Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 2 by Sir Richard Francis Burton
page 87 of 559 (15%)
family. The Ishmaelities are sub-Caucasian, and are denoted in history
as the Arab al-Mustarribah, the insititious or half-caste Arab.

Oriental ethnography, which, like most Eastern sciences, luxuriates in
nomenclative distinction, recognises a fourth race under the name of
Arab al-Mustajamah. These “barbarized Arabs” are now represented by such a
population as that of Meccah.

That Aus and Khazraj, the Himyaritic tribes which emigrated to
Al-Hijaz, mixed with the Amalikah, the Jurham, and the Katirah, also
races from Al-Yaman, and with the Hebrews, a northern branch of the
Semitic family, we have ample historical evidence. And they who know
how immutable is race in the Desert, will scarcely doubt that the
Badawi of Al-Hijaz preserves in purity the blood transmitted to him by
his ancestors.[FN#6]

[p.80] I will not apologise for entering into details concerning the
personale of the Badawin[FN#7]; a precise physical portrait of race, it
has justly been remarked, is the sole deficiency in the pages of Bruce
and of Burckhardt.

The temperament of the Hijazi is not unfrequently the pure nervous, as
the height of the forehead and the fine texture of the hair prove.
Sometimes the bilious, and rarely the sanguine, elements predominate;
the lymphatic I never saw. He has large nervous centres, and
well-formed spine and brain, a conformation favourable to longevity.
Bartema well describes his colour as a “dark leonine”; it varies from the
deepest Spanish to a chocolate hue, and its varieties are attributed by
the people to blood. The skin is hard, dry, and soon wrinkled by
exposure. The xanthous complexion is rare, though not unknown in
DigitalOcean Referral Badge