afraid of his duplicity, collects his Indian friends. The Hakim Abdullah draws up a petition
[p.49]addressed to Mr. Walne (H.B.M’s Consul) by the Indian merchants and others resident at Cairo, informing him of Mohammed Shafi’a’s birth, character, and occupation as a vendor of slaves, offering proof of all assertions, and praying him for the sake of their good name to take away his passport. And all the Indians affix their seals to this paper. Then Mohammed Shafi’a threatens to waylay and to beat the Haji. The Haji, not loud or hectoringly, but with a composed smile, advises his friends to hold him off.
One would suppose that such a document would have elicited some inquiry.But Haji Wali was a Persian protege, and proceedings between the Consulates had commenced before the petition was presented. The pseudo-British subject, having been acknowledged as a real one, must be supported. Consuls, like kings, may err, but must not own to error. No notice was taken of the Indian petition; worse still, no inquiry into the slave-affair was set on foot[FN#7]; and it was discovered that the passport having been granted by a Consul-General could not with official etiquette be resumed by a Consul.[FN#8]
[p.50]Thus matters were destined to proceed as they began. Mohammed Shafi’a had offered 5,000 piastres to the Persian Consul’s interpreter; this of course was refused, but still somehow or other all the Haji’s affairs seemed to go wrong. His statements were mistranslated, his accounts were misunderstood, and the suit was allowed to drag on to a suspicious length. When I left Cairo in July, Haji Wali had been kept away nearly two months from his business and family, though both parties-for the plaintiff’s purse was rapidly thinning-appeared eager to settle the difference by arbitration: when I returned from Arabia in October, matters were almost in statu quo ante, and when I started for India in January, the proceedings had not closed.
Such is a brief history, but too common, of a case in which the subject of an Eastern state has to contend against British influence. It is doubtless a point of honour to defend our proteges from injustice, but the higher principle should rest upon the base of common honesty. The worst part of such a case is, that the injured party has no redress.
“Fiat injustitia, ruat coelum,”
is the motto of his “natural protectors,” who would violate every law to gratify the false pride of a petty English official. And, saving the rare exceptions where rank or wealth command consideration, with what face, to use the native phrase, would a hapless Turk appeal to the higher powers, our ministers or our Parliament?
After lodging myself in the Wakalah, my first object was to make a certain stir in the world. In Europe your travelling doctor advertises the loss of a diamond ring, the gift of a Russian autocrat; or he monopolises a whole column in a newspaper, feeing perhaps a title for the use of a signature; the large brass plate, the gold-headed cane, the rattling chariot, and the summons from the sermon complete the work. Here, there is no such Royal
[p.51]Road to medical fame. You must begin by sitting with the porter, who is sure to have blear eyes, into which you drop a little nitrate of silver, whilst you instil into his ear the pleasing intelligence that you never take a fee from the poor. He recovers; his report of you spreads far and wide, crowding your doors with paupers. They come to you as though you were their servant, and when cured they turn their backs upon you for ever. Hence it is that European doctors generally complain of ingratitude on the part of their Oriental patients. It is true that if you save a man’s life, he naturally asks you for the means of preserving it. Moreover, in none of the Eastern languages with which I am acquainted is there a single term conveying the meaning of our “gratitude,” and none but Germans[FN#9] have ideas unexplainable by words. But you must not condemn this absence of a virtue without considering the cause. An Oriental deems that he has the right to your surplus. “Daily bread is divided” (by heaven), he asserts, and eating yours, he considers it his own. Thus it is with other things. He is thankful to Allah for the gifts of the Creator, but he has a claim to the good offices of a fellow-creature. In rendering him a service you have but done your duty, and he would not pay you so poor a compliment as to praise you for the act. He leaves you, his benefactor, with a short prayer for the length of your days. “Thank you,” being expressed by “Allah increase thy weal!” or the selfish wish that your shadow (with which you protect him and his fellows) may never be less. And this is probably the last you hear of him.
There is a discomfort in such proceedings, a reasonable,
[p.52]a metaphysical coldness, uglily contrasting in theory with the genial warmth which a little more heart would infuse into them. In theory, I say, not in practice. Human nature feels kindness is displayed to return it in kind. But Easterns do not carry out the idea of such obligations as we do. What can be more troublesome than, when you have obliged a man, to run the gauntlet of his and his family’s thanksgivings, to find yourself become a master from being a friend, a great man when you were an equal; not to be contradicted, where shortly before every one gave his opinion freely? You must be unamiable if these considerations deter you from benefiting your friend; yet, I humbly opine, you still may fear his gratefulness.
To resume. When the mob has raised you to fame, patients of a better class will slowly appear on the scene. After some coquetting about “etiquette,” whether you are to visit them, or they are to call upon you, they make up their minds to see you, and to judge with their eyes whether you are to be trusted or not; whilst you, on your side, set out with the determination that they shall at once cross the Rubicon,-in less classical phrase, swallow your drug. If you visit the house, you insist upon the patient’s servants attending you; he must also provide and pay an ass for your conveyance, no matter if it be only to the other side of the street. Your confidential man accompanies you, primed for replies to the “fifty searching questions” of the “servants’ hall.” You are lifted off the saddle tenderly, as nurses dismount their charges, when you arrive at the gate; and you waddle upstairs with dignity. Arrived at the sick room, you salute those present with a general “Peace be upon you!” to which they respond, “And upon thee be the peace and the mercy of Allah, and his blessing!” To the invalid you say, “There is nothing the matter, please Allah, except the health;” to which the proper answer-for here every
[p.53]sign of ceremony has its countersign[FN#10]-is, “May Allah give thee health!” Then you sit down, and acknowledge the presence of the company by raising your right hand to your lips and forehead, bowing the while circularly; each individual returns the civility by a similar gesture. Then inquiry about the state of your health ensues. Then you are asked what refreshment you will take: you studiously mention something not likely to be in the house, but at last you rough it with a pipe and a cup of coffee. Then you proceed to the patient, who extends his wrist, and asks you what his complaint is. Then you examine his tongue, you feel his pulse, you look learned, and-he is talking all the time-after hearing a detailed list of all his ailments, you gravely discover them, taking for the same as much praise to yourself as does the practising phrenologist for a similar simple exercise of the reasoning faculties. The disease, to be respectable, must invariably be connected with one of the four temperaments, or the four elements, or the “humours of Hippocrates.” Cure is easy, but it will take time, and you, the doctor, require attention; any little rudeness it is in your power to punish by an alteration in the pill, or the powder, and, so unknown is professional honour, that none will brave your displeasure. If you would pass for a native practitioner, you must finally proceed to the most uncomfortable part of your visit, bargaining for fees. Nothing more effectually arouses suspicion than disinterestedness in a doctor. I once cured a rich Hazramaut merchant of rheumatism, and neglected to make him pay for treatment; he carried off one of my coffee cups, and was unceasingly wondering where I came from. So I made him produce five piastres, a shilling, which he threw upon the carpet, cursing Indian avarice. “You will bring on
[p.54]another illness,” said my friend, the Haji, when he heard of it. Properly speaking, the fee for a visit to a respectable man is 20 piastres, but with the rich patient you begin by making a bargain. He complains, for instance, of dysentery and sciatica. You demand L10 for the dysentery, and L20 for the sciatica. But you will rarely get it. The Eastern pays a doctor’s bill as an Oirishman does his “rint,” making a grievance of it. Your patient will show indisputable signs of convalescence: he will laugh and jest half the day; but the moment you appear, groans and a lengthened visage, and pretended complaints, welcome you. Then your way is to throw out some such hint as
“The world is a carcass, and they who seek it are dogs.”
And you refuse to treat the second disorder, which conduct may bring the refractory one to his senses. “Dat Galenus opes,” however, is a Western apothegm: the utmost “Jalinus” can do for you here is to provide you with the necessaries and comforts of life. Whatever you prescribe must be solid and material, and if you accompany it with something painful, such as rubbing to scarification with a horse-brush, so much the better. Easterns, like our peasants in Europe, wish the doctor to “give them the value of their money.” Besides which, rough measures act beneficially upon their imagination. So the Hakim of the King of Persia cured fevers by the bastinado; patients are beneficially baked in a bread-oven at Baghdad; and an Egyptian at Alexandria, whose quartan resisted the strongest appliances of European physic, was effectually healed by the actual cautery, which a certain Arab Shaykh applied to the crown of his head. When you administer with your own hand the remedy-half-a-dozen huge bread pills, dipped in a solution of aloes or cinnamon water, flavoured with assafoetida, which in the case of the dyspeptic rich often suffice, if they will but
[p.55]diet themselves-you are careful to say, “In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.” And after the patient has been dosed, “Praise be to Allah, the Curer, the Healer;” you then call for pen, ink, and paper, and write some such prescription as this:
“A.[FN#11]
“In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, and blessings and peace be upon our Lord the Apostle, and his family, and his companions one and all! But afterwards let him take bees-honey and cinnamon and album graecum, of each half a part, and of ginger a whole part, which let him pound and mix with the honey, and form boluses, each bolus the weight of a Miskal, and of it let him use every day a Miskal on the saliva.[FN#12] Verily its effects are wonderful. And let him abstain from flesh, fish, vegetables, sweetmeats, flatulent food, acids of all descriptions, as well as the major ablution, and live in perfect quiet. So shall he be cured by the help of the King, the Healer.[FN#13] And The Peace.[FN#14]”
The diet, I need scarcely say, should be rigorous; nothing has tended more to bring the European system of medicine into contempt among Orientals than our inattention to this branch of the therapeutic art. When an Hindi or a Hindu “takes medicine,” he prepares himself for it by diet and rest two or three days before adhibition, and as gradually, after the dose, he relapses into his usual habits; if he break through the regime it is concluded that fatal results must ensue. The ancient Egyptians we learn from Herodotus devoted a certain number of days in each month to the use of alteratives, and the
[p.56]period was consecutive, doubtless in order to graduate the strength of the medicine. The Persians, when under salivation, shut themselves up in a warm room, never undress, and so carefully guard against cold that they even drink tepid water. When the Afghan princes find it necessary to employ Chob-Chini, (the Jin-seng, [FN#15] or China
[p.57]root so celebrated as a purifier, tonic, and aphrodisiac) they choose the spring season; they remove to a garden, where flowers and trees and bubbling streams soothe their senses; they carefully avoid fatigue and trouble of all kinds, and will not even hear a letter read, lest it should contain bad news.
When the prescription is written out, you affix an impression of your ring seal to the beginning and to the end of it, that no one may be able to add to or take from its contents. And when you send medicine to a patient of rank, who is sure to have enemies, you adopt some similar precaution against the box or the bottle being opened. One of the Pashas whom I attended,-a brave soldier who had been a favourite with Mohammed Ali, and therefore was degraded by his successor,-kept an impression of my ring in wax, to compare with that upon the phials. Men have not forgotten how frequently, in former times, those who became obnoxious to the State were seized with sudden and fatal cramps in the stomach. In the case of the doctor it is common prudence to adopt these precautions, as all evil consequences would be charged upon him, and he would be exposed to the family’s revenge.
Cairo, though abounding in medical practitioners, can still support more; but to thrive they must be Indians, Chinese, or Maghrabis. The Egyptians are thoroughly disgusted with European treatment, which is here about as efficacious as in India-that is to say, not at all. But they are ignorant of the medicine of Hind, and therefore great is its name; deservedly perhaps, for skill in simples and dietetics. Besides which the Indian
[p.58]may deal in charms and spells,-things to which the latitude gives such force that even Europeans learn to put faith in them. The traveller who, on the banks of the Seine, scoffs at Sights and Sounds, Table-turning and Spirit-rapping, sees in the wilds of Tartary and Thibet a something supernatural and diabolical in the bungling Sie-fa of the Bokte.[FN#16] Some sensible men, who pass for philosophers among their friends, have been caught by the incantations of the turbanded and bearded Cairo magician. In our West African colonies the phrase “growing black” was applied to colonists, who, after a term of residence, became thoroughly imbued with the superstitions of the land. And there are not wanting old Anglo-Indians, intelligent men, that place firm trust in tales and tenets too puerile even for the Hindus to believe. As a “Hindi” I could use animal magnetism, taking care, however, to give the science a specious supernatural appearance. Haji Wali, who, professing positive scepticism, showed the greatest interest in the subject as a curiosity, advised me not to practise pure mesmerism; otherwise, that I should infallibly become a “Companion of Devils.” “You must call this an Indian secret,” said my friend, “for it is clear that you are no Mashaikh,[FN#17] and people will ask, where are your drugs, and what business have you with charms?” It is useless to say that I followed his counsel; yet patients would consider themselves my
[p.59]Murids (disciples), and delighted in kissing the hand of the Sahib Nafas[FN#18] or minor saint.
The Haji repaid me for my docility by vaunting me everywhere as the very phoenix of physicians. My first successes were in the Wakalah; opposite to me there lived an Arab slave dealer, whose Abyssinians constantly fell sick. A tender race, they suffer when first transported to Egypt from many complaints, especially consumption, dysentery and varicose veins. I succeeded in curing one girl. As she was worth at least fifteen pounds, the gratitude of her owner was great, and I had to dose half a dozen others in order to cure them of the pernicious and price-lowering habit of snoring. Living in rooms opposite these slave girls, and seeing them at all hours of the day and night, I had frequent opportunities of studying them. They were average specimens of the steato-pygous Abyssinian breed, broad-shouldered, thin-flanked, fine-limbed, and with haunches of a prodigious size. None of them had handsome features, but the short curly hair that stands on end being concealed under a kerchief, there was something pretty in the brow, eyes, and upper part of the nose, coarse and sensual in the pendent lips, large jowl and projecting mouth, whilst the whole had a combination of piquancy with sweetness. Their style of flirtation was peculiar.
“How beautiful thou art, O Maryam!-what eyes!-what-“
[p.60]”Then why,”-would respond the lady-“don’t you buy me?”
“We are of one faith-of one creed-formed to form each other’s happiness.”
“Then why don’t you buy me?”
“Conceive, O Maryam, the blessing of two hearts-“
“Then why don’t you buy me?”
and so on. Most effectual gag to Cupid’s eloquence! Yet was not the plain-spoken Maryam’s reply without its moral. How often is it our fate, in the West as in the East, to see in bright eyes and to hear from rosy lips an implied, if not an expressed, “Why don’t you buy me?” or, worse still, “Why can’t you buy me?”
All I required in return for my services from the slave-dealer, whose brutal countenance and manners were truly repugnant, was to take me about the town, and explain to me certain mysteries in his craft, which knowledge might be useful in time to come. Little did he suspect who his interrogator was, and freely in his unsuspiciousness he entered upon the subject of slave hunting in the Somali country, and Zanzibar, of all things the most interesting to me. I have, however, nothing new to report concerning the present state of bondsmen in Egypt. England has already learned that slaves are not necessarily the most wretched and degraded of men. Some have been bold enough to tell the British public that, in the generality of Oriental countries,[FN#19] the serf fares far
[p.61]better than the servant, or indeed than the poorer orders of freemen. “The laws of Mahomet enjoin his followers to treat slaves with the greatest mildness, and the Moslems are in general scrupulous observers of the Apostle’s recommendation. Slaves are considered members of the family, and in houses where free servants are also kept, they seldom do any other work than filling the pipes, presenting the coffee, accompanying their master when going out, rubbing his feet when he takes his nap in the afternoon, and driving away the flies from him. When a slave is not satisfied, he can legally compel his master to sell him. He has no care for food, lodging, clothes and washing, and has no taxes to pay; he is exempt from military service and soccage, and in spite of his bondage is freer than the freest Fellah in Egypt.[FN#20]” This is, I believe, a true statement, but of course it in no wise affects the question of slavery in the abstract. A certain amount of reputation was the consequence of curing the Abyssinian girls: my friend Haji Wali carefully told the news to all the town, and before fifteen days were over, I found myself obliged to decline extending a practice which threatened me with fame.
Servants are most troublesome things to all Englishmen in Egypt, but especially to one travelling as a respectable native, and therefore expected to have slaves. After much deliberation, I resolved to take a Berberi,[FN#21]
[p.62]and accordingly summoned a Shaykh-there is a Shaykh for everything down to thieves in “the East,” (in Egypt since the days of Diodorus Siculus), and made known my want. The list of sine qua nons was necessarily rather an extensive one,-good health and a readiness to travel anywhere, a little skill in cooking, sewing and washing, willingness to fight, and a habit of regular prayers. After a day’s delay the Shaykh brought me a specimen of his choosing, a broad-shouldered, bandy-legged fellow, with the usual bull-dog expression of the Berberis, in his case rendered doubly expressive by the drooping of an eyelid-an accident brought about with acrid juice in order to avoid conscription. He responded sturdily to all my questions. Some Egyptian donkey boys and men were making a noise in the room at the time, and the calm ferocity with which he ejected them commanded my approval. When a needle, thread, and an unhemmed napkin were handed to him, he sat down, held the edge of the cloth between his big toe and its neighbour, and finished the work in quite a superior style. Walking out, he armed himself with a Kurbaj, which he used, now lightly, then heavily, upon all laden animals, biped and quadruped, that came in the way. His conduct proving equally satisfactory in the kitchen, after getting security from him, and having his name registered by the Shaykh,[FN#22] I closed with him for eighty piastres a
[p.63]month. But Ali the Berberi and I were destined to part. Before a fortnight he stabbed his fellow servant-a Surat lad, who wishing to return home forced his services upon me-and for this trick he received, with his dismissal, 400 blows on the feet by order of the Zabit, or police magistrate. After this failure I tried a number of servants, Egyptians, Sa’idis,[FN#23] and clean and unclean eating[FN#24] Berberis. Recommended by different Shaykhs, all had some fatal defect; one cheated recklessly, another robbed me, a third drank, a fourth was always in scrapes for infringing the Julian edict, and the last, a long-legged Nubian, after remaining two days in the house, dismissed me for expressing
[p.64]a determination to travel by sea from Suez to Yambu’. I kept one man; he complained that he was worked to death: two-they did nothing but fight; and three-they left me, as Mr. Elwes said of old, to serve myself. At last, thoroughly tired of Egyptian domestics, and one servant being really sufficient for comfort, as well as suitable to my assumed rank, I determined to keep only the Indian boy. He had all the defects of his nation; a brave at Cairo, he was an arrant coward at Al-Madinah; the Badawin despised him heartily for his effeminacy in making his camel kneel to dismount, and he could not keep his hands from picking and stealing. But the choice had its advantages: his swarthy skin and chubby features made the Arabs always call him an Abyssinian slave, which, as it favoured my disguise, I did not care to contradict; he served well, he was amenable to discipline, and being completely dependent upon me, he was therefore less likely to watch and especially to prate about my proceedings. As master and man we performed the pilgrimage together; but, on my return to Egypt after the pilgrimage, Shaykh (become Haji) Nur, finding me to be a Sahib,[FN#25] changed for the worse. He would not work, and reserved all his energy for the purpose of pilfering, which he practised so audaciously upon my friends, as well as upon myself, that he could not be kept in the house.
Perhaps the reader may be curious to see the necessary expenses of a bachelor residing at Cairo. He must observe, however, in the following list that I was not a strict economist, and, besides that, I was a stranger in the country: inhabitants and old settlers would live as well for little more than two-thirds the sum.
[p.65]
——————————————Piastres.Faddah. House rent at 18 piastres per mensem———0——-24 Servant at 80 piastres per——do.———-2——-26
Breakfast for 10 eggs———————-0——–5 self and Coffee———————–0——-10 servant. Water melon (now 5 piastres)-1——–0 Two rolls of bread———–0——-10
2 lbs. of meat—————2——-20 Two rolls of bread———–0——-10 Dinner. Vegetables——————-0——-20 Rice————————-0——–5 Oil and clarified butter—–1——–0
A skin of Nile water———1——–0 Sundries. Tobacco[FN#25]—————1——–0 Hammam (hot bath)————3——-20 Oil and clarified butter—–1——–2 – –
Total——————————-12——-50
Equal to about two shillings and sixpence.
[p.66]In these days who at Cairo without a Shaykh? I thought it right to conform to popular custom, and accordingly, after having secured a servant, my efforts were directed to finding a teacher; the pretext being that as an Indian doctor I wanted to read Arabic works on medicine, as well as to perfect myself in divinity and pronunciation.[FN#26] My theological studies were in the Shafe’i school for two reasons: in the first place, it is the least rigorous of the Four Orthodox, and, secondly, it most resembles the Shi’ah heresy, with which long intercourse
[p.67]with Persians had made me familiar.[FN#27] My choice of doctrine, however, confirmed those around me in their conviction that I was a rank heretic, for the ‘Ajami, taught by his religion to conceal offensive tenets[FN#28] in lands where the open expression would be dangerous, always represents himself to be a Shafe’i. This, together with the original mistake of appearing publicly at Alexandria as a “Mirza” in a Persian dress, caused me infinite small annoyance at Cairo, in spite of all precautions and contrivances. And throughout my journey, even in Arabia, though I drew my knife every time an offensive hint was thrown out, the ill-fame clung to me like the shirt of Nessus.
It was not long before I happened to hit upon a proper teacher, in the person of Shaykh Mohammed al-Attar, or the “Druggist.” He had known prosperity, having once been a Khatib (preacher) in one of Mohammed Ali’s mosques. But His Highness the late Pasha had dismissed him, which disastrous event, with its subsequent train of misfortunes, he dates from the melancholy day when he took to himself a wife. He talks of her abroad as a stern and rigid master dealing with a naughty slave, though, by the look that accompanies his rhodomontade, I am convinced that at home he is the very model of “managed men.” His dismissal was the reason that compelled him to fall back upon the trade of a druggist, the refuge for the once wealthy, though now destitute, Sages of Egypt.
His little shop in the Jamaliyah Quarter is a perfect gem of Nilotic queerness. A hole, about five feet long
[p.68]and six deep, pierced in the wall of some house, it is divided into two compartments separated by a thin partition of wood, and communicating by a kind of arch cut in the boards. The inner box, germ of a back parlour, acts as store-room, as the pile of empty old baskets tossed in dusty confusion upon the dirty floor shows. In the front is displayed the stock in trade, a matting full of Persian tobacco and pipe-bowls of red clay, a palm-leaf bag containing vile coffee and large lumps of coarse, whity-brown sugar wrapped up in browner paper. On the shelves and ledges are rows of well-thumbed wooden boxes, labelled with the greatest carelessness, pepper for rhubarb, arsenic for Tafl, or wash-clay, and sulphate of iron where sal-ammoniac should be. There is also a square case containing, under lock and key, small change and some choice articles of commerce, damaged perfumes, bad antimony for the eyes, and pernicious rouge. And dangling close above it is a rusty pair of scales, ill poised enough for Egyptian Themis herself to use. To hooks over the shop-front are suspended reeds for pipes, tallow candles, dirty wax tapers and cigarette paper; instead of plate-glass windows and brass-handled doors, a ragged net keeps away the flies when the master is in, and the thieves when he goes out to recite in the Hasanayn Mosque his daily chapter “Ya Sin.[FN#29]” A wooden shutter which closes down at night-time, and by day two palm-stick stools intensely dirty and full of fleas, occupying the place of the Mastabah or earthen bench,[FN#30] which accommodated purchasers, complete the furniture of my preceptor’s establishment.
[p.69]There he sits, or rather lies (for verily I believe he sleeps through three-fourths of the day), a thin old man about fifty-eight,[FN#31] with features once handsome and regular; a sallow face, shaven head, deeply wrinkled cheeks, eyes hopelessly bleared, and a rough grey beard ignorant of oil and comb. His turband, though large, is brown with wear; his coat and small-clothes display many a hole; and, though his face and hands must be frequently washed preparatory to devotion, still they have the quality of looking always unclean. It is wonderful how fierce and gruff he is to the little boys and girls who flock to him grasping farthings for pepper and sugar. On such occasions I sit admiring to see him, when forced to exertion, wheel about on his place, making a pivot of that portion of our organisation which mainly distinguishes our species from the other families of the Simiadae, to reach some distant drawer, or to pull down a case from its accustomed shelf. How does he manage to say his prayers, to kneel and to prostrate himself upon that two feet of ragged rug, scarcely sufficient for a British infant to lie upon? He hopelessly owns that he knows nothing of his craft, and the seats before his shop are seldom occupied. His great pleasure appears to be when the Haji and I sit by him a few minutes in the evening, bringing with us pipes, which he assists us to smoke, and ordering coffee, which he insists upon sweetening with a lump of sugar from his little store. There we make him talk and laugh, and occasionally quote a few lines strongly savouring of the jovial: we provoke him to long stories about the love borne him in his student-days by the great and holy Shaykh Abd al-Rahman, and the antipathy with which he was regarded by the equally
[p.70]great and holy Shakh Nasr al-Din, his memorable single imprisonment for contumacy,[FN#32] and the temperate but effective lecture, beginning with “O almost entirely destitute of shame!” delivered on that occasion in presence of other under-graduates by the Right Reverend principal of his college. Then we consult him upon matters of doctrine, and quiz him tenderly about his powers of dormition, and flatter him, or rather his age, with such phrases as, “The water from thy hand is of the Waters of Zemzem;” or, “We have sought thee to deserve the Blessings of the Wise upon our undertakings.” Sometimes, with interested motives it must be owned, we induce him to accompany us to the Hammam,[FN#33] where he insists upon paying the smallest sum, quarrelling with everything and
[p.71]everybody, and giving the greatest trouble. We are generally his only visitors; acquaintances he appears to have few, and no friends; he must have had them once, for he was rich, but is not so now, so they have fallen away from the poor old man.
When the Shaykh Mohammed sits with me, or I climb up into his little shop for the purpose of receiving a lesson from him, he is quite at his ease, reading when he likes, or making me read, and generally beginning each lecture with some such preamble as this[FN#34]:-
“Aywa! aywa! aywa![FN#35]”-Even so, even so, even so! we take refuge with Allah from Satan the Stoned! In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, and the Blessings of Allah upon our Lord Mohammed, and his Family and his Companions one and all! Thus saith the author, may Almighty Allah have mercy upon him! Section I. of chapter two, upon the orders of prayer,’ &c.”
He becomes fiercely sarcastic when I differ from him in opinion, especially upon a point of grammar, or the theology over which his beard has grown grey.
“Subhan’ Allah! (Allah be glorified![FN#36]) What words are these? If thou be right, enlarge thy turband,[FN#37]” (i.e., set up as a learned man), “and throw away thy
[p.72]drugs, for verily it is better to quicken men’s souls than to destroy their bodies, O Abdullah!”
Oriental-like, he revels in giving good counsel.
“Thou art always writing, O my brave![FN#38]” (this is said on the few occasions when I venture to make a note in my book), “what evil habit is this? Surely thou hast learned it in the lands of the Frank. Repent!”
He loathes my giving medical advice gratis.
“Thou hast two servants to feed, O my son! The doctors of Egypt never write A, B, without a reward. Wherefore art thou ashamed? Better go and sit upon the mountain[FN#39] at once” (i.e., go to the desert), “and say thy prayers day and night!”
And finally, he is prodigal of preaching upon the subject of household expenses.
“Thy servant did write down two pounds of flesh yesterday! What words are these, O he?[FN#40] Dost thou never say, Guard us, Allah, from the sin of extravagance?'”
He delights also in abruptly interrupting a serious subject when it begins to weigh upon his spirits. For instance,
Now the waters of ablution being of seven different kinds, it results that-hast thou a wife?-No?-Then verily thou must buy thee a female slave, O youth! This conduct is not right, and men will say of thee-Repentance: I take refuge with Allah[FN#41]-of a truth his mouth watereth for the spouses of other Moslems.'”
[p.73]But sometimes he nods over a difficult passage under my very eyes, or he reads it over a dozen times in the wantonness of idleness, or he takes what school-boys call a long “shot” most shamelessly at the signification. When this happens I lose my temper, and raise my voice, and shout, “Verily there is no power nor might save in Allah, the High, the Great!” Then he looks at me, and with passing meekness whispers-
“Fear Allah, O man!”
[FN#1] The second is an imitative word, called in Arabic grammar Tabi’a, as “Zayd Bayd,” “Zayd and others;” so used, it denotes contempt for drachms and similar parts of drug-craft. [FN#2] This familiar abbreviation of Wali al-Din was the name assumed by the enterprising traveller, Dr. Wallin. [FN#3] By the Indians called Bhang, the Persians Bang, the Hottentots Dakha, and the natives of Barbary Fasukh. Even the Siberians, we are told, intoxicate themselves by the vapour of this seed thrown upon red-hot stones. Egypt surpasses all other nations in the variety of compounds into which this fascinating drug enters, and will one day probably supply the Western world with “Indian hemp,” when its solid merits are duly appreciated. At present in Europe it is chiefly confined, as cognac and opium used to be, to the apothecary’s shelves. Some adventurous individuals at Paris, after the perusal of Monte Christo, attempted an “orgie” in one of the cafes, but with poor success.
[FN#4] The Indian name of an Afghan, supposed to be a corruption of the Arabic Fat’han (a conqueror), or a derivation from the Hindustani paithna, to penetrate (into the hostile ranks). It is an honourable term in Arabia, where “Khurasani” (a native of Khorasan), leads men to suspect a Persian, and the other generic appellation of the Afghan tribes “Sulaymani,” a descendant from Solomon, reminds the people of their proverb, “Sulaymani harami!”-“the Afghans are ruffians!” [FN#5] For the simple reason that no Eastern power confers such an obligation except for value received. In old times, when official honour was not so rigorous as it is now, the creditors of Eastern powers and principalities would present high sums to British Residents and others for the privilege of being enrolled in the list of their subjects or servants. This they made profitable; for their claims, however exorbitant, when backed by a name of fear, were certain to be admitted, unless the Resident’s conscience would allow of his being persuaded by weightier arguments of a similar nature to abandon his protege. It is almost needless to remark that nothing of the kind can occur in the present day, and at the same time that throughout the Eastern world it is firmly believed that such things are of daily occurrence. Ill fame descends to distant generations; whilst good deeds, if they blossom, as we are told, in the dust, are at least as short-lived as they are sweet.
[FN#6] A doctor, a learned man; not to be confounded with Hakim, a ruler.
[FN#7] It may be as well to remark that our slave laws require reform throughout the East, their severity, like Draco’s Code, defeating their purpose. In Egypt, for instance, they require modification. Constitute the offence a misdemeanour, not a felony, inflict a fine (say L100), half of which should be given to the informer, and make the imprisonment either a short one, or, what would be better still, let it be done away with, except in cases of non-payment; and finally, let the Consul or some other magistrate residing at the place have power to inflict the penalty of the law, instead of being obliged, as at present, to transmit offenders to Malta for trial. As the law now stands, our officials are unwilling to carry its rigours into effect; they therefore easily lend an ear to the standard excuse-ignorance-in order to have an opportunity of decently dismissing a man, with a warning not to do it again.
[FN#8] Yet at the time there was at Alexandria an acting Consul-General, to whom the case could with strict propriety have been referred.
[FN#9] Johann Gottlieb Fichte expressly declares that the scope of his system has never been explained by words, and that it even admits not of being so explained. To make his opinions intelligible, he would express them by a system of figures, each of which must have a known and positive value.
[FN#10] M. C. de Perceval (Arabic Grammar), and Lane (Mod. Egyptians, Chapter 8 et passim), give specimens.
[FN#11] A monogram generally placed at the head of writings. It is the initial letter of “Allah,” and the first of the alphabet, used from time immemorial to denote the origin of creation. “I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last.”
[FN#12] “Ala-rik,” that is to say, fasting-the first thing in the morning.
[FN#13] The Almighty.
[FN#14] W’as-salam, i.e. adieu.
[FN#15] From M. Huc we learn that Jin-seng is the most considerable article of Manchurian commerce, and that throughout China there is no chemist’s shop unprovided with more or less of it. He adds: “The Chinese report marvels of the Jin-seng, and no doubt it is for Chinese organisation a tonic of very great effect for old and weak persons; but its nature is too heating, the Chinese physicians admit, for the European temperament, already in their opinion too hot. The price is enormous, and doubtless its dearness contributes with a people like the Chinese to raise its celebrity so high. The rich and the Mandarins probably use it only because it is above the reach of other people, and out of pure ostentation.” It is the principal tonic used throughout Central Asia, and was well known in Europe when Sarsaparilla arose to dispute with it the palm of popularity. In India, Persia, and Afghanistan, it is called chob-chini,-the “Chinese wood.” The preparations are in two forms, 1. Sufuf, or powder; 2. Kahwah, or decoction. The former is compound of Radix China Qrient, with gum mastich and sugar-candy, equal parts; about a dram of this compound is taken once a day, early in the morning. For the decoction one ounce of fine parings is boiled for a quarter of an hour in a quart of water. When the liquid assumes a red colour it is taken off the fire and left to cool. Furthermore, there are two methods of adhibiting the choh-chini: 1. Band; 2. Khola. The first is when the patient confines himself to a garden, listening to music, enjoying the breeze, the song of birds, and the bubbling of a flowing stream. He avoids everything likely to trouble and annoy him; he will not even open a letter, and the doctor forbids anyone to contradict him. Some grandees in central Asia will go through a course of forty days in every second year; it reminds one of Epicurus’ style of treatment,-the downy bed, the garlands of flowers, the good wine, and the beautiful singing girl, and is doubtless at least as efficacious in curing as the sweet relaxation of Gräfenberg or Malvern. So says Socrates, according to the Anatomist of Melancholy,
“Oculum non curabis sine toto capite, Nec caput sine toto corpore,
Nec totum corpus sine animo.”
The “Khola” signifies that you take the tonic without other precautions than the avoiding acids, salt, and pepper, and choosing summer time, as cold is supposed to induce rheumatism.
[FN#16] Certain Lamas who, we learn from M. Huc, perform famous Sie-fa, or supernaturalisms, such as cutting open the abdomen, licking red-hot irons, making incisions in various parts of the body, which an instant afterwards leave no trace behind, &c., &c. The devil may “have a great deal to do with the matter” in Tartary, for all I know; but I can assure M. Huc, that the Rufa’i Darwayshes in India and the Sa’adiyah at Cairo perform exactly the same feats. Their jugglery, seen through the smoke of incense, and amidst the enthusiasm of a crowd, is tolerably dexterous, and no more.
[FN#17] A holy man. The word has a singular signification in a plural form, “honoris causa.”
[FN#18] A title literally meaning the “Master of Breath,” one who can cure ailments, physical as well as spiritual, by breathing upon them-a practice well known to mesmerists. The reader will allow me to observe, (in self-defence, otherwise he might look suspiciously upon so credulous a narrator), that when speaking of animal magnetism, as a thing established, I allude to the lower phenomena, rejecting the discussion of all disputed points, as the existence of a magnetic Aura, and of all its unintelligibilities-Prevision, Levitation, Introvision, and other divisions of Clairvoyance.
[FN#19] In the generality, not in all. Nothing, for instance, can be more disgraceful to human nature than the state of praedial slavery, or serfs attached to the glebe, when Malabar was under the dominion of the “mild Hindu.” And as a rule in the East it is only the domestic slaves who taste the sweets of slavery. Yet there is truth in Sonnini’s terrible remark: “The severe treatment under which the slaves languish in the West Indies is the shameful prerogative of civilisation, and is unknown to those nations among whom barbarism is reported to hold sway.” (Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt, vol. ii.) [FN#20] The author has forgotten to mention one of the principal advantages of slaves, namely, the prospect of arriving at the highest rank of the empire. The Pasha of the Syrian caravan with which I travelled to Damascus, had been the slave of a slave, and he is but a solitary instance of cases perpetually occuring in all Moslem lands. “C’est un homme de bonne famille,” said a Turkish officer in Egypt, “il a ete achete.”
[FN#21] A “Barbarian” from Nubia and Upper Egypt. Some authorities, Mr. Lane for instance, attribute the good reputation of these people to their superior cunning. Sonnini says, “they are intelligent and handy servants, but knaves.” Others believe in them. As far as I could find out, they were generally esteemed more honest than the Egyptians, and they certainly possess a certain sense of honour unknown to their northern brethren. “Berberi” is a term of respect; “Masri” (corrupted from Misri) in the mouth of a Badawi or an Arab of Arabia is a reproach. “He shall be called an Egyptian,” means “he shall belong to a degraded race.”
[FN#22] Who becomes responsible, and must pay for any theft his protege may commit. Berberis, being generally “les Suisses” of respectable establishments, are expected to be honest. But I can assert from experience that, as a native, you will never recover the value of a stolen article without having recourse to the police. For his valuable security, the Shaykh demands a small fee (7 or 8 piastres), which, despite the urgent remonstrances of protector and protege, you deduct from the latter’s wages. The question of pay is a momentous one; too much always spoils a good servant, too little leaves you without one. An Egyptian of the middle class would pay his Berberi about 40 piastres a month, besides board, lodging, some small perquisites, and presents on certain occasions. This, however, will not induce a man to travel, especially to cross the sea.
[FN#23] A man from the Sa’id or Upper Egypt. [FN#24] A favourite way of annoying the Berberis is to repeat the saying, “we have eaten the clean, we have eaten the unclean,”-meaning, that they are by no means cunning in the difference between right and wrong, pure and impure. I will relate the origin of the saying, as I heard it differently, from Mansfield Parkyns, (Life in Abyssinia, chap. 31.) A Berberi, said my informant, had been carefully fattening a fine sheep for a feast, when his cottage was burned by an accident. In the ashes he found roasted meat, which looked tempting to a hungry man: he called his neighbours, and all sat down to make merry over the mishap; presently they came to the head, which proved to be that of a dog, some enemy having doubtless stolen the sheep and put the impure animal in its place. Whereupon, sadly perplexed, all the Berberis went to their priest, and dolefully related the circumstance, expecting absolution, as the offence was involuntary. “You have eaten filth,” said the man of Allah. “Well,” replied the Berberis, falling upon him with their fists, “filth or not, we have eaten it.” The Berberi, I must remark, is the “Paddy” of this part of the world, celebrated for bulls and blunders. [FN#25] The generic name given by Indians to English officials. [FN#26] There are four kinds of tobacco smoked in Egypt. The first and best is the well-known Latakia, generally called “Jabali,” either from a small seaport town about three hours’ journey south of Latakia, or more probably because grown on the hills near the ancient Laodicea. Pure, it is known by its blackish colour, fine shredding, absence of stalk, and an undescribable odour, to me resembling that of creosote; the leaf, too, is small, so that when made into cigars it must be covered over with a slip of the yellow Turkish tobacco called Bafra. Except at the highest houses unadulterated Latakia is not to be had in Cairo. Yet, mixed as it is, no other growth exceeds it in flavour and fragrance. Miss Martineau smoked it, we are told, without inconvenience, and it differs from our Shag, Bird’s-eye, and Returns, in degree, as does Chateau Margeau from a bottle of cheap strong Spanish wine. To bring out its flavour, the connoisseur smokes it in long pipes of cherry, jasmine, maple, or rosewood, and these require a servant skilled in the arts of cleaning and filling them. The best Jabali at Cairo costs about seven piastres the pound; after which a small sum must be paid to the Farram or chopper, who prepares it for use.
2nd. Suri (Tyrian), or Shami, or Suryani, grown in Syria, an inferior growth, of a lighter colour than Latakia, and with a greenish tinge; when cut, its value is about three piastres per pound. Some smokers mix this leaf with Jabali, which, to my taste, spoils the flavour of the latter without improving the former. The strongest kind, called Korani or Jabayl, is generally used for cigarettes; it costs, when of first-rate quality, about five piastres per pound. 3rd. Tumbak, or Persian tobacco, called Hijazi, because imported from the Hijaz, where everybody smokes it, and supposed to come from Shiraz, Kazerun, and other celebrated places in Persia. It is all but impossible to buy this article unadulterated, except from the caravans returning after the pilgrimage. The Egyptians mix it with native growths, which ruins its flavour and gives it an acridity that “catches the throat,” whereas good tumbak never yet made a man cough. Yet the taste of this tobacco, even when second-rate, is so fascinating to some smokers that they will use no other. To be used it should be wetted and squeezed, and it is invariably inhaled through water into the lungs: almost every town has its favourite description of pipe, and these are of all kinds, from the pauper’s rough cocoa-nut mounted with two reeds, to the prince’s golden bowl set with the finest stones. Tumbak is cheap, costing about four piastres a pound, but large quantities of it are used.
4th. Hummi, as the word signifies, a “hot” variety of the tumbak, grown in Al-Yaman and other countries. It is placed in the tile on the buri or cocoa-nut pipe, unwetted, and has a very acrid flavour. Being supposed to produce intoxication, or rather a swimming in the head, hummi gives its votaries a bad name: respectable men would answer “no” with rage if asked whether they are smoking it, and when a fellow tells you that he has seen better days, but that now he smokes Hummi in a buri, you understand him that his misfortunes have affected either his brain or his morality. Hence it is that this tobacco is never put into pipes intended for smoking the other kinds. The price of Hummi is about five piastres per pound.
[FN#26] A study essential to the learned, as in some particular portions of the Koran a mispronunciation becomes a sin. [FN#27] The Shafe’i, to quote but one point of similarity, abuse Yazid, the Syrian tyrant, who caused the death of the Imam Husayn: this expression of indignation is forbidden by the Hanafi doctors, who rigidly order their disciples to “judge not.” [FN#28] A systematic concealment of doctrine, and profession of popular tenets, technically called by the Shi’ahs “Takiyah:” the literal meaning of the word is “fear,” or “caution.” [FN#29] One of the most esteemed chapters of the Koran, frequently recited as a Wazifah or daily task by religious Moslems in Egypt. [FN#30] The Mastabah here is a long earthen bench plastered over with clay, and raised about two feet from the ground, so as to bring the purchaser’s head to a level with the shop. Mohammed Ali ordered the people to remove them, as they narrowed the streets; their place is now supplied by “Kafas,” cages or stools of wicker-work. [FN#31] A great age in Lower Egypt, where but few reach the 12th lustre. Even the ancients observed that the old Egyptians, despite their attention to diet and physic, were the most short-lived, and the Britons, despite their barbarism, the longest lived of men. [FN#32] This is the “imposition” of Oxford and Cambridge. [FN#33] The Hammam, or hot bath, being a kind of religious establishment, is one of the class of things-so uncomfortably numerous in Eastern countries-left ‘ala jud’ak, “to thy generosity.” Consequently, you are pretty sure to have something disagreeable there, which you would vainly attempt to avoid by liberality. The best way to deal with all such extortioners, with the Lawingi (undresser) of a Cairo Hammam, or the “jarvey” of a London Hansom, is to find out the fare, and never to go beyond it-never to be generous. The Hammam has been too often noticed to bear another description: one point, however, connected with it I must be allowed to notice. Mr. Lane (Modern Egyptians) asserts that a Moslem should not pray nor recite the Koran in it, as the bath is believed to be a favourite resort of Jinnis (or genii). On the contrary, it is the custom of some sects to recite a Ruk’atayn (two-bow) prayer immediately after religious ablution in the hot cistern. This, however, is makruh, or improper without being sinful, to the followers of Abu Hanifah. As a general rule, throughout Al-Islam, the Farz (obligatory) prayers may be recited everywhere, no matter how impure the place may be: but those belonging to the classes sunnat (traditionary) and nafilah (supererogatory) are makruh, though not actually unlawful, in certain localities. I venture this remark on account of the extreme accuracy of the work referred to. A wonderful contrast to the generality of Oriental books, it amply deserves a revision in the rare places requiring care. [FN#34] Europeans so seldom see the regular old Shaykh, whose place is now taken by polite young men educated in England or France, that this scene may be new even to those who have studied of late years on the banks of the Nile.
[FN#35] This word is often used to signify simply “yes.” It is corrupted from Ay wa’llahi, “Yes, by Allah.” In pure Arabic “ay” or “I” is synonymous with our “yes” or “ay”; and “Allah” in those countries enters somehow into every other phrase.
[FN#36] This is, of course, ironical: “Allah be praised for creating such a prodigy of learning as thou art!” [FN#37] The larger the turband the greater are the individual’s pretensions to religious knowledge and respectability of demeanour. This is the custom in Egypt, Turkey, Persia, and many other parts of the Moslem world.
[FN#38] Ya gad’a, as the Egyptians pronounce it, is used exactly like the “mon brave” of France, and our “my good man.” [FN#39] The “mountain” in Egypt and Arabia is what the “jungle” is in India. When informed that “you come from the mountain,” you understand that you are considered a mere clodhopper: when asserting that you will “sit upon the mountain,” you hint to your hearers an intention of turning anchorite or magician.
[FN#40] Ya hu, a common interpellative, not, perhaps, of the politest description.
[FN#41] A religious formula used when compelled to mention anything abominable or polluting to the lips of a pious man.
[p.74]CHAPTER V.
THE RAMAZAN.
THIS year the Ramazan befell in June, and a fearful infliction was that “blessed month,” making the Moslem unhealthy and unamiable. For the space of sixteen consecutive hours and a quarter, we were forbidden to eat, drink, smoke, snuff, and even to swallow our saliva designedly. I say forbidden, for although the highest orders of Turks,-the class is popularly described as
“Turco fino
Mangia porco e beve vino.”-
may break the ordinance in strict privacy, popular opinion would condemn any open infraction of it with uncommon severity. In this, as in most human things, how many are there who hold that
“Pecher en secret n’est pas pecher,
Ce n’est que l’eclat qui fait le crime”?
The middle and lower ranks observe the duties of the season, however arduous, with exceeding zeal: of all who suffered severely from such total abstinence, I found but one patient who would eat even to save his life. And among the vulgar, sinners who habitually drink when they should pray, will fast and perform their devotions through the Ramazan.
Like the Italian, the Anglo-Catholic, and the Greek fasts, the chief effect of the “blessed month” upon True Believers is to darken their tempers into positive gloom.
[p.75]Their voices, never of the softest, acquire, especially after noon, a terribly harsh and creaking tone. The men curse one another[FN#1] and beat the women. The women slap and abuse the children, and these in their turn cruelly entreat, and use bad language to, the dogs and cats. You can scarcely spend ten minutes in any populous part of the city without hearing some violent dispute. The “Karakun,” or station-houses, are filled with lords who have administered an undue dose of chastisement to their ladies, and with ladies who have scratched, bitten, and otherwise injured the bodies of their lords. The Mosques are crowded with a sulky, grumbling population, making themselves offensive to one another on earth whilst working their way to heaven; and in the shade, under the outer walls, the little boys who have been expelled the church attempt to forget their miseries in spiritless play. In the bazars and streets, pale long-drawn faces, looking for the most part intolerably cross, catch your eye, and at this season a stranger will sometimes meet with positive incivility. A shopkeeper, for instance, usually says when he rejects an insufficient offer, “Yaftah Allah,”-“Allah opens.[FN#2]” During the Ramazan, he will grumble about the bore of Ghashim, or “Johnny raws,” and gruffly tell you not to stand there wasting his time. But as a rule the shops are either shut or destitute of shopmen, merchants will not purchase, and students will not study. In fine,
[p.76]the Ramazan, for many classes, is one-twelfth of the year wantonly thrown away.
The following is the routine of a fast day. About half an hour after midnight, the gun sounds its warning to faithful men that it is time to prepare for the “Sahur,” (early breakfast) or morning meal. My servant then wakes me, if I have slept; brings water for ablution, spreads the Sufrah[FN# 3] (or leather cloth); and places before me certain remnants of the evening’s meal. It is some time before the stomach becomes accustomed to such hours, but in matters of appetite, habit is everything, and for health’s sake one should strive to eat as plentifully as possible. Then sounds the Salam, or Blessings on the Prophet,[FN#4] an introduction to the Call of Morning Prayer. Smoking sundry pipes with tenderness, as if taking leave of a friend; and until the second gun, fired at about half-past two A.M., gives the Imsak,[FN#4]-the order to abstain from food,-I wait the Azan,[FN#5] which in this month is called somewhat earlier than usual. Then, after a ceremony termed the Niyat[FN#6] (purpose) of fasting, I say my
[p.77]prayers, and prepare for repose.[FN#7] At 7 A.M. the labours of the day begin for the working classes of society; the rich spend the night in revelling, and rest in down from dawn till noon.
The first thing on rising is to perform the Wuzu, or lesser ablution, which invariably follows sleep in a reclining position; without this it would be improper to pray, to enter the Mosques, to approach a religious man, or to touch the Koran. A few pauper patients usually visit me at this hour, report the phenomena of their complaints,-which they do, by the bye, with unpleasant minuteness of detail,-and receive fresh instructions. At 9 A.M. Shaykh Mohammed enters, with “lecture” written upon his wrinkled brow; or I pick him up on the way, and proceed straight to the Mosque Al-Azhar. After three hours’ hard reading, with little interruption from bystanders-this is long vacation, most of the students being at home-comes the call to mid-day prayer. The founder of Al-Islam ordained but few devotions for the morning, which is the business part of the Eastern day; but during the afternoon and evening they succeed one another rapidly, and their length increases. It is then time to visit my rich patients, and afterwards, by way of accustoming myself to the sun, to wander among the bookshops for an hour or two, or simply to idle in the street. At 3 P.M. I return home, recite the afternoon prayers, and re-apply myself to study.
This is the worst part of the day. In Egypt the summer nights and mornings are, generally speaking,
[p.78]pleasant, but the forenoons are sultry, and the afternoons are serious. A wind wafting the fine dust and furnace-heat of the desert blows over the city; the ground returns with interest the showers of caloric from above, and not a cloud or a vapour breaks the dreary expanse of splendour on high. There being no such comforts as Indian tatties, and few but the wealthiest houses boasting glass windows, the interior of your room is somewhat more fiery than the street. Weakened with fasting, the body feels the heat trebly, and the disordered stomach almost affects the brain. Every minute is counted with morbid fixity of idea as it passes on towards the blessed sunset, especially by those whose terrible lot is manual labour at such a season. A few try to forget their afternoon miseries in slumber, but most people take the Kaylulah, or Siesta, shortly after the meridian, holding it unwholesome to sleep late in the day.
As the Maghrib, the sunset hour, approaches-and how slowly it comes!-the town seems to recover from a trance. People flock to the windows and balconies, in order to watch the moment of their release. Some pray, others tell their beads; while others, gathering together in groups or paying visits, exert themselves to while away the lagging time.
O Gladness! at length it sounds, that gun from the citadel. Simultaneously rises the sweet cry of the Mu’ezzin, calling men to prayer, and the second cannon booms from the Abbasiyah Palace,[FN#8]-“Al Fitar! Al
[p.79]Fitar!” fast-breaking! fast-breaking! shout the people, and a hum of joy rises from the silent city. Your acute ears waste not a moment in conveying the delightful intelligence to your parched tongue, empty stomach, and languid limbs. You exhaust a pot full of water, no matter its size. You clap hurried hands[FN#9] for a pipe; you order coffee; and provided with these comforts, you sit down, and calmly contemplate the coming pleasures of the evening.
Poor men eat heartily at once. The rich break their fast with a light meal,-a little bread and fruit, fresh or dry, especially water-melon, sweetmeats, or such digestible dishes as “Muhallabah,”-a thin jelly of milk, starch, and rice-flour. They then smoke a pipe, drink a cup of coffee or a glass of sherbet, and recite the evening prayers; for the devotions of this hour are delicate things, and while smoking a first pipe after sixteen hours’ abstinence, time easily slips away. Then they sit down to the Fatur (breakfast), the meal of the twenty-four hours, and eat plentifully, if they would avoid illness.
There are many ways of spending a Ramazan evening. The Egyptians have a proverb, like ours of the Salernitan school:
[p.80]”After Al-Ghada rest, if it be but for two moments: After Al-Asha[FN#10] walk, if it be but two steps.”
The streets are now crowded with a good-humoured throng of strollers; the many bent on pleasure, the few wending their way to Mosque, where the Imam recites “Tarawih” prayers.[FN#11] They saunter about, the accustomed pipe in hand, shopping, for the stalls are open till a late hour; or they sit in crowds at the coffee-house entrance, smoking Shishas,[FN#12] (water-pipes), chatting, and listening to story-tellers, singers and itinerant preachers. Here a bare-footed girl trills and quavers, accompanied by a noisy tambourine and a “scrannel pipe” of abominable discordance, in honour of a perverse saint whose corpse insisted upon being buried inside some respectable man’s dwelling-house.[FN#13] The scene reminds you strongly of the Sonneurs of Brittany and the Zampognari from the Abruzzian Highlands bagpiping before the Madonna. There a tall, gaunt Maghrabi displays upon a square yard of
[p.81]dirty paper certain lines and blots, supposed to represent the venerable Ka’abah, and collects coppers to defray the expenses of his pilgrimage. A steady stream of loungers sets through the principal thoroughfares towards the Azbakiyah Gardens, which skirt the Frank quarter; there they sit in the moonlight, listening to Greek and Turkish bands, or making merry with cakes, toasted grains, coffee, sugared-drinks, and the broad pleasantries of Kara Gyuz[FN#14] (the local Punch and Judy). Here the scene is less thoroughly Oriental than within the city; but the appearance of Frank dress amongst the varieties of Eastern costume, the moon-lit sky, and the light mist hanging over the deep shade of the Acacia trees-whose rich scented yellow-white blossoms are popularly compared to the old Pasha’s beard[FN#15]-make it passing picturesque. And the traveller from the far East remarks with wonder the presence of certain ladies, whose only mark of modesty is the Burka, or face-veil: upon this laxity the police looks with lenient eyes, inasmuch as, until very lately, it paid a respectable tax to the state.[FN#16]
Returning to the Moslem quarter, you are bewildered
[p.82]by its variety of sounds. Everyone talks, and talking here is always in extremes, either in a whisper, or in a scream; gesticulation excites the lungs, and strangers cannot persuade themselves that men so converse without being or becoming furious. All the street cries, too, are in the soprano key. “In thy protection! in thy protection!” shouts a Fellah peasant to a sentinel, who is flogging him towards the station-house, followed by a tail of women, screaming, “Ya Gharati-ya Dahwati-ya Hasrati-ya Nidamati-O my calamity! O my shame!” The boys have elected a Pasha, whom they are conducting in procession, with wisps of straw for Mash’als, or cressets, and outrunners, all huzzaing with ten-schoolboy power. “O thy right! O thy left! O thy face! O thy heel! O thy back, thy back!” cries the panting footman, who, huge torch on shoulder, runs before the grandee’s carriage; “Bless the Prophet and get out of the way!” “O Allah bless him!” respond the good Moslems, some shrinking up to the walls to avoid the stick, others rushing across the road, so as to give themselves every chance of being knocked down. The donkey boy beats his ass with a heavy palm-cudgel,-he fears no treadmill here,-cursing him at the top of his voice for a “pander,” a “Jew,” a “Christian,” and a “son of the One-eyed, whose portion is Eternal Punishment.” “O chick pease! O pips!” sings the vendor of parched grains, rattling the unsavoury load in his basket. “Out of the way, and say, There is one God,'” pants the industrious water-carrier, laden with a skin, fit burden for a buffalo. “Sweet-water, and gladden thy soul, O lemonade!” pipes the seller of that luxury, clanging his brass cups together. Then come the beggars, intensely Oriental. “My supper is in Allah’s hands, my supper is in Allah’s hands! whatever thou givest, that will go with thee!” chaunts the old vagrant, whose wallet perhaps contains more provision than the basket of many a respectable shopkeeper.
[p.83]”Na’al abuk[FN#17]-rucse thy father-O brother of a naughty sister!” is the response of some petulant Greek to the touch of the old man’s staff. “The grave is darkness, and good deeds are its lamp!” sing the blind women, rapping two sticks together: “upon Allah! upon Allah! O daughter!” cry the bystanders, when the obstinate “bint”[FN#18] (daughter) of sixty years seizes their hands, and will not let go without extorting a farthing. “Bring the sweet” (i.e. fire), “and take the full,”[FN#19] (i.e., empty cup), euphuistically cry the long-moustached, fierce-browed Arnauts to the coffee-house keeper, who stands by them charmed by the rhyming repartee that flows so readily from their lips.
“Hanien,” may it be pleasant to thee![FN#20] is the signal for encounter.
[p.84]”Thou drinkest for ten,” replies the other, instead of returning the usual religious salutation.
“I am the cock and thou art the hen!” is the rejoinder,-a tart one. “Nay, I am the thick one and thou art the thin!” resumes the first speaker, and so on till they come to equivoques which will not bear a literal English translation.
And sometimes, high above the hubbub, rises the melodious voice of the blind mu’ezzin, who, from his balcony in the beetling tower rings forth, “Hie ye to devotion! Hie ye to salvation.” And (at morning-prayer time) he adds: “Devotion is better than sleep! Devotion is better than sleep!” Then good Moslems piously stand up, and mutter, previous to prayer, “Here am I at Thy call, O Allah! here am I at Thy call!”
Sometimes I walked with my friend to the citadel, and sat upon a high wall, one of the outworks of Mohammed Ali’s Mosque, enjoying a view which, seen by night, when the summer moon is near the full, has a charm no power of language can embody. Or escaping from “stifled Cairo’s filth,[FN#21]” we passed, through the Gate of Victory, into the wilderness beyond the City of the Dead.[FN#22] Seated upon some mound of ruins, we inhaled
[p.85]the fine air of the Desert, inspiriting as a cordial, when star-light and dew-mists diversified a scene, which, by day, is one broad sea of yellow loam with billows of chalk rock, thinly covered by a film-like spray of sand surging and floating in the fiery wind. There, within a mile of crowded life, all is desolate; the town walls seem crumbling to decay, the hovels are tenantless, and the paths untrodden; behind you lies the Wild, before you, the thousand tomb-stones, ghastly in their whiteness; while beyond them the tall dark forms of the Mamluk Soldans’ towers rise from the low and hollow ground like the spirits of kings guarding ghostly subjects in the Shadowy Realm. Nor less weird than the scene are the sounds!-the hyaena’s laugh, the howl of the wild dog, and the screech of the low-flying owl. Or we spent the evening at some Takiyah[FN#23] (Darwayshes’ Oratory), generally preferring that called the “Gulshani,” near the Muayyid Mosque outside the Mutawalli’s saintly door. There is nothing attractive in its appearance. You mount a flight of ragged steps, and enter a low verandah enclosing an open stuccoed terrace, where stands the holy man’s domed tomb: the two stories contain small dark rooms in which the Darwayshes dwell, and the ground-floor doors open into the
[p.86]verandah. During the fast-month, Zikrs[FN#24] are rarely performed in the Takiyahs: the inmates pray there in congregations, or they sit conversing upon benches in the shade. And a curious medley of men they are, composed of the choicest vagabonds from every nation of Al-Islam. Beyond this I must not describe the Takiyah or the doings there, for the “path” of the Darwaysh may not be trodden by feet profane.
Curious to see something of my old friends the Persians, I called with Haji Wali upon one Mirza Husayn, who by virtue of his dignity as “Shahbandar[FN#25]” (he calls himself “Consul-General”), ranks with the dozen little quasi-diplomatic kings of Cairo. He suspends over his lofty gate a sign-board in which the Lion and the Sun (Iran’s proud ensign) are by some Egyptian limner’s art metamorphosed into a preternatural tabby cat grasping a scimitar, with the jolly fat face of a “gay” young lady, curls and all complete, resting fondly upon her pet’s concave back. This high dignitary’s reception room was a court-yard sub dio: fronting the door were benches and cushions composing the Sadr or high place, with the parallel rows of Diwans spread down the less dignified sides, and a line of naked boards, the lowest seats, ranged along the door-wall. In the middle stood three little tables supporting three huge lanterns-as is their size so is the owner’s dignity-each of which contained three of the largest spermaceti candles.
The Haji and I entering took our seats upon the side benches with humility, and exchanged salutations with the great man on the Sadr. When the Darbar or levee was full, in stalked the Mirza, and all arose as he calmly divested himself of his shoes; and with all due
[p.87]solemnity ascended his proper cushion. He is a short, thin man about thirty-five, with regular features and the usual preposterous lamb-skin cap and beard, two peaked black cones at least four feet in length, measured from the tips, resting on a slender basement of pale yellow face. After a quarter of an hour of ceremonies, polite mutterings and low bendings with the right hand on the left breast, the Mirza’s pipe was handed to him first, in token of his dignity-at Teheran he was probably an under-clerk in some government office. In due time we were all served with Kaliuns[FN#26] (Persian hookahs) and coffee by the servants, who made royal conges whenever they passed the great man; and more than once the janissary, in dignity of belt and crooked sabre, entered the court to quicken our awe.
The conversation was the usual Oriental thing. It is, for instance, understood that you have seen strange things in strange lands.
“Voyaging-is-victory,” quotes the Mirza; the quotation is a hackneyed one, but it steps forth majestic as to pause and emphasis.
“Verily,” you reply with equal ponderousness of pronunciation and novelty of citation, “in leaving home one learns life, yet a journey is a bit of Jahannam.”
Or if you are a physician the “lieu commun” will be, “Little-learn’d doctors the body destroy: Little-learn’d parsons the soul destroy.”
To which you will make answer, if you would pass for a man of belles lettres, by the well-known lines,
“Of a truth, the physician hath power with drugs, Which, long as the patient hath life, may relieve him; But the tale of our days being duly told, The doctor is daft, and his drugs deceive him.”
After sitting there with dignity, like the rest of the guests, I took my leave, delighted with the truly Persian
[p.88]”apparatus” of the scene. The Mirza, having no salary, lives by fees extorted from his subjects, who pay rather than lack protection; and his dragoman for a counter-fee will sell their interests shamelessly. He is a hidalgo of blue blood in pride, pompousness and poverty. There is not a sheet of writing-paper in the “Consulate”-when they want one a farthing is sent to the grocer’s-yet the Consul drives out in an old carriage with four outriders, two tall-capped men preceding and two following the crazy vehicle. And the Egyptians laugh heartily at this display, being accustomed by Mohammed Ali to consider all such parade obsolete.
About half-an-hour before midnight sounds the Abrar[FN#27] or call to prayer, at which time the latest wanderers return home to prepare for the Sahur, their dawn meal. You are careful on the way to address each sentinel with a “Peace be upon thee!” especially if you have no lantern, otherwise you may chance to sleep in the guard-house. And, chemin faisant, you cannot but stop to gaze at streets as little like what civilised Europe understands by that name as is an Egyptian temple to the new Houses of Parliament.
There are certain scenes, cannily termed “Ken-speckle,” which print themselves upon Memory, and which endure as long as Memory lasts,-a thunder-cloud bursting upon the Alps, a night of stormy darkness off the Cape, an African tornado, and, perhaps, most awful of all, a solitary journey over the sandy Desert.
Of this class is a stroll through the thoroughfares of old Cairo by night. All is squalor in the brilliancy of noon-day. In darkness you see nothing but a silhouette. When, however, the moon is high in the heavens, and the summer stars rain light upon God’s world, there is something not of earth in the view. A glimpse at the
[p.89]strip of pale blue sky above scarcely reveals three ells of breadth: in many places the interval is less: here the copings meet, and there the outriggings of the houses seem to interlace. Now they are parted by a pencil of snowy sheen, then by a flood of silvery splendour; while under the projecting cornices and the huge hanging balcony-windows of fantastic wood-work, supported by gigantic brackets and corbels, and under deep verandahs, and gateways, vast enough for Behemoth to pass through, and in blind wynds and long cul-de-sacs, lie patches of thick darkness, made visible by the dimmest of oil lamps. The arch is a favourite feature: in one place you see it a mere skeleton-rib opening into some huge deserted hall; in another the ogre is full of fretted stone and wood carved like lace-work. Not a line is straight, the tall dead walls of the Mosques slope over their massy buttresses, and the thin minarets seem about to fall across your path. The cornices project crookedly from the houses, while the great gables stand merely by force of cohesion. And that the Line of Beauty may not be wanting, the graceful bending form of the palm, on whose topmost feathers, quivering in the cool night breeze, the moonbeam glistens, springs from a gloomy mound, or from the darkness of a mass of houses almost level with the ground. Briefly, the whole view is so strange, so fantastic, so ghostly, that it seems preposterous to imagine that in such places human beings like ourselves can be born, and live through life, and carry out the command “increase and multiply,” and die.
[FN#1] Of course all quarrelling, abuse, and evil words are strictly forbidden to the Moslem during Ramazan. If one believer insult another, the latter should repeat “I am fasting” three times before venturing himself to reply. Such is the wise law. But human nature in Egypt, as elsewhere, is always ready to sacrifice the spirit to the letter, rigidly to obey the physical part of an ordinance, and to cast away the moral, as if it were the husk and not the kernel. [FN#2] Allah opens (the door of daily bread) is a polite way of informing a man that you and he are not likely to do business; in other words, that you are not in want of his money. [FN#3] The Sufrah is a piece of leather well tanned, and generally of a yellow colour, bordered with black. It is circular, has a few small pouches for knives or spoons, and, by means of a thong run through rings in the periphery, can be readily converted into a bag for carrying provisions on a journey. Figuratively it is used for the meal itself. “Sufrah hazir” means that dinner is upon the table. [FN#4] The Salam at this hour of the morning is confined to the devotions of Ramazan. The curious reader may consult Lane’s Modern Egyptians, chap. 25, for a long and accurate interpretation of these words.
[FN#5] The summons to prayer.
[FN#6] In the Mohammedan church every act of devotion must be preceded by what is called its Niyat, or purpose. This intention must be either mentally conceived, or, as the more general rule is, audibly expressed. For instance, the worshipper will begin with “I purpose to pray the four-bows of mid-day prayer to Allah the Almighty,” and then he will proceed to the act of worship. Moslems of the Shafe’i faith must perform the Niyat of fasting every night for the ensuing day; the Malikis, on the other hand, “purpose” abstinence but once for the thirty days of Ramazan. Lane tells a pleasant tale of a thief in the Mosque saying, “I purpose (before prayer) to carry off this nice pair of new shoes!”
[FN#7] Many go to sleep immediately after the Imsak, or about a quarter of an hour before the dawn prayer, and do not perform their morning devotions till they awake. But this is not, strictly speaking, correct. [FN#8] When the late Pasha of Egypt (H.H. Abbas Hilmi) came to power, he built a large pile of palace close outside the walls of Cairo, on the direction of Suez, and induced his courtiers to follow his example. This was done readily enough, for Asiatics, like Europeans, enjoy the fine air of the desert after the rank atmosphere of towns and cities. If the successor of His Highness does not follow the usual Oriental method of wiping away all vestiges of the predecessor, except his grave, there will be, at no distant period, a second Cairo on the site of the Abbasiyah.
[FN#9] One of our wants is a history of the bell and its succedanai. Strict Moslems have an aversion to all modifications of this instrument, striking clocks, gongs, &c., because they were considered by the Prophet peculiar to the devotions of Christians. He, therefore, instituted the Azan, or call to prayer, and his followers still clap their hands when we should ring for a servant. The symbolical meaning of the bell, as shown in the sistrum of Isis, seems to be the movement and mixture of the elements, which is denoted by clattering noise. “Hence,” observes a learned antiquary, “the ringing of bells and clattering of plates of metal were used in all lustrations, sacrifices, &c.” We find them amongst the Jews, worn by the high priest; the Greeks attached them to images of Priapus, and the Buddhists of Thibet still use them in their worship, as do the Catholics of Rome when elevating the Host.
[FN#10] Al-Ghada is the early dinner: Al-Asha, the supper, eaten shortly after sunset. (See Lane’s Modern Egyptians, Chap. 5.) [FN#11] Extra prayers repeated in the month of Ramazan. (Lane, Chap. 25, “Tarawih.”) They take about an hour, consisting of 23 prostrations, with the Salam (or blessing on the Prophet) after every second prostration.
[FN#12] The Shisha, or Egyptian and Syrian water-pipe, is too well known to require any description. It is filled with a kind of tobacco called Tumbak, for which see Chap. 4 of this Volume. [FN#13] Strangers often wonder to see a kind of cemetery let into a dwelling-house in a crowded street. The reason is, that some obstinate saint has insisted upon being buried there, by the simple process of weighing so heavily in his bier, that the bearers have been obliged to place him on the pavement. Of course, no good Moslem would object to have his ground floor occupied by the corpse of a holy man. The reader will not forget, that in Europe statues have the whims which dead bodies exhibit in Egypt. So, according to the Abbe Marche, the little statue of Our Lady, lately found in the forest of Pennacom, “became, notwithstanding her small size, heavy as a mountain, and would not consent to be removed by any one but the chaplain of the chateau.” [FN#14] Europeans compare “Kara Gyuz” to our Chinese shadows. He is the Turkish “Punch,” and his pleasantries may remind the traveller of what he has read concerning the Mines and Fescennine performances of the Romans. On more than one occasion, Kara Gyuz has been reported to the police for scandalously jibing and deriding consuls, Frank merchants, and even Turkish dignitaries.
[FN#15] Mohammed Ali drained and planted the Azbakiyah, which, before his day, was covered with water and mud long after the inundation had ceased. The Egyptians extract a perfume, an aphrodisiac, which they call “Fitnah,” from this kind of Acacia. [FN#16] All “Agapemones” are at this time suppressed, by order of His Highness (Abbas Pasha), whose august mother occasionally insisted upon banishing whole colleges of Ambubaiae to Upper Egypt. As might be expected, this proceeding had a most injurious effect upon the morals of society. I was once at Cairo during the ruler’s absence on a tour up to the Nile; his departure was the signal for the general celebration of Cotyttia.
[FN#17] For La’an abuk, curse thy father. So in Europe pious men have sworn per diem, instead of per Deum, and “drat” acts for something stronger.
[FN#18] A daughter, a girl. In Egypt, every woman expects to be addressed as “O lady!” “O female-pilgrim!” “O bride!” or, “O daughter!” even though she be on the wrong side of fifty. In Syria and in Arabia, you may say “y’al mara!” (O woman); but if you attempt it near the Nile, the answer of the offended fair one will be “may Allah cut out thy heart!” or, “the woman, please Allah, in thine eye!” And if you want a violent quarrel, “y’al aguz!” (O old woman!) pronounced drawlingly,-y’al ago-o-ooz,-is sure to satisfy you. On the plains of Sorrento, in my day, it was always customary, when speaking to a peasant girl, to call her “bella fe,” (beautiful woman), whilst the worst of insults was “vecchiarella.” So the Spanish Calesero, under the most trying circumstances, calls his mule “Vieja, rivieja.” (old, very old). Age, it appears, is as unpopular in Southern Europe as in Egypt. [FN#19] “Fire” is called the “sweet” by euphuism, as to name it directly would be ill-omened. So in the Moslem law, flame and water being the instruments of Allah’s wrath, are forbidden to be used by temporal rulers. The “full” means an empty coffee cup, as we say in India Mez barhao (“increase the table,”) when ordering a servant to remove the dishes.
[FN#20] Or “pleasurably and health”: Hanien is a word taken from the Koran. The proper answer to this is “May Allah cause thee to have pleasure!” Hanna-kumu’llah, not “Allah yahannik!” which I have heard abominably perverted by Arnaut and other ruffians. [FN#21] This in these days must be said comparatively: Ibrahim Pasha’s order, that every housekeeper should keep the space before his house properly swept and cleaned, has made Cairo the least filthy city in the East.
[FN#22] Here lies the Swiss Burckhardt, who enjoyed a wonderful immunity from censure, until a certain pseudo-orientalist of the present day seized the opportunity of using the “unscrupulous traveller’s” information, and of abusing his memory. Some years ago, the sum of L20 (I am informed) was collected, in order to raise a fitting monument over the discoverer of Petra’s humble grave. Some objection, however, was started, because Moslems are supposed to claim Burckhardt as one of their own saints. Only hear the Egyptian account of his death! After returning from Al-Hijaz, he taught Tajwid (Koran chaunting) in the Azhar Mosque, where the learned, suspecting him to be at heart an infidel, examined his person, and found the formula of the Mohammedan faith written in token of abhorrence upon the soles of his feet. Thereupon, the principal of the Mosque, in a transport of holy indignation, did decapitate him with one blow of the sword. It only remains to be observed, that nothing can be more ridiculous than the popular belief, except it be our hesitating to offend the prejudices of such believers.
[FN#23] A Takiyah is a place where Darwayshes have rooms, and perform their devotions.
[FN#24] Certain forms of worship peculiar to Darwayshes. For a description see Lane (Modern Egyptians, ch. 24). [FN#25] Shahbandar, Harbour-King, is here equivalent to our “Consul.” [FN#26] Written “Ghalayun.”
[FN#27] See Lane (Modern Egyptians, chap. 24).
[p.90]CHAPTER VI.
THE MOSQUE.
THEN the Byzantine Christians, after overthrowing the temples of Paganism, meditated re-building and re-modelling them, poverty of invention and artistic impotence reduced them to group the spoils in a heterogeneous mass.[FN#1] The sea-ports of Egypt and the plains and mountains of Syria abounding in pillars of granite, syenite and precious marbles, in Pharaonic, Grecian, and Roman statuary, and in all manner of structural ornaments, the architects were at no loss for material. Their Syncretism, the result of chance and precipitancy, of extravagance and incuriousness, fell under eyes too ignorant to be hurt by the hybrid irregularity: it was perpetuated in the so-called Saracenic style, a plagiarism from the Byzantine,[FN#2] and it was reiterated in the Gothic, an offshoot from the Saracenic.[FN#3] This fact accounts in the Gothic style for its manifold incongruities of architecture, and for the phenomenon,-not solely attributable to the buildings
[p.91]having been erected piecemeal,-of its most classic period being that of its greatest irregularity.
Such “architectural lawlessness,” such disregard for symmetry,-the result, I believe, of an imperfect “amalgamation and enrichment,”-may doubtless be defended upon the grounds both of cause and of effect. Architecture is of the imitative arts, and Nature, the Myriomorphous, everywhere delighting in variety, appears to abhor nothing so much as perfect similarity and precise uniformity. To copy her exactly we must therefore seek that general analogy compatible with individual variety; in fact, we should avoid the over-display of order and regularity. And again, it may be asserted that, however incongruous these disorderly forms may appear to the conventional eye, we find it easy to surmount our first antipathy. Perhaps we end in admiring them the more, as we love those faces in which irregularity of feature is compensated for by diversity and piquancy of expression.
There is nothing, I believe, new in the Arab Mosque; it is an unconscious revival of the forms used from the earliest ages to denote by symbolism the worship of the generative and the creative gods. The reader will excuse me if I only glance at a subject of which the investigation would require a volume, and which, discussed at greater length, would be out of place in such a narrative as this.
The first Mosque in Al-Islam was erected by Mohammed at Kuba, near Al-Madinah: shortly afterwards, when he entered Meccah as a conqueror, he destroyed the three hundred and sixty idols of the Arab Pantheon, and thus purified that venerable building from its abominations. He had probably observed in Syrian Bostra the two forms appropriated by the Christians to their places of worship, the cross and the parallelogramic Basilica; he therefore preferred for the prayers of the “Saving Faith” a square,-some authors say, with, others
[p.92]without, a cloister. At length in the reign of Al-Walid (A.H. 90) the cupola, the niche, and the minaret made their appearance; and what is called the Saracenic style became for ever the order of the Moslem world.
The Hindus I believe to have been the first who symbolised by an equilateral triangle their peculiar cult, the Yoni-Linga: in their temple architecture, it became either a conoid or a perfect pyramid. Egypt denoted it by the obelisk, peculiar to that country; and the form appeared in different parts of the world: thus in England it was a mere upright stone, and in Ireland a round tower. This we might expect to see. D’Hancarville and Brotier have successfully traced the worship itself, in its different modifications, to all people: the symbol would therefore be found everywhere. The old Arab minaret is a plain cylindrical or polygonal tower, without balcony or stages, widely different from the Turkish, modern Egyptian, and Hijazi combinations of tube and prism, happily compared by a French traveller to “une chandelle coiffee d’un eteignoir.” And finally the ancient minaret, made solid as all Gothic architecture is, and provided with a belfry, became the spire and steeple of our ancestors.
>From time immemorial, in hot and rainy lands, a hypaethral court, either round or square, surrounded by a covered portico, was used for the double purpose of church and mart,-a place where God and Mammon were worshipped turn by turn. In some places we find rings of stones, like the Persian Pyroetheia; in others, circular concave buildings representing the vault of heaven, where Fire, the divine symbol, was worshipped; and in Arabia, columnar aisles, which, surmounted by the splendid blue vault, resemble the palm-grove. The Greeks adopted this idea in the fanes of Creator Bacchus; and at Pozzuoli, near Naples, it may be seen in the building vulgarly called the Temple of Serapis. It was equally well known
[p.93]to the Kelts: in some places the Temenos was a circle, in others a quadrangle. And such to the present day is the Mosque of Al-Islam.
Even the Riwak or porches surrounding the area in the Mosque are revivals of older forms. “The range of square buildings which enclose the temple of Serapis are not, properly speaking, parts of the fane, but apartments of the priests, places for victims, and sacred utensils, and chapels dedicated to subordinate deities, introduced by a more complicated and corrupt worship, and probably unknown to the founders of the original edifice.” The cloisters in the Mosque became cells, used as lecture rooms, and stores for books bequeathed to the college. They are unequal, because some are required to be of larger, others to be of smaller, dimensions. The same reason causes difference of size when the building is distributed into four hyposteles opening upon the area: the porch in the direction of the Ka’abah, where worshippers mostly congregate, demands greater depth than the other three. The wings were not unfrequently made unequal, either from want of building materials, or because the same extent of accommodation was not required in both. The columns were of different substances; some of handsome marble, others of rough stone meanly plastered over, with dissimilar capitals, vulgarly cut shafts of various sizes; here with a pediment, there without, now turned upside down, then joined together by halves in the centre, and almost invariably nescient of intercolumnar rule. This is the result of Byzantine syncretism, carelessly and ignorantly grafted upon Arab ideas of the natural and the sublime. Loving and admiring the great, or rather the big in plan,[FN#4]} they care
[p.94]little for the execution of mere details, and they have not the acumen to discern the effect which clumsy workmanship, crooked lines, and visible joints,-parts apparently insignificant,-exercise upon the whole of an edifice. Their use of colours was a false taste, commonly displayed by mankind in their religious houses, and statues of the gods. The Hindus paint their pagodas, inside and outside; and rub vermilion, in token of honour, over their deities. The Persian Colossi of Kaiomars and his consort on the Balkh road and the Sphinx of Egypt, as well as the temples of the Nile, still show traces of artificial complexion. The fanes in classic Greece have been dyed. In the Forum Romanum, one of the finest buildings, still bears stains of the Tyrian purple. And to mention no other instances, in the churches and belfries of Modern Italy, we see alternate bands of white and black material so disposed as to give them the appearance of giant zebras. The origin of “Arabesque” ornament must be referred to one of the principles of Al-Islam. The Moslem, forbidden by his law to decorate his Mosque with statuary and pictures,[FN#5] supplied their place with quotations from the Koran, and inscriptions, “plastic metaphysics,” of marvellous perplexity.
[p.95]His alphabet lent itself to the purpose, and hence probably arose that almost inconceivable variety of lace-like fretwork, of incrustations, of Arabesques, and of geometric flowers, in which his eye delights to lose itself.[FN#6]
The Meccan Mosque became a model to the world of Al-Islam, and the nations that embraced the new faith copied the consecrated building, as religiously as Christendom produced imitations of the Holy Sepulchre.[FN#7] The Mosque of Omar at Jerusalem, of Amru at Babylon on the Nile, and of Taylun at Cairo were erected, with some trifling improvements, such as arched cloisters and inscribed cornices, upon the plan of the Ka’abah. From Egypt and Palestine the ichnography spread far and wide. It was modified, as might be expected, by national taste; what in Arabia was simple and elegant became highly ornate in Spain,[FN#8] florid in Turkey, sturdy in Syria, and effeminate in India. Still divergence of detail had not, even after the lapse of twelve centuries, materially altered the fundamental form.
[p.96]Perhaps no Eastern city affords more numerous or more accessible specimens of Mosque architecture than Cairo. Between 300 and 400 places of worship;[FN#9] some stately piles, others ruinous hovels, many new, more decaying and earthquake-shaken, with minarets that rival in obliquity the Pisan monster, are open to the traveller’s inspection. And Europeans by following the advice of their hotel-keeper have penetrated, and can penetrate, into any one they please.[FN#10] If architecture be really what I believe it to be, the highest expression of a people’s artistic feeling,-highest because it includes all others,-to compare the several styles of the different epochs, to observe how each monarch building his own Mosque, and calling it by his own name, identified the manner of the monument with himself, and to trace the gradual decadence of art through one thousand two hundred years, down to the present day, must be a work of no ordinary interest to Orientalists. The limits of my plan, however, compel me to place only the heads of the argument before the reader. May I be allowed to express a hope that it will induce some learned traveller to investigate a subject in every way worthy his attention?
The desecrated Jami’ Taylun (ninth century) is simple and massive, yet elegant, and in some of its details peculiar.[FN#11] One of the four colonnades[FN#12] still remains unoccupied
[p.97]by paupers to show the original magnificence of the building; the other porches are walled up, and inhabited. In the centre of a quadrangle about 100 paces square is a domed building springing from a square which occupies the proper place of the Ka’abah. This “Jami'[FN#13]” Cathedral is interesting as a point of comparison. If it be an exact copy of the Meccan temple as it stood in A.D. 879, it shows that the latter has greatly altered in this our modern day.
Next in date to the Taylun Mosque is that of the Sultan al-Hakim, third Caliph of the Fatimites, and founder of the Druze mysteries. The minarets are remarkable in shape, as well as size: they are unprovided with the usual outer gallery, they are based upon a cube of masonry, and they are pierced above with apertures apparently meaningless. A learned Cairene informed me that these spires were devised by the eccentric monarch to disperse, like large censers, fragrant smoke over the city during the hours of prayer. The Azhar and Hasanayn[FN#14] Mosques are simple and artless piles, celebrated for sanctity, but remarkable for nothing save ugliness. Few buildings, however, are statelier in appearance,
[p.98]or give a nobler idea of both founder and architect than that which bears Sultan Hasan’s name. The stranger stands awe-struck before walls high towering without a single break, a hypaethral court severe in masculine beauty, a gateway that might suit the palace of the Titans, and a lofty minaret of massive grandeur. This Mosque (finished about A.D. 1363), with its fortress aspect, owns no more relationship to the efforts of a later age than does Canterbury Cathedral to an Anglo-Indian “Gothic.” For dignified beauty and refined taste, the Mosque and tomb of Kaid Bey and the other Mamluk kings are admirable. Even in their present state, picturesqueness presides over decay, and the traveller has seldom seen aught more striking than the rich light of the stained glass pouring through the first shades of evening upon the marble floor.
The modern Mosques must be visited to see Egyptian architecture in its decline and fall. That of Sittna Zaynab (our Lady Zaynab), founded by Murad Bey, the Mamluk, and interrupted by the French invasion, shows, even in its completion, some lingering traces of taste. But nothing can be more offensive than the building which every tourist flogs donkey in his hurry to see-old Mohammed Ali’s “Folly” in the citadel. Its Greek architect has toiled to caricature a Mosque to emulate the glories of our English “Oriental Pavilion.” Outside, as Monckton Milnes sings,
“The shining minarets, thin and high,”
are so thin, so high above the lumpy domes, that they
[p.99]look like the spindles of crouching crones, and are placed in full sight of Sultan Hasan the Giant, so as to derive all the disadvantages of the contrast. Is the pointed arch forgotten by man, that this hapless building should be disgraced by large and small parallelograms of glass and wood,[FN#15] so placed and so formed as to give its exterior the appearance of a European theatre coiffe with Oriental cupolas? Outside as well as inside, money has been lavished upon alabaster full of flaws; round the bases of pillars run gilt bands; in places the walls are painted with streaks to resemble marble, and the wood-work is overlaid with tinsel gold. After a glance at these abominations, one cannot be surprised to hear the old men of Egypt lament that, in spite of European education, and of prizes encouraging geometry and architecture, modern art offers a melancholy contrast to antiquity. It is said that H. H. Abbas Pasha proposes to erect for himself a Mosque that shall far surpass the boast of the last generation. I venture to hope that his architect will light the “sacred fire” from Sultan Hasan’s, not from Mohammed Ali’s, Turco-Grecian splendours. The former is like the genuine Osmanli of past ages, fierce, cold, with a stalwart frame, index of a strong mind-there was a sullen grandeur about the man. The latter is the pert and puny modern Turk in pantaloons, frock coat and Fez, ill-dressed, ill-conditioned, and ill-bred, body and soul.
[p.100]We will now enter the Mosque Al-Azhar. At the dwarf wooden railing we take off our slippers, hold them in the left hand, sole to sole, that no dirt may fall from them, and cross the threshold with the right foot, ejaculating Bismillah, &c. Next we repair to the Mayza’ah, or large tank, for ablution, without which it is unlawful to appear in the House of Allah. We then seek some proper place for devotion, place our slippers on some other object in front of us to warn the lounger, and perform a two-bow prayer in honour of the Mosque.[FN#16] This done, we may wander about, and inspect the several objects of curiosity.
The moon shines splendidly upon a vast open court, paved with stones which are polished like glass by the feet of the Faithful. There is darkness in the body of the building, a large oblong hall, at least twice too lengthy for its height, supported by a forest of pillars, thin, poor-looking, crooked marble columns, planted avenue-like, upon torn and dirty matting. A few oil lamps shed doubtful light over scanty groups, who are debating some point of grammar, or are listening to the words of wisdom that fall from the mouth of a Wa’iz.[FN#17] Presently they will leave the hypostyle, and throw themselves upon the flags of the quadrangle, where they may enjoy the open air and avoid some fleas. It is now “long vacation”: so the holy building has become a kind of Caravanserai for travellers;
[p.101]perhaps a score of nations meet in it; there is a confusion of tongues, and the din at times is deafening. Around the court runs a tolerably well-built colonnade, whose entablature is garnished with crimson arabesques, and in the inner wall are pierced apartments, now closed with plank doors. Of the Riwak, as the porches are called, the Azhar contains twenty-four, one for each recognised nation in Al-Islam, and of these fifteen are still open to students.[FN#18] Inside them we find nothing but matting and a pile of large dingy wooden boxes, which once contained the college library; they are now, generally speaking, empty.[FN#19]
There is nothing worth seeing in the cluster of little dark chambers that form the remainder of the Azhar. Even the Zawiyat al-Umyan (or the Blind men’s Oratory), a place where so many “town and gown rows” have emanated, is rendered interesting only by the fanaticism of its inmates, and the certainty that, if recognised in this
[p.102]sanctum, we shall run the gauntlet under the staves of its proprietors, the angry blind.
The Azhar is the grand collegiate Mosque of this city,-the Christ Church, in fact, of Cairo,-once celebrated throughout the world of Al-Islam. It was built, I was told, originally in poor style by one Jauhar al-Kaid,[FN#20] originally the slave of a Moorish merchant, in consequence of a dream that ordered him to “erect a place whence the light of science should shine upon Al-Islam.”
It gradually increased by “Wakf[FN#21]” (entailed bequests) of lands, money, and books; and pious rulers made a point of adding to its size and wealth. Of late years it has considerably declined, the result of sequestrations, and of the diminished esteem in which the purely religious sciences are now held in the land of Egypt.[FN#22] Yet it is calculated that between 2000 and 3000 students of all nations and ages receive instruction here gratis.
[p.103]Each one is provided with bread, in a quantity determined by the amount of endowment, at the Riwak set apart for his nation,[FN#23] with some article of clothing on festival days, and a few piastres once a year. The professors, who are about 150 in number, may not take fees from their pupils; some lecture on account of the religious merit of the action, others to gain the high title of “Teacher in Al Azhar.[FN#24]” Six officials receive stipends from the government,-the Shaykh al-Jami’ or dean, the Shaykh al-Sakka, who regulates the provision of water for ablution, and others that may be called heads of departments.
The following is the course of study in the Azhar. The school-boy of four or five years’ standing has been taught, by a liberal application of the maxim “the Green Rod is of the Trees of Paradise,” to chant the Koran without understanding it, the elementary rules of arithmetic, and, if he is destined to be a learned man, the art of writing.[FN#25] He then registers his name in Al-Azhar, and applies
[p.104]himself to the branches of study most cultivated in Al-Islam, namely Nahw (syntax), Fikh (the law), Hadis (the traditions of the Prophet), and Tafsir, or Exposition of the Koran.
The young Egyptian reads at the same time Sarf, or Inflexion, and Nahw (syntax). But as Arabic is his mother-tongue, he is not required to study the former so deeply as are the Turks, the Persians, and the Indians. If he desire, however, to be a proficient, he must carefully peruse five books in Sarf,[FN#26] and six in Nahw.[FN#27]
[p.105]Master of grammar, our student now applies himself to its proper end and purpose, Divinity. Of the four schools those of Abu Hanifah and Al-Shafe’i are most common in Cairo; the followers of Ibn Malik abound only in Southern Egypt and the Berberah country, and the Hanbali is almost unknown. The theologian begins with what is called a Matn or text, a short, dry, and often obscure treatise, a mere string of precepts; in fact, the skeleton of the subject. This he learns by repeated perusal, till he can quote almost every passage literatim. He then passes to its “Sharh,” or commentary, generally the work of some other savant, who explains the difficulty of the text, amplifies its Laconicisms, enters into exceptional cases, and deals with principles and reasons, as well as with mere precept. A difficult work will sometimes require “Hashiyah,” or “marginal notes”; but this aid has a bad name:-
“Who readeth with note,
But learneth by rote,”
says a popular doggrel. The reason is, that the student’s reasoning powers being little exercised, he learns to depend upon the dixit of a master rather than to think for himself. It also leads to the neglect of another practice, highly advocated by the Eastern pedagogue.
“The lecture is one.
The dispute (upon the subject of the lecture) is one thousand.”
In order to become a Fakih, or divine of distinguished fame, the follower of Abu Hanifah must peruse about ten volumes,[FN#28] some of huge size, written in a diffuse style;
[p.106]the Shafe’i’s reading is not quite so extensive.[FN#29] Theology is much studied, because it leads directly to the gaining of daily bread, as priest or tutor; and other scientific pursuits are neglected for the opposite reason.
The theologian in Egypt, as in other parts of Al-Islam, must have a superficial knowledge of the Prophet’s traditions. Of these there are eight well known collections,[FN#30] but only the first three are generally read.
School-boys are instructed, almost when in their infancy, to intone the Koran; at the university they are
[p.107]taught a more exact system of chanting. The style called “Hafs” is most common in Egypt, as it is indeed throughout the Moslem world. And after learning to read the holy volume, some savans are ambitious enough to wish to understand it: under these circumstances they must dive into the ‘Ilm al-Tafsir,[FN#31] or the Exegesis of the Koran.
Our student is now a perfect Fakih or Mulla.[FN#32] But
[p.108]the poor fellow has no scholarship or fellowship-no easy tutorship-no fat living to look forward to. After wasting
[p.109]seven years, or twice seven years, over his studies, and reading till his brain is dizzy, his digestion gone, and his eyes half blind, he must either starve upon college alms, or squat, like my old Shaykh Mohammed, in a druggist’s shop, or become pedagogue and preacher in some country place, on the pay of L8 per annum. With such prospects it is wonderful how the Azhar can present any attractions; but the southern man is essentially an idler, and many become Olema, like Capuchins, in order to do nothing. A favoured few rise to the degree of Mudarris (professors), and thence emerge Kazis and Muftis. This is another inducement to matriculate; every undergraduate having an eye upon the Kazi-ship, with as much chance of obtaining it as the country parocco has of becoming a cardinal. Others again devote themselves to laical pursuits, degenerate into Wakils (lawyers), or seek their fortunes as Katibs-public or private accountants.
To conclude this part of the subject, I cannot agree with Dr. Bowring when he harshly says, upon the subject of Moslem education: “The instruction given by the Doctors of the Law in the religious schools, for the formation of the Mohammedan priesthood, is of the most worthless character.”[FN#33] His opinion is equally open to
[p.110]objection with that of those who depreciate the law itself because it deals rather in precepts than in principle, in ceremonies and ordinances rather than in ethics and aesthetics. Both are what Eastern faiths and Eastern training have ever been,-both are eminently adapted for the Oriental mind. When the people learn to appreciate ethics, and to understand psychics and aesthetics, the demand will create a supply. Meanwhile they leave transcendentalism to their poets and philosophers, and they busy themselves with preparing for heaven by practising the only part of their faith now intelligible to them-the Material.
It is not to be supposed that a nation in this stage of civilisation could be so fervently devout as the Egyptians are, without the bad leaven of bigotry. The same tongue which is employed in blessing Allah, is, it is conceived, doing its work equally well in cursing Allah’s enemies. Wherefore the Kafir is denounced by every sex, age, class, and condition, by the man of the world,[FN#34] as by the boy at school; and out of, as well as in, the Mosque. If you ask your friend who is the person with a black turband, he replies,
“A Christian. Allah make his Countenance cold!”
If you inquire of your servant, who are the people singing in the next house, it is ten to one that his answer will be,
“Jews. May their lot be Jahannam!”
It appears unintelligible, still it is not less true, that Egyptians who have lived as servants under European roofs for years, retain the liveliest loathing for the manners
[p.111]and customs of their masters. Few Franks, save those who have mixed with the Egyptians in Oriental disguise, are aware of their repugnance to, and contempt for, Europeans-so well is the feeling veiled under the garb of innate politeness, and so great is their reserve when conversing with those of strange religions. I had a good opportunity of ascertaining the truth when the first rumour of a Russian war arose. Almost every able-bodied man spoke of hastening to the Jihad,-a crusade, or holy war,-and the only thing that looked like apprehension was the too eager depreciation of their foes. All seemed delighted with the idea of French co-operation, for, somehow or other, the Frenchman is everywhere popular. When speaking of England, they were not equally easy: heads were rolled, pious sentences were ejaculated, and finally out came the old Eastern cry, “Of a truth they are Shaytans, those English.[FN#35]” The Austrians are despised, because the East knows nothing of them since the days when Osmanli hosts threatened the gates of Vienna. The Greeks are hated as clever scoundrels, ever ready to do Al-Islam a mischief. The Maltese, the greatest of cowards off their own ground, are regarded with a profound contempt: these are the proteges which bring the British nation into disrepute at Cairo. And Italians are known chiefly as “istruttori” and “distruttori”[FN#36]-doctors, druggists, and pedagogues.
Yet Egyptian human nature is, like human nature everywhere, contradictory. Hating and despising Europeans, they still long for European rule. This people admire
[p.112]an iron-handed and lion-hearted despotism; they hate a timid and a grinding tyranny.[FN#37] Of all foreigners, they would prefer the French yoke,-a circumstance which I attribute to the diplomatic skill and national dignity of our neighbours across the Channel.[FN#38] But whatever European nation secures Egypt will win a treasure. Moated on the north and south by seas, with a glacis of impassable deserts to the eastward and westward, capable of supporting an army of 180,000 men, of paying a
[p.113]heavy tribute, and yet able to show a considerable surplus of revenue, this country in western hands will command India, and by a ship-canal between Pelusium and Suez would open the whole of Eastern Africa.[FN#39]
There is no longer much to fear from the fanaticism of the people, and a little prudence would suffice to command the interests of the Mosque.[FN#40] The chiefs of corporations,[FN#41] in the present state of popular feeling, would offer [p.114]even less difficulty to an invader or a foreign ruler than the Olema. Briefly, Egypt is the most tempting prize which the East holds out to the ambition of Europe, not excepted even the Golden Horn.
[FN#1] In the capitals of the columns, for instance. [FN#2] This direct derivation is readily detected in the Mosques at Old Cairo.
[FN#3] The roof supported by arches resting on pillars, was unknown to classic antiquity, and in the earliest ages of Al-Islam, the cloisters were neither arched nor domed. A modern writer justly observes, “A compound of arcade and colonnade was suggested to the architects of the Middle Ages by the command that ancient buildings gave them of marble columns.”
[FN#4] “The Oriental mind,” says a clever writer on Indian subjects, “has achieved everything save real greatness of aim and execution.” That the Arab mind always aimed, and still aims, at the physically great is sufficiently evident. Nothing affords the Meccans greater pride than the vast size of their temple. Nothing is more humiliating to the people of Al-Madinah than the comparative smallness of their Mosque. Still, with a few exceptions, Arab greatness is the vulgar great, not the grand.
[FN#5] That is to say, imitations of the human form. All the doctors of Al-Islam, however, differ on this head: some absolutely forbidding any delineation of what has life, under pain of being cast into hell; others permitting pictures even of the bodies, though not of the faces, of men. The Arabs are the strictest of Misiconists; yet even they allow plans and pictures of the Holy Shrines. Other nations are comparatively lax. The Alhambra abounds in paintings and frescoes. The Persians never object to depict in books and on walls the battles of Rustam, and the Turks preserve in the Seraglio treasury of Constantinople portraits, by Greeks and other artists, of their Sultans in regular succession. [FN#6] This is at least a purer taste than that of our Gothic architects, who ornamented their cathedrals with statuary so inappropriate as to suggest to the antiquary remains of the worship of the Hellespontine god.
[FN#7] At Bruges, Bologna, (St. Stefano), and Nurnberg, there are, if I recollect right, imitations of the Holy Sepulchre, although the “palmer” might not detect the resemblance at first sight. That in the Church of Jerusalem at Bruges was built by a merchant, who travelled three times to Palestine in order to ensure correctness, and totally failed. “Arab art,” says a writer in the “Athenaeum,” “sprang from the Koran, as the Gothic did from the Bible.” He should have remembered, that Arab art, in its present shape, was borrowed by Al-Walid from the Greeks, and, perhaps, in part from the Persians and the Hindus, but that the model buildings existed at Meccah, and in Al-Yaman, centuries before the people had “luxurious shawls and weavings of Cashmere” to suggest mural decoration.
[FN#8] See Theophile Gautier’s admirable description of the Mosque at Cordova.
[FN#9] Joseph Pitts, of Exeter, declares that Cairo contained in his day (A.D. 1678-93) 5 or 6000 Mosques, public and private; at the same time he corrects Mr. Collins, who enumerated 6000 public, and 20,000 particular buildings, and M. de Thevenot, who (Part I. p. 129), supplied the city with 23,000!
[FN#10] In Niebuhr’s time, a Christian passing one of the very holy buildings on foot was liable to be seized and circumcised. All Mosques may now be entered with certain precautions. When at Cairo, I heard occasionally of a Frank being spat at and insulted, but the instances were rare.
[FN#11] The “Handbook” contains the story current among the learned concerning the remarkable shape of the minaret. [FN#12] The columns support pointed arches, which, therefore, were known at Cairo 200 years before they were introduced into England. By the discoveries of M. Mariette, it is now ascertained that the Egyptians were perfectly acquainted with the round arch and key-stone at a period antecedent to the architectural existence of Greece. [FN#13] A “Jami'” is a place where people assemble to pray-a house of