2] Since the days of Job, the Bedouins of
Arabia have been a race of marauders; they have reduced robbery to a
system. Predatory excursions figure conspicuously in the history of all
the tribes. Robber is a title of honor.[1073] Pliny said that the Arabs
were equally addicted to theft and trade. They pillaged caravans and
held them for ransom, or gave them safe conduct across the desert for a
price. Formerly the Turkoman tribes of the Trans-Caspian steppes levied
on the bordering districts, notably the northern part of Khorasan, which
belonged more to the Turkomans, Yomut and Goklan tribes of the adjoining
steppe than to the resident Persians. The border districts of Herat,
Khiva, Merv and Bukhara used to suffer in the same way from the raids of
the Tekkes, till the Russians checked the evil.[1074] The Tekkes had
depopulated whole districts, invaded Persian towns of considerable size,
and carried off countless families into slavery. Both Turkomans and
Kirghis tribes prior to 1873 raided caravans and carried off the
travelers to the slave markets of Bukhara and Samarkand.[1075] [See map
page 103.]

Among these tribes no young man commanded respect in his community till
he had participated in a _baranta_ or cattle-raising.[1076] For centuries
the nomadic hordes of the Russian steppes systematically pillaged the
peaceful agricultural Slavs, who were threatening to encroach upon their
pasture lands. The sudden, swift descent and swift retreat of the
mounted marauders with the booty into the pathless grasslands, whither
pursuit was dangerous, their tendency to rob and conquer but never to
colonize, involved Russia in a long struggle, which ceased only with the
extension of Muscovite dominion over the steppes.[1077]

[Sidenote: Depredation and conquests of African nomads.]

All the Saharan tribes are marauders, whether Arabs, Berber Tuaregs, or
Negroid Tibbus. The desert has made them so. The Tuaregs are chronic
freebooters; they keep the Sahara and especially the caravan routes in
constant insecurity. They stretch a cordon across these routes from
Ghadames and Ghat in the east to the great oases of Insalah and Twat in
the west; and from the oases and hills forming their headquarters they
spread for pasturage and blackmail over the desert.[1078] They exact toll
over and over again from a caravan, provide it with a military escort of
their own tribesmen, and then pillage it on the way.[1079] This has been
the experience of B