Page:Folk-lore of the Holy Land.djvu/335

P. 141. Folks gentle and simple.—Considering the strange vicissitudes of Eastern history, it is not surprising that many people, now abjectly poor, should claim to be descendants of famous men. Orientals generally have great regard for pure blood and ancient lineage. Amongst the poor of Palestine there are many who, though obliged to do menial work to obtain a living, as household servants, labourers, etc., yet claim that they are “Awlad asl,” i.e. “Children of stock” or of gentle descent, and that on this account, if they do their work faithfully, they should enjoy a degree of respect not shown to those low-born. It is related of one such that, being able-bodied and very strong, but having no other means of livelihood, he consented to accept employment from a poor peasant who had only one ox and could not plough for want of a second. The scion of nobility in his dire distress actually agreed to be yoked to the plough in the place of the missing animal; stipulating, however, that besides receiving food and wages, he was to be treated with the greatest respect, and always to be addressed as “O Emir.” In consequence of this arrangement the ploughman, while at work, was constantly calling out “Yaminak ya Emir,” or “Shemâlak ya Emir,” i.e. “To the right, O Emir,” or “To the left, O Emir.”

There is at the present day a poor seamstress at Jerusalem whose family boast that they are descended from Chosroes, king of Persia. A fellâh for some time in the writer’s service traced his lineage to the Fatimite Khalifeh “Ed Dahir,” whilst a teacher in one of the Jerusalem Mission-schools in 1874 asserted that he was descended from the ancient kings of Armenia. There are some of these high-born people who have been more fortunate than others. Thus, the family of the celebrated Khalid ibn Walid, surnamed for his victories in the early days of Islam “The Sword of Allah,” is still powerful at Jerusalem,^[1] and there are, in the Lebanon, descendants of the