winning of revenge. The heart and hand of the Arab are remembered, his blood is to be avenged, but his spirit haunts not the rocks any more than that of his dead camel. The heritage of blood is a material burden which must be taken up and borne; it is no ghost-voice crying from the grave. All this is in keeping with the clan spirit which turns away from the shadow-world of kinsmen, where punishment or reward are yet unknown, to the sphere of the dead man's achievements and the very real work of revenge. For the murdered Arab is only the central figure of a group; around and behind him move his avenging kin, and even the virtues he possesses are rather those of a kinsman than of an individual in our modern conceptions of character.
In Burckhardt's Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys[1] occurs a passage which, as fully describing this communal nature of Arab Blood-revenge, deserves to be here quoted; it will show how widely the personal vengeance of a Bothwellhaugh is socially separated from the feelings of clan duty. "It is a received law among the Arabs that whoever sheds the blood of a man owes blood on that account to the family of the slain person; the law is sanctioned by the Qurʾân, which says, 'Whoever shall be unjustly slain, we have given to his heir the power of demanding satisfaction.' The Arabs, however, do not strictly observe the command of their holy volume; they claim the blood not only from the actual homicide but from all his relations, and it is these claims which constitute the right of Thâr, or Blood-revenge. … This rests within the Khomse, or fifth generation, those having a right to avenge whose fourth lineal ascendant is at the same time the fourth lineal ascendant of the person slain; and, on the other hand, only those male kindred
- ↑ Vol. i. p. 149.
