Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates by W.S. Blunt

Author:W.S. Blunt [Blunt, W.S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9780714619781
Google: 58LOoQEACAAJ
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 1968-05-03T01:20:28+00:00

March 16.—(I must condense what I have written during the last two days; for my journal has become a mere mass of notes, for the most part taken from conversations we have had with various interesting people here, and requires re-writing.)

By far the most important personage in Faris’s camp, the young Sheykh himself not excepted, is his mother, the Hatoun Amsheh39, better known in the tribe as the “Mother of Abd-ul-Kerim.” I think it pretty and touching that they should retain this title for her instead of calling her the Mother of Faris, the rising sun among them, and that they should thus do honour to the dead brother instead of to him. But the fact is, Abd-ul-Kerim was a hero whose name will linger for many generations yet among the Shammar, as that of their greatest man. During his lifetime the tribe was rich and powerful, and enjoyed a prestige in the desert such as it is hardly likely ever to have again; for the unity of the Shammar is broken, and, divided, they never can contend on equal terms with their great enemies the Ánazeh. That he was a real hero of romance it is not difficult to see; for his memory pervades the whole life of the family and tribe he has left behind him, and is the motive of three parts of the loyalty with which the present Sheykh is honoured. The mother of Abd-ul-Kerim is a sort of holy personage, and object of veneration, with all the tribes of Northern Mesopotamia, She was, as I have already mentioned, a Taï by birth, and sister of the Sheykh Hámid, whom Wilfrid made acquaintance with the day before our arrival; and she must have been formerly very beautiful. The Taï have the reputation of being the handsomest women in the desert, She is now old and fat (fat, alas ! is the tomb of beauty); but in spite of infirmities she is a most dignified personage, and her will is law in all the camp. To-day Faris, like the spoilt boy that he sometimes is, amused himself with firing off Wilfrid’s rifle close to the tent, and at last took aim at some goats belonging to a neighbour. The old lady very properly thought this undignified behaviour in the Sheykh, and sent to tell him so, and he put down the rifle at once without a word. In Faris’s tent she reigns supreme, allowing no other woman to share her power over him. Even his present wife, a slave from the Taï, lives in another tent. His first wife was a woman of good birth, but she is dead; and there is one son by her, a pretty boy of nine, named Salfij, who is brought up by the Hatoun, along with Abd-ul-Kerim’s son, Mohammed, and his daughter, Menífeh, ten and thirteen years old, and a charming boy of twelve, Tellál, the son of another brother, Abd-ur-Raják, also dead.40 Both these boys are made more account of in the tent than Faris’s own sons, because they are orphans.

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