BEDOUIN, bedUZ-en or -in (Ar. Bedwi, Badawi, pl. Ballwin, those of the desert). A typ ical nomadic people, still found in their purity in the deserts of Central Arabia, where, in language, social life, and religion (outside of their pro fession of Islam), they retain much of primitive Semitism. They have also wandered over north ern and northeastern Africa, northward to the Caucasus, and eastward beyond the borders of Persia, the rural and semi-urban conditions of parts of all these countries modifying not a lit tle their desert-born peculiarities. Through the Berbers and Moors, with whom they have mixed, the Bedouin have had an influence upon Spain and southern France, which, in the case of the latter country, is made much of sociologically by Desmoulins in his Les Francais d'aujourd'hui (Paris, 1898). In these migrations, much inter mixture with other peoples has occurred. Their independence, spirit of liberty, sense of hospital ity, restlessness, etc., all find expression in a rich
fund of song and story where the dreamy and exaggerative imagination of the race has full play. Among the desert Arabs the Mufri•hara, or tribal song-duel, a sort of primitive arbitra tion court, was developed. The contrast and interrelations of desert and oasis, and the vicissi tudes of migratory life, are reflected in the social and domestic institutions of the Bedouin. The worst side of their character, the love for pillage end destruction, evidenced from the earliest times, has gained them an unenviable reputation the world over as robbers par eireeltenee. (See SEMITES.) Since Burekbardt, Notes on. Bed ouins and Wahabys (London, 1830), may be men tioned Blunt, Bedouin Tribes- of the Euphra tes (London, 1879), and the general works on Arabia.