'Field Notes on Sa'udi Arabia, 1935' [‎17v] (39/248)

{c) Characteristics
While the Sa’udi Arabian settled in villages may have modified
characteristics, it is with the Bedouin Arab that the general type is to
be found.
The Bedouin Arab character is paradoxical. Poverty-ridden and
for ever in the closest contact with the bitter harshness of the desert,
he appears at first an ignorant and superstitious savage. Nothing is
more false. In spite of his rough appearance he can, after contact,
never be mistaken for a barbarian.
His language is rich and expressive, and he has a receptive
intelligence. Nature has made of him a philosopher, but at the same
time he is a strong individualist, consequently lacking the devotion
to the general good. The depressing climate of the desert has
aggravated this tendency, forcing him to live in isolation with his
family and to wrangle with his neighbours over the scanty water
supply and meagre pastures essential to the camel herds and flocks
on which their and his life depends.
On the other hand, in spite of this and his poverty, he will kill
his last sheep in order to offer a fitting hospitality to a stranger guest.
Clad in rags, he will boast of his ancestry, compose stirring ballads,
and display the ease of bearing of a “ grand seigneur.”
Figure of romance to the Western world, he is in fact hard,
practical and often grasping. Puritanical, he is not prudish.’
Hysterical sometimes, he is never sentimental. Disliking bloodshed,
he will yet maintain a blood feud to his fourth generation. A master
of ruse, he can be chivalrous.
His most indisputable characteristic is his tenacity, fruit of his
ong struggle against implacable nature. I his tenacity has given
him a temperament of steel, at once supple and resisting, and
accounts for his defects of individualism, his sudden rages and the
fervour of his lust or puritanism.
It saves him, above all, from being commonplace.
{d) Physique and value for Warfare in varying countries and climates
1 he extreme severity of life in the deserts, combined with an
a most complete absence of medical knowledge, other than the use
certain herbs, has ensured that only the very fittest of the Arabs
ave survived Thus the Sa’udi Arabian is perhaps one of the
fittest races in the world.
A nomad Arab, with only a morsel of food and a sip of water or
arunde^ hf 11 "- WiU Wa h tWenty or thirty m ‘ les a ^y, barefoot
and under a blazing sun, with no apparent ill-effect. Nevertheless
"TucTw 10115 f n0t COm P let ely accustomed the body
to such treatment, and the desert Arab dies young, usually some-
40 years 0f age ' An old man is often no more
latL Llp a g H h U i 6y l? 5, C ° Unt him 101 ' Used t0 drinking and
eating little and only at long intervals, and burnt up in a fierce sun,