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SINAI. 2g5
accurate they may be for the localities and races they describe, have not an equal claim to
the title of correct delineations of Arabs and of Arab customs. The case appears to me much
as if the description of a backwoodsman of Ohio should be given for a faithful portrait of
a Yorkshire farmer, or the ways and doings of Connaught for a sketch of Norfolk life and
manners. Syria and Egypt, Palmyra and Bagdad, even less Mosoul and Algiers, are not
Arabia, nor are their inhabitants Arabs. The populations alluded to are, instead, a mixture
of Kurds, Turcomans, Syrians, Phoenicians, Armenians, Berbers, Greeks, Copts, Albanians,
Chaldeans, not to mention the remnants of other and older races, with a little, a very little
Arab blood—one in twenty at most—and that little re-diluted by local and territorial
influences! That all more or less speak Arabic is a fact which gives them no more claim to
be numbered among Arabs than speaking bad English makes an Englishman of a native of
Connaught or of Texas. For the popular figure of the Bedawy, I must add, that even were he
sketched, as he rarely is, from the genuine nomade of Arabia, it would be no juster to bring
him forward as an example of Arab life and society than to publish the ' Pickwick Papers' or
'Nicholas Nickleby' with 'Scenes in High Life' or 'Tales of the Howards' lettered on the
back. These unlucky and much-talked of BedawTin in the Syrian, also miscalled Arabian, desert,
are, in fact, only hybrids, crosses between Turcoman and Kurdish tribes, with a small and
questionable infusion of Arab blood, and that too none of the best, like a wine-glass of thin
claret poured into a tumbler of water. In short, among these races, town or Bedawin, we
have no real authentic Arabs. Arabia and Arabs begin south of Syria and Palestine, west of
Basrah and Zobeyr, east of Kerak and the Red Sea. Draw a line across from the top of the
Red Sea to the top of the Persian Gulf: what is below that line is alone Arab; and even
then do not reckon the pilgrim route {i.e. the Hajj route to Mecca from Damascus, Cairo, &c),
it is half Turkish-; nor Medinah, it is cosmopolitan ; nor the sea-coast of Yemen, it is Indo-
Abyssinian ; least of all Mecca, the common sewer of Mohammadans of all kinds, nations, and
lands, and where every trace of Arab identity has long since been effaced by promiscuous
immorality and the corruption of ages. Mascat and Kateef must also stand with Mokha and
'Aden on the list of exceptions/' (Palgrave/s " Central and Eastern Arabia," vol. ii. p. 162.)
But to return to Wady Taiyebeh (see pages 269 and 271). A few bends the valley
makes, and then, set in a frame of white cliffs, with horizontal bands of varied colouring on
the one side and darker-tinted cliffs on the other, the deep blue waters of the Red Sea come in
sight. The description of the Israelite march is clearly given in Numbers xxxiii. to, 11: " And
they removed from Elim, and encamped by the Red Sea : and they removed from the Red
Sea, and encamped in the wilderness of Sin." If we can imagine the sloping terraces of
the mountain black with the great moving multitude of people, may we not imagine that
here, on the quiet shore of the sea, they first realised the completeness of that deliverance
which God had wrought for them. Before them was their enemy and their friend, the
mysterious sea, beyond which there was one more last glimpse of Egypt; behind them was the
Desert, promontory after promontory stretching out into these waters. They had on their
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