Game Drives of the Aralo-Caspian Region by Yagodin Vadim N.; van Pelt Dr W. Paul; Betts FAHA Professor Alison

Author:Yagodin, Vadim N.; van Pelt, Dr W. Paul; Betts FAHA, Professor Alison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SOC003000: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Archaeology
Publisher: Sydney University Press
Published: 2019-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Early travellers left eyewitness accounts that are crucial to the desert kites’ interpretation. The earliest account was written by the Portuguese Pedro Teixeira, who saw desert kites in action in 1604 AD at the village of At-Tajbe, north of the Jebel Bishri mountain pass. The kites were used by bedouins to hunt goitered gazelles. The kites were not permanent structures but consisted of a number of flags suspended on poles (Legge and Rowley-Conwy 1987: 68).

In the 19th century, Burckhardt (1831: 220–21) described a gazelle hunt in Syria using a construction similar to the desert kites:

These [gazelles] are seen in considerable numbers all over the Syrian Desert. On the eastern frontiers of Syria are several places allotted for the hunting of gazelles; these places are called masiade. An open space in the plain, of about one mile and a half square, is enclosed on three sides by a wall of loose stones, too high for the gazelles to leap over. In different parts of this wall gaps are purposely left, and near each gap a deep ditch is made on the outside. The enclosed space is situated near some rivulet or spring to which in summer the gazelles resort. When the hunting is to begin, many peasants assemble and watch till they see a herd of gazelles advancing from a distance towards the enclosure, into which they drive them; the gazelles, frightened by the shouts of these people, and the discharge of fire-arms, endeavour to leap over the wall, but can only effect this at the gaps, where they fall into the ditch outside, and are easily taken, sometimes by hundreds. The chief of the herd always leaps first, the others follow him one by one. The gazelles thus taken are immediately killed, and their flesh sold to the Arabs and neighbouring Fellahs. Several villages share in the profits of every masiade, or hunting-party, the principal of which are near Kariatein, Hassia, and Homs. Of the gazelle’s skin, a kind of parchment is made, used in covering the small drum or tabl, with which the Syrians accompany some musical instruments or the voice. (Burckhardt 1831: 220–21)

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