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Updated: June 4, 2025
It is the best ground of all, especially where the yellow or brown sands are overlaid by hard gravel, or by a natural metalling of trap and other stones. Wa'r the broken stony surface, over which camels either cannot travel, or travel with difficulty: it is the horror of the Bedawi; and, when he uses the word, it usually means that it causes man to dismount.
Within a mile or so of us stood some Bedawi tents, which we had passed on the march: they were deserted by the men, here Sulaymat, who drive their camels to the wilds sometimes for a week at a time.
Like other Arabs, the Hutaym tribe is divided into a multitude of clans, septs, and families, each under its own Shaykh. All are Moslems, after the Desert pattern, a very rude and inchoate article. Wellsted knew them by their remarkably broad chins: the Bedawi recognize them by their look; by their peculiar accent, and by the use of certain peculiar words, as Harr! when donkey-driving.
The Bedawi matchlock has made them wary; chance might give a shot the first day: on the other hand, skill might be baffled for a month or two I passed six weeks upon the Anti-Libanus before seeing a bear.
The inhospitable sandy steppe destitute of springs and trees, which, stretching from the Arabianpeninsula up to and beyond the Euphrates, reaches towards the west as far as the Syrian mountain-chain and its narrow belt of coast, toward the east as far as the rich lowlands of the Tigris and lower Euphrates this Asiatic Sahara was the primitive home of the sons of Ishmael; from the commencement of tradition we find the "Bedawi," the "son of the desert," pitching his tents there and pasturing his camels, or mounting his swift horse in pursuit now of the foe of his tribe, now of the travelling merchant.
Moreover, the fact that these annual campaigns of Babylonian and Assyrian kings were simply Bedawi razzias highly organized and on a great scale should be borne in mind when we speak of Semitic "empires," lest we think too territorially. No permanent organization of territorial dominion in foreign parts was established by Semitic rulers till late in Assyrian history.
At the same time they did not lose, at least not in Mesopotamia, which was already half Semitized, certain Bedawi ideas and instincts, which would profoundly affect their later history. Of these the most important historically was a religious idea which, for want of a better term, may be called Super-Monotheism.
There might have been treachery in camp; the Egyptian officers suggested that a Baliyy scout could have been sent on to announce the approach of a rich caravan. Accordingly, I ordered an evening review of our "Remingtons;" and chose a large mark purposely, that the Bedawi lookers-on might not have cause to scoff.
Unlike Tor, nothing can be healthier or freer from fever than the pilgrims' plateau. From El-Wijh, too, escape is hopeless: the richest would not give a piastre to levant; because, if a solitary traveller left the caravan, a Bedawi bullet would soon prevail on him to stop. This, then, should be the first long halt for the "compromised" travelling northwards.
I asked them why they did not import good stallions from the banks of the Nile; and the reply was that of the North Country the experiment had ended in the death of the more civilized brutes. This is easily understood: the Baliyy camel seems to live on sand. The camp was visited by a few Bedawi stragglers, and the reports of their immense numbers were simply absurd.
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