DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.10358#0310
280
PICTURESQUE PALESTINE.
He accordingly engaged the Fellah in talk, asking, ' What presents do you give to the bride
at a Fellah wedding ?' ' What presents ? Why, we give a silk robe, and a cotton robe, and
silver ornaments; and then we give so much in money to the father, and so much to the
brother, and so much to the uncles and aunts.' By the time that he had got to the uncles
and aunts he perceived that the Bedawy had eaten up three-quarters of the supper, so he in
turn asked the Bedawy what they gave the bride at a Bedawy wedding ? The Bedawy
replied bluntly, ' A tob (robe), a veil, a necklace, and a headdress.' He continued eating till
all was finished, leaving the Fellah still very hungry and done out of his supper."
I think I ought to place by this the next story told by Mrs. Finn, in which the tables are
turned on a Bedawy. It happened that a Bedawy came to a village one evening in the summer
and entered the public room of the guest-house. For supper amongst other things the Fellah
host set before him some prickly pears—the fruit of the great cactus, which forms the hedges for
enclosures so common in Palestine, &c. — which he had never seen, and which was then in season.
In mockery of his ignorance they did not shell the prickly pears, but left them in the husk all
covered with their innumerable sharp spines. The Bedawy, unsuspicious, took up and ate the
fruit as he was accustomed to eat cucumbers ; after supper his host asked him how he liked
them ? " God be praised for them, they are very refreshing," said the man ; " only the hair
upon them is rather sharp, it is rougher than the hairs on cucumbers, and it sticks to my tongue
and smarts."
Mr. Palgrave, in his " Central and Eastern Arabia," warns one not to accept without much
allowance the favourable pictures which travellers draw sometimes of the good faith and the
hospitality of the Bedawi'n. Of the first he writes—*
" Deeds of the most cold-blooded perfidy are by no means uncommon among these
nomades, and strangers under their guidance and protection, nay, even their own kindred and
brethren of the desert, are but too often the victims of such conduct. To lead travellers
astray in the wilderness till they fall exhausted by thirst and weariness, and then to plunder
and leave them to die, is no unfrequent Bedawi'n procedure..... Thus, for example, a
numerous caravan, composed principally of wealthy Jews on their way across the desert from
Damascus to Bagdad, was, not many years since, betrayed by its Bedawm guides. The
travellers perished to a man, while their faithless conductors, after keeping aloof till they were
sure that thirst and the burning sun had done their work, returned to the scene of death, and
constituted themselves the sole and universal legatees of the moveable goods, gear, and wealth
of their too-confiding companions. I myself, during my stay at the town of Ha'yel, in Central
Arabia, met with a large Hebrew folio, once the property of one of these unfortunate Israelites.
The Bedawy, to whose lot it had fallen amid his share of plunder, had brought it thus far
in hope of rendering his treason so far profitable by the sale of a work all the more valuable
in Eastern opinion for being totally unintelligible."
Of their hospitality he says : " Nor do I wish to deprive them of all credit for these
* Palgrave's "Arabia," vol. i. 3, 36.
PICTURESQUE PALESTINE.
He accordingly engaged the Fellah in talk, asking, ' What presents do you give to the bride
at a Fellah wedding ?' ' What presents ? Why, we give a silk robe, and a cotton robe, and
silver ornaments; and then we give so much in money to the father, and so much to the
brother, and so much to the uncles and aunts.' By the time that he had got to the uncles
and aunts he perceived that the Bedawy had eaten up three-quarters of the supper, so he in
turn asked the Bedawy what they gave the bride at a Bedawy wedding ? The Bedawy
replied bluntly, ' A tob (robe), a veil, a necklace, and a headdress.' He continued eating till
all was finished, leaving the Fellah still very hungry and done out of his supper."
I think I ought to place by this the next story told by Mrs. Finn, in which the tables are
turned on a Bedawy. It happened that a Bedawy came to a village one evening in the summer
and entered the public room of the guest-house. For supper amongst other things the Fellah
host set before him some prickly pears—the fruit of the great cactus, which forms the hedges for
enclosures so common in Palestine, &c. — which he had never seen, and which was then in season.
In mockery of his ignorance they did not shell the prickly pears, but left them in the husk all
covered with their innumerable sharp spines. The Bedawy, unsuspicious, took up and ate the
fruit as he was accustomed to eat cucumbers ; after supper his host asked him how he liked
them ? " God be praised for them, they are very refreshing," said the man ; " only the hair
upon them is rather sharp, it is rougher than the hairs on cucumbers, and it sticks to my tongue
and smarts."
Mr. Palgrave, in his " Central and Eastern Arabia," warns one not to accept without much
allowance the favourable pictures which travellers draw sometimes of the good faith and the
hospitality of the Bedawi'n. Of the first he writes—*
" Deeds of the most cold-blooded perfidy are by no means uncommon among these
nomades, and strangers under their guidance and protection, nay, even their own kindred and
brethren of the desert, are but too often the victims of such conduct. To lead travellers
astray in the wilderness till they fall exhausted by thirst and weariness, and then to plunder
and leave them to die, is no unfrequent Bedawi'n procedure..... Thus, for example, a
numerous caravan, composed principally of wealthy Jews on their way across the desert from
Damascus to Bagdad, was, not many years since, betrayed by its Bedawm guides. The
travellers perished to a man, while their faithless conductors, after keeping aloof till they were
sure that thirst and the burning sun had done their work, returned to the scene of death, and
constituted themselves the sole and universal legatees of the moveable goods, gear, and wealth
of their too-confiding companions. I myself, during my stay at the town of Ha'yel, in Central
Arabia, met with a large Hebrew folio, once the property of one of these unfortunate Israelites.
The Bedawy, to whose lot it had fallen amid his share of plunder, had brought it thus far
in hope of rendering his treason so far profitable by the sale of a work all the more valuable
in Eastern opinion for being totally unintelligible."
Of their hospitality he says : " Nor do I wish to deprive them of all credit for these
* Palgrave's "Arabia," vol. i. 3, 36.