“They said, marry!—I replied,— Far be it from me To take to my bosom a sackful of snakes. I am free why then become a slave? May Allah never bless womankind.” “They declare woman to be heaven to man; I say, Allah, give me Jehannum, not this heaven.” Three kinds of dwellings are found in Arabia. There is the _tent_, the date-palm hut, and the house built with mortar of stone or mud-brick. The tent is distinctive, in a general sense, of the interior and of Northern Arabia; the palm-hut of the coast and of South Arabia; while houses of brick and mortar exist in all the towns and cities. The evolution of the house is from goats’-hair to matting, and from matting to mud-roof. Each of these dwellings is called _beit_, “the place where one spends the night.” The Bedouin tent[99] consists of nine poles, arranged in sets of three and a wide, black goats’-hair covering so as to form two parts; the men’s apartment being to the left of the entrance and the women’s to the right, separated by a white woollen carpet hanging from the ridge-pole. The posts are about five to seven feet in height; the length of the tent is between twenty and thirty feet, its depth at the most is ten feet. The only furniture consists of cooking utensils, pack-saddles, carpets, water-skins, wheat-bags and millstones. The date-palm hut is of different shapes. In Hejaz and Yemen it is built like a huge beehive, circular and with a pointed roof. In Eastern Arabia it consists of a square enclosure with hip-roof generally steep and covered with matting or thatch-work. At Bahrein the Arabs are very skillful in so weaving the date-fronds together and tightening every crevice that the huts keep out wind and rain-storms most successfully. The average size date-hut can be built for twenty or thirty Rupees (seven to ten dollars) and will last for several years. The stone-dwellings of Arabia are as different in architecture and material as circumstance and taste can make them. In Yemen large castle-like dwellings crown every mountain and frown on every valley; stone is plentiful and the plan of architecture inherits grace and strength from the older civilization of the Himyarites. In Bagdad, Busrah and East Arabia Persian architecture prevails, with arches, wind-towers, tracery and the veranda-windows. While the architecture of Mecca and Medina takes on its own peculiar type from the needs of the pilgrimage. Generally speaking the Arabs build their houses without windows to the street, and with an open court; the harem-system dictates to the builder, even putting a high parapet on the flat-roof against jealous eyes. Bleak walls without ornament or pictures are also demanded by their surly religion. All furniture is simple and commonplace; except where the touch of western civilization has awakened a taste for mirrors, marble-top tables and music-boxes.