← catalogue

Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1

by Sir Richard Francis Burton · English · Gutenberg #4657 · 915,145 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1

Author: Sir Richard Francis Burton


        
Release date: November 1, 2003 [eBook #4657]
                Most recently updated: July 17, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4657

Credits: William Thierens and Robert Sinton


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF A PILGRIMAGE TO AL-MADINAH & MECCAH — VOLUME 1 ***




PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF A PILGRIMAGE TO AL-MADINAH & MECCAH

BY

CAPTAIN SIR RICHARD F. BURTON,

K.C.M.G., F.R.G.S., &c., &c., &c.

EDITED BY HIS WIFE, ISABEL BURTON.

"Our notions of Mecca must be drawn from the Arabians; as no unbeliever
is permitted to enter the city, our travellers are silent."-Gibbon,
chap. 50.

MEMORIAL EDITION.

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOLUME I.

[p.xii] [Arabic text]

Dark and the Desert and Destriers me ken,
And the Glaive and the Joust, and Paper and Pen.

Al-Mutanabbi

[p.xv]

PREFACE TO THE MEMORIAL EDITION.

AFTER my beloved husband had passed away from amongst us, after the
funeral had taken place, and I had settled in England, I began to think
in what way I could render him the most honour. A material Monument to
his memory has already been erected by his countrymen in the shape of a
handsome contribution to the beautiful Mausoleum-tent in stone and
marble to contain his remains; but I also hoped to erect a less
material, but more imperishable, Monument to his name, by making this
unique hero better known to his countrymen by his Works, which have
hitherto not been sufficiently known, not extensively enough published,
and issued perhaps at a prohibitive price. Viewing the long list of
Works written by him between 1842 and 1890, many of which are still
unpublished, I was almost disheartened by the magnitude of the work,
until the Publishers, Messrs. Tylston and Edwards, fully appreciating
the interest with which the British Public had followed my husband's
adventurous career and fearless enterprise, arranged to produce this
uniform Memorial Edition at their own expense.

[p.xvi]Mr. Leonard Smithers, a man of great literary talent and of
indefatigable energy, who admired and collaborated with my husband in
the traduction of Latin Classics for two years before he died, has also
kindly volunteered to be my working assistant and to join with me in
the editing.

My part is to give up all my copyrights, and to search out such papers,
annotations, and latest notes and corrections, as will form the most
complete work; also to write all the Prefaces, and to give every
assistance in my power as Editress.

The Memorial Edition commences with the present "Pilgrimage to
Al-Madinah and Meccah," which will be followed at intervals by others
of my husband's works. Since this "Memorial Edition" was arranged, and
the Prospectus issued, I have parted with the Copyright of my husband's
famous translation of the "Arabian Nights" to the Publishers, and they
are arranging to bring out that work at an early date, and as nearly as
possible uniform in appearance with the Memorial Edition.

The ornamentations on the binding are, a figure of my husband in his
Arab costume, his monogram in Arabic, and, on the back of the book, the
tent which is his tomb.

Both the publishers and myself have to thank Mr. Smithers for the
infinite trouble he has taken in collating the first, second, third and
fourth editions of the ‘Pilgrimage' with Sir Richard's own original
annotated copies. All the lengthy notes and appendices of the first
edition have been retained, and these are supplemented by the notes and
appendices in the later editions, as well as by the author's MS. notes.
He has adopted Sir Richard's latest and

[p.xvii]most correct orthography of Arabic words, and has passed the
sheets through the press. Following my husband's plan in "The Thousand
Nights and a Night," he has put the accents on Arabic words only the
first time of their appearance, to show how they ought to be; thinking
it unnecessary to preserve throughout, what is an eyesore to the reader
and a distress to the printer. So it is with Arabic books,-the accents
are only put for the early student; afterwards, they are left to the
practical knowledge of the reader. All the original coloured
illustrations of the first edition, and also the wood engravings of the
later issues, are reproduced for the first time in one uniform edition.
The map and plans are fac-similies of those in the latest (fourth)
edition. In fact, everything has been done to make this book worthy of
its author and of the public's appreciation.

For those who may not know the import of "A Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah
and Meccah," in 1853, they will not take it amiss when I say that there
are Holy Shrines of the Moslem world in the far-away Desert, where no
white man, European, or Christian, could enter (save as a Moslem), or
even approach, without certain death. They are more jealously guarded
than the "Holy Grail," and this Work narrates how this Pilgrimage was
accomplished. My husband had lived as a Dervish in Sind, which greatly
helped him; and he studied every separate thing until he was master of
it, even apprenticing himself to a blacksmith to learn how to make
horse-shoes and to shoe his own horses. It meant living with his life
in his hand, amongst the strangest and wildest companions, adopting
their unfamiliar manners, living for nine months in the hottest and
most unhealthy climate, upon

[p.xviii]repulsive food; it meant complete and absolute isolation from
everything that makes life tolerable, from all civilisation, from all
his natural habits; the brain at high tension, but the mind never
wavering from the role he had adopted; but he liked it, he was happy in
it, he felt at home in it, and in this Book he tells you how he did it,
and what he saw.

Sir Richard Burton died at the age of 70, on the 20th October, 1890.
During the last 48 years of his life, he lived only for the benefit and
for the welfare of England and of his countrymen, and of the Human Race
at large. Let us reverently raise up this "Monument," aere perennius,
to his everlasting memory.

ISABEL BURTON.
May 24, 1893.

[p.xix]PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

AFTER a lapse of twenty-five years, a third edition of my Pilgrimage
has been called for by the public, to whom I take this opportunity of
returning thanks. Messrs. Mullan have chosen the very best opportunity.
My two publications concerning the Khedival Expeditions to Midian ("The
Gold Mines of Midian," and "The Land of Midian Revisited"), are, as I
have stated in the Preface, sequels and continuations of this
Pilgrimage from which the adventures forming their subject may be said
to date.

The text has been carefully revised, and the "baggage of notes" has
been materially lightened.[FN#1] From the Appendix I have removed
matter which, though useful to the student, is of scant general
interest. The quaint and interesting "Narrative and Voyages of
Ludovicus Vertomannus, Gentleman of Rome," need no longer be read in
extracts, when the whole has been printed by the Hakluyt Society. (The
Travels of Ludovico di Varthema in Egypt, Syria, Arabia Deserta and
Arabia Felix, in Persia, India, and Ethiopia, A.D. 1503 to 1508.
Translated from the original Italian edition of 1510, with a Preface by
John Winter Jones, Esq., F.S.A., and edited,

[p.xx]with notes and an Introduction, by George Percy Badger, late
Government Chaplain in the Presidency of Bombay. London.) On the other
hand, I have inserted after the Appendix, with the permission of the
author, two highly interesting communications from Dr. Aloys Sprenger,
the well-known Orientalist and Arabist, concerning the routes of the
Great Caravans. My friend supports his suspicions that an error of
direction has been made, and geographers will enjoy the benefit of his
conscientious studies, topographical and linguistic.

The truculent attacks made upon pilgrims and Darwayshes call for a few
words of notice. Even that learned and amiable philanthropist, the late
Dr. John Wilson of Bombay ("Lands of the Bible," vol. ii., p. 302)
alludes, in the case of the Spaniard Badia, alias Ali Bey al-Abbasi, to
the "unjustifiable fanciful disguise of a Mohammedan Pilgrim." The
author of the Ruddy Goose Theory ("Voice of Israel from Mount Sinai")
and compiler of the "Historical Geography of Arabia" has dealt a foul
blow to the memory of Burckhardt, the energetic and inoffensive Swiss
traveller, whose name has ever been held in the highest repute. And now
the "Government Chaplain" indites (Introduction, p. xxvii.) the
following invidious remarks touching the travels of Ludovico di
Varthema-the vir Deo carus, be it remarked, of the learned and laical
Julius Caesar Scaliger:

"This is not the place to discuss the morality of an act involving the
deliberate and voluntary denial of what a man holds to be truth in a
matter so sacred as that of Religion. Such a violation of conscience is
not justifiable by the end which the renegade (!) may have in view,
however abstractedly praiseworthy it may be; and even granting that his
demerit should be gauged by the amount of knowledge which he possesses
of what is true and what false, the conclusion is inevitable, that
nothing short of utter ignorance of the precepts of his faith, or a

[p.xxi]conscientious disbelief in them, can fairly relieve the
Christian, who conforms to Islamism without a corresponding persuasion
of its verity, of the deserved odium all honest men attach to apostasy
and hypocrisy."

The reply to this tirade is simply, "Judge not; especially when you are
ignorant of the case which you are judging." Perhaps also the writer
may ask himself, Is it right for those to cast stones who dwell in a
tenement not devoid of fragility?
The second attack proceeds from a place whence no man would reasonably
have expected it. The author of the "Narrative of a Year's Journey
through Central and Eastern Arabia" (vol. i., pp. 258-59) thus
expresses his opinions:-

"Passing oneself off for a wandering Darweesh, as some European
explorers have attempted to do in the East, is for more reasons than
one a very bad plan. It is unnecessary to dilate on that moral aspect
of the proceeding which will always first strike unsophisticated minds.
To feign a religion which the adventurer himself does not believe, to
perform with scrupulous exactitude, as of the highest and holiest
import, practices which he inwardly ridicules, and which he intends on
his return to hold up to the ridicule of others, to turn for weeks and
months together the most sacred and awful bearings of man towards his
Creator into a deliberate and truthless mummery, not to mention other
and yet darker touches,-all this seems hardly compatible with the
character of a European gentleman, let alone that of a Christian."

This comes admirably a propos from a traveller who, born a Protestant,
of Jewish descent, placed himself "in connection with," in plain words
took the vows of, "the order of the Jesuits," an order "well-known in
the annals of philanthropic daring"; a popular preacher who declaimed
openly at Bayrut and elsewhere against his own nation, till the
proceedings of a certain Father Michael

[p.xxii]Cohen were made the subject of an official report by Mr.
Consul-General Moore (Bayrut, November 11, 1857); an Englishman by
birth who accepted French protection, a secret mission, and the
"liberality of the present Emperor of the French"; a military officer
travelling in the garb of what he calls a native (Syrian) "quack" with
a comrade who "by a slight but necessary fiction passed for his
brother-in-law[FN#2]"; a gentleman who by return to Protestantism
violated his vows, and a traveller who was proved by the experiment of
Colonel (now Sir Lewis) Pelly to have brought upon himself all the
perils and adventures that have caused his charming work to be
considered so little worthy of trust. Truly such attack argues a
sublime daring. It is the principle of "vieille coquette, nouvelle
devote"; it is Satan preaching against Sin. Both writers certainly lack
the "giftie" to see themselves as others see them.

In noticing these extracts my object is not to defend myself: I
recognize no man's right to interfere between a human being and his
conscience. But what is there, I would ask, in the Moslem Pilgrimage so
offensive to Christians-what makes it a subject of "inward ridicule"?
Do they not also venerate Abraham, the Father of the Faithful? Did not
Locke, and even greater names, hold Mohammedans to be heterodox
Christians, in fact Arians who, till the end of the fourth century,
represented the mass of North-European Christianity? Did Mr. Lane
neverconform by praying at a Mosque in Cairo? did he ever fear to
confess it? has he been called an apostate for so doing? Did not Father
Michael Cohen prove himself an excellent Moslem at Wahhabi-land?

The fact is, there are honest men who hold that Al-Islam,

[p.xxiii]in its capital tenets, approaches much nearer to the faith of
Jesus than do the Pauline and Athanasian modifications which, in this
our day, have divided the Indo-European mind into Catholic and Roman,
Greek and Russian, Lutheran and Anglican. The disciples of Dr. Daniel
Schenkel's school ("A Sketch of the Character of Jesus," Longmans,
1869) will indeed find little difficulty in making this admission.
Practically, a visit after Arab Meccah to Angle-Indian Aden, with its
"priests after the order of Melchisedeck," suggested to me that the
Moslem may be more tolerant, more enlightened, more charitable, than
many societies of self-styled Christians.

And why rage so furiously against the "disguise of a wandering
Darwaysh?" In what point is the Darwaysh more a mummer or in what does
he show more of betise than the quack? Is the Darwaysh anything but an
Oriental Freemason, and are Freemasons less Christians because they
pray with Moslems and profess their belief in simple unitarianism?

I have said. And now to conclude.

After my return to Europe, many inquired if I was not the only living
European who has found his way to the Head Quarters of the Moslem
Faith. I may answer in the affirmative, so far, at least, that when
entering the penetralia of Moslem life my Eastern origin was never
questioned, and my position was never what cagots would describe as in
loco apostatae.

On the other hand, any Jew, Christian, or Pagan, after declaring before
the Kazi and the Police Authorities at Cairo, or even at Damascus, that
he embraces Al-Islam, may perform, without fear of the so-called Mosaic
institution, "Al-Sunnah," his pilgrimage in all safety. It might be
dangerous to travel down the Desert-line between Meccah and Al-Madinah
during times of popular excitement; but the coast route is always safe.
To the "new Moslem," however, the old Moslem is rarely

[p.xxiv] well affected; and the former, as a rule, returns home
unpleasantly impressed by his experiences.

The Eastern world moves slowly-eppur si muove. Half a generation ago
steamers were first started to Jeddah: now we hear of a projected
railroad from that port to Meccah, the shareholders being all Moslems.
And the example of Jerusalem encourages us to hope that long before the
end of the century a visit to Meccah will not be more difficult than a
trip to Hebron.

Ziyadeh hadd-i-adab!

RICHARD F. BURTON.

London, 31st March, 1879.


[Arabic text]

[p.xxv]PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

The interest just now felt in everything that relates to the East would
alone be sufficient to ensure to the author of "El Medinah and Meccah"
the favourable consideration of the Reading Public. But when it is
borne in mind that since the days of William Pitts of Exeter (A.D.
1678-1688) no European travellers, with the exception of
Burckhardt[FN#3] and Lieut. Burton,[FN#4] have been able to send us
back an account of their travels there, it cannot be doubted but that
the present work will be hailed as a welcome addition to our knowledge
of these hitherto mysterious penetralia of Mohammedan superstition. In
fact, El Madinah may be considered almost a virgin theme; for as
Burckhardt was prostrated by sickness throughout the period of his stay
in the Northern Hejaz, he was not able to describe it as satisfactorily
or minutely as he did the Southern country,-he could not send a plan of
the Mosque, or correct the popular but erroneous ideas which prevail
concerning it and the surrounding city.

The reader may question the propriety of introducing

[p.xxvi]in a work of description, anecdotes which may appear open to
the charge of triviality. The author's object, however, seems to be to
illustrate the peculiarities of the people-to dramatise, as it were,
the dry journal of a journey,-and to preserve the tone of the
adventures, together with that local colouring in which mainly consists
"l'education d'un voyage." For the same reason, the prayers of the
"Visitation" ceremony have been translated at length, despite the
danger of inducing tedium; they are an essential part of the subject,
and cannot be omitted, nor be represented by "specimens."

The extent of the Appendix requires some explanation. Few but literati
are aware of the existence of Lodovico Bartema's naive recital, of the
quaint narrative of Jos. Pitts, or of the wild journal of Giovanni
Finati. Such extracts have been now made from these writers that the
general reader can become acquainted with the adventures and opinions
of the different travellers who have visited El Hejaz during a space of
350 years. Thus, with the second volume of Burckhardt's Travels in
Arabia, the geographer, curious concerning this portion of the Moslem's
Holy Land, possesses all that has as yet been written upon the subject.

The editor, to whom the author in his absence has intrusted his work,
had hoped to have completed it by the simultaneous publication of the
third volume, containing the pilgrimage to Meccah. The delay, however,
in the arrival from India of this portion of the MS. has been such as
to induce him at once to publish El Misr and El Medinah. The concluding
volume on Meccah is now in the hands of the publisher, and will appear
in the Autumn of the present year. Meanwhile the Public will not lose
sight of the subject of Arabia. Part of El Hejaz has lately been
inspected by M. Charles Didier, an eminent name in French literature,
and by the Abbe Hamilton,-persuaded, it is believed, by our author to

[p.xxvii]visit Taif and Wady Laymum. Though entirely unconnected with
the subjects of Meccah and El Medinah, the account of the Sherif's
Court where these gentlemen were received with distinction, and of the
almost unknown regions about Jebel Kora, will doubtless be welcomed by
the Orientalists and Geographers of Europe.

Mr. Burton is already known by his "History of Sindh." And as if to
mark their sense of the spirit of observation and daring evinced by him
when in that country, and still more during his late journeyings in
Arabia and East Africa, the Geographical Society, through their learned
Secretary, Dr. Norton Shaw, have given valuable aid to this work in its
progress through the press, supplying maps where necessary to complete
the illustrations supplied by the author,-who, it will be perceived, is
himself no mean draughtsman.

It was during a residence of many years in India that Mr. Burton had
fitted himself for his late undertaking, by acquiring, through his
peculiar aptitude for such studies, a thorough acquaintance with
various dialects of Arabia and Persia; and, indeed, his Eastern cast of
features (vide Frontispiece, Vol. II.) seemed already to point him out
as the very person of all others best suited for an expedition like
that described in the following pages.

It will be observed that in writing Arabic, Hindoostannee, Persian, or
Turkish words, the author has generally adopted the system proposed by
Sir William Jones and modified by later Orientalists.[FN#5] But when a
word (like Fatihah for Fat-hah) has been "stamped" by general popular
use, the conversational form has been

[p.xxviii]preferred; and the same, too, may be said of the common
corruptions, Cairo, Kadi, &c., which, in any other form, would appear
to us pedantic and ridiculous. Still, in the absence of the author, it
must be expected that some trifling errors and inaccuraci[e]s will have
here and there have crept in. In justice to others and himself, the
Editor, however, feels bound to acknowledge, with much gratitude, that
where such or even greater mistakes have been avoided, it has been
mainly due to the continued kindness of an Eastern scholar of more than
European reputation,-who has assisted in revising the sheets before
finally consigning them to the printer.

Let us hope that the proofs now furnished of untiring energy and
capacity for observation and research by our author, as well as his
ability to bear fatigue and exposure to the most inclement climate,
will induce the Governments of this country and of India to provide him
with men and means (evidently all that is required for the purpose) to
pursue his adventurous and useful career in other countries equally
difficult of access, and, if possible, of still greater interest, than
the Eastern shores of the Red Sea.

THOMAS L. WOLLEY.

Hampton Court Palace,

June, 1855.

[p.xxix] TO COLONEL WILLIAM SYKES, F.R.SOC., M.R.G.SOC., M.R.A.SOC.,

AND LORD RECTOR OF THE MARISCHAL COLLEGE, ABERDEEN.

I DO not parade your name, my dear Colonel, in the van of this volume,
after the manner of that acute tactician who stuck a Koran upon his
lance in order to win a battle. Believe me it is not my object to use
your orthodoxy as a cover to my heresies of sentiment and science, in
politics, political economy and-what not?

But whatever I have done on this occasion,-if I have done any
thing,-has been by the assistance of a host of friends, amongst whom
you were ever the foremost. And the highest privilege I aim at is this
opportunity of publicly acknowledging the multitude of obligations owed
to you and to them. Accept, my dear Colonel, this humble return for
your kindness, and ever believe me,

The sincerest of your well wishers,

RICHARD F. BURTON.

[FN#1] These omitted notes and appendices have all been restored to the
present Edition.
[FN#2] The brother-in-law, Barakat J'rayj'ray, has since that time
followed suit: educated at the Jesuit college of Mu'allakah (Libanus)
he has settled as a Greek Catholic priest at the neighbouring town of
Zahleh.
[FN#3] In 1811.
[FN#4] Captain Sadlier is not mentioned, as his Frankish dress
prevented his entering the city.
[FN#5] The orthography of Eastern words has been revised for this
Edition by Mr. Leonard C. Smithers, from Sir R. F. Burton's MS.
Corrections, and in accordance with the orthography of Sir Richard's
most recent Oriental Work, "The Book of the Thousand Nights and a
Night."

[p.1]PART I.

AL-MISR

CHAPTER I.

TO ALEXANDRIA.

A few Words concerning what induced me to a Pilgrimage.

IN the autumn of 1852, through the medium of my excellent friend, the
late General Monteith, I offered my services to the Royal Geographical
Society of London, for the purpose of removing that opprobrium to
modern adventure, the huge white blot which in our maps still notes the
Eastern and the Central regions of Arabia. Sir Roderick I. Murchison,
Colonel P. Yorke and Dr. Shaw, a deputation from that distinguished
body, with their usual zeal for discovery and readiness to encourage
the discoverer, honoured me by warmly supporting, in a personal
interview with the then Chairman of the then Court of Directors to the
then Honourable East India Company, my application for three years'
leave of absence on special duty from India to Maskat. But they were
unable to prevail upon the said Chairman, the late Sir James Hogg,
who,[FN#1] remembering the fatalities which of late years have befallen
sundry soldier-travellers in the East, refused his sanction, alleging
as a reason[FN#1]

[p.2]that the contemplated journey was of too dangerous a nature. In
compensation, however, for the disappointment, I was allowed the
additional furlough of a year, in order to pursue my Arabic studies in
lands where the language is best learned.

What remained for me but to prove, by trial, that what might be
perilous to other travellers was safe to me? The "experimentum crucis"
was a visit to Al-Hijaz, at once the most difficult and the most
dangerous point by which a European can enter Arabia. I had intended,
had the period of leave originally applied for been granted, to land at
Maskat-a favourable starting-place-and there to apply myself, slowly
and surely, to the task of spanning the deserts. But now I was to
hurry, in the midst of summer, after a four years' sojourn in Europe,
during which many things Oriental had faded away from my memory,
and-after passing through the ordeal of Egypt, a country where the
police is curious as in Rome or Milan-to begin with the Moslem's Holy
Land, the jealously guarded and exclusive Harim. However, being
liberally supplied with the means of travel by the Royal Geographical
Society; thoroughly tired of "progress" and of "civilisation;" curious
to see with my eyes what others are content to "hear with ears,"
namely, Moslem inner life in a really Mohammedan country; and longing,
if truth be told, to set foot on that mysterious spot which no vacation
tourist has yet described, measured, sketched and photographed, I
resolved to resume my old character of a Persian wanderer,[FN#2] a
"Darwaysh," and to make the attempt.

[p.3]The principal object with which I started was this: to cross the
unknown Arabian Peninsula, in a direct line from either Al-Madinah to
Maskat, or diagonally from Meccah to Makallah on the Indian Ocean. By
what "Circumstance, the miscreator" my plans were defeated, the reader
will discover in the course of these volumes. The secondary objects
were numerous. I was desirous to find out if any market for horses
could be opened between Central Arabia and India, where the studs were
beginning to excite general dissatisfaction; to obtain information
concerning the Great Eastern wilderness, the vast expanse marked Rub'a
al-Khai (the "Empty Abode") in our maps; to inquire into the
hydrography of the Hijaz, its water-shed, the disputed slope of the
country, and the existence or non-existence of perennial streams; and
finally, to try, by actual observation, the truth of a theory proposed
by Colonel W. Sykes, namely, that if tradition be true, in the
population of the vast Peninsula there must exist certain physiological
differences sufficient to warrant our questioning the common origin of
the Arab family. As regards horses, I am satisfied that from the
Eastern coast something might be done-nothing on the Western, where the
animals, though thorough-bred, are mere "weeds," of a foolish price and
procurable only by chance. Of the Rub'a al-Khali I have heard enough,
from credible relators, to conclude that its horrid depths swarm with a
large and half-starving population; that it abounds in Wadys, valleys,
gullies and ravines, partially fertilised by intermittent torrents;
and, therefore, that the land is open to the adventurous traveller.
Moreover, I am satisfied, that in spite of all geographers, from
Ptolemy to Jomard, Arabia, which abounds in fiumaras,[FN#3] possesses
not

[p.4]a single perennial stream worthy the name of river;[FN#4] and the
testimony of the natives induces me to think, with Wallin, contrary to
Ritter and others, that the Peninsula falls instead of rising towards
the south. Finally, I have found proof, to be produced in a future part
of this publication, for believing in three distinct races. 1. The
aborigines of the country, driven like the Bhils and other autochthonic
Indians, into the eastern and south-eastern wilds bordering upon the
ocean. 2. A Syrian or Mesopotamian stock, typified by Shem and Joktan,
that drove the Indigenae from the choicest tracts of country; these
invaders still enjoy their conquests, representing the great Arabian
people. And 3. An impure Syro-Egyptian clan-we personify it by Ishmael,
by his son Nabajoth, and by Edom, (Esau, the son of Isaac)-that
populated and still populates the Sinaitic Peninsula. And in most
places, even in the heart of Meccah, I met with debris of heathenry,
proscribed by Mohammed, yet still popular, while the ignorant observers
of the old customs assign to them a modern and a rationalistic origin.

I have entitled this account of my summer's tour through Al-Hijaz, a
Personal Narrative, and I have laboured to make its nature correspond
with its name, simply because "it is the personal that interests
mankind." Many may not follow my example;[FN#5] but some

[p.5]perchance will be curious to see what measures I adopted, in order
to appear suddenly as an Eastern upon the stage of Oriental life; and
as the recital may be found useful by future adventurers, I make no
apology for the egotistical semblance of the narrative. Those who have
felt the want of some "silent friend" to aid them with advice, when it
must not be asked, will appreciate what may appear to the uninterested
critic mere outpourings of a mind full of self.[FN#6]

On the evening of April 3, 1853, I left London for Southampton. By the
advice of a brother officer, Captain (now Colonel) Henry Grindlay, of
the Bengal Cavalry,-little thought at that time the adviser or the
advised how valuable was the suggestion!-my Eastern dress was called
into requisition before leaving town, and all my "impedimenta" were
taught to look exceedingly Oriental. Early the next day a "Persian
Prince," accompanied by Captain Grindlay, embarked on board the
Peninsular and Oriental Company's magnificent screw steamer "Bengal."

[p.6]A fortnight was profitably spent in getting into the train of
Oriental manners. For what polite Chesterfield says of the difference
between a gentleman and his reverse-namely, that both perform the same
offices of life, but each in a several and widely different way-is
notably as applicable to the manners of the Eastern as of the Western
man. Look, for instance, at that Indian Moslem drinking a glass of
water. With us the operation is simple enough, but his performance
includes no fewer than five novelties. In the first place he clutches
his tumbler as though it were the throat of a foe; secondly, he
ejaculates, "In the name of Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful!"
before wetting his lips; thirdly, he imbibes the contents, swallowing
them, not sipping them as he ought to do, and ending with a satisfied
grunt; fourthly, before setting down the cup, he sighs forth, "Praise
be to Allah"-of which you will understand the full meaning in the
Desert; and, fifthly, he replies, "May Allah make it pleasant to thee!"
in answer to his friend's polite "Pleasurably and health!" Also he is
careful to avoid the irreligious action of drinking the pure element in
a standing position, mindful, however, of the three recognised
exceptions, the fluid of the Holy Well Zemzem, water distributed in
charity, and that which remains after Wuzu, the lesser ablution.
Moreover, in Europe, where both extremities are used indiscriminately,
one forgets the exclusive use of the right hand, the manipulation of
the rosary, the abuse of the chair,-your genuine Oriental gathers up
his legs, looking almost as comfortable in it as a sailor upon the back
of a high-trotting -the rolling gait with the toes straight to the
front, the grave look and the habit of pious ejaculations.

Our voyage over the "summer sea" was eventless. In a steamer of two or
three thousand tons you discover

[p.7]the once dreaded, now contemptible, "stormy waters" only by the
band-a standing nuisance be it remarked-performing

"There we lay
All the day,
In the Bay of Biscay, O!"

The sight of glorious Trafalgar[FN#7]| excites none of the sentiments
with which a tedious sail used to invest it. "Gib" is, probably, better
known to you, by Theophile Gautier and Eliot Warburton, than the
regions about Cornhill; besides which, you anchor under the Rock
exactly long enough to land and to breakfast. Malta, too, wears an old
familiar face, which bids you order a dinner and superintend the iceing
of claret (beginning of Oriental barbarism), instead of galloping about
on donkey-back through fiery air in memory of St. Paul and White-Cross
Knights. But though our journey might be called monotonous, there was
nothing to complain of. The ship was in every way comfortable; the
cook, strange to say, was good, and the voyage lasted long enough, and
not too long. On the evening of the thirteenth day after our start, the
big-trowsered pilot, so lovely in his deformities to western eyes, made
his appearance, and the good screw "Bengal" found herself at anchor off
the Headland of Clay.[FN#8]

Having been invited to start from the house of a kind friend, John W.
Larking, I disembarked with him, and

[p.8]rejoiced to see that by dint of a beard and a shaven head I had
succeeded, like the Lord of Geesh, in "misleading the inquisitive
spirit of the populace." The mingled herd of spectators before whom we
passed in review on the landing-place, hearing an audible
"Alhamdolillah"[FN#9] whispered "Muslim!" The infant population spared
me the compliments usually addressed to hatted heads; and when a little
boy, presuming that the occasion might possibly open the hand of
generosity, looked in my face and exclaimed "Bakhshish,"[FN#10] he
obtained in reply a "Mafish;"[FN#11] which convinced the bystanders
that the sheep-skin covered a real sheep. We then mounted a carriage,
fought our way through the donkeys, and in half an hour found
ourselves, chibuk in mouth and coffee-cup in hand, seated on the diwan
of my friend Larking's hospitable home.

Wonderful was the contrast between the steamer and that villa on the
Mahmudiyah canal! Startling the sudden change from presto to adagio
life! In thirteen days we had passed from the clammy grey fog, that
atmosphere

[p.9]of industry which kept us at anchor off the Isle of Wight, through
the loveliest air of the Inland Sea, whose sparkling blue and purple
haze spread charms even on N. Africa's beldame features, and now we are
sitting silent and still, listening to the monotonous melody of the
East-the soft night-breeze wandering through starlit skies and tufted
trees, with a voice of melancholy meaning.

And this is the Arab's Kayf. The savouring of animal existence; the
passive enjoyment of mere sense; the pleasant languor, the dreamy
tranquillity, the airy castle-building, which in Asia stand in lieu of
the vigorous, intensive, passionate life of Europe. It is the result of
a lively, impressible, excitable nature, and exquisite sensibility of
nerve; it argues a facility for voluptuousness unknown to northern
regions, where happiness is placed in the exertion of mental and
physical powers; where Ernst ist das Leben; where niggard earth
commands ceaseless sweat of face, and damp chill air demands perpetual
excitement, exercise, or change, or adventure, or dissipation, for want
of something better. In the East, man wants but rest and shade: upon
the banks of a bubbling stream, or under the cool shelter of a perfumed
tree, he is perfectly happy, smoking a pipe, or sipping a cup of
coffee, or drinking a glass of sherbet, but above all things deranging
body and mind as little as possible; the trouble of conversations, the
displeasures of memory, and the vanity of thought being the most
unpleasant interruptions to his Kayf. No wonder that "Kayf" is a word
untranslatable in our mother-tongue![FN#12]

"Laudabunt alii claram Rhodon aut Mytelenen."

Let others describe the once famous Capital of

[p.10]Egypt, this City of Misnomers, whose dry docks are ever wet, and
whose marble fountain is eternally dry, whose "Cleopatra's
Needle"[FN13] is neither a needle nor Cleopatra's; whose "Pompey's
Pillar" never had any earthly connection with Pompey; and whose
Cleopatra's Baths are, according to veracious travellers, no baths at
all. Yet it is a wonderful place, this "Libyan suburb" of our day, this
outpost of civilisation planted upon the skirts of barbarism, this
Osiris seated side by side with Typhon, his great old enemy. Still may
be said of it, "it ever beareth something new[FN#14];" and Alexandria,
a threadbare subject in Bruce's time, is even yet, from its perpetual
changes, a fit field for modern description.[FN#15]

[p.11]The better to blind the inquisitive eyes of servants and
visitors, my friend, Larking, lodged me in an out-house, where I could
revel in the utmost freedom of life and manners. And although some
Armenian Dragoman, a restless spy like all his race, occasionally
remarked voila un Persan diablement degage, none, except those who were
entrusted with the secret, had any idea of the part I was playing. The
domestics, devout Moslems, pronounced me an 'Ajami,[FN#16] a kind of
Mohammedan, not a good one like themselves, but, still better than
nothing. I lost no time in securing the assistance of a Shaykh,[FN#17]
and plunged once more into the intricacies of the Faith; revived my
recollections of religious ablutions, read the Koran, and again became
an adept in the art of prostration. My leisure hours were employed in
visiting the baths and coffee-houses, in attending the bazars, and in
shopping,-an operation which hereabouts consists of sitting upon a
chapman's counter, smoking, sipping coffee, and telling your beads the
while, to show that you are not of the slaves for whom time is made; in
fact, in pitting your patience against that of your adversary, the
vendor. I found time for a short excursion to a country village on the
banks of the canal; nor was an opportunity of seeing "Al-nahl," the
"Bee-dance;" neglected, for it would be some months before my eyes
might dwell on such a pleasant spectacle again.
"Delicias videam, Nile jocose, tuas!"

Careful of graver matters, I attended the mosque, and visited the
venerable localities in which modern Alexandria abounds. Pilgrimaging
Moslems are here

[p.12]shown the tomb of Al-nabi Daniyal (Daniel the Prophet),
discovered upon a spot where the late Sultan Mahmud dreamed that he saw
an ancient man at prayer.[FN#18] Sikandar al-Rumi, the Moslem Alexander
the Great, of course left his bones in the place bearing his name, or,
as he ought to have done so, bones have been found for him. Alexandria
also boasts of two celebrated Walis-holy men. One is Mohammed
al-Busiri, the author of a poem called Al-Burdah, universally read by
the world of Islam, and locally recited at funerals and on other solemn
occasions. The other is Abu Abbas al-Andalusi, a sage and saint of the
first water, at whose tomb prayer is never breathed in vain.

It is not to be supposed that the people of Alexandria could look upon
my phials and pill-boxes without a yearning for their contents. An
Indian doctor, too, was a novelty to them; Franks they despised,-but a
man who had come so far from East and West! Then there was something
infinitely seducing in the character of a magician, doctor, and fakir,
each admirable of itself, thus combined to make "great medicine." Men,
women, and children besieged my door, by which means I could see the
people face to face, and especially the fair sex, of which Europeans,
generally speaking, know only the worst specimens. Even respectable
natives, after witnessing a performance of "Mandal" and the Magic
mirror[FN#19], opined that the stranger was a holy man, gifted

[p.13]with supernatural powers, and knowing everything. One old person
sent to offer me his daughter in marriage; he said nothing about
dowry,-but I thought proper to decline the honour. And a middle-aged
lady proffered me the sum of one hundred piastres, nearly one pound
sterling, if I would stay at Alexandria, and superintend the
restoration of her blind left eye.

But the reader must not be led to suppose that I acted "Carabin" or
"Sangrado" without any knowledge of my trade. From youth I have always
been a dabbler in medical and mystical study. Moreover, the practice of
physic is comparatively easy amongst dwellers in warm latitudes,
uncivilised peoples, where there is not that complication of maladies
which troubles more polished nations. And further, what simplifies
extremely the treatment of the sick in these parts is the undoubted
periodicity of disease, reducing almost all to one type-ague.[FN#20]
Many of the complaints of tropical climates, as medical men well know,
display palpably intermittent symptoms little known to colder
countries; and speaking from individual experience, I may safely assert
that in all cases of suffering, from a wound to ophthalmia, this
phenomenon has forced itself upon my notice. So much by way of excuse.
I therefore considered myself as well qualified for the work as if I
had taken out a buono per l'estero diploma at Padua, and not more
likely to do active harm than most of the regularly graduated young
surgeons who start to "finish" themselves upon the frame of the British
soldier.

After a month's hard work at Alexandria, I prepared to assume the
character of a wandering Darwaysh; after

[p.14]reforming my title from "Mirza"[FN#21] to "Shaykh"
Abdullah.[FN#22] A reverend man, whose name I do not care to quote,
some time ago initiated me into his order, the Kadiriyah, under the
high-sounding name of Bismillah-Shah:[FN#23] and, after a due period of
probation, he graciously elevated me to the proud position of a
Murshid,[FN#24] or Master in the mystic craft. I was therefore
sufficiently well acquainted with the tenets and practices of these
Oriental Freemasons. No character in the Moslem world is so proper for
disguise as that of the Darwaysh. It is assumed by all ranks, ages, and
creeds; by the nobleman who has been disgraced at court, and by the
peasant who is too idle to till the ground; by Dives, who is weary of
life, and by Lazarus, who begs his bread from door to door. Further,
the Darwaysh is allowed to ignore ceremony and politeness, as one who
ceases to appear upon the stage of life; he may pray or not, marry or
remain single as he pleases, be respectable in cloth of frieze as in
cloth of gold, and no one asks him-the chartered vagabond-

[p.15]Why he comes here? or Wherefore he goes there? He may wend his
way on foot alone, or ride his Arab mare followed by a dozen servants;
he is equally feared without weapons, as swaggering through the streets
armed to the teeth. The more haughty and offensive he is to the people,
the more they respect him; a decided advantage to the traveller of
choleric temperament. In the hour of imminent danger, he has only to
become a maniac, and he is safe; a madman in the East, like a notably
eccentric character in the West, is allowed to say or do whatever the
spirit directs. Add to this character a little knowledge of medicine, a
"moderate skill in magic, and a reputation for caring for nothing but
study and books," together with capital sufficient to save you from the
chance of starving, and you appear in the East to peculiar advantage.
The only danger of the "Mystic Path"[FN#25] is, that the Darwaysh's
ragged coat not unfrequently covers the cut-throat, and, if seized in
the society of such a "brother," you may reluctantly become his
companion, under the stick or on the stake. For be it known, Darwayshes
are of two orders, the Sharai, or those who conform to religion, and
the Bi-Sharai, or Luti, whose practices are hinted at by their own
tradition that "he we daurna name" once joined them for a week, but at
the end of that time left them in dismay, and returned to whence he
came.

[FN#1] "Remembering . . . . reason," afterwards altered by the author
to "much disliking, if fact must be told, my impolitic habit of telling
political truths, (in 1851 I had submitted to the Court of Directors
certain remarks upon the subject of Anglo-Indian misrule: I need hardly
say that the publication was refused with many threats), and not
unwilling to mortify my supporter (his colleague, Colonel W. Sykes),
refused his sanction, alleging as a no-reason," et seq.
[FN#2] The vagrant, the merchant, and the philosopher, amongst
Orientals, are frequently united in the same person.
[FN#3] In a communication made to the Royal Geographical Society, and
published in the 24th vol. of the Journal, I have given my reasons for
naturalising this word. It will be used in the following pages to
express a "hill water-course, which rolls a torrent after rain, and is
either partially or wholly dry during the droughts." It is, in fact,
the Indian "Nullah, or Nala."
[FN#4] "In provinciis Arabum, ait Ibn Haukal, nullus dignoscitur
fluvius, aut mare quod navigia ferat." This truth has been disputed,
but now it is generally acknowledged.
[FN#5] A French traveller, the Viscount Escayrac de Lanture, was living
at Cairo as a native of the East, and preparing for a pilgrimage when I
was similarly engaged. Unfortunately he went to Damascus, where some
disturbance compelled him to resume his nationality. The only European
I have met with who visited Meccah without apostatising, is M.
Bertolucci, Swedish Consul at Cairo. This gentleman persuaded the
Badawin camel men who were accompanying him to Taif to introduce him in
disguise: he naïvely owns that his terror of discovery prevented his
making any observations. Dr. George A. Wallin, of Finland, performed
the Hajj in 1845; but his "somewhat perilous position, and the filthy
company of Persians," were effectual obstacles to his taking notes.
[FN#6] No one felt the want of this "silent friend," more than myself;
for though Eastern Arabia would not have been strange to me, the
Western regions were a terra incognita. Through Dr. Norton Shaw,
Secretary to the Royal Geographical Society, I addressed a paper full
of questions to Dr. Wallin, professor of Arabic at the University of
Helsingfors. But that adventurous traveller and industrious Orienta1ist
was then, as we afterwards heard with sorrow, no more; so the queries
remained unanswered. In these pages I have been careful to solve all
the little financial and domestic difficulties, so perplexing to the
"freshman," whom circumstances compel to conceal his freshness from the
prying eyes of friends.
[FN#7] "Then came Trafalgar: would that Nelson had known the meaning of
that name! it would have fixed a smile upon his dying lips!" so says
the Rider through the Nubian Desert, giving us in a foot note the
curious information that "Trafalgar" is an Arabic word, which means the
"Cape of Laurels." Trafalgar is nothing but a corruption of Tarf
al-Gharb-the side or skirt of the West; it being the most occidental
point then reached by Arab conquest.
[FN#8] In Arabic "Ras al-Tin," the promontory upon which immortal
Pharos once stood. It is so called from the argile there found and
which supported an old pottery.
[FN#9] "Praise be to Allah, Lord of the (three) worlds!" a pious
ejaculation, which leaves the lips of the True Believer on all
occasions of concluding actions.
[FN#10] "Bakhshish," says a modern writer, "is a fee or present which
the Arabs (he here means the Egyptians, who got the word from the
Persians through the Turks,) claim on all occasions for services you
render them, as well as for services they have rendered you. A doctor
visits a patient gratis-the patient or his servant will ask for a
bakhshish (largesse); you employ, pay, clothe, and feed a child-the
father will demand his bakhshish; you may save the life of an Arab, at
the risk of your own, and he will certainly claim a bakhshish. This
bakhshish, in fact, is a sort of alms or tribute, which the poor Arab
believes himself entitled to claim from every respectable-looking
person."
[FN#11] Mafish, "there is none," equivalent to, "I have left my purse
at home." Nothing takes the Oriental mind so much as a retort
alliterative or jingling. An officer in the Bombay army (Colonel
Hamerton) once saved himself from assault and battery by informing a
furious band of natives, that under British rule "harakat na hui,
barakat hui," "blessing hath there been to you; bane there hath been
none."
[FN#12] In a coarser sense "kayf" is app1ied to all manner of
intoxication. Sonnini is not wrong when he says, "the Arabs give the
name of Kayf to the voluptuous relaxation, the delicious stupor,
produced by the smoking of hemp."
[FN#13] Cleopatra's Needle is called by the native Ciceroni "Masallat
Firaun," Pharaoh's packing needle. What Solomon, and the Jinnis and
Sikandar zu'l karnain (Alexander of Macedon), are to other Moslem
lands, such is Pharaoh to Egypt, the "Caesar aut Diabolus" of the Nile.
The ichneumon becomes "Pharaoh's cat,"-even the French were bitten and
named it, le rat de Pharaon; the prickly pear, "Pharaoh's fig;" the
guinea-worm, "Pharaoh's worm;" certain unapproachable sulphur springs,
"Pharaoh's bath;" a mausoleum at Petra, "Pharaoh's palace;" the mongrel
race now inhabiting the valley of the Nile is contemptuously named by
Turks and Arabs "Jins Firaun," or "Pharaoh's Breed;" and a foul kind of
vulture (vultur percnopterus, ak baba of the Turks, and ukab of Sind),
"Pharaoh's hen." This abhorrence of Pharaoh is, however, confined to
the vulgar and the religious. The philosophers and mystics of Al-Islam,
in their admiration of his impious daring, make him equal, and even
superior, to Moses. Sahil, a celebrated Sufi, declares that the secret
of the soul (i.e., its emanation) was first revealed when Pharaoh
declared himself a god. And Al-Ghazali sees in such temerity nothing
but the most noble aspiration to the divine, innate in the human,
spirit. (Dabistan, vol. iii.)
[FN#14] [Greek text] "Quid novi fert Africa?" said the Romans. "In the
same season Fayoles, tetrarch of Numidia, sent from the land of Africa
to Grangousier, the most hideously great mare that was ever seen; for
you know well enough how it is said, that ‘Africa always is productive
of some new thing.'"
[FN#15] Alexandria, moreover, is an interesting place to Moslems, on
account of the prophecy that it will succeed to the honours of Meccah,
when the holy city falls into the hands of the infidel. In its turn
Alexandria will be followed by Kairawan (in the Regency of Tunis); and
this by Rashid or Rosetta, which last shall endure to the end of time.
[FN#16] A Persian as opposed to an Arab.
[FN#17] A priest, elder, chieftain, language-master, private-tutor,
&c., &c.
[FN#18] The Persians place the Prophet's tomb at Susan or Sus,
described by Ibn Haukal (p. 76). The readers of Ibn Batutah may think
it strange that the learned and pious traveller in his account of
Alexandria (chap. 2.) makes no allusion to the present holy deceased
that distinguish the city. All the saints are now clear forgotten. For
it is the fate of saints, like distinguished sinners, to die twice.
[FN#19] The Mandal is that form of Oriental divination which owes its
present celebrity in Europe to Mr. Lane. Both it and the magic mirror
are hackneyed subjects, but I have been tempted to a few words
concerning them in another part of these volumes. Meanwhile I request
the reader not to set me down as a mere charlatan; medicine in the East
is so essentially united with superstitious practices, that he who
would pass for an expert practitioner, must necessarily represent
himself an "adept."
[FN#20] Hence the origin, I believe, of the Chronothermal System, a
discovery which physic owes to my old friend, the late Dr. Samuel
Dickson.
[FN#21] The Persian "Mister." In future chapters the reader will see
the uncomfortable consequences of my having appeared in Egypt as a
Persian. Although I found out the mistake, and worked hard to correct
it, the bad name stuck to me; bazar reports fly quicker and hit harder
than newspaper paragraphs.
[FN#22] Arab Christians sometimes take the name of "Abdullah," servant
of Allah-"which," as a modern traveller observes, "all sects and
religions might be equally proud to adopt." The Moslem Prophet said,
"the names most approved of God are Abdullah, Abd-al-rahman (Slave of
the Compassionate), and such like."
[FN#23] "King in-the-name-of-Allah," a kind of Oriental
"Praise-God-Barebones." When a man appears as a Fakir or Darwaysh, he
casts off, in process of regeneration, together with other worldly
sloughs, his laical name for some brilliant coat of nomenclature rich
in religious promise.
[FN#24] A Murshid is one allowed to admit Murids or apprentices into
the order. As the form of the diploma conferred upon this occasion may
be new to many European Orientalists, I have translated it in Appendix
I.
[FN#25] The Tarikat or path, which leads, or is supposed to lead, to
Heaven.

[p.16]CHAPTER II.

I LEAVE ALEXANDRIA.

THE thorough-bred wanderer's idiosyncracy I presume to be a composition
of what phrenologists call "inhabitiveness" and "locality" equally and
largely developed. After a long and toilsome march, weary of the way,
he drops into the nearest place of rest to become the most domestic of
men. For a while he smokes the "pipe of permanence"[FN#1] with an
infinite zest; he delights in various siestas during the day, relishing
withal deep sleep during the dark hours; he enjoys dining at a fixed
dinner hour, and he wonders at the demoralisation of the mind which
cannot find means of excitement in chit-chat or small talk, in a novel
or a newspaper. But soon the passive fit has passed away; again a
paroxysm of ennui coming on by slow degrees, Viator loses appetite, he
walks about his room all night, he yawns at conversations, and a book
acts upon him as a narcotic. The man wants to wander, and he must do
so, or he shall die.

After about a month most pleasantly spent at Alexandria, I perceived
the approach of the enemy, and as nothing hampered my incomings and
outgoings, I surrendered. The world was "all before me," and there was
pleasant excitement in plunging single-handed into its chilling depths.
My Alexandrian Shaykh, whose heart

[p.17]fell victim to a new "jubbah," which I had given in exchange for
his tattered za'abut[FN#2] offered me, in consideration of a certain
monthly stipend, the affections of a brother and religious refreshment,
proposing to send his wife back to her papa, and to accompany me, in
the capacity of private chaplain to the other side of Kaf.
[FN#3] I politely accepted the "Bruderschaft," but many reasons induced
me to decline his society and services. In the first place, he spoke
the detestable Egyptian jargon. Secondly, it was but prudent to lose
the "spoor" between Alexandria and Suez. And, thirdly, my "brother" had
shifting eyes (symptoms of fickleness), close together (indices of
cunning); a flat-crowned head, and large ill-fitting lips; signs which
led me to think lightly of his honesty, firmness, and courage.
Phrenology and physiognomy, be it observed, disappoint you often
amongst civilised people, the proper action of whose brain upon the
features is impeded by the external pressure of education, accident,
example, habit, and necessity. But they are tolerably safe guides when
groping your way through the mind of man in his so-called natural
state, a being of impulse, in that chrysalis condition of mental
development which is rather instinct than reason.

Before my departure, however, there was much to be done.

The land of the Pharaohs is becoming civilised, and unpleasantly so:
nothing can be more uncomfortable than its present middle state,
between barbarism and the reverse. The prohibition against carrying
arms is rigid as in Italy; all "violence" is violently denounced; and
beheading

[p.18]being deemed cruel, the most atrocious crimes, as well as those
small political offences, which in the days of the Mamluks would have
led to a beyship or a bow-string, receive fourfold punishment by
deportation to Fayzoghlu, the local Cayenne. If you order your peasant
to be flogged, his friends gather in threatening hundreds at your
gates; when you curse your boatman, he complains to your consul; the
dragomans afflict you with strange wild notions about honesty; a
Government order prevents you from using vituperative language to the
"natives" in general; and the very donkey boys are becoming cognisant
of the right of man to remain unbastinadoed. Still the old leaven
remains behind: here, as elsewhere in the "Morning-land," you cannot
hold your own without employing the voie de fait. The passport system,
now dying out of Europe, has sprung up, or rather has revived, in
Egypt, with peculiar vigour.[FN#4] Its good effects claim for it our
respect; still we cannot but lament its inconvenience. By we, I mean
real Easterns. As strangers-even those whose beards have whitened in
the land-know absolutely nothing of what unfortunate natives must
endure, I am tempted to subjoin a short

[p.19]sketch of my adventures in search of a Tazkirah, or passport, at
Alexandria.

Through ignorance which might have cost me dear but for friend
Larking's weight with the local authorities, I had neglected to provide
myself with a passport in England, and it was not without difficulty,
involving much unclean dressing and an unlimited expenditure of broken
English, that I obtained from H.B.M's Consul at Alexandria a
certificate, declaring me to be an Indo-British subject named Abdullah,
by profession a doctor, aged thirty, and not distinguished-at least so
the frequent blanks seemed to denote-by any remarkable conformation of
eyes, nose, or cheek. For this I disbursed a dollar. And here let me
record the indignation with which I did it. That mighty Britain-the
mistress of the seas-the ruler of one-sixth of mankind-should charge
five shillings to pay for the shadow of her protecting wing! That I
cannot speak my modernised "civis sum Romanus" without putting my hand
into my pocket, in order that these officers of the Great Queen may not
take too ruinously from a revenue of seventy millions! O the meanness
of our magnificence! the littleness of our greatness!

My new passport would not carry me without the Zabit or Police
Magistrate's counter-signature, said H.B.M.'s Consul. Next day I went
to the Zabit, who referred me to the Muhafiz (Governor) of Alexandria,
at whose gate I had the honour of squatting at least three hours, till
a more compassionate clerk vouchsafed the information that the proper
place to apply to was the Diwan Kharijiyah (the Foreign Office). Thus a
second day was utterly lost. On the morning of the third I started, as
directed, for the Palace, which crowns the Headland of Clay. It is a
huge and couthless shell of building in parallelogrammic form,
containing all kinds of public offices in glorious confusion, looking
with their glaring

[p.20]white-washed faces upon a central court, where a few leafless
wind-wrung trees seem struggling for the breath of life in an eternal
atmosphere of clay-dust and sun-blaze.[FN#5]

The first person I addressed was a Kawwas[FN#6] or police officer, who,
coiled comfortably up in a bit of shade fitting his person like a robe,
was in full enjoyment of the Asiatic "Kayf." Having presented the
consular certificate and briefly stated the nature of my business, I
ventured to inquire what was the right course to pursue for a visa.

They have little respect for Darwayshes, it appears, at Alexandria.

M'adri-"Don't know," growled the man of authority, without moving any
thing but the quantity of tongue absolutely necessary for articulation.

Now there are three ways of treating Asiatic officials,-by bribe, by
bullying, or by bothering them with a dogged perseverance into
attending to you and your concerns. The latter is the peculiar province
of the poor; moreover, this time I resolved, for other reasons, to be
patient. I repeated my question in almost the same words. Ruh! "Be
off," was what I obtained for all reply. But this time the questioned
went so far as to open his eyes. Still I stood twirling the paper in my
hands, and looking very humble and very persevering, till a loud Ruh ya
Kalb! "Go, O dog!" converted into a responsive curse the little speech
I was preparing about

[p.21]the brotherhood of Al-Islam and the mutual duties obligatory on
true believers. I then turned away slowly and fiercely, for the next
thing might have been a cut with the Kurbaj,[FN#7] and, by the hammer
of Thor! British flesh and blood could never have stood that.

After which satisfactory scene,-for satisfactory it was in one sense,
proving the complete fitness of the Darwaysh's costume,-I tried a dozen
other promiscuous sources of information,-policemen, grooms, scribes,
donkey-boys, and idlers in general. At length, wearied of patience, I
offered a soldier some pinches of tobacco, and promised him an Oriental
sixpence if he would manage the business for me. The man was interested
by the tobacco and the pence; he took my hand, and inquiring the while
he went along, led me from place to place, till, mounting a grand
staircase, I stood in the presence of Abbas Effendi, Naib or deputy to
the Governor.

It was a little, whey-faced, black-bearded Turk, coiled up in the usual
conglomerate posture upon a calico-covered diwan, at the end of a long,
bare, large- windowed room. Without deigning even to nod the head,
which hung over his shoulder with transcendent listlessness and
affectation of pride, in answer to my salams and benedictions, he eyed
me with wicked eyes, and faintly ejaculated "Min ent[FN#8]?" Then
hearing that I was a Darwaysh and doctor-he must be an Osmanli
Voltairean, that little Turk-the official snorted a contemptuous snort.
He condescendingly added, however, that the proper source to seek was
"Taht," which, meaning simply "below," conveyed to an utter stranger
rather imperfect information from a topographical point of view.

At length, however, my soldier guide found out that

[p.22]a room in the custom-house bore the honourable appellation of
"Foreign Office." Accordingly I went there, and, after sitting at least
a couple of hours at the bolted door in the noon-day sun, was told,
with a fury which made me think I had sinned, that the officer in whose
charge the department was, had been presented with an olive branch in
the morning, and consequently that business was not to be done that
day. The angry-faced official communicated the intelligence to a large
group of Anadolian, Caramanian, Bosniac, and Roumelian Turks,-sturdy,
undersized, broad-shouldered, bare-legged, splay-footed, horny-fisted,
dark-browed, honest-looking mountaineers, who were lounging about with
long pistols and yataghans stuck in their broad sashes, head-gear
composed of immense tarbushes with proportionate turbands coiled round
them, and bearing two or three suits of substantial clothes, even at
this season of the year, upon their shoulders.

Like myself they had waited some hours, but they were not so patient
under disappointment: they bluntly told the angry official that he and
his master were a pair of idlers, and the curses that rumbled and
gurgled in their hairy throats as they strode towards the door sounded
like the growling of wild beasts.

Thus was another day truly orientally lost. On the morrow, however, I
obtained permission, in the character of Dr. Abdullah, to visit any
part of Egypt I pleased, and to retain possession of my dagger and
pistols.

And now I must explain what induced me to take so much trouble about a
passport. The home reader naturally inquires, Why not travel under your
English name?

For this reason. In the generality of barbarous countries you must
either proceed, like Bruce, preserving the "dignity of manhood," and
carrying matters with a high hand, or you must worm your way by
timidity and

[p.23]subservience; in fact, by becoming an animal too contemptible for
man to let or injure. But to pass through the Moslem's Holy Land, you
must either be a born believer, or have become one; in the former case
you may demean yourself as you please, in the latter a path is ready
prepared for you. My spirit could not bend to own myself a Burma,[FN#9]
a renegade-to be pointed at and shunned and catechised, an object of
suspicion to the many and of contempt to all. Moreover, it would have
obstructed the aim of my wanderings. The convert is always watched with
Argus eyes, and men do not willingly give information to a "new
Moslem," especially a Frank: they suspect his conversion to be feigned
or forced, look upon him as a spy, and let him see as little of life as
possible. Firmly as was my heart set upon travelling in Arabia, by
Heaven! I would have given up the dear project rather than purchase a
doubtful and partial success at such a price. Consequently, I had no
choice but to appear as a born believer, and part of my birthright in
that respectable character was toil and trouble in obtaining a
Tazkirah.[FN#10]

Then I had to provide myself with certain necessaries for the way.
These were not numerous. The silver-mounted dressing-bag is here
supplied by a rag containing a Miswak[FN#11] or tooth-stick, a bit of
soap and a comb, wooden, for bone and tortoiseshell are not,
religiously speaking, correct. Equally simple was my wardrobe; [p.24]a
change or two of clothing. It is a great mistake to carry too few
clothes, and those who travel as Orientals should always have at least
one very grand suit for use on critical occasions. Throughout the East
a badly dressed man is a pauper, and, as in England, a pauper-unless he
belongs to an order having a right to be poor-is a scoundrel. The only
article of canteen description was a Zemzemiyah, a goat-skin water-bag,
which, especially when new, communicates to its contents a ferruginous
aspect and a wholesome, though hardly an attractive, flavour of
tanno-gelatine. This was a necessary; to drink out of a tumbler,
possibly fresh from pig-eating lips, would have entailed a certain loss
of reputation. For bedding and furniture I had a coarse Persian
rug-which, besides being couch, acted as chair, table, and oratory-a
cotton-stuffed chintz-covered pillow, a blanket in case of cold, and a
sheet, which did duty for tent and mosquito curtains in nights of
heat.[FN#12] As shade is a convenience not always procurable, another
necessary was a huge cotton umbrella of Eastern make, brightly yellow,
suggesting the idea of an overgrown marigold. I had also a substantial
housewife, the gift of a kind relative, Miss Elizabeth Stisted; it was
a roll of canvas, carefully soiled, and garnished with needles and
thread, cobblers' wax, buttons, and other such articles. These things
were most useful in lands where tailors abound not; besides which, the
sight of a man darning his coat or patching his slippers teems with
pleasing ideas of humility. A dagger,[FN#13] a brass inkstand and
pen-holder

[p.25]stuck in the belt, and a mighty rosary, which on occasion might
have been converted into a weapon of offence, completed my equipment. I
must not omit to mention the proper method of carrying money, which in
these lands should never be entrusted to box or bag. A common cotton
purse secured in a breast pocket (for Egypt now abounds in that
civilised animal, the pick-pocket!), contained silver pieces and small
change.[FN#14] My gold, of which I carried twenty-five sovereigns, and
papers, were committed to a substantial leathern belt of Maghrabi
manufacture, made to be strapped round the waist under the dress. This
is the Asiatic method of concealing valuables, and one more civilised
than ours in the last century, when Roderic Random and his companion
"sewed their money between the lining and the waist-band of their
breeches, except some loose silver for immediate

[p.26]expense on the road." The great inconvenience of the belt is its
weight, especially where dollars must be carried, as in Arabia, causing
chafes and discomfort at night. Moreover, it can scarcely be called
safe. In dangerous countries wary travellers will adopt surer
precautions.
[FN#16]

A pair of common native Khurjin, or saddle-bags, contained my wardrobe;
the bed was readily rolled up into a bundle; and for a medicine
chest[FN#17] I bought a pea-green box with red and yellow flowers,
capable of standing falls from a camel twice a day.

[p.27]The next step was to find out when the local steamer would start
for Cairo, and accordingly I betook myself to the Transit Office. No
vessel was advertised; I was directed to call every evening till
satisfied. At last the fortunate event took place: a "weekly
departure," which, by the bye, occurred once every fortnight or so, was
in orders for the next day. I hurried to the office, but did not reach
it till past noon-the hour of idleness. A little, dark gentleman-Mr.
Green-so formed and dressed as exactly to resemble a liver-and-tan
bull-terrier, who with his heels on the table was dosing, cigar in
mouth, over the last "Galignani," positively refused, after a time,-for
at first he would not speak at all,-to let me take my passage till
three in the afternoon. I inquired when the boat started, upon which he
referred me, as I had spoken bad Italian, to the advertisement. I
pleaded inability to read or write, whereupon he testily cried Alle
nove! alle nove!-at nine! at nine! Still appearing uncertain, I drove
him out of his chair, when he rose with a curse and read 8 A.M. An
unhappy Eastern, depending upon what he said, would have been precisely
one hour too late.

Thus were we lapsing into the real good old East-Indian style of doing
business. Thus Anglo-Indicus orders his first clerk to execute some
commission; the senior, having "work" upon his hands, sends a junior;
the junior finds the sun hot, and passes on the word to a "peon;" the
"peon" charges a porter with the errand; and the porter quietly sits or
doses in his place, trusting that Fate will bring him out of the
scrape, but firmly resolved, though the shattered globe fall, not to
stir an inch.

The reader, I must again express a hope, will pardon the length of
these descriptions,-my object is to show him how business is carried on
in these hot countries. Business generally. For had I been, not
Abdullah the Darwaysh, but a rich native merchant, it would have been

[p.28]the same. How many complaints of similar treatment have I heard
in different parts of the Eastern world! and how little can one realise
them without having actually experienced the evil! For the future I
shall never see a "nigger" squatting away half a dozen mortal hours in
a broiling sun patiently waiting for something or for some one, without
a lively remembrance of my own cooling of the calces at the
custom-house of Alexandria.

At length, about the end of May (1853) all was ready. Not without a
feeling of regret I left my little room among the white myrtle blossoms
and the rosy oleander flowers with the almond smell. I kissed with
humble ostentation my good host's hand in presence of his servants-he
had become somewhat unpleasantly anxious, of late, to induce in me the
true Oriental feeling, by a slight administration of the bastinado-I
bade adieu to my patients, who now amounted to about fifty, shaking
hands with all meekly and with religious equality of attention; and,
mounted in a "trap" which looked like a cross between a wheel-barrow
and a dog-cart, drawn by a kicking, jibbing, and biting mule, I set out
for the steamer, the "Little Asthmatic."

[FN#1] The long pipe which at home takes the place of the shorter
chibuk used on the road.
[FN#2] The jubbah is a long outer garment, generally of cloth, worn by
learned and respectable men. The za'abut is a large bag-sleeved black
or brown coloured robe made of home-spun woollen, the garb of the
peasant, the hedge-priest, and the darwaysh.
[FN#3] The mountain which encircles the globe, according to the sacred
geography of the Moslems. To "go to Kaf" is equivalent to our "go to
Jericho," or-somewhere else.
[FN#4] Sir G. Wilkinson, referring his readers to Strabo, remarks that
the "troublesome system of passports seems to have been adopted by the
Egyptians at a very early period." Its present rigours, which have
lasted since the European troubles in 1848 and 1849, have a two-fold
object; in the first place, to act as a clog upon the dangerous
emigrants which Germany, Italy, and Greece have sent out into the
world; and secondly, to confine the subjects of the present Pasha of
Egypt to their fatherland and the habit of paying taxes. The
enlightened ruler (this was written during the rule of Abbas Pasha)
knows his own interests, and never willingly parts with a subject
liable to cess, at times objecting even to their obeying pilgrimage
law. We, on the other hand, in India, allow a freedom of emigration, in
my humble opinion, highly injurious to us. For not only does this
exodus thin the population, and tend to impoverish the land, it also
serves to bring our rule into disrepute in foreign lands. At another
time I shall discuss this subject more fully.
[FN#5] The glare of Alexandria has become a matter of fable in the
East. The stucco employed in overlaying its walls, erected by
Zul-karnayn, was so exquisitely tempered and so beautifully polished,
that the inhabitants, in order to protect themselves from blindness,
were constrained to wear masks.
[FN#6] The word literally means "a bowman, an archer," reminding us of
"les archers de la Sainte Hermandade," in the most delicious of modern
fictions. Some mis-spell the word "Kawas," "Cavass," and so forth!
[FN#7] A whip, a cravache of dried and twisted hippopotamus hide, the
ferule, horsewhip, and "cat o' nine tails" of Egypt.
[FN#8] For "man anta?" who art thou?
[FN#9] An opprobrious name given by the Turks to their Christian
converts. The word is derived from burmak, "to twist, to turn."
[FN#10] During my journey, and since my return, some Indian papers
conducted by jocose editors made merry upon an Englishman "turning
Turk." Once for all, I beg leave to point above for the facts of the
case; it must serve as a general answer to any pleasant little fictions
which may hereafter appear.
[FN#11] A stick of soft wood chewed at one end. It is generally used
throughout the East, where brushes should be avoided, as the natives
always suspect hogs' bristles.
[FN#12] Almost all Easterns sleep under a sheet, which becomes a kind
of respirator, defending them from the dews and mosquitoes by night and
the flies by day. The "rough and ready" traveller will learn to follow
the example, remembering that "Nature is founder of Customs in savage
countries;" whereas, amongst the soi-disant civilised, Nature has no
deadlier enemy than Custom.
[FN#13] It is strictly forbidden to carry arms in Egypt. This, however,
does not prevent their being as necessary-especially in places like
Alexandria, where Greek and Italian ruffians abound-as they ever were
in Rome or Leghorn during the glorious times of Italian "liberty."
[FN#14] In the Azhar Mosque, immediately after Friday service, a fellow
once put his hand into my pocket, which fact alone is ample evidence of
"progress."
[FN#15] As a general rule, always produce, when travelling, the
minutest bit of coin. At present, however, small change is dear in
Egypt; the Sarrafs, or money-changers, create the dearth in order to
claim a high agio. The traveller must prepare himself for a most
unpleasant task in learning the different varieties of currency, which
appear all but endless, the result of deficiency in the national
circulating medium. There are, however, few copper coins, the pieces of
ten or five faddah (or parahs), whereas silver and gold abound. As
regards the latter metal, strangers should mistrust all small pieces,
Turkish as well as Egyptian. "The greater part are either cut or
cracked, or perhaps both, and worn down to mere spangles: after taking
them, it will not be possible to pass them without considerable loss."
Above all things, the traveller must be careful never to change gold
except in large towns, where such a display of wealth would not arouse
suspicion or cupidity; and on no occasion when travelling even to
pronounce the ill-omened word "Kis" (purse). Many have lost their lives
by neglecting these simple precautions.
[FN#16] Some prefer a long chain of pure gold divided into links and
covered with leather, so as to resemble the twisted girdle which the
Arab fastens round his waist. It is a precaution well known to the
wandering knights of old. Others, again, in very critical situations,
open with a lancet the shoulder, or any other fleshy part of the body,
and insert a precious stone, which does not show in its novel purse.
[FN#17] Any "Companion to the Medicine Chest" will give, to those that
require such information, the names of drugs and instruments necessary
for a journey; but it must be borne in mind that hot countries require
double quantities of tonics, and half the allowance of cathartics
necessary in cold climates. Sonnini, however, is right when he says of
the Egyptian fellahs, that their stomachs, accustomed to digest bread
badly baked, acrid and raw vegetables, and other green and unwholesome
nourishment, require doses fit only for horses. Advisable precautions
are, in the first place, to avoid, if travelling as a native, any signs
of European manufacture in knives, scissors, weights, scales and other
such articles. Secondly, glass bottles are useless: the drugs should be
stowed away in tin or wooden boxes, such as the natives of the country
use, and when a phial is required, it must be fitted into an etui of
some kind. By this means, ground glass stoppers and plentiful cotton
stuffing, the most volatile essences may be carried about without great
waste. After six months of the driest heat, in Egypt and Arabia, not
more than about one-fourth of my Prussic acid and chloroform had
evaporated. And, thirdly, if you travel in the East, a few bottles of
tincture of cantharides-highly useful as a rubefacient, excitant, et
cetera-must never be omitted. I made the mistake of buying my drugs in
England, and had the useless trouble of looking after them during the
journey. Both at Alexandria and Cairo they are to be found in
abundance, cheaper than in London, and good enough for all practical
purposes.

[p.29]CHAPTER III.

THE NILE STEAMBOAT-THE "LITTLE ASTHMATIC."



IN the days of the Pitts we have invariably a "Relation" of Egyptian
travellers who embark for a place called "Roseet" on the "River Nilus."
Wanderers of the Brucean age were wont to record their impressions of
voyage upon land subjects observed between Alexandria and Cairo. A
little later we find every one inditing rhapsodies about, and
descriptions of, his or her Dahabiyah (barge) on the canal. After this
came the steamer. And after the steamer will come the railroad, which
may disappoint the author tourist, but will be delightful to that
sensible class of men who wish to get over the greatest extent of
ground with the least inconvenience to themselves and others. Then
shall the Mahmudiyah-ugliest and most wearisome of canals-be given up
to cotton boats and grain barges, and then will note-books and the
headings of chapters clean ignore its existence.

I saw the canal at its worst, when the water was low; and I have not
one syllable to say in its favour. Instead of thirty hours, we took
three mortal days and nights to reach Cairo, and we grounded with
painful regularity four or five times between sunrise and sunset. In
the scenery on the banks sketchers and describers have left you nought
to see. From Pompey's Pillar to the Maison Carree, Kariom and its
potteries, Al-Birkah[FN#1] of the night birds, Bastarah

[p.30]with the alleys of trees, even unto Atfah, all things are
perfectly familiar to us, and have been so years before the traveller
actually sees them. The Nil al-Mubarak itself-the Blessed Nile,-as
notably fails too at this season to arouse enthusiasm. You see nothing
but muddy waters, dusty banks, a sand mist, a milky sky, and a glaring
sun: you feel nought but a breeze like the blast from a potter's
furnace. You can only just distinguish through a veil of reeking
vapours the village Shibr Katt from the village Kafr al-Zayyat, and you
steam too far from Wardan town to enjoy the Timonic satisfaction of
enraging its male population with "Haykal! ya ibn Haykal! O Haykal!-O
son of Haykal[FN#2]!" You are nearly wrecked, as a matter of course, at
the Barrage; and you are certainly dumbfoundered by the sight of its
ugly little Gothic crenelles.[FN#3] The Pyramids of Khufa and Khafra
(Cheops

[p.31]and Cephren) "rearing their majestic heads above the margin of
the Desert," only suggest of remark that they have been remarkably
well-sketched; and thus you proceed till with a real feeling of
satisfaction you moor alongside of the tumble-down old suburb "Bulak."

To me there was double dulness in the scenery: it seemed to be Sind
over again-the same morning mist and noon-tide glare; the same hot wind
and heat clouds, and fiery sunset, and evening glow; the same pillars
of dust and "devils" of sand sweeping like giants over the plain; the
same turbid waters of a broad, shallow stream studded with sand-banks
and silt-isles, with crashing earth slips and ruins nodding over a kind
of cliff, whose base the stream gnaws with noisy tooth. On the banks,
saline ground sparkled and glittered like hoar-frost in the sun; and
here and there mud villages, solitary huts, pigeon-towers, or watch
turrets, whence litt1e brown boys shouted and slung stones at the
birds, peeped out from among bright green patches of palm-tree,
tamarisk, and mimosa, of maize, tobacco, and sugar-cane. Beyond the
narrow tongue of land on the river banks lay the glaring, yellow
Desert, with its low hills and sand slopes, bounded by innumerable
pyramids of Nature's architecture. The boats, with their sharp bows,
preposterous sterns, and lateen sails, might have belonged to the
Indus. So might the chocolate-skinned, blue-robed peasantry; the women
carrying progeny on their hips, with the eternal waterpot on their
heads; and the men sleeping in the shade or following the plough, to
which probably Osiris first put hand. The lower animals, like the
higher, were the same; gaunt, mange-stained camels, muddy buffaloes,
scurvied donkeys, sneaking jackals, and fox-like dogs. Even the
feathered creatures were perfectly familiar to my eye-

[p.32]paddy birds, pelicans, giant cranes, kites and wild water-fowl.

I had taken a third-class or deck-passage, whereby the evils of the
journey were exasperated. A roasting sun pierced the canvas awning like
hot water through a gauze veil, and by night the cold dews fell raw and
thick as a Scotch mist. The cooking was abominable, and the dignity of
Darwaysh-hood did not allow me to sit at meat with Infidels or to eat
the food which they had polluted. So the Pilgrim squatted apart,
smoking perpetually, with occasional interruptions to say his prayers
and to tell his beads upon the mighty rosary; and he drank the muddy
water of the canal out of a leathern bucket, and he munched his bread
and garlic[FN#4] with a desperate sanctimoniousness.

The "Little Asthmatic" was densely crowded, and discipline not daring
to mark out particular places, the scene on board of her was motley
enough. There were two Indian officers, who naturally spoke to none but
each other, drank bad tea, and smoked their cigars exclusively

[p.33]like Britons. A troop of the Kurd Kawwas,[FN#5] escorting
treasure, was surrounded by a group of noisy Greeks; these men's gross
practical jokes sounding anything but pleasant to the solemn Moslems,
whose saddle-bags and furniture were at every moment in danger of being
defiled by abominable drinks and the ejected juices of tobacco. There
was one pretty woman on board, a Spanish girl, who looked strangely
misplaced-a rose in a field of thistles. Some silent Italians, with
noisy interpreters, sat staidly upon the benches. It was soon found
out, through the communicative dragoman, that their business was to buy
horses for H. M. of Sardinia: they were exposed to a volley of
questions delivered by a party of French tradesmen returning to Cairo,
but they shielded themselves and fought shy with Machiavellian
dexterity. Besides these was a German, a "beer-bottle in the morning
and a bottle of beer in the evening," to borrow a simile from his own
nation; a Syrian merchant, the richest and ugliest of Alexandria; and a
few French house-painters going to decorate the Pasha's palace at
Shubra. These last were the happiest of our voyagers,-veritable
children of Paris, Montagnards, Voltaireans, and thoroughbred
Sans-Soucis. All day they sat upon deck chattering as only their lively
nation can chatter, indulging in ultra-gallic maxims, such as "on ne
vieillit jamais a table;" now playing ecarte for love or nothing, then
composing "des ponches un peu chiques;" now reciting adventures of the
category "Mirabolant," then singing, then dancing, then sleeping, and
rising to play, to drink, talk, dance, and sing again. One chaunted:

"Je n'ai pas connu mon pere
Ce respectable vieillard.
Je suis ne trois ans trop tard," &.;

Whilst another trolled out:

"Qu'est ce que je vois?
Un canard en robe de chambre!"

[p.34]They being new comers, free from the western morgue so soon
caught by Oriental Europeans, were particularly civil to me, even
wishing to mix me a strong draught; but I was not so fortunate with all
on board. A large shopkeeper threatened to "briser" my "figure" for
putting my pipe near his pantaloons; but seeing me finger my dagger
curiously, though I did not shift my pipe, he forgot to remember his
threat. I had taken charge of a parcel for one M. P-, a student of
Coptic, and remitted it to him on board; of this little service the
only acknowledgment was a stare and a petulant inquiry why I had not
given it to him before. And one of the Englishmen, half publicly, half
privily, as though communing with himself, condemned my organs of
vision because I happened to touch his elbow. He was a man in my own
service; I pardoned him in consideration of the compliment paid to my
disguise.

Two fellow-passengers were destined to play an important part in my
comedy of Cairo. Just after we had started, a little event afforded us
some amusement. On the bank appeared a short, crummy, pursy kind of
man, whose efforts to board the steamer were notably ridiculous. With
attention divided between the vessel and a carpet-bag carried by his
donkey boy, he ran along the sides of the canal, now stumbling into
hollows, then climbing heights, then standing shouting upon the
projections with the fierce sun upon his back, till everyone thought
his breath was completely gone. But no! game to the backbone, he would
have perished miserably rather than lose his fare: "patience and
perseverance," say the wise, "got a wife for his Reverence." At last he
was taken on board, and presently he lay down to sleep. His sooty
complexion, lank black hair, features in which appeared beaucoup de
finesse, that is to say, abundant rascality, an eternal smile and
treacherous eyes, his gold[FN#6] ring, dress

[p.35]of showy colours, fleshy stomach, fat legs, round back, and a
peculiar manner of frowning and fawning simultaneously, marked him an
Indian. When he awoke he introduced himself to me as Miyan Khudabakhsh
Namdar, a native of Lahore: he had carried on the trade of a shawl
merchant in London and Paris, where he had lived two years, and, after
a pilgrimage intended to purge away the sins of civilised lands, he had
settled at Cairo.

My second friend, Haji Wali, I will introduce to the reader in a future
chapter; and my two expeditions to Midian have brought him once more
into notice.[FN#7]

Long conversations in Persian and Hindustani abridged the tediousness
of the voyage, and when we arrived at Bulak, the polite Khudabakhsh
insisted upon my making his house my home. I was unwilling to accept
the man's civility, disliking his looks; but he advanced cogent reasons
for changing my mind. His servant cleared my luggage through the
custom-house, and a few minutes after our arrival I found myself in his
abode near the Azbakiyah Gardens, sitting in a cool Mashrabiyah[FN#8]
that gracefully projected over a garden, and sipping the favourite
glass of pomegranate syrup.

As the Wakalahs or Caravanserais were at that time full of pilgrims, I
remained with Khudabakhsh ten days or a fortnight. But at the end of
that time my patience was thoroughly exhausted. My host had become a
civilised man, who sat on chairs, who ate with a fork, who talked
European politics, and who had learned to admire, if not to understand,
liberty-liberal ideas! and was I not flying from such things? Besides
which, we English have a

[p.36]peculiar national quality, which the Indians, with their
characteristic acuteness, soon perceived, and described by an
opprobrious name. Observing our solitary habits, that we could not, and
would not, sit and talk and sip sherbet and smoke with them, they
called us "Jangli"-wild men, fresh caught in the jungle and sent to
rule over the land of Hind.[FN#9] Certainly nothing suits us less than
perpetual society, an utter want of solitude, when one cannot retire
into oneself an instant without being asked some puerile question by a
companion, or look into a book without a servant peering over one's
shoulder; when from the hour you rise to the time you rest, you must
ever be talking or listening, you must converse yourself to sleep in a
public dormitory, and give ear to your companions' snores and
mutterings at midnight.[FN#10]

The very essence of Oriental hospitality, however, is this family style
of reception, which costs your host neither coin nor trouble. I speak
of the rare tracts in which the old barbarous hospitality still
lingers. You make one more at his eating tray, and an additional
mattress appears in the sleeping-room. When you depart, you leave if
you like a little present, merely for a memorial, with your
entertainer; he would be offended if you offered it him openly as a
remuneration, and you give

[p.37]some trifling sums to the servants. Thus you will be welcome
wherever you go. If perchance you are detained perforce in such a
situation,-which may easily happen to you, medical man,-you have only
to make yourself as disagreeable as possible, by calling for all manner
of impossible things. Shame is a passion with Eastern nations. Your
host would blush to point out to you the indecorum of your conduct; and
the laws of hospitality oblige him to supply the every want of a guest,
even though he be a detenu.

But of all Orientals, the most antipathetical companion to an
Englishman is, I believe, an East-Indian. Like the fox in the fable,
fulsomely flattering at first, he gradually becomes easily friendly,
disagreeably familiar, offensively rude, which ends by rousing the
"spirit of the British lion." Nothing delights the Hindi so much as an
opportunity of safely venting the spleen with which he regards his
victors.[FN#11] He will sit in the presence of a

[p.38]magistrate, or an officer, the very picture of cringing
submissiveness. But after leaving the room, he is as different from his
former self as a counsel in court from a counsel at a concert, a sea
captain at a club dinner from a sea captain on his quarter-deck. Then
he will discover that the English are not brave, nor clever, nor
generous, nor civilised, nor anything but surpassing rogues; that every
official takes bribes, that their manners are utterly offensive, and
that they are rank infidels. Then he will descant complacently upon the
probability of a general Bartholomew's Day in the East, and look
forward to the hour when enlightened Young India will arise and drive
the "foul invader" from the land.[FN#12] Then he will submit his
political opinions nakedly, that India should be wrested from the
Company and given to the Queen, or taken from the Queen and given to
the French. If the Indian has been a European traveller, so much the
worse for you. He has blushed to own,-explaining, however , conquest by
bribery,-that 50,000 Englishmen hold 150,000,000 of his compatriots in
thrall, and for aught you know, republicanism may have become his idol.
He has lost all fear of the white face, and having been accustomed to
unburden his mind in

"The land where, girt by friend or foe,
A man may say the thing he will,"-

he pursues the same course in other lands where it is exceedingly
misplaced. His doctrines of liberty and

[p.39]equality he applies to you personally and practically, by not
rising when you enter or leave the room,-at first you could scarcely
induce him to sit down,-by not offering you his pipe, by turning away
when you address him; in fact, by a variety of similar small affronts
which none knows better to manage skilfully and with almost impalpable
gradations. If-and how he prays for it!-an opportunity of refusing you
anything presents itself, he does it with an

"In rice strength,
In an Indian manliness,[FN#13]"

say the Arabs. And the Persians apply the following pithy tale to their
neighbours. "Brother," said the leopard to the jackal, "I crave a few
of thy cast-off hairs; I want them for medicine;[FN#14] where can I
find them?" "Wa'llahi!" replied the jackal, "I don't exactly know-I
seldom change my coat-I wander about the hills. Allah is
bounteous,[FN#15] brother! hairs are not so easily shed."

Woe to the unhappy Englishman, Pasha, or private soldier, who must
serve an Eastern lord! Worst of all, if the master be an Indian, who,
hating all Europeans,[FN#16]
[p.40]adds an especial spite to Oriental coarseness, treachery, and
tyranny. Even the experiment of associating with them is almost too
hard to bear. But a useful deduction may be drawn from such
observations; and as few have had greater experience than myself, I
venture to express my opinion with confidence, however unpopular or
unfashionable it may be.

I am convinced that the natives of India cannot respect a European who
mixes with them familiarly, or especially who imitates their customs,
manners, and dress. The tight pantaloons, the authoritative voice, the
pococurante manner, and the broken Hindustani impose upon them-have a
weight which learning and honesty, which wit and courage, have not.
This is to them the master's attitude: they bend to it like those
Scythian slaves that faced the sword but fled from the horsewhip. Such
would never be the case amongst a brave people, the Afghan for
instance; and for the same reason it is not so, we read, with "White
Plume," the North American Indian. "The free trapper combines in the
eye of an Indian (American) girl, all that is dashing and heroic in a
warrior of her own race, whose gait and garb and bravery he emulates,
with all that is gallant and glorious in the white man." There is but
one cause for this phenomenon; the "imbelles Indi" are still, with few
exceptions,[FN#17] a cowardly and slavish people, who would raise
themselves by depreciating those superior to them in the scale of
creation. The Afghans and American aborigines, being chivalrous races,
rather exaggerate the valour of their foes, because by so doing they
exalt their own.[FN#18]

[FN#1] Villages notorious for the peculiar Egyptian revelry, an
undoubted relic of the good old times, when "the most religious of men"
revelled at Canopus with an ardent piety in honour of Isis and Osiris.
[FN#2] "Haykal" was a pleasant fellow, who, having basely abused the
confidence of the fair ones of Wardan, described their charms in
sarcastic verse, and stuck his scroll upon the door of the village
mosque, taking at the same time the wise precaution to change his
lodgings without delay. The very mention of his name affronts the brave
Wardanenses to the last extent, making them savage as Oxford bargees.
[FN#3] The Barrage is a handsome bridge,-putting the style of
architecture out of consideration,-the work of French engineers,
originally projected by Napoleon the First. It was intended to act as a
dam, raising the waters of the Nile and conducting them to Suez, the
salt lakes, and a variety of other places, through a number of canals,
which, however, have not yet been opened. Meanwhile, it acts upon the
river's trunk as did the sea of old upon its embouchures, blocking it
up and converting the land around it to the condition of a swamp.
Moreover, it would have cleaned out the bed by means of sluice gates,
forming an artificial increase of current to draw off the deposit; but
the gates are wanting, so the piers, serving only to raise the soil by
increasing the deposit of silt, collect and detain suspended matter,
which otherwise would not settle. Briefly, by a trifling expenditure
the Barrage might be made a blessing to Egypt; in its present state it
is a calamity, an "enormous, cruel wonder," more crushing to the people
than were the pyramids and sphinxes of old.
[FN#4] Those skilled in simples, Eastern as well as Western, praise
garlic highly, declaring that it "strengthens the body, prepares the
constitution for fatigue, brightens the sight, and, by increasing the
digestive power, obviates the ill-effects arising from sudden change of
air and water." The traveller inserts it into his dietary in some
pleasant form, as "Provence-butter," because he observes that, wherever
fever and ague abound, the people, ignorant of cause but observant of
effect, make it a common article of food. The old Egyptians highly
esteemed this vegetable, which, with onions and leeks, enters into the
list of articles so much regretted by the Hebrews (Numbers, xi. 5;
Koran, chap. 2). The modern people of the Nile, like the Spaniards,
delight in onions, which, as they contain between 25 and 30 per cent.
of gluten, are highly nutritive. In Arabia, however, the stranger must
use this vegetable sparingly. The city people despise it as the food of
a Fellah-a boor. The Wahhabis have a prejudice against onions, leeks,
and garlic, because the Prophet disliked their strong smell, and all
strict Moslems refuse to eat them immediately before visiting the
mosque, or meeting for public prayer.
[FN#5] A policeman; see Chap. I.
[FN#6] The stricter sort of Moslems, such as the Arabs, will not wear
gold ornaments, which are forbidden by their law.
[FN#7] See "The Gold Mines of Midian," and "The Land of Midian
(Revisited)," by Sir R. F. Burton.
[FN#8] The projecting latticed window, made of wood richly carved, for
which Cairo was once so famous. But they are growing out of fashion
with young Egypt, disappearing before heating glass and unsightly green
blinds.
[FN#9] Caste in India arises from the peculiarly sociable nature of the
native mind, for which reason "it is found existing among sects whose
creeds are as different and as opposite as those of the Hindu and the
Christian." (B. A. Irving's Prize Essay on the Theory and Practice of
Caste.) Hence, nothing can be more terrible to a man than expulsion
from caste; the excommunication of our feudal times was not a more
dreadful form of living death.
[FN#10] With us every man's house is his castle. But caste divides a
people into huge families, each member of which has a right to know
everything about his "caste-brother," because a whole body might be
polluted and degraded by the act of an individual. Hence, there is no
such thing as domestic privacy, and no system of espionnage devised by
rulers could be so complete as that self-imposed by the Hindus.
[FN#11] The Calcutta Review (No. 41), noticing "L'Inde sous la
Domination Anglaise," by the Baron Barchou de Penhoën, delivers the
following sentiment: "Whoever states, as the Baron B. de P. states and
repeats, again and again, that the natives generally entertain a bad
opinion of the Europeans generally, states what is decidedly untrue."
The reader will observe that I differ as decidedly from the Reviewer's
opinion. Popular feeling towards the English in India was "at first one
of fear, afterwards of horror: Hindus and Hindis (Moslems) considered
the strangers a set of cow-eaters and fire-drinkers, tetrae beluae ac
molossis suis ferociores, who would fight like Iblis, cheat their own
fathers, and exchange with the same readiness a broadside of shots and
thrusts of boarding-pikes, or a bale of goods and a bag of rupees."
(Rev. Mr. Anderson-The English in Western India.) We have risen in a
degree above such a low standard of estimation; still, incredible as it
may appear to the Frank himself, it is no less true, that the Frank
everywhere in the East is considered a contemptible being, and
dangerous withal. As regards Indian opinion concerning our government,
my belief is, that in and immediately about the three presidencies,
where the people owe everything to and hold everything by our rule, it
is most popular. At the same time I am convinced that in other places
the people would most willingly hail any change. And how can we hope it
to be otherwise,-we, a nation of strangers, aliens to the country's
customs and creed, who, even while resident in India, act the part
which absentees do in other lands? Where, in the history of the world,
do we read that such foreign dominion ever made itself loved?
[FN#12] This was written three years before the Indian Mutiny. I also
sent into the Court of Directors a much stronger report-for which I
duly suffered.
[FN#13] In the Arabic "Muruwwat," generosity, the noble part of human
nature, the qualities which make a man.
[FN#14] "For medicine," means for an especial purpose, an urgent
occasion.
[FN#15] "Allah Karim!" said to a beggar when you do not intend to be
bountiful.
[FN#16] Read an account of Tipu Sahib's treatment of his French
employes. If Rangit Singh behaved better to his European officers, it
was only on account of his paramount fear and hatred of the British.
The Panjabi story of the old lion's death is amusing enough, contrasted
with that Anglomania of which so much has been said and written. When
the Sikh king, they declare, heard of our success in Afghanistan-he had
allowed us a passage through his dominions, as ingress into a deadly
trap-his spirits (metaphorically and literally) failed him; he had not
the heart to drink, he sickened and he died.
[FN#17] The Rajputs, for instance, "whose land has ever been the focus
of Indian chivalry, and the home of Indian heroes."
[FN#18] As my support against the possible, or rather the probable,
imputation of "extreme opinions," I hold up the honoured name of the
late Sir Henry Elliot (Preface to the Biographical Index to the
Historians of Mohammedan India). "These idle vapourers (bombastic
Babus, and other such political ranters), should learn that the sacred
spark of patriotism is exotic here, and can never fall on a mine that
can explode; for history will show them that certain peculiarities of
physical, as well as moral organisation, neither to be strengthened by
diet nor improved by education, have hitherto prevented their ever
attempting a national independence; which will continue to exist to
them but as a name, and as an offscouring of college declamations."

[p.41]CHAPTER IV.

LIFE IN THE WAKALAH.

THE "Wakalah," as the Caravanserai or Khan is called in Egypt, combines
the offices of hotel, lodging-house, and store. It is at Cairo, as at
Constantinople, a massive pile of buildings surrounding a quadrangular
"Hosh" or court-yard. On the ground-floor are rooms like caverns for
merchandise, and shops of different kinds-tailors, cobblers, bakers,
tobacconists, fruiterers, and others. A roofless gallery or a covered
verandah, into which all the apartments open, runs round the first and
sometimes the second story: the latter, however, is usually exposed to
the sun and wind. The accommodations consist of sets of two or three
rooms, generally an inner one and an outer; the latter contains a
hearth for cooking, a bathing-place, and similar necessaries. The
staircases are high, narrow, and exceedingly dirty; dark at night, and
often in bad repair; a goat or donkey is tethered upon the different
landings; here and there a fresh skin is stretched in process of
tanning, and the smell reminds the veteran traveller of those closets
in the old French

[p.42]inns where cat used to be prepared for playing the part of jugged
hare. The interior is unfurnished; even the pegs upon which clothes are
hung have been pulled down for fire-wood: the walls are bare but for
stains, thick cobwebs depend in festoons from the blackened rafters of
the ceiling, and the stone floor would disgrace a civilised prison: the
windows are huge apertures carefully barred with wood or iron, and in
rare places show remains of glass or paper pasted over the framework.
In the court-yard the poorer sort of travellers consort with tethered
beasts of burden, beggars howl, and slaves lie basking and scratching
themselves upon mountainous heaps of cotton bales and other merchandise.

This is not a tempting picture, yet is the Wakalah a most amusing
place, presenting a succession of scenes which would delight lovers of
the Dutch school-a rich exemplification of the grotesque, and what is
called by artists the "dirty picturesque."

I could find no room in the Wakalah Khan Khalil, the Long's, or
Meurice's of native Cairo; I was therefore obliged to put up with the
Jamaliyah, a Greek quarter, swarming with drunken Christians, and
therefore about as fashionable as Oxford Street or Covent Garden. Even
for this I had to wait a week. The pilgrims were flocking to Cairo, and
to none other would the prudent hotel keepers open their doors, for the
following sufficient reasons. When you enter a Wakalah, the first thing
you have to do is to pay a small sum, varying from two to five
shillings, for the Miftah (the key). This is generally equivalent to a
month's rent; so the sooner you leave the house the better for it. I
was obliged to call myself a Turkish pilgrim in order to get possession
of two most comfortless rooms, which I afterwards learned were
celebrated for making travellers ill; and I had to pay eighteen
piastres for the key and eighteen ditto per mensem for

[p.43]rent, besides five piastres to the man who swept and washed the
place. So that for this month my house-hire amounted to nearly four
pence a day.

But I was fortunate enough in choosing the Jamaliyah Wakalah, for I
found a friend there. On board the steamer a fellow-voyager, seeing me
sitting alone and therefore as he conceived in discomfort, placed
himself by my side and opened a hot fire of kind inquiries. He was a
man about forty-five, of middle size, with a large round head closely
shaven, a bull-neck, limbs sturdy as a Saxon's, a thin red beard, and
handsome features beaming with benevolence. A curious dry humour he
had, delighting in "quizzing," but in so quiet, solemn, and quaint a
way that before you knew him you could scarcely divine his drift.

"Thank Allah, we carry a doctor!" said my friend more than once, with
apparent fervour of gratitude, after he had discovered my profession. I
was fairly taken in by the pious ejaculation, and some days elapsed
before the drift of his remark became apparent.

"You doctors," he explained, when we were more intimate, "what do you
do? A man goes to you for ophthalmia: it is a purge, a blister, and a
drop in the eye! Is it for fever? well! a purge and kinakina (quinine).
For dysentery? a purge and extract of opium. Wa'llahi! I am as good a
physician as the best of you," he would add with a broad grin, "if I
only knew the Dirham-birhams,[FN#1]-drams and drachms,-and a few
break-jaw Arabic names of diseases."

Haji Wali[FN#2] therefore emphatically advised me to

[p.44]make bread by honestly teaching languages. "We are
doctor-ridden," said he, and I found it was the case.

When we lived under the same roof, the Haji and I became fast friends.
During the day we called on each other frequently, we dined together,
and passed the evening in a Mosque, or some other place of public
pastime. Coyly at first, but less guardedly as we grew bolder, we
smoked the forbidden weed "Hashish,[FN#3]" conversing lengthily the
while about that world of which I had seen so much. Originally from
Russia, he also had been a traveller, and in his wanderings he had cast
off most of the prejudices of his people. "I believe in Allah and his
Prophet, and in nothing else," was his sturdy creed; he rejected
alchemy, jinnis and magicians, and truly he had a most unoriental
distaste for tales of wonder. When I entered the Wakalah, he
constituted himself my cicerone, and especially guarded me against the
cheating of trades-men. By his advice I laid aside the Darwaysh's gown,
the large blue pantaloons, and the short shirt; in fact all connection
with Persia and the Persians. "If you persist in being an 'Ajami," said
the Haji, "you will get yourself into trouble; in Egypt you will be
cursed; in Arabia you will be beaten because you are a heretic; you
will pay the treble of what other travellers do, and if you fall sick
you may die by the roadside." After long deliberation about

[p.45]the choice of nations, I became a "Pathan.[FN#4]" Born in India
of Afghan parents, who had settled in the country, educated at Rangoon,
and sent out to wander, as men of that race frequently are, from early
youth, I was well guarded against the danger of detection by a
fellow-countryman. To support the character requires a knowledge of
Persian, Hindustani and Arabic, all of which I knew sufficiently well
to pass muster; any trifling inaccuracy was charged upon my long
residence at Rangoon. This was an important step; the first question at
the shop, on the camel, and in the Mosque, is "What is thy name?" the
second, "Whence comest thou?" This is not generally impertinent, or
intended to be annoying; if, however, you see any evil intention in the
questioner, you may rather roughly ask him, "What may be his maternal
parent's name?"-equivalent to enquiring, Anglice, in what church his
mother was married,-and escape your difficulties under cover of the
storm. But this is rarely necessary. I assumed the polite, pliant
manners of an Indian physician, and the dress of a small Effendi (or
gentleman), still, however, representing myself to be a Darwaysh, and
frequenting the places where Darwayshes congregate. "What business,"
asked the Haji, "have those reverend men with politics or statistics,
or any of the information which you are collecting? Call yourself a
religious wanderer if you like, and let those who ask the object of
your peregrinations know that you are under a vow to visit all the holy
places in Al-Islam. Thus you will persuade them that you are a

[p.46]man of rank under a cloud, and you will receive much more
civility than perhaps you deserve," concluded my friend with a dry
laugh. The remark proved his sagacity; and after ample experience I had
not to repent having been guided by his advice.

Haji Wali, by profession a merchant at Alexandria, had accompanied
Khudabakhsh, the Indian, to Cairo on law-business. He soon explained
his affairs to me, and as his case brought out certain Oriental
peculiarities in a striking light, with his permission I offer a few of
its details.

My friend was defendant in a suit instituted against him in H.B.M.'s
Consular Court, Cairo, by one Mohammed Shafi'a, a scoundrel of the
first water. This man lived, and lived well, by setting up in business
at places where his name was not known; he enticed the unwary by artful
displays of capital; and, after succeeding in getting credit, he
changed residence, carrying off all he could lay hands upon. But
swindling is a profession of personal danger in uncivilised countries,
where law punishes pauper debtors by a short imprisonment; and where
the cheated prefer to gratify their revenge by the cudgel or the knife.
So Mohammed Shafi'a, after a few narrow escapes, hit upon a prime
expedient. Though known to be a native of Bokhara-he actually signed
himself so in his letters, and his appearance at once bespoke his
origin,-he determined to protect himself by a British passport. Our
officials are sometimes careless enough in distributing these
documents, and by so doing they expose themselves to a certain loss of
reputation at Eastern courts[FN#5]; still Mohammed Shafi'a

[p.47]found some difficulties in effecting his fraud. To recount all
his Reynardisms would weary the reader; suffice it to say that by
proper management of the subalterns in the consulate, he succeeded
without ruining himself. Armed with this new defence, he started boldly
for Jeddah on the Arabian coast. Having entered into partnership with
Haji Wali, whose confidence he had won by prayers, fastings, and
pilgrimages, he openly trafficked in slaves, sending them to Alexandria
for sale, and writing with matchless impudence to his correspondent
that he would dispose of them in person, but for fear of losing his
British passport and protection.

Presently an unlucky adventure embroiled this worthy British subject
with Faraj Yusuf, the principal merchant of Jeddah, and also an English
protege. Fearing so powerful an adversary, Mohammed Shafi'a packed up
his spoils and departed for Egypt. Presently he quarrels with his
former partner, thinking him a soft man, and claims from him a debt of
L165. He supports his pretensions by a document and four witnesses, who
are ready to swear that the receipt in question was "signed, sealed,
and delivered" by Haji Wali. The latter adduces his books to show that
accounts have been settled, and can prove that the witnesses in
question are paupers, therefore, not legal; moreover, that each has
received from the plaintiff two dollars, the price of perjury.

[p.48]Now had such a suit been carried into a Turkish court of justice,
it would very sensibly have been settled by the bastinado, for Haji
Wali was a respectable merchant, and Mohammed Shafi'a a notorious
swindler. But the latter was a British subject, which notably
influenced the question. The more to annoy his adversary, he went up to
Cairo, and began proceedings there, hoping by this acute step to
receive part payment of his demand.

Arrived at Cairo, Mohammed Shafi'a applied himself stoutly to the task
of bribing all who could be useful to him, distributing shawls and
piastres with great generosity. He secured the services of an efficient
lawyer; and, determining to enlist heaven itself in his cause, he
passed the Ramazan ostentatiously; he fasted, and he slaughtered sheep
to feed the poor.

Meanwhile Haji Wali, a simple truth-telling man, who could never master
the rudiments of that art which teaches man to blow hot and to blow
cold with the same breath, had been persuaded to visit Cairo by
Khudabakhsh, the wily Indian, who promised to introduce him to
influential persons, and to receive him in his house till he could
provide himself with a lodging at the Wakalah. But Mohammed Shafi'a,
who had once been in partnership with the Indian, and who possibly knew
more than was fit to meet the public ear, found this out; and, partly
by begging, partly by bullying, persuaded Khudabakhsh to transfer the
influential introductions to himself. Then the Hakim[FN#6]
Abdullah-your humble servant-appears upon the scene: he has travelled
in Feringistan, he has seen many men and their cities, he becomes an
intimate and an adviser of the Haji, and he finds out evil passages in
Mohammed Shafi'a's life. Upon which Khudabakhsh ashamed, or rather
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 a

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/4657