government shall compel the Bedawin to settle down in villages and till
the soil, there can be little done in the way of instructing them. And
when that step is taken, it is quite doubtful whether the Moslem
government will not send its Khoteebs or religious teachers, and compel
them all to embrace the religion of Islam. If that should be done,
Christian teachers will have but little opportunity of opening schools
among them.
One of the leading tribes of the Bedawin is the Anazy, who are more
numerous, powerful and wealthy than any other Kobileh of the Arabs.
Their principal Sheikh on the Damascus border is Mohammed ed Dukhy, the
warlike and successful leader of ten thousand Arab horsemen, of the
Weled Ali. He is now an officer of the Turkish government, with a salary
of ten thousand dollars a year, employed to protect the great Haj or
Pilgrim Caravan, which goes annually from Damascus to Mecca. He
furnishes camels for the Haj, and a powerful escort of horsemen, and is
under bonds to keep the Arabs quiet.
In February, 1871, he came to Beirut on business, and was the guest of a
Maronite merchant, who brought him at our invitation to visit the Female
Seminary, the College and the Printing Press. After looking through the
Seminary, examining the various departments, and inquiring into the
course of study he turned to the pupils and said, "Our Bedawin girls
would learn as much in six months as you learn in two years." I told him
we should like to see the experiment tried, and that if he would send on
a dozen Bedawin girls, we would see that they had every opportunity for
improvement. He said, "Allah only knows the future. Who knows but it may
yet come to pass?" The Sheikh himself can neither read nor write, but
his wife, the Sitt Harba, or Lady Spear, who came from the vicinity of
Hamath, can read and write well, and she is said to be the only
Bedawiyeh woman who can write a letter. With this in view we prepared an
elegant copy of the Arabic Bible, enclosed in a waterproof case made by
the girls of the Seminary, and presented it to him at the Press. He
expressed great interest in it, and asked what the book contained. We
explained the contents, and he remarked, "I will have the Sitt Harba
read to me of Ibrahim, Khalil Allah, (the Friend of God), and Ismaeel,
the father of the Arabs, and Neby (prophet) Moosa, and Soleiman the
king, and Aieesa, (Jesus,) the son of Mary." The electrotype apparatus
deeply interested him, but when Mr. Hallock showed him the steam
cylinder press, rolling off the sheets with so great rapidity and
exactness, he stood back and remarked in the most deliberate manner,
"the man who made that press can conquer anything but death!" It seemed
some satisfaction to him that in the matter of _death_ the Bedawin was
on a level with the European.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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