Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates Vol 2 - The Search For Mecca

CHAPTEK XXA'I.
" There is hoije of a tree, if it be cut doTrn, that it will sprout again, and
"
that the tender branches thereof will not cease * * But man dieth, and
waateth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he ? " Job.
God—They have
Eeligion of the Bedouins confined to a belief in
no ceremonial observances— Their oaths—They are "without
belief in a future life—Their superstitions
morality an absolute code—Their marriages.
are fevr—Their
With the single exception of a belief in God,
inlieritecl from the earliest times, the Bedouins profess
no religions creed whatever ; neither have they,
it may almost be said, any superstitions. No peojDle
in the world take less account of the supernatural
than they do, nor trouble themselves so little with
metaphysics.
Their belief in God is of the simplest kind. It
hardly extends beyond the axiom that God exists ;
and, if, as some have affirmed, they connect the idea
of Him with the sun or with the heavens, no trace
of such an opinion has come under my notice,
''
God is God," they say, and it very simply expresses
all that they know of Him, AVho and what
and where He is, has not, I should think, ever been
so much as discussed among them. Of a divine
revelation they seem to have no traditions, nor of
any law divinely instituted. God is the fate to
which all must bow, the cause of the good and of