Quotes about Bedouins

Al-Jahiz

Everybody agrees that there is no people on earth in whom generosity is as universally well developed as the Zanj. These people have a natural talent for dancing to the rhythm of the tambourine, without needing to learn it. There are no better singers anywhere in the world, no people more polished and eloquent, and no people less given to insulting language. No other nation can surpass them in bodily strength and physical toughness. One of them will lift huge blocks and carry heavy loads that would be beyond the strength of most Bedouins or members of other races. They are courageous, energetic, and generous, which are the virtues of nobility, and also good-tempered and with little propensity to evil. They are always cheerful, smiling, and devoid of malice, which is a sign of noble character.

The Zanj were what the Arabs called Black Africans. His grandfather was an East African Black man. Intermarriage between Arabs and Black Africans was common until the arrival of Islam which did not allow intermarriage between Muslims and others.

Richard Francis Burton

Wherever we halted we were surrounded by wandering troops of Bedouins.

Arab Proverb

Pasture comes before prayer.

The Bedouin live by their flocks without which they have little material existence.

Ibn Khaldun

Sedentary people [city people] have become used to laziness and ease. They find full assurance of safety in the walls that surround them. The Bedouins have no gates and walls. They always carry weapons. They watch carefully all sides of the road. They take hurried naps only ….They pay attention to every barking and noise. Fortitude has become a character quality of theirs, and courage their nature.

Arab Proverb

The empty gun spares, but the loaded gun slays.

Ever since the invention and manufacturing of firearms, Bedouin Arabs have prized gun ownership highly. Gun ownership percentage is much higher than even the United States. Over time one or more guns appeared in every tent. With children about, the loaded gun has ever been a danger. Further, anger leads to gunplay in a society where guns are ubiquitous. Even for the gun owner, the additional time it takes to load a gun before using it is a safety valve that allows time for cooling off.

T. E. Lawrence

Wear an Arab headcloth when with a tribe. Bedouin have a malignant prejudice against the hat, and believe the persistence in wearing it (due probably to British obstinacy of dictation) is founded on some immoral or irreligious principle…. if you can wear Arab kit when with the tribes, you will acquire their trust and intimacy to a degree impossible in uniform.

Lawrence of Arabia

Arab Proverb

No two floods are alike.

Flash floods in the desert are will known to all Bedouin, and each is very different from the others in its circumstances and consequence. The metaphor here is for all travail and disaster. Each is unique, especially to the victim.

Alain de Botton

Whereas the Bedouin who survey 100 miles of empty sand and crave company and can psychologically afford to offer each stranger a warm welcome, his urban contemporaries, at heart no less well-meaning or generous, must in order to preserve a modicum of balance, live without any acknowledgement of the millions of human beings sleeping arguing. Copulating, and dying only inches away. Modern society does not help us to put forward our more dignified side.

Bedouins Quotes