was all but universally adopted, it would have been strange if the weaker sex had not often gone to the wall. The custom which prevailed in the _Jáhiliyya_ of burying female infants alive, revolting as it appears to us, was due partly to the frequent famines with which Arabia is afflicted through lack of rain, and partly to a perverted sense of honour. Fathers feared lest they should have useless mouths to feed, or lest they should incur disgrace in consequence of their daughters being made prisoners of war. Hence the birth of a daughter was reckoned calamitous, as we read in the Koran: "_They attribute daughters unto God--far be it from Him!--and for themselves they desire them not. When a female child is announced to one of them, his face darkens wrathfully: he hides himself from his people because of the bad news, thinking--'Shall I keep the child to my disgrace or cover it away in the dust?'_"[180] It was said proverbially, "The despatch of daughters is a kindness" and "The burial of daughters is a noble deed."[181] Islam put an end to this barbarity, which is expressly forbidden by the Koran: "_Kill not your children in fear of impoverishment: we will provide for them and for you: verily their killing was a great sin._"[182] Perhaps the most touching lines in Arabian poetry are those in which a father struggling with poverty wishes that his daughter may die before him and thus be saved from the hard mercies of her relatives:-- THE POOR MAN'S DAUGHTER "But for Umayma's sake I ne'er had grieved to want nor braved Night's blackest horror to bring home the morsel that she craved. Now my desire is length of days because I know too well The orphan girl's hard lot, with kin unkind enforced to dwell. I dread that some day poverty will overtake my child, And shame befall her when exposed to every passion wild.[183] She wishes me to live, but I must wish her dead, woe's me: Death is the noblest wooer a helpless maid can see. I fear an uncle may be harsh, a brother be unkind, When I would never speak a word that rankled in her mind."[184] And another says:-- "Were not my little daughters Like soft chicks huddling by me, Through earth and all its waters To win bread would I roam free. Our children among us going, Our very hearts they be; The wind upon them blowing Would banish sleep from me."[185] [Sidenote: Treatment of enemies.] "Odi et amo": these words of the poet might serve as an epitome of Bedouin ethics. For, if the heathen Arab was, as we have seen, a good friend to his friends, he had in the same degree an intense and deadly feeling of hatred towards his enemies. He who did not strike back when struck was regarded as a coward. No honourable man could forgive an injury or fail to avenge it. An Arab, smarting under the loss of some camels driven off by raiders, said of his kin who refused to help him:--