According to Mijuel, the Mizrab, instead of being, as we had been told, a mere section of the Resallin, are in fact the original stock, from which not only the Resallin but the Moáhib and the Gomussa themselves have branched off. In regard to the last-mentioned tribe he related the following curious story: —
An Arab of the Mizrab married a young girl of the Suellmat tribe and soon afterwards died. In a few weeks his widow married again, taking her new husband from among her own kinsmen. Before the birth of her first child a dispute arose as to its parentage, she affirming her Mizrab husband to be the father while the Suellmat claimed the child. The matter, as all such matters are in the desert, was referred to arbitration, and the mother’s assertion was put to the test by a live coal being placed upon her tongue. In spite of this ordeal she persisted in her statement, and got a judgment in her favour. Her son, however, is supposed to have been dissatisfied with the decision, for as soon as born he turned angrily on his mother, from which circumstance he received the name of Gomussa or the “scratcher.” From him the Gomussa tribe are descended. They first came into notice about seventy years ago when they attacked and plundered the Bagdad caravan which happened to be conveying a large sum of money. With these sudden riches they acquired such importance that they have since become the leading section of the tribe, and they are now undoubtedly the possessors of the best mares among the Ánazeh. The Mizrab Sheykhs nevertheless still assert superiority in point of birth, and a vestige of their old claims still exists in their titular right to the tribute of Palmyra.
Mijuel’s son, Afet, or Japhet, whom we met at Beteyen’s camp last spring, has taken, it would appear, an active part in the late fighting. During the battle where Sotamm was defeated by the Sebaa and their allies, the head of the Ibn Jendal3 family, pursued by some Welled Ali horsemen, yielded himself up a prisoner to Afet whose father-in-law he was, and who sought to give him protection by covering him with his cloak. But the Ibn Smeyr were at blood feud with the Ibn Jendals, and in such cases no asylum is sacred. One of Mohammed Dukhi’s sons dragged Ibn Jendal out of his hiding-place and slew him before Afet’s eyes. On that day the Sebaa took most of the mares and camels they had lost in the previous fighting, and our friend Ferhan Ibn Hedeb is now in tolerable comfort again with tents and tent furniture, and coffee-pots to his heart’s content. I hope he will bear his good fortune as well as he bore the bad.
Mijuel can of course give us better advice than anybody else in Damascus, and he says that we cannot do better in the interests of our journey than go first to Jerúd and consult Mohammed Dukhi. The Welled Ali after the Roala are the tribe which knows the western side of the desert best, and we should be sure of getting correct information from them, if nothing more. The Sebaa never go anywhere near the Wady Sirhán, as they keep almost entirely to the eastern half of the Hamád; and even their ghazús hardly ever meddle with that inhospitable region. Mijuel has once been as far south as to the edge of the Nefûd, which he describes as being covered with grass in the spring. The Wady Sirhán, he believes, has wells, but no pasturage.
Another interesting visit which we paid while at Damascus was to Abd el-Kader, the hero of the French war in Algiers. This charming old man, whose character would do honour to any nation and any creed, is ending his days as he began them, in learned retirement and the exercises of his religion. The Arabs of the west, “Maghrabi” (Mogrebins), are distinguished from those of the Peninsula, and indeed from all others, by a natural taste for piety and a religious tone of thought. Arabia proper, except in the first age of Islam and latterly during the hundred years of Wahhabi rule, has never been a religious country. Perhaps out of antagonism to Persia, its nearest neighbour, it neglects ceremonial observance, and pays little respect to saints, miracles, and the supernatural world in general. But with the Moors and the Algerian Arabs this is different. Their religion is the reason of their social life and a prime mover in their politics. It is the fashion there, even at the present day, for a rich man to spend his money on a mosque, as elsewhere he would spend it on his stud and the entertainment of guests, and nothing gives such social distinction as regular attendance at prayer. There is too, besides the lay nobility, a class of spiritual nobles held equally high in public estimation. These are the marabous or descendants of certain saints, who by virtue of their birth partake in the sanctity of their ancestors and have hereditary gifts of divination and miraculous cure. They hold indeed much the same position with the vulgar as did the sons of the prophets in the days of Saul.
Abd el-Kader was the representative of such a family, and not, as I think most people suppose, a Bedouin Sheykh. In point of fact he was a townsman and a priest, not by birth a soldier, and though trained, as nobles of either class were, to arms, it was only the accident of a religious war that made him a man of action. He gained his first victories by his sermons, not by his sword; and, now that the fight is over, he has returned naturally to his first profession, that of saint and man of letters. As such, quite as much as for his military renown, he is revered in Damascus.
To us, however, it is the extreme simplicity of his character and the breadth of his good sense, amounting to real wisdom, which form his principal charm. “Saint” though he be “by profession,” as one may say, for such he is in his own eyes as well as those of his followers, he is uninjured by his high position. It is to him an obligation. His charity is unbounded, and he extends it to all alike; to be poor or suffering is a sufficient claim on him. During the Damascus massacres he opened his doors to every fugitive; his house was crowded with Christians, and he was ready to defend his guests by force if need were. To us he was most amiable, and talked long on the subject of Arab genealogy and tradition. He gave me a book which has been lately written by one of his sons on the pedigree of the Arabian horse, and took an evident interest in our own researches in that direction. He made the pilgrimage to Mecca many years ago, travelling the whole way from Algeria by land and returning through Nejd to Meshhed Ali and Bagdad. This was before the French war.
Abd el-Kader returned our visit most politely next day, and it was strange to see this old warrior humbly mounted on his little Syrian donkey, led by a single servant, riding into the garden where we were. He dresses like a mollah in a cloth gown, and with a white turban set far back from his forehead after the Algerian fashion. He never, I believe, wore the Bedouin kefiyeh. His face is now very pale as becomes a student, and his smile is that of an old man, but his eye is still bright and piercing like a falcon’s. It is easy to see, however, that it will never flash again with anything like anger. Abd el-Kader has long possessed that highest philosophy of noble minds according to Arab doctrine, patience.
A man of a very different sort, but one whom we were also interested to see, was Midhat Pasha, just arrived at Damascus as Governor-General of Syria. He had come with a considerable flourish of trumpets, for he was supposed to represent the doctrine of administrative reform, which was at that time seriously believed in by Europeans for the Turkish Empire. Midhat was the protégé of our own Foreign Office, and great things were expected of him. For ourselves, though quite sceptical on these matters and knowing the history of Midhat’s doings at Bagdad too well to have any faith in him as a serious reformer, we called to pay our respects, partly as a matter of duty, and partly it must be owned out of curiosity. It seemed impossible that a man who had devised anything so fanciful as parliamentary government for Turkey should be otherwise than strange and original. But in this we were grievously disappointed, for a more essentially commonplace, even silly talker, or one more naïvely pleased with himself, we had never met out of Europe. It is possible that he may have adopted this tone with us as the sort of thing which would suit English people, but I don’t think so. We kept our own counsel of course about our plans, mentioning only that we hoped to see Bagdad and Bussora and to go on thence to India, for such was to be ultimately our route. On the mention of these two towns he at once began a panegyric