general poverty and the law of the survival of the fittest, has made the Arab mother stern of heart. In the open desert under the shade of an acacia bush or behind a camel, the Arab baby first sees the daylight. As soon as it is born the mother herself rubs and cleans the child with sand, places it in her handkerchief and carries it home. She suckles the child for a short period, and at the age of four months it already drinks profusely of camels’ milk. A name is given to the infant immediately; generally from some trifling incident connected with its birth, or from some object which attracts the mother’s fancy. Moslem names such as Hassan Ali or Fatimah, are extremely uncommon among the true Bedouins; although Mohammed is sometimes given. Beside his own peculiar name every Bedouin boy is called by the name of his father and tribe. And what is more remarkable, boys are often called after their sisters, e. g., Akhoo Noorah, the brother of Noorah. Girls’ names are taken from the constellations, birds, or desert animals like Gazelle.

In education the Arab is a true child of nature. His parents leave him to his own sweet will; they seldom chastise and seldom praise. Trained from birth in the hard school of nomad life, fatigue and danger do contribute much to his education. Burckhardt says, “I have seen parties of naked boys playing at noonday upon the burning sand in the middle of summer, running until they had fatigued themselves, and when they returned to their fathers’ tents they were scolded for not continuing the exercise. Instead of teaching the boy civil manners, the father desires him to beat and pelt the strangers who come to the tent; to steal or secrete some trifling article belonging to them. The more saucy and impudent children are the more they are praised since this is taken as an indication of future enterprise and warlike disposition. Bedouin children, male and female, go unclad and play together until their sixth year. The first child’s festival is that of circumcision. At the age of seven years the day is fixed, sheep are killed and a large dish of food is cooked. Women accompany the operation with a loud song and afterward there is dancing and horseback riding and encounters with lances. The girls adorn themselves with cheap jewelry and tent-poles are decorated with ostrich feathers. Altogether it is a gala-day.

The Bedouin children have few toys but they manage to amuse themselves with many games. I have seen a group of happy children, each with a pet locust on a bit of string, watching whose steed should win the race. The boys make music out of desert-grass winding it in curious fashion to resemble a horn, and calling it Masoor. In Yemen and Nejd a sling, like David’s, with pebbles from the brook is a lad’s first weapon. Afterward he acquires a lance and perhaps an old discarded bowie-knife. The children of the desert have no books.[95] But, of paper, they have the Book of Nature. This magnificent picture book is never more diligently studied than by those little dark eyes which watch the sheep at pasture or count the stars in the blue abyss from their perch on a lofty camel’s saddle in the midnight journeyings.

When the Bedouin lad grows up, and begins to swear by the few straggling hairs on his chin, he cannot read a letter, but he knows men and he knows the desert. The talk heard at night around the Sheikh’s tent or the acacia-brush fireside is much like the wisdom of the book of Job. A philosophy of submission to the world as it is; a deification of stoicism or patience; a profound trust that all will end well at last. Sad to say even the little nomads, with their ignorance of all religion, share in the fanatical antagonism of their elders toward the Christian religion and Christians. One of their games, in Nejd, is to draw a cross on the desert sand and then defile it; they learn that all outside the pale of Mohammed’s creed are kafirs and to please Allah are glad to throw stones at any wayfaring Nasrani. Little do the Bedouins and still less do their children, however, know of the religion of Islam. The Koran is not a book for children’s minds and of such is not the kingdom of Mohammed.

The Bedouin child early puts away childish things. To western eyes the children of Arabia appear like little old men and women; and the grown-up people have minds like children. This is another paradox of the Arab-character. At ten years the boy is sent to drive camels and the girl to herd sheep; at fifteen they are both on the way to matrimony. He wears the garb of a man and boasts a matchlock; she takes to spinning camel hair and sings the songs of the past. Their brief childhood is over. In the towns marriage takes place even earlier; and there are boys of eighteen who have already divorced two wives.

Among the Bedouins polygamy is not common nor is it among the poorer Arabs of the towns. The marriage ceremony among the Bedouins is as simple as it is long and complex among the townsmen. After the negotiations which precede the marriage contract, the bridegroom comes with a lamb in his arms to the tent of the girl’s father and there cuts the lamb’s throat before witnesses. As soon as the blood falls on the ground the contract is sealed; feasting and dancing follow, and at night the bride is conducted to the bridegroom’s tent where he is awaiting her arrival. Dowrys are paid more generally and more largely in the towns than in the desert. Among certain Arab tribes a demand of money for the hand of a bride would be deemed scandalous. From a western standpoint the women of the Bedouin stand on a higher platform of liberty and justice than those of the towns where the Koran has done its work on one half of society to repress intellect and degrade affection, and sensualize the sexual relation to the last degree. On the other hand divorce is perhaps more common among the Bedouins,[96] than among the city Arabs. Burckhardt met Arabs not yet forty-five years of age who were known to have had above fifty wives. Concerning the marriage-contract in the towns, the ceremony, the divorce proceedings, and the methods by which that is made legal which even the lax law of Islam condemns, the less said the better.

On the position of women in Arabia we quote four unimpeachable witnesses who have nothing in common save their knowledge of the subject; there is truth on both sides where they differ; where they agree there is no question of certainty as to the fact.

Doughty, the Christian explorer, whose volumes are a mine of information says:[97] “The female is of all animals the better, say the Arabians, save only in mankind. Upon the human female the Semites cast all their blame. Hers is, they think, a maleficent nature, and the Arabs complain that ‘she has seven lives.’ The Arabs are contrary to womankind, upon whom they would have God’s curse; some, they say, are poisoners of husbands and there are many adulteresses.... The horma [i. e., woman] they would have under subjection; admitted to an equality, the ineptitude of her evil nature will break forth. They check her all day at home and let her never be enfranchised from servitude. The veil and the jealous lattice are rather of the obscene Mohammedan austerity in the towns; among the mild tent-dwellers in the open wilderness the housewives have a liberty as where all are kindred; yet their hareem are now seen in the most Arabian tribes half-veiled.”

Burckhardt, the time-honored authority on things Arabian, writes: “The Bedouins are jealous of their women, but do not prevent them from laughing and talking with strangers. It seldom happens that a Bedouin strikes his wife; if he does so she calls loudly on her wasy or protector who pacifies the husband and makes him listen to reason.... The wife and daughters perform all the domestic business. They grind the wheat in the handmill or pound it in the mortar; they prepare the breakfast and dinner; knead and bake the bread; make butter, fetch water, work at the loom, mend the tent-covering and are, it must be owned, indefatigable. While the husband or brother sits before the tent smoking his pipe.”

Lady Ann Blunt, who travelled among the tribes of the Euphrates valley with her husband, speaks thus from a woman’s standpoint. “Of the Bedouin women a shorter description will be enough. As girls they are pretty in a wild picturesque way and almost always have cheerful, good-natured faces. They are hard-working and hard-worked, doing all the labor of the camp.... They live apart from the men but are in no way shut up or put under restraint. In the morning they all go out to gather wood for the day, and whenever we have met them so employed they have seemed in the highest possible spirits.... In mental qualities the women of the desert are far below the men, their range of ideas being extremely limited. Some few of them, however, get real influence over their husbands and even, through them, over their tribes. In more than one Sheikh’s tent it is in the woman’s half of it that the politics of the tribe are settled.”

Snouck Hurgronje, the Dutch traveller who spent an entire year (1884-85) in Mecca thus characterizes the position of women in Arabian towns:[98]

The poems which revile womankind, and of which the Dutch traveller speaks, are legion. Here are two examples in English translation from Burton:

Three kinds of dwellings are found in Arabia. There is the tent, the date-palm hut, and the house built with mortar of stone or mud-brick. The tent is distinctive, in a general sense, of the interior and of Northern Arabia; the palm-hut of the coast and of South Arabia; while houses of brick and mortar exist in all the towns and cities. The evolution of the house is from goats’-hair to matting, and from matting to mud-roof. Each of these dwellings is called beit, “the place where one spends the night.”

The Bedouin tent[99] consists of nine poles, arranged in sets of three and a wide, black goats’-hair covering so as to form two parts; the men’s apartment being to the left of the entrance and the women’s to the right, separated by a white woollen carpet hanging from the ridge-pole. The posts are about five to seven feet in height; the length of the tent is between twenty and thirty feet, its depth at the most is ten feet. The only furniture consists of cooking utensils, pack-saddles, carpets, water-skins, wheat-bags and millstones.

The date-palm hut is of different shapes. In Hejaz and Yemen it is built like a huge beehive, circular and with a pointed roof. In Eastern Arabia it consists of a square enclosure with hip-roof generally steep and covered with matting or thatch-work. At Bahrein the Arabs are very skillful in so weaving the date-fronds together and tightening every crevice that the huts keep out wind and rain-storms most successfully. The average size date-hut can be built for twenty or thirty Rupees (seven to ten dollars) and will last for several years.

The stone-dwellings of Arabia are as different in architecture and material as circumstance and taste can make them. In Yemen large castle-like dwellings crown every mountain and frown on every valley; stone is plentiful and the plan of architecture inherits grace and strength from the older civilization of the Himyarites. In Bagdad, Busrah and East Arabia Persian architecture prevails, with arches, wind-towers, tracery and the veranda-windows. While the architecture of Mecca and Medina takes on its own peculiar type from the needs of the pilgrimage. Generally speaking the Arabs build their houses without windows to the street, and with an open court; the harem-system dictates to the builder, even putting a high parapet on the flat-roof against jealous eyes. Bleak walls without ornament or pictures are also demanded by their surly religion. All furniture is simple and commonplace; except where the touch of western civilization has awakened a taste for mirrors, marble-top tables and music-boxes.

In dress there is also much variety in Arabia. Turkish influence is seen in the Ottoman provinces and Indian-Persian in Oman, Hassa and Bahrein. The Turkish fez and the turban (which are not Arabian) are examples. The common dress of the Bedouin is the type that underlies all varieties. It consists of a coarse cotton shirt over which is worn the abba or wide square mantle. The headdress is made with a square cloth, folded across and fastened on the crown of the head by a circlet of woollen-rope called an ‘akal. The color of the garment and its ornamentation depends on the locality; likewise the belt and the weapons of the wearer. Sandals of all shapes are used; shoes and boots on the coast indicate foreign influence. The dress of the Bedouin woman is a wide cotton gown, with open sides, generally of a dark blue color, and a cloth for the head. The veil is of various shapes; in Oman it has the typical Egyptian nose-piece with only the middle part of the face concealed; in the Turkish provinces of East Arabia, thin black cloth conceals all the features. Nose and earrings are common. All Arab women also tattoo their hands and faces as well as other parts of their bodies, dye with henna and use antimony on their eyelashes for ornament.

The staple foods of Arabia are bread, rice, ghee (or clarified butter, which the Arabs call semu) milk, mutton and dates. These are found everywhere and coffee is the universal beverage. Other foods and fruits we have considered in our study of the provinces. Tea is now widely used but was known scarcely anywhere less than twenty years ago. Tobacco is smoked in every village and the Bedouins also are passionately fond of the weed; even the Wahabi religious prohibition did not drive out desire for the universal narcotic. There is one article of food we have left unmentioned, locusts. These are quite a staple in the grocers’ shops of all the interior towns of Arabia. They are prepared for eating by boiling in salt and water, after which they are dried in the sun. They taste like stale shrimps or dried herring. The coast-dwellers still live largely on fish and in the days of Ptolemy they were called Ichthiophagoi.