Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ... captured, and the tribe had been given the privilege of compounding for the offence by the payment of a hundred camels. This they had declined to do, so justice was to take its course. The commander of the few soldiers told me that some grain is cultivated on the plateau in certain spots, and that it is buried in holes until the owner requires it. He placed the number of the population of Sinai very high, and brought in one of the men who was charged with the murder to substantiate his statements. This man was one of a war-party against the Turkish Bedawyn fifteen years ago; he gave the numbers of his party as one hundred and eighty, and said that they were from two sub-tribes only. The soldiers claimed that there were ten thousand men in the peninsula, while our sheykh, Mudakhel, put the numbers at about six thousand men. The numbers are almost impossible to ascertain, as the people near the borders are always moving. I think that sometimes there are as many as the ten thousand men in the peninsula, while at others they are much fewer. A Sudany soldier, who had been in the country a long time, and who knew the tribes very well, gave me a rough list as follows: Aleyqat and Hameda 2, ooo men. Owarma and Sowalah 200 Welad Said 300 Mezaynah 1,000 Karashi (he called it " Gurrarcia ") . . . (?) He said that the Tih tribes were so much mixed that he did not know their numbers; but he thought that about half were on the Turkish side and half on the Egyptian border. An old man, the brother of the sheykh of the Aleyqat, agreed to these numbers. From my experience in the country I should have put the numbers lower, as I so seldom seemed to meet new men; the same appeared to turn up everywhere. The Aleyqat and the Hameda are..."
