men are said to have fallen on both sides and twenty-seven of ʻAwde’s kinsmen perished. Eye-witnesses described to me how ʻAwde on several occasions cut the heart from a wounded enemy and bit at it.
I met this chief in the spring of 1909, when he was visiting the camp of Prince an-Nûri eben Šaʻlân at al-Hawǧa. His hand had been injured by a gunshot and I cured the wound for him. He hated the Turkish Government, which, in 1908, issued a warrant against him for having shot two gendarmes who had been sent to arrest him because he had not paid tribute. ʻAwde assured me that the charge was a lie and that he had paid the tribute. He said that in 1906 he had accompanied his brother to Maʻân and that they had taken with them all the money collected for tribute, together with the proceeds of the sale of ten camels. At Maʻân they deposited both wallets with the ḳâḍi[1] and the tax collector, asking them to calculate the amount due to them and to return the remainder. The Turkish officials took all the gold coins except seven and assured both the chief and his brother that everything was paid. The cautious ʻAwde wanted a receipt, but the officials declared that it was just the time for the al-ʻaṣr (afternoon) prayer and that they must go and pray. They departed and did not return again that day. On the following day the ḳâḍi fell ill and the tax collector went on a journey. ʻAwde and his brother waited at Maʻân for several days, but the sick man grew no better and the tax collector did not return. Their friends in Maʻân asserted that it was a matter of common knowledge that they had paid their tribute and promised that they would obtain a receipt for them as soon as the ḳâḍi recovered his health. Accordingly, the brothers departed to join their tribe and proceeded to their winter encampment in the aṭ-Ṭubejḳ region. They did not return to Maʻân until eight months later, but they found no receipt and discovered that both the officials had been transferred elsewhere. At the end of 1907 Rbejjeʻ died and ʻAwde received an order to pay his arrears of tribute from 1905. When he did not obey this order, declaring that the tribute had been paid up to the end of 1906, two gendarmes were sent to his camp near Maʻân, early in the summer of 1908, for the purpose of conveying him to the seat
- ↑ Arabic terms (except botanical terms) not defined in the text are explained above, page xii.
