Egypt : handbook for travellers / edited by K. Baedeker.

Date:
1885-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Egypt : handbook for travellers / edited by K. Baedeker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the pope) for circulation in Egypt. Notwithstanding the serious defects to which we have alluded, the Coptic community boasts of a number of highly respectable members, and in spite of the frequent heavy contributions levied from the sect by previous governments, it contains several wealthy landowners and merchants, some of wrhom we shall hereafter have occasion to name. 3. Beduins. Bedu (sing, bedawi) is the name applied to the nomadic Arabs, and 'Arab to those who immigrated at a later per- iod and settled in the valley of the Nile. They both differ mater- ially from the dwellers in towns and from the fellahin, who usually call themselves ‘Sons of the Arabs’ (Ibn el-'Arab). The subdivisions of the Beduin tribes are called Kabileh (whence the name Kabyles, applied to some of the Algerian Beduins). Though differing greatly in origin and language, the wandering tribes of Egypt all profess Mohammedanism. Again, while some of them have immigrated from Arabia or Syria, partly in very ancient, and partly in modern times, and while others are sup- posed to be the aboriginal inhabitants of the territories claimed by them (as the Berbers of N. Africa and the Ethiopians or Blem- myes of Nubia), or former dwellers on the Nile expelled from their homes by foreign invaders, they all differ greatly from the stationary Egyptian population; and this contrast is accounted for by the radical difference between the influences of the desert and those of the Nile valley. The Beduins may be divided into two leading groups: (1) Beduins in the narrower sense, i. e. Arabic speaking- tribes, most of whom have probably immigrated from Arabia or Sy- ria, and who occupy the deserts adjoining Central and Northern Egypt, or who are to be found in different regions of Southern Nubia as a pastoral people ; (2) ‘Bega’, who range over the regions of Upper Egypt and Nubia situated between the Nile and the Red Sea, and extending to the frontiers of the Abyssinian mountains (their ter- ritory being known as ‘Edbai’). To these last the name of Ethio- pians may as accurately be applied as that of Arabs to the first group ; and they are believed by Dr. Lepsius to be the descendants of theBlemmyes, who occupied the Nubian part of the valley of the Nile down to the 4th cent, after Christ, when they were expelled by ‘Nubian’ invaders from the south. The second group consists of three different races, the Hadendoa, the Buharin, and the Ababdeh. The last-named, who are widely scattered in the valleys of the desert between the tropics and the latitude of Keneh and Koser, and who lead a poverty-stricken life with their very scanty stock of camels and goats, are those with whom alone we have to deal as inhabitants of Egypt. Though closely resembling the other Bega tribes in appearance, the Ababdeh (sing. Abadi, the Gebadei of Pliny) possess an original language of their own (‘to-bedyawiyeh’), which, however, they have long since exchanged for bad Arabic. Besides the girdle round their loins they wear a kind of long white