given by Burck. and Doughty of a group of low-caste tribes called
Solubba or Sleyb. These people live partly by hunting, partly by
coarse smith-work and other gipsy labour in the Arab encampments;
they are forbidden by their patriarch to be cattle-keepers, and have
no property save a few asses; they are excluded from fellowship and
intermarriage with the regular Bedouin, though on friendly terms with
them; and they are the only tribes that are free of the Arabian deserts
to travel where they will, ranging practically over the whole peninsula
from Syria to Yemen. It is, perhaps, of less significance that they
sometimes speak of themselves as decayed Bedouin, and point out the
ruins of the villages where their ancestors dwelt as owners of camels
and flocks.[1] The name (
Hebrew characters), signifying 'smith' (p. 102), would be a
suitable eponym for such degraded nomads. The one point in which
the analogy absolutely fails is that tribes so circumstanced could not
afford to practise the stringent rule of blood-revenge indicated by v.15.—It
thus appears that the known conditions of Arabian nomadism present
no exact parallel to the figure of Cain. To carry back the origin of
the legend to pre-historic times would destroy the raison d'être of Sta.'s
hypothesis, which seeks to deduce everything from definite historical
relations: at the same time it may be the only course by which the theory
can be freed from certain inconsistencies with which it is encumbered.[2]
3. The kernel of Sta.'s argument is the attractive combination of Cain the fratricide with the eponymous ancestor of the Ḳenites.[3] In historical times the Ḳenites appear to have been pastoral nomads (Ex. 216ff. 31) frequenting the deserts south of Judah (1 Sa. 2710 3029), and (in some of their branches) clinging tenaciously to their ancestral manner of life (Ju. 411. 17 524, Jer. 357 cpd. with 1 Ch. 255). From the fact that they are found associated now with Israel (Ju. 116 etc.), now with Amaleḳ (Nu. 2421ff., 1 Sa. 156), and now with Midian (Nu. 1029), Sta. infers that they were a numerically weak tribe of the second rank; and from the name, that they were smiths. The latter character, however, would imply that they were pariahs, and of that there is no evidence whatever. Nor is there any indication that the Ḳenites exercised a more rigorous blood-feud than other Semites: indeed, it seems an inconsistency in Sta.'s position that he regards the Ḳenites as at once distinguished by reckless bravery in the vindication of the tribal honour, and at the same time too feeble to maintain their independence without the aid of stronger tribes. There is, in short, nothing to show that the Ḳenites were anything but typical Bedouin; and all the objections to
- ↑ Burck. 14f.; Doughty, Arabia Deserta, i. 280 ff.
- ↑ An interesting parallel might be found in the account given by Merker (Die Masai, p. 306 ff.) of the smiths (ol kononi) among the Masai of East Africa. Apart from the question of the origin of the Masai, it is quite possible that these African nomads present a truer picture of the conditions of primitive Semitic life than the Arabs of the present day. See also Andree, Ethnogr. Parall. u. Vergl. (1878), 156 ff.
- ↑ The tribe is called (
Hebrew characters) in Nu. 2422, Ju. 411; elsewhere the gentilic (Hebrew characters) is used (in 1 Ch. 255 (Hebrew characters)).
