Des rapports observés entre les moyens d’existence et l’état social des peuples d’espèce caucasienne

CHAP. 30: > Of the relations observed between the means of existence and the social state of the peoples of the Caucasian species of southeast Asia. — Constitution of a nomadic people. — Parallel between the morals of these peoples and the morals of peoples of the same species, who are closer to the North.

In comparing the peoples of the Mongol species who inhabit the highest or coldest regions of Asia, to the peoples of the same species who inhabit the temperate or hot regions, we have found among the former neither more virtues, nor fewer vices than among the latter. We have seen, on the contrary, that, according to the reports of travelers, the peoples of the hot or temperate countries are less vicious, less enslaved, and less barbarous than the peoples of the cold countries. From this one can conclude, doubtless, that the influence of climates on the peoples of the Mongol race is not such as learned philosophers have thought. But the facts relative to the peoples of this species might prove nothing for peoples of a different species. If several persons have thought that the heat of the tropics produced on Europeans effects that it does not produce on negroes, and if they have even founded on this the justification of the slave trade and of slavery, could one not also say that the heat of the climate produces on the peoples of the Caucasian species effects contrary to those it produces on the peoples of the Mongol species? One could even, to establish this system, found it on the facts previously reported relative to the Europeans established in the south of Asia; there, we have seen, in effect, the peoples of European origin lose all their activity and most of their moral qualities, alongside the active and honest Chinese.

The Arabs belong to the same species as we, and they live under a climate we can call burning, if we compare it to that under which the peoples of the north of Europe live. Several circumstances concur to make the climate of Arabia very hot: the latitude under which this country is situated, the low elevation at which it is placed above sea level, a soil almost entirely deprived of water and stripped of trees, and especially the position it occupies between the most ardent parts of Asia and Africa. If the heat of the climate produces the physical and moral effects attributed to it, in no country should these effects show themselves in a more evident manner than among the Arabs.

The Persians, the Hindus, the Chinese, have several times passed under the yoke of conquerors, and their morals have been more or less altered. The morals of the Europeans who established themselves in the islands of the south of Asia have likewise been altered by the spirit of conquest and by enslavement and the morals of the natives. But the Arabs who have not left their country have never mixed with other peoples; never until recent times have the Bedouins been subjugated. The travelers who last visited them found them such as their ancestors were in the most remote times. Nothing, among them, had disturbed the influence of place and climate; they had the same customs, the same morals, the same language, and the same prejudices that existed nearly three thousand years ago [75].

To judge the morals of the Arab peoples, these peoples must be divided into three classes, and considered separately: those who have devoted themselves to cultivation and who, being neighbors of the Turkish empire, were anciently enslaved by them; those who have remained wandering in the deserts, who have never abandoned the pastoral life, and who are designated by the name of Bedouins; and those who have adopted the agricultural life, and who inhabit the center and the southern extremity of Arabia [76].

The first, who occupy a part of the soil of Africa, and who for a long time have been subject to the Turkish government, have taken on the morals of all the peoples enslaved to the Ottoman power; they have lost, says Savary, the good faith and the rectitude that characterize their nation; they have taken on all the vices that are proper to slaves [77]. It is not of them that we are concerned here: I will expound their morals in speaking of the peoples who inhabit the northern part of Africa.

The Bedouins are divided into several tribes, and each tribe is composed of two classes of persons: some are noble, others are not. The former all designate themselves by the name of sheikhs; they are, properly speaking, only chiefs whose families have multiplied extremely. Arab nobility is hereditary, and can be transmitted no other way than by blood: the caliphs themselves have never had the power to transform into a sheikh a man born in the inferior ranks [78].

Each sheikh is the governor of his family and of his servants; if he judges himself too weak, he unites with other sheikhs, and they name among themselves a common chief who directs the tribe. This chief is always taken from the same family, all of whose members are equally eligible, to whatever degree they may be from one another. The chiefs of the tribes unite in their turn to name a general chief: this is the grand sheikh, or sheikh of sheikhs [79]. This general chief is likewise taken from the same family; but as the families are composed of a great number of members, the electors have much latitude in the elections [80]. The sheikhs are so numerous, and exercise such an influence, that they appear to exclusively form the nation [81].

According to Volney, the government of this society is at once republican, aristocratic, and even despotic, without being decidedly any of these states. It is republican, since the people have a primary influence in all affairs, and nothing is done without the consent of the majority. It is aristocratic, since the family of the sheikhs has some of the prerogatives that force gives everywhere. Finally, it is despotic, since the principal sheikh has an indefinite and almost absolute power [82].

In each tribe the authority of the chief is limited by morals or customs, by the use of elections, and especially by the faculty that each sheikh has of abandoning with his family the tribe to which he is bound, and of going to join a different tribe. This faculty is sometimes sufficient to reduce to extreme weakness or even to entirely dissolve a powerful tribe whose chief has displeased the members, and to raise to great power a weak tribe whose chief conducts himself with wisdom and moderation. It results from this that, in each tribe, the sheikh who commands is rather the companion than the superior of the sheikhs who have elected him; that the chiefs of the tribes consider themselves the equals of the grand sheikh, and that all are equally animated by a spirit of liberty and independence. One pays to the grand sheikh only a very slight contribution; often one even pays him nothing [83].

The Arab nobles are pastoralists and military men, and they disdain no domestic function: such a sheikh who commands five hundred horsemen, saddles and bridles his own himself; he gives it barley and chopped straw. In his tent, it is his wife who makes the coffee, who kneads the dough, who cooks the meat; his daughters and his female relatives wash the linen, and go, pitcher on head and veil on face, to draw water from the fountain. This is precisely, says Volney, the state depicted by Homer, and by Genesis in the story of Abraham; but one must admit that it is difficult to form a just idea of it, when one has not seen it with one's own eyes [84]. I will expound, in the following book, the causes of this invariability of morals.

Women are not slaves in any part of Arabia, unless they are purchased from foreign nations, and even, in this case, they are treated with much gentleness. Polygamy is not, however, out of use there; but it is very rarely practiced, and only by a few rich voluptuaries [85]. The poorest individuals who have daughters of great beauty sometimes give them to rich men to receive considerable presents from them; but men who possess some fortune, on the contrary, provide a dowry for theirs [86]. Women, in marrying, often retain the administration of their property; and if they are rich, they sometimes, by this means, hold their husbands in their dependence. A husband can repudiate his wife; but he cannot do so without dishonoring himself, unless he has just causes for it; it is very rare that men make use of this faculty. For her part, a woman can repudiate her husband, if she has reasons to complain of him [87]. Women occupy the secluded part of the house; but their apartments are more ornate and more sought-after than those of the men. They appeared to Niebuhr as free and as happy as European women can be, and he did not judge their morals to be less pure [88].

The Arabs buy slaves from foreign nations; but the lot of these slaves is not different from that of servants among other nations; often it is even preferable, since those who show intelligence are treated and raised like the children of the family [89]. The Bedouins who have subjugated Arab cultivators have subjected them to a tribute: very poor themselves, they do not leave to those they have subjugated the means to enrich themselves; but they do not treat them as slaves either. The Arab peasants subjected to the sheikhs are not serfs of the soil like the Russian peasants; if they find their masters too demanding, they have the liberty to withdraw to the place they judge suitable, and to adopt another kind of industry [90].

The sheikhs who have preserved their independence are very proud of their birth: family pride is very exalted among them, especially among those whose family has always furnished chiefs to their tribe. But this pride manifests itself only with regard to the Arabs who have not known how to defend their independence; in their eyes, any tributary man, cultivator or other, is a debased man, with whom they would not want to ally themselves [91]. In the relations that persons of the same tribe have with one another, there reigns, says Volney, a good faith, a disinterestedness, a generosity that would do honor to the most civilized men [92].The Bedouins appear to have never established magistrates for the repression of individual injuries; each is therefore obliged to provide for his own safety and that of the members of his family. From this has resulted, among the nobles, an excessive delicacy on the point of honor, and a spirit of vengeance that is always carried to excess. Murder is generally punished by the death of the murderer or of one of the principal members of his family; it is to the closest relative of the dead that the duty of avenging him is devolved. In some tribes, the relatives of the deceased sometimes accept a compensation in money; in others, any compensation is considered shameful. This spirit of vengeance is often transmitted from father to son, and ends only with the extinction of one of the two families. It is the same among the cultivating peoples as among the pastoralists [93].

The Bedouins have two kinds of property: they have their herds, their tents, their furniture; these are private properties. They also have pastures, which are the common property of each tribe. Although nomadic, the Arabs are not strangers to the property of lands: the pastures are not divided by individuals or by families, but they are by tribes. Each of them possesses a part of the desert that it travels through successively, but whose limits it cannot exceed without encroaching on the territory of another and without consequently exposing itself to war. Each tribe considers itself sovereign over its territory, and believes itself no less entitled to collect a toll on the travelers and merchandise that cross it, than the princes of Europe who establish customs lines on the borders of their States [94].

There is perhaps no people more sober than the Bedouins and who live on so little. Six or seven dates dipped in melted butter, some fresh or curdled milk, are sufficient for a man's day. He considers himself happy if he adds a few pinches of coarse flour or a ball of rice. However, whatever their sobriety, they often lack the necessary: they then eat rats, lizards, snakes grilled over brushwood, and above all, locusts. It is to this continual abstinence that their delicate constitution and their small, thin body, more agile than vigorous, must be attributed. Meat is reserved for the greatest feast days; it is only for a marriage or a death that a kid is killed; only rich and generous sheikhs can permit themselves to slaughter young camels and eat rice cooked with meat [95].

The wandering life of these Arabs, their habitual state of distress, and the nature of their properties, have in large part determined their relations with foreigners. Accustomed to living on fruits and dairy, they have none of those cruel morals that the habit of shedding blood gives to hunter peoples. Their hands have not become accustomed to murder, nor their ears to pain; they have preserved a human and sensitive heart [96]. They are therefore not enemies of foreigners; they are on the contrary very hospitable toward them; their hospitality is not limited to persons who share their beliefs or who speak their language; it is the same for Christians as for Muslims; it is a virtue common to all classes, from the poorest to the richest [97].

“When the Arabs are at their table,” says Niebuhr, “they invite those who happen by to eat with them, whether they be Christians or Mohammedans, great or small. In the caravans, I have often seen with pleasure a muleteer press passersby to share his meal with him, and although most excused themselves politely, he gave with a content air some of his little bread and the dates he had to those who would accept them; and I was not a little surprised when I saw in Turkey that rich Turks would withdraw into a corner, so as not to be obliged to invite those who might find them at table [98].”

The Bedouins do not limit themselves to sharing the little food they have with the stranger who asks for hospitality: they protect him against any insult, however dangerous the protection may be for them. The tent of a Bedouin is for any stranger who seeks refuge there an inviolable sanctuary, even if this stranger were his enemy; it would be a cowardice, an eternal shame to satisfy even a just vengeance at the expense of hospitality. The power of the Sultan, says Volney, would not be capable of removing a refugee from a tribe, short of exterminating it entirely; this Bedouin, so avid outside his camp, has not set foot back in it before he becomes liberal and generous [99].

The Arabs, sharing with the foreigners who present themselves at their homes what subsistence they have, use, at the homes of the people who receive them, the same liberty they give at their own: they naturally expect to be treated as they themselves treat others: which has led to the saying that one must avoid them as friends and as enemies [100].

There are among the Bedouins men who hold for ransom the foreigners they surprise on their territory; but, according to Niebuhr, these men are the most civilized thieves in the world; they rarely mistreat the persons they plunder, unless they offer resistance; they show themselves hospitable even toward them; they often return to them a part of what they have taken; they accompany them on their journey, for fear that they might perish in the desert; they take care of them, if, in the attack, they have wounded them, or if they see them afflicted with some illness. Often, the Turkish officers are the cause of the Arabs' attacks; caring little for what will happen to those who come after them, they make it their glory to have the caravans pass without paying; and those that follow are then treated as enemies [101]. The Bedouins plunder, when they can, the peoples with whom they are at war; but they are neither so avid, nor so cruel as the European corsairs; the principal difference that exists between the one and the other is that the former go raiding on the seas, and the others in the desert.

The agricultural Arabs, upon whom the yoke of the Turks has not weighed heavily, resemble, in many respects, the Bedouins: like them, they are divided into two classes; but that of the sheikhs appears to contain an even more considerable part of the population. This title is given to the professors of an academy, to certain persons employed in the mosques or even in the lower schools, to the descendants of individuals considered as saints, to the magistrates of the cities, to those of the villages, and even to the chiefs of the Jews [102].

The men who cultivate the land are not slaves: the government collects on the products a tax that appears inconsiderable, when one compares it to those paid by the Europeans, and when one observes that it is the only one that exists. This tax is ten percent of the product, for lands that are naturally watered, and only five percent of the product of those that need artificial watering. Merchandise is not subject to any manufacturing, import, or export duty [103].

In each city and even in each village, there is a magistrate charged with rendering justice; he is elected by the sheikhs or principal inhabitants; he is paid by the government and can receive nothing from the parties [104].

Women are entirely free; they are married only with their consent, and although polygamy is not forbidden, a woman, in marrying, can stipulate that her husband may neither marry a second, nor frequent his female slaves. Daughters succeed their parents like sons, but they have a slightly less considerable share. A woman takes a quarter of the goods her husband leaves upon dying, if he has no children, and an eighth if he has children. Women are not secluded; they only cover themselves with a veil when they go out [105].

Foreigners, even when they do not profess the Muslim religion, are treated by the agricultural Arabs with as much politeness as Muslims would be in the most civilized countries of Europe; they are even received by them with much less mistrust. Any person can freely travel in their countries without passports, without permission, and without any police officer coming to inquire where he comes from, where he is going, or what he is planning. No one takes it into his head to inspect his baggage or to make him pay an entry duty. A foreigner travels, in a word, in this country much more freely and with as much safety as in any country of Europe [106].

In no part of Arabia has any traveler observed those atrocious morals, nor that multitude of shameful vices that we have remarked among the grandees of Persia or among the peoples who inhabit the north of Asia, and that we will find again among peoples of the same race established in the north of Africa. It is, on the contrary, in speaking of the independent cultivators that Savary said:

“These Arabs are the best peoples on earth; they are ignorant of the vices of civilized nations: incapable of dissimulation, they know neither deceit nor falsehood. Proud and generous, they repel an insult with armed hand, and do not avenge themselves by treason. Hospitality is sacred among them; their houses and their tents are open to all travelers, of whatever religion they may be [107].”

Cultivation in Arabia costs much pain and care: the lands need to be watered with exactitude; in the mountainous part of Yemen, the fields are often in terraces, and, in the rainy season, water is led there by canals from the top of the mountains; in the plain, the inhabitants surround their fields with dikes to make the waters stay there for some time; they also retain by dikes those that descend from the mountains, in order to use them as needed; thus, whatever the heat of the climate, the inhabitants are active and laborious. The arts have however made little progress in the cities; I will expound elsewhere the principal causes of this [108].

The numerous hordes that inhabit the mountains or gorges of the Caucasus belong to the same species of men as the Arabs; but the climate under which most of them are placed is very cold, especially if one compares it to that under which the Arabs live. Even those among these hordes that occupy the deepest gorges of the mountains are far from experiencing a heat equal to that which is felt on the coasts of the south of Arabia, since between the two countries there is a difference of more than thirty degrees of latitude. There exists, however, no moral superiority in favor of the men who inhabit the coldest or most temperate climate, over those who live under a burning climate.

Among most of the tribes of the Caucasus, the population is divided into two classes: one of masters or nobles, the other of serfs who cultivate the soil. The former treat the latter like cattle: they seize the fruit of their labors; they sell or exchange them, according as they judge it suits their interests. The trade in human creatures that is done in these regions is no less active than that which exists on the coasts of Guinea. Often a noble, instead of selling the cultivator, takes his children from him, and delivers them to slave merchants, who go to sell them elsewhere.

The relations that take place between husband and wife, between parents and their children, are analogous to those that exist between a master and his slaves. A father sells his son or his daughter, a brother sells his sister, when they find merchants who give them a good price for them. The strongest or the most subtle seize the weakest, their wives or their children, and go to sell them to merchants from Constantinople. This kind of commerce occupies a part of the Turkish navy on the Black Sea.

Each being the judge and avenger of his own injuries, offenses give rise to vengeances that are appeased only by blood, and which sometimes require the extermination of the offender's family. These men are therefore mistrustful and fearful: they walk only when armed, and fall asleep only after having placed their dagger under their pillow. Theft or brigandage is their favorite trade. Their women have all the vices compatible with their sex.

In seeing the name of nobles or even of prince given to the dominant class of the population, one must not imagine that this class possesses great riches; that it wears sumptuous clothing and lives in palaces. Among some of these hordes, the grandees go barefoot or with their feet wrapped in skins, wear a large felt cap, dirty clothes and a shirt, eat with their fingers, and lodge in huts that are half-formed underground and that receive light only through a door, which serves, at the same time, as a passage for the inhabitants and for the smoke. This excess of misery does not preclude aristocratic pride.

These hordes are continually at war with one another, and they wage it with the same animosity as all savage peoples: they plunder, burn, or massacre everything they encounter on their passage. Of all the peoples of this species who inhabit Asia, they are incontestably the most barbarous.

There are some variations in the morals of the different hordes that inhabit the Caucasus; but one observes that as one ascends into the mountains, the inhabitants are coarser or more barbarous. Some wander in the forests, and join the vices we have observed among savages to the vices of brigands that sometimes exist among civilized peoples [109].