Page 350 - A Hand book of Arabia Vol 1 (iii) Ch 6 -10

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:*r>2 NEJD
badly
Artificial light is seldom provided : only rich men possess
i
made petroleum lamps, imported from the Unit. . ,
Cook in" utensils arc of copper, badly tinned, and of \eij simple
forms. Except in Qaslm these are seldom of inative mamifactu .
Only very rude 4 kitchen 5 pottery is made in ISejcl. Bread m bakec
in flat pancakes either on the ashes themselves, or (in richer
houses) on an iron tray. Except, in Qaslm towns and the Iaige>
urban centres of S.Nej’d there is no metallurgy : and even in those,
cooking-pots of copper, and other very simple vessels and necessaries
c
alone are made. Coffee-pots come from Hasa, daggers and
V.. • .
knives from Ha’il or the Gulf, and firearms exclusively from abroad.
These last are adapted by the owners to their use by knocking off
the sights, paring down the stock, hammering in decorative nails,
&C. They soon become foul, being seldom or never cleaned.
As for clothing materials, all are imported except the coarse
woollen cloth used for abbas, and the woollen head-cords. Camel-
hair cloth for tents and saddlebags is manufactured locally, but
with only a monochrome stripe. Better class abbas come from Hasa.
I
1 No underclothes except a cotton shirt are worn. Foot-covering is
I not very generally worn, and leather articles are almost all imported,
l except the simplest utensils of ill-tanned hide, e. g. water-skins
and buckets (used in irrigation), skin robes of some nomads, and
■ rude saddles, sandals, holsters, &c.
} Very little basket- or reed-work is produced beside mats and fans.
There is some improvement on this standard of production in Qaslm,
especially in Aneizah ; but even there the technique and output are
much below those of Gulf ports, e.g. Koweit, and the apparatus
of the household is of the simplest. Throughout Nejd the food-stuffs
do not go beyond milk, ghi, dates, and bread, as staples, and rice
and mutton as luxuries.
0. Trade
There is almost nothing to treat under this head, except in
respect of one district, Qaslm. This produces a superfluity
of dates and ghi, but in the last commodity trades more as
middleman than producer, collecting from the Bedouin herdsmen
ot the western and northern steppes. At one time it used to breed
horses for export but (as also in Central Nejd, Woshm and ‘AridM
the production of these has almost ceased as a result of the wars
between Ha fl and Riyadh during the past half-century But if
Qaslm docs not produce much, it trades in the products of others
more than any other Arabian district. Doimhty heard in i«-«
tta .« than a (hint „t it* population

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