Page 18 - A Hand book of Arabia Vol 1 (iii) Ch 4,5

104 HEJAZ

cither cosmopolitan centres like Mecca and Medina, whose societies
are not typical of local urban life, or ports like Jiddah and Yambo\
of mixed population, and, like the inland centres, varying greatly
from month to month according to the ebb and flow of passing
pilgrims. Ta if, again, as an official summer resort, stands by itself.
Urban life, therefore, will be best treated of under each separate
town.
2. Bedouin life has certain common features which distinguish it to
some extent from that of the nomadic societies elsewhere in Arabia.
While, on the one hand, nomadism is paramount throughout Hejaz
outside the towns, there being very few and inconsiderable villages
or even hamlets, the towns, on the other hand, owing to their
external relations, remain more independent of it than in any other
area where it prevails to anything like the same degree. The result
is that the sharpest contrast exists between urban and rural life in
Hejaz. The townsmen are among the best off, the Bedouins among
the worst off, in Arabia. Thanks to their detachment from the
settled communities and to the poverty of the soil, the Hejazi
Bedouins are exceptionally unproductive and uncommercial; and
further, owing to the temptation offered by the pilgrim traffic, and
also to the check imposed upon their natural free development by
the local pressure of the condominium of the Porte and the Sherif,
they are of exceptionally predatory character, low morale, and
disunited organization. Though there are very large tribes, such
as the Harb and Ateibah, there are practically no great Bedouin
chiefs in Hejaz : and the tribes act less as units than almost
anywhere else. In short, while the nomads are individually less to
be trusted in Hejaz than in any other Arabian province, the engage­
ments made for groups and safe-conducts given in all sincerity by
their Sheikhs will have less validity in every respect, and very
limited local range.
3. Oasis life in Hejaz is that of simple and primitive agricul­

turists. The clay-built houses are often spacious, with an upper
floor, and the windows are open casements for light and air.
The flooring is of beaten earth, the doors rudely constructed of
palm-boards. Rafters are made of tamarisk and palm-beams, for
in all the oases tamarisk is grown for timber. Palmwood is used |
for cooking, but charcoal in the Nejd manner for the coffee-fires,
the men making it in the desert. Camel harness is manu­
factured from palm-fibre ; but the villagers are chiefly occupied
"•ith the tending of their palm-groves and with cultivation. The
Hejazis are barren of invention and initiative. Water is their main
concern, but they continue to use old wells and rarely sink new