volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

Osmdn Bey Bestower of Decorations. 185
payment of arrears of salary. In fact, Osman Bey,
for that was his name, had been sent to sell decorations
to anyone who could afford to pay for them. I asked
him what he did with the money that was paid to
him, and he told me that he handed it over to the local
Government Treasurers who allowed him a percentage
for his salary and travelling expenses. The captain
said he would like to see some of the decorations, and
Osman fetched out of one of his saddle-bags a parcel
carefully tied up in a waterproof cover. This contained
several smaU leather-covered boxes, and when he opened
some of these we saw they were filled with medals
attached to coloured ribbons ; whether they were genuine
or not I could not say. He told us what expense
attended the acquisition of each, and then we learned
that each purchaser was expected to make him a little
present. Finedly he said that the captain and myself
ought each to have a nishdn, or decoration, and that he
was wilhng to make special terms in our favom" if we
had the same opinion ; but we had not. I shall never
forget the scene of Osman Bey with his dirty face and
hands, unkempt, unshaven, with a double row of
decorations on his left breast, his trousers torn at the
knees and seat, and lacking several buttons, and his
broken elastic-sided boots, offering the Orders of the
Majidiyah and Osmaniyah for purchase by candlelight
in a filthy guardroom at a rest-house in the Damascus
Desert. Osman was astir early the next morning to
see us start, and as his greatest need seemed to be a
smoke I gave him a tin of Capstan and some matches,
and we parted on the best of terms.
We left 'Ain al-Beda at 5.30 a.m., November 6th,
and soon afterwards we overtook a party of the Salibiyin,
or gazelle-hunters,^ who stopped us and offered a few
skins for purchase. From what Muhammad told me
about them they seemed to be a sort of gypsy tribe
among the Arabs. They do no work, and are said to
' Described also by Dr. Halifax in 1695 ; see Quarterly Statement
of the Palestine Exploration Fund for 1890, p. 274.