Mohammed and his followers conquered only the more civilised Badawin; and there is even to this day little or no religion amongst the wild people, except those on the coast or in the vicinity of cities. The faith of the Badawi comes from Al-Islam, whose hold is weak. But his customs and institutions, the growth of his climate, his nature, and his wants, are still those of his ancestors, cherished ere Meccah had sent forth a Prophet, and likely to survive the day when every vestige of the Ka’abah shall have disappeared. Of this nature are the Hijazi’s pagan oaths, his heathenish names (few being Moslem except “Mohammed”), his ordeal of licking red-hot iron, his Salkh, or scarification,—proof of manliness,—his blood revenge, and his eating carrion (i.e., the body of an animal killed without the usual formula), and his lending his wives to strangers. All these I hold to be remnants of some old

[p.110] creed; nor should I despair of finding among the Badawin bordering upon the Great Desert some lingering system of idolatry.

The Badawin of Al-Hijaz call themselves Shafe’i but what is put into the mouths of their brethren in the West applies equally well here. “We pray not, because we must drink the water of ablution; we give no alms, because we ask them; we fast not the Ramazan month, b