The mild influence of the fair sex likewise tends to soften the nomadic Arab’s character, and to inspire him with chivalrous feelings. In pastoral life tribes often meet for a time, live together whilst pasturage lasts, and then separate perhaps for a generation. Under such circumstances youths will become attached to maidens whom possibly by the laws of the clan they may not marry, and then the lovers have recourse to flight. The fugitives must brave every danger; for revenge, at all times the Bedouin’s idol, now becomes the lode-star of his existence. But the Arab lover will dare all consequences, and stake his life on the possession of her he loves. Women, indeed, are regarded as inferior beings by their lords and masters, and to them exclusively all the labour and menial offices in the tent are assigned; but in troublous times and in the hour of need, they raise themselves to the level of the stronger sex by physical as well as moral courage. In the early days of Islam, if history be credible, Arabia had many heroines, and within the last century Ghalujah, the wife of a Wahabi chief, opposed Mohammed Ali himself in many a bloody field. After a lost battle a retreating tribe has not unfrequently been again led on to victory by the taunts of its women, and Arab poets praise not only female beauty, but also female faith, purity, and affection. From ancient periods of the Arab’s history, we find him practising knight-errantry, the wildest but most exalted form of chivalry. The fourth Caliph is fabled to have travelled far, redressing the injured, punishing the injurer, preaching to the infidel, and especially protecting women--the chief end and aim of knighthood. The Caliph El Mutasen heard, in the assembly of his courtiers, that a woman of the Sayyid family had been taken prisoner by a ‘Greek barbarian’ of Ammoria. The man on one occasion struck her, when she cried, ‘Help me, O Mutasen!’ and the fellow said derisively, ‘Wait till he cometh upon his pied steed.’ The chivalrous prince arose, sealed up the wine cup which he held in his hand, took oath to do his knightly duty, and on the morrow started for Ammoria with 70,000 men, each mounted on a piebald charger. Having taken the place he entered it, exclaiming, ‘Here am I at thy call!’ He struck off the caitiff’s head, released the lady with his own hands, ordered the cup-bearer to bring the sealed bowl, and drank from it, exclaiming, ‘Now, indeed, wine is good!’ A Knight of the Round Table could have done no better. It is the existence of this noble spirit which makes the society of Bedouins so delightful to the traveller, who, after enjoying it, laments at finding himself in the ‘loathsome company’ of Persians, or among Arab townpeople, whose ‘filthy and cowardly minds’ he contrasts with the ‘high and chivalrous spirit of the true Sons of the Desert.’