Note 92 — Chapter III · PASTORAL TRIBES.

There is one more secondary cause here, which we have not met with before. It is sometimes stated that keeping slaves is a mere luxury. Now rich nomads, like all rich people, love luxury. Like the rich Kazak Kirghiz who told Levchine that the possession of over 8000 horses procured him a reputation among his countrymen, many rich nomads will win renown by possessing a large retinue of slaves. Thus for instance we know that among the Beni Amer slave labour is of little use; yet it is stated, that the Beni Amer are ambitious to possess many slaves92. And slaves are preferable, as objects of luxury, to free servants. For slaves, generally acquired from beyond the limits of the tribe, are much more apt to gratify the pride of the rich man by their submission, than poor freemen, who are always conscious of their membership of the tribe and unwilling to be trampled down. The latter fact is proved by several statements of ethnographers.