SALIBAH, an Arab race in the northern part of the Peninsula and southern parts of Mesopotamia, who take tl3eir name from Salib, a cross. Lady Anne Blunt describes the,m (ii. p. 110) as short of stature, well made, engaged in hunting, and clothed in gazelle skins. They have donkeys and goats, but no camels or horses ; they beg from the Arabs ; they eat hedgehogs. Their women are beautiful, but no Bedouin, however poor, would marry one of them. She supposes them to be of Indian origin. Lieut.-Col. Pelly saw some men of this tribe at Koweit and elewhere. They are said to worship the cross (Salib), and perform many ceremonies, more nearly allied to the corruptions of Asian Christianity than to Islamism. Men and women dance round a sort of May-pole. They wear a carter's smock, coming down to the feet, and which, like a boy's pinafore, ties behind. They possess a beautiful breed of donkeys, which they ride, without girths, upon a saddle made like a cottage wooden chair bottom. They squat on this seat, and twist their legs over a pummel peak, crossing them over the donkey's neck. They seem to prize their saddles as an
Arab does his mare, and would not sell them. They appear a merry, quiek-witted, disreputable lot, with retrousse noses and Irish features. They stood, with eyes twinkling (legs and-hands always on the fidget), and pelted him with the peelings of their fun. This strange people live on the flesh of the gazelle, which they shoot, and dress themselves in its skin. They wander about amongst, and are friends with, till the Arab tribes, and yet remain entirely distinct. They adopt some of the forms of the Muhammadan faith, but lit feasts and marriages they raise the cross RA a sil.:11 of rejoicing.. They are the best guides for the desert, knowing where water is to bo found, and the position of the various tribes. Those whom he saw seeined much more intelligent than the Arabs, and they have more of a European than an Asiatic cast of countenance.