Beyond the tribe the bond of consanguinity does not break off abruptly; it embraces also the group of such tribes which stand in any sort of historic relation to one another. But in this wider circle the ties of kinship cease to be really effective.
The Arabs as a whole, though linked together by community of speech, of intellectual acquirements and social forms, are not really a nation; neither can the larger groups into which they have split up be called nations; the nation is the tribe. The tribe is the source and the limit of political obligation; what lies outside the tribe is alien. This does not mean that a perpetual and open bellum omnium contra omnes prevails in Arabia; the relations of the tribes among themselves vary greatly, and may be friendly as a result of kinship and treaty. But inasmuch as the idea of common duty of man to man does not exist among them, and no moral law is valid beyond the tribe, everybody alien from the tribe is an enemy as a matter of course. If he is caught in the hunting-grounds of the tribe without a special security, he is an outlaw and fair game. “When I and my people were tormented with hunger,” says an old Bedouin, “God sent me a man who was travelling alone with his wife and his herd of camels; I slew him and took his wife and camels for my own.” He considers the murder perfectly lawful, and is only surprised that a stranger should presume to rove about the country with his wife and his cattle and without a strong escort.
Yet the narrow bounds of the tribal community are capable of enlargement. There are means whereby even the alien can attain the security of a member of the tribe. If he seizes the hem of his enemy’s garment from behind, or ties a knot in the end of his turban, or knots his rope with his own, he has nothing further to fear. If he succeeds in creeping into the other’s tent, or in being introduced and entertained there by the wife or child, his life is sacred. The sanctity of the hearth is unknown among the Arabs, even their altar is not a hearth and is without any fire; but, on the other hand, the tent and those within it are sacred, and even to touch the tent-cords from outside renders a stranger safe from attack. By a sacramental act, accompanied with a simple form of words, he disarms his enemy and assures his own safety. Of course protection is not always stolen, as it were, in this fashion, it may be extended voluntarily; for example, there are cases when the man who grants protection flings his mantle over the one who implores it, thus making him out as his own property which no man may injure.
If a foreign trader desires to travel through the tribe without peril, one of its members must give him a safe-conduct; very often he merely gives him some recognisable piece of his own property to take with him as a passport or charter of legitimation. The relations which arise in this manner are, for the most part, transitory.[42]
But there are also permanent and hereditary relations of this sort, based in part upon contract and oath. A member of a tribe may allow a stranger to sojourn permanently with his clan, and by adoption into the clan the sojourner is considered naturalised by the whole tribe. Not individuals only, but whole clans and families can thus be naturalised, and instances thereof are not uncommon. A fresh element is consequently grafted on the pure tribal stock in these sojourners or protégés. In a few generations they may amalgamate with the tribal stock, but as fresh batches are constantly coming in from without, the distinction between the two elements within the tribe remains.
Consanguinity and contiguity combine to weld the tribe together; external bonds there are none. Blood-relationship is the higher and stronger principle, and neighbourhood passes into brotherhood. All political and military duties are looked upon as obligations of blood or brotherhood. The relations of the individual to larger associations and the community as a whole are precisely the same in character, though less intimate in degree, as those which bind him to his own family. There is no res publica in contradistinction to domestic concerns, no difference, in fact, between what is public and what is private. In principle, at least, all men have the same rights and duties, and no man has one-sided rights or duties. Everything is based on reciprocity, on loyalty and fellowship, and the complementary notions of duty and right, of ruler and subject, of patron and client, are expressed by one and the same word. There are neither officers nor officials, neither jailers nor executioners. There is no magisterial authority, no sovereign power, separable from the association and the individual, with a revenue of its own drawn from taxation and an independent administration by official organisation. The functions of the community are exercised by all its members equally. The prerogative and obligations of the state as we understand it, which can only be fitly discharged by its civil officers, are to the Arab things that the individual is bound to do, not under compulsion from without, but from the corporate feeling of neighbourhood and brotherhood. By his own active exertions the individual has constantly to create afresh those things which with us are permanent organisations and institutions, which lead or seem to lead an independent life of their own. The Arabs stop at the foundations, building no upper story upon them which could be handed over ready-made to their heirs and in which they might live at their ease.
In other words, among the Arabs political relations are moral, for morality is confined within the limits of the tribe. Political organisation is represented by the corporate feeling which finds expression in the exercise of the duties of brotherhood. These require a man to say “good day” to his fellows, or “God bless you,” if anyone sneezes, not to shut himself up from others, nor to take offence easily, to visit the sick, to pay the last honours to the dead, to feed the poor in time of dearth, to protect and care for the widow and the orphan; likewise to slaughter a camel now and again in winter, to arrange sports and there regale the rest with its flesh, for no man slaughters for himself alone, and every such occasion is a feast for the whole company. Such are the common demonstrations of brotherly kindness by which corporate spirit is kept alive under ordinary circumstances. But the greatest duty in which all others culminate is to help a brother in need. Political duty therefore occupies an essentially subordinate place. The great thing in all cases is that the individual should act and should see himself how to get along, but, of course, he is quite at liberty to concert measures with his comrades. The rest are only bound to assist him in time of need, and then they must answer to his call without asking whether he is right or wrong; as he has brewed, so they must drink. The whole tribe does not always rise at once, the primary obligation rests with the clan. The clan has the right of inheritance together with the next duty of paying the debts of any member of it, delivering him from captivity, acting as his compurgators, and assisting him in procuring vengeance or paying mulcts. The larger associations only become involved when the need is great, and more particularly in cases of enmity with another tribe.
It will readily be imagined that a community based so exclusively on mutual fellowship does not fulfil its tasks very satisfactorily, and that the system is not particularly workable. There are many indolent or refractory members who do not fulfil their duties towards the community for lack of coercion from without, and because the only pressure that can be brought to bear upon them, the shame of falling short in the eyes of their kinsfolk or in public opinion, is of no avail against their cowardice or perverse obstinacy. Moreover, individual liberty of action is too little restricted by a due regard for the interests of the community. There is nothing to prevent a man from undertaking on his own account a raid which may kindle a flame of war that will wrap his whole tribe in its conflagration and even spread beyond. Or by the admittance of a stranger into his tent and his clan, which he regards as an obligation of honour and of religion, he may involve his tribe in great difficulties by imposing on them the burden of henceforth protecting the said stranger against his pursuers who may be seeking to arrest him for some crime.