“The Bishari of the Akhmed Orab tribe, who inhabit the mountains, are exceedingly few in number, and the Batran told us that all the way from Ras Bernas to Mount Sorturba, just south of Shellal, over which country his rule extends, the whole tribe could muster only about three hundred fighting men. They have the Ababdeh to the north, and the Amara Bisharin to the south, and apparently their relations with their neighbours are usually strained. These tribes are purely pastoral, and cultivate no land whatsoever. They live in huts in groups of from three to six together, and are scattered over the country at wide intervals. They wear their hair fuzzy at the top, with a row of curls hanging down the neck, usually white and stiff with mutton fat. They are medium-sized, dark-skinned, and some of them decidedly handsome. They are girt only with a loin-cloth and sheet, and every shepherd here carries his shield and his sword. Under a good and settled government they would undoubtedly be excellent members of society, but with the Khalifa on one side and the Egyptian Government on the other their position is by no means an enviable one. Their huts are very small and dingy, being constructed with bent sticks on which palm-leaf matting is stretched; inside they are decorated with their paraphernalia for weddings and camel-travelling, all elaborately decorated with cowrie and other shells, the most remarkable of these things being the tall conical hats with long streamers used for dances at weddings, entirely covered with cowrie shells in pretty patterns. The things they use for hanging up food are also prettily decorated with shells and strips of red and blue cloth. The family occupying a hut sleep on mats in the inner part, with the usual wooden African pillows, and around the outer edge of the hut are collected their wooden bowls for sour milk, their skins for water, their incense-burners, and their limited number of household utensils. Often when he goes off to distant pasturages a Bishari will pack up his tent and household gods and leave them in a tree, where he will find them quite safe on his return. They live principally on milk and the products of their flocks, water being to them a far more precious article than milk. They are very knowledgeable in the mountain shrubs and herbs, and pointed out to us many which they eat for medicinal and other purposes; but the only one of these which we appreciated was a small red gourd climbing amongst the mimosa branches, resembling a tomato, _Cephalandra Indica_. This they call _gourod_, their usual word for gourd. Also they are, like the akridophagoi whom Agatharchides places on their coast, large consumers of locusts when in season; they catch them only when they have reached the flying stage, and roast them in the ashes. We often saw clouds of locusts in this district, devouring all the scanty herbage and literally filling the air.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
COFFEE. CHOCOLATE. TEA. PICKLES. BEER. GENERAL MAXIMS FOR HEALTH. HINTS TO PERSONS OF MODERATE FORTUNE [FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE MASSACHUSETTS JOURNAL.] FURNITURE. EDUCATION OF DAUGHTERS. TRAVELLING AND PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. PHILOSOPHY AND CONSISTENCY. REASONS FOR HARD TIMES. HOW TO ENDURE POVERTY. APPENDIX TO THE AMERICAN FRUGAL HOUSEWIFE. CARVING. INDEX. APPENDIX.
Sources: The passage is from J. Theodore (James Theodore) Bent, Southern Arabia, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Child, The American Frugal Housewife of 1829, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — forest cloth, amphora stamp.