Since the days of Job the Bedouin have been a nation of robbers. “The oxen were plowing and the asses feeding beside them; and the Sabeans fell upon them and took them away, yea they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword.” (Job i. 14.) The Bedouin’s hand is against every man in all Jebel Shammar to this day. The tribes are in a state of almost perpetual war against each other; it seldom happens, according to Burckhardt, that a tribe enjoys a moment of general peace with all its neighbors, yet the war between two tribes is not of long duration. Peace is easily made and easily broken. In Bedouin parlance a salt covenant is only binding while the salt is in their stomachs. General battles are rarely fought, and few lives are lost; to surprise an enemy by sudden attack, or to plunder a camp, are the chief objects of both parties. The dreadful effects of “blood-revenge” (by which law the kindred of the slain are in duty bound to slay the murderer or his kin) prevent many sanguinary conflicts. Whatever the Arabs take in their predatory excursions is shared according to previous agreement. Sometimes the whole spoil is equally divided by the Sheikh among his followers; at other times each one plunders for himself. A Bedouin raid is called a _ghazu_, and it is worthy of remark that the earliest biographer of Mohammed, Ibn Ishak, so designates the wars of the prophet of God with the Koreish. The Anaeze Bedouin never attack by night, for during the confusion of a nocturnal assault the women’s apartments might be entered, and this they regard as treachery. The female sex is respected even among the most inveterate enemies whenever a camp is plundered, and neither men, women nor slaves are ever taken prisoners. It is war only for booty. The Arabs are robbers, seldom murderers; to ask protection or _dakheil_ is sure quarter, even when the spear is lifted. Peace is concluded generally by arbitration in the tent of the Sheikh of a third tribe friendly to both combating tribes. The most frequent cause of war is quarrels over wells or watering-places and pasture grounds, just as in the days of the patriarchs.