THE HASSANIYEH.
We are come to a branch of the Arabs called the Hassaniyeh, who inhabit a large tract of land south of Khartoum. They are paler in complexion than those of whom we have already treated, having a decided tinge of yellow in their skins. They are slight, tall and straight-featured. The men part their hair in the middle, plait it into long braids, and fasten it at the back of the head, so that they have rather a feminine aspect.
The villages of the Hassaniyeh are mere assemblages of slight huts, circular in shape, and having conical roofs, with a hole in the centre by way of a chimney. The walls are made of sticks and reeds, and the roofs of straw, and at a little distance the huts look more like tents than houses. Each hut is surrounded with a fence of thorns.
As among other Arab tribes, the sheikh’s house is much larger and better than those of the commonalty, and is divided into several chambers. Sometimes a sort of second hut is placed in the interior, is made of fine yellow grass, and is inhabited by the women. Now and then a sheikh has his tent covered with camel’s-hair cloth, and one of them, seen by Mr. Bayard Taylor, was thirty feet in length, and contained two inner chambers. The walls were covered with skins, gourds, and similar articles; the principal chamber contained a large bedstead or angarep; and the cloth roof was decorated with great quantities of cowrie shells, sewed upon it in crosses, stars, and other patterns.
The people have some very strange customs, among which is one that is almost peculiar to themselves, though an analogous custom prevails in one or two parts of the world. A woman when she marries does not merge her identity entirely in that of her husband, but reserves to herself one-fourth of her life. Consequently, on every fourth day she is released from her marriage vows; and, if she happens to take a fancy to any man, the favored lover may live with her for four-and-twenty hours, during which time the husband may not enter the hut. With this curious exception, the Hassaniyeh women are not so immoral as those of many parts of the world. When a traveller passes through the country, they are bound to fulfil the rites of hospitality by assigning him a house during the time of his visit, and lending him a wife for the same period. Mr. Taylor suggests that if the Hassaniyeh would also lend him a family of children their generosity would be complete.
When a stranger of rank visits their domains, they perform a curious dance of welcome by way of salutation. Mr. Bayard Taylor has well described one of these dances which he witnessed on his voyage to Khartoum. He had won the hearts of the people by presenting them with a handful of tobacco and fourpence in copper. “In a short time I received word that the women of the village would come to perform a dance of welcome and salutation, if I would allow them. As the wind was blowing strongly against us and the sailors had not finished skinning the sheep, I had my carpet spread on the sand in the shade of a group of mimosas, and awaited their arrival.
“Presently we heard a sound of shrill singing and the clapping of hands in measured beat, and discerned the procession advancing slowly through the trees. They came two by two, nearly thirty in all, singing a shrill, piercing chorus, which sounded more like lamentation than greeting.
“When they had arrived in front of me, they ranged themselves into a semicircle, with their faces toward me, and, still clapping their hands to mark the rhythm of the song, she who stood in the centre stepped forth, with her breast heaved almost to a level with her face, which was thrown back, and advanced with a slow undulating motion, till she had reached the edge of my carpet. Then, with a quick jerk, she reversed the curve of her body, throwing her head forward and downward, so that the multitude of her long twists of black hair, shining with butter, brushed my cap. This was intended as a salutation and sign of welcome; I bowed my head at the same time, and she went back to her place in the ranks.
“After a pause the chorus was resumed and another advanced, and so in succession, till all had saluted me, a ceremony which occupied an hour. They were nearly all young, between the ages of fourteen and twenty, and some were strikingly beautiful. They had the dark-olive Arab complexion, with regular features, teeth of pearly whiteness, and black, brilliant eyes. The coarse cotton robe thrown over one shoulder left free the arms, neck, and breasts, which were exquisitely moulded. Their bare feet and ankles were as slender as those of the Venus of Cleomenes.”
All the women took their part successively in this curious dance, and by far the most beautiful and graceful of them was the wife of the sheikh, a young woman barely twenty years old, with features compared by Mr. Taylor to those of Guido’s Cleopatra, the broad round forehead, full oval face, and regal bearing all adding to the resemblance. Her hair was plaited into at least fifty braids, and was thickly plastered with butter, and upon her head was a diadem of white beads. She moved with a stately grace down the line, and so charmed were the guests with her mode of performing the curious salutation, that she repeated it several times for their gratification.
Even the men took part in the dance, and one of them, a splendid example of the purest Arab blood, possessed so perfect a form, and moved in the dance with such entire and absolute grace, that he even drew away the traveller’s attention from the women.
We now come to some of the manners and customs of the Arabs, which are not restricted to certain tribes, but are characteristic of the Arab nature. Some of them are remarkable for the fact that they have survived through many centuries, and have resisted the influence of a comparatively new religion, and the encroachments of a gradually advancing civilization.
As may be expected, their superstitions have undergone but little change, and the learned and most civilized Arab acknowledges their power in his heart as well as the ignorant and half-savage Arab who never saw a book or entered a house. He will not openly admit that he believes in these superstitions, but he does believe in them very firmly, and betrays his belief in a thousand ways. Educated though he be, he has a lingering faith in the efficacy of written charms; and if he should happen to see in the possession of another man a scrap of paper covered with characters he does not understand, he will feel uneasy as often as the mysterious writing occurs to him. Should he get such a piece of paper into his own possession, he cherishes it fondly, and takes care to conceal it from others.
In consequence of this widely-diffused superstition, travellers have passed safely through large tracts of country, meeting with various tribes of Arabs, all at variance with each other, in true Arab fashion, and yet have managed to propitiate them by the simple process of writing a sentence or two of any language on a scrap of paper. One favorite form of the “saphiès,” as these written charms are called, exhibits a curious mixture of medicine and literature. A man who is ill, or who wants a charm to prevent him from being ill, brings to the saphiè writer a smooth board, a pen and ink. The saphiè is written on the board, and the happy possessor takes it home, washes off every vestige of the writing, and then drinks the blackened water.
Even at the present day, the whole of the Arabian tribes have the full and implicit belief in the Jinns, Efreets, Ghouls, and other superhuman beings, that forms the chief element in the “Arabian Nights.” This belief is inbred with them, and no amount of education can drive it out of them. They do not parade this belief, nor try to conceal it, but accept the existence of these beings as an acknowledged fact which no one would dream of disputing.
According to their ideas, every well has its peculiar spirit, mostly an efreet or semi-evil genius, and every old tower is peopled with them, and there is scarcely a house that has not at least one spirit inmate. Many of the Arabs say that they have seen and conversed with the efreets, and relate very curious adventures. Generally, the efreet is harmless enough, if he be only let alone, but sometimes he becomes so troublesome that strong measures must be used. What was done in the way of exorcism before the discovery of fire-arms is not known, but in the present day, when an efreet can be seen, he can be destroyed by a bullet as if he were a human being.
Mr. Lane relates a most curious story of such an encounter. It is so interesting, and is so well told, that nothing but our very limited space prevents its insertion. The gist of it, however, is as follows:—
An European lady had been looking after a house in Cairo, and at last had found a very handsome one, with a large garden, for a very low rent—scarcely more than £12 per annum. She took the house, which pleased her well enough, though it did not have the same effect on the maid-servants, all of whom left it as soon as possible. At last the reason came out. The house was haunted by an efreet, which lived mostly in the bath, and at night used to go about the house, banging at the doors, knocking against the walls, and making such a perpetual riot that he had frightened tenant after tenant out of it, and kept the house to himself. The family had heard the noises, but attributed them to the festivities which had been going on for some time at the next house.
In spite of the change of servants, the noises continued, and rather increased than decreased in violence. “Very frequently the door of the room in which we were sitting, late in the evening within two or three hours of midnight, was violently knocked at many short intervals. At other times it seemed as if something very heavy fell upon the pavement, close under the windows of the same room or one adjoining; and, as these rooms were on the top of the house, we imagined at first that some stones or other things had been thrown by a neighbor, but we could find nothing outside after the noise I have mentioned. The usual sounds continued during the greater part of the night, and were generally varied with a heavy tramping, like the walking of a person in large clogs, varied by knocking at the doors of many of the apartments, and at the large water-jars, which are placed in recesses in the galleries.”
During the fast of Ramadhan the house was free from noises, as efreets are supposed to be imprisoned during that season, but as soon as it was over they recommenced with added violence. After a while, the efreet began to make himself visible, and a new door-keeper was greatly amazed by hearing and seeing the figure walking nightly round the gallery. He begged to be allowed to fire at it, and at last he was permitted to do so, provided that he only used blank cartridge. The man, however, not only put balls into his pistol, but loaded it with two bullets and a double charge of powder. Just about midnight the report of the pistol rang through the house, followed by the voice of the door-keeper, crying out, “There he lies, the accursed!” and accompanied by sounds as of a a wounded creature struggling and gasping for breath.
The man continued to call to his fellow-servants to come up, and the master of the house ran at once to the spot. The door-keeper said that the efreet had appeared in his usual shape, a tall white figure, and on being asked to leave the house, refused to do so. He then passed as usual down the passage, when the man fired at him and struck him down. “Here,” said he, “are the remains.” So saying, he picked up, under the spot where the bullets had entered the wall, a small mass of something that looked like scorched leather, perforated by fire in several places, and burnt to a cinder. This, it appears, is always the relic which is left when an efreet is destroyed. Ever afterward the house was free from disturbance.
The reader will notice the curious resemblance to the efreet stories in the “Arabian Nights,” more especially to the story of the Second Calender, in which the efreet and the princess who fought him were both reduced to ashes. The idea, too, of the wells being inhabited by efreets repeatedly occurs in those wonderful tales.
Another curious tale of the efreet was told to Mr. Taylor by an Arab of some rank. He was walking one night near Cairo, when he saw a donkey near him. The animal seemed to be without an owner, and, as he happened to be rather tired, he mounted, and rode on his way pleasantly. In a short time, however, he became startled by finding that the donkey was larger than it was when he mounted it, and no sooner had he made this discovery than the animal increased rapidly in size, and in a few minutes was as large as a camel. Of course he was horribly frightened, but he remembered that a disguised efreet could be detected by wounding him with a sharp instrument. Accordingly, he cautiously drew his dagger, and was about to plunge it into the animal’s back. The efreet, however, was too clever for him, and, as soon as he saw the dagger, suddenly shrunk to his former size, kicked off his rider, and vanished with a peal of laughter and the exclamation, “Oh, you want to ride, do you?”
According to the Arab belief, the spirit of man is bound to pass a certain time on earth, and a natural death is the token of reaching that time. Should he be killed by violence, his spirit haunts the spot where his body was buried, and remains there until the term on earth has been fulfilled. The same Arab told Mr. Taylor that for many years, whenever he passed by night over the place where Napoleon defeated the Mamelukes, the noise of battle was heard, the shouts of the soldiers, the cries of the wounded, and the groans of the dying. At first the sounds were loud, as of a multitude; but year by year they gradually decreased, as the time of earthly sojourn expired, and at the time when he told the story but few could be heard.
Among some of the tribes they have a rather odd superstition. A traveller was struck with the tastefulness of a young girl’s headdress, and wanted to buy it. She was willing enough to sell it for the liberal price which was offered, but her father prohibited the sale, on the ground that from the headdress could be made a charm which would force the girl to fly to the possessor, no matter in what part of the world he might be.
It is not wonderful that, saturated as they are with these ideas, many of the wonders of nature appear to them to be of supernatural origin. Chief among them is that extraordinary phenomenon, the mirage, in which a place far below the horizon is suddenly made visible, and appears to be close at hand. Even in our own country we have had examples of the mirage, though not in so striking a manner as is often seen among the sandy plains of Arabia. Water is a favorite subject of the mirage, and the traveller, as he passes over the burning plains, sees before him a rolling river or a vast lake, the palm trees waving on its edge and reflected on its surface, and the little wavelets rippling along as driven by the wind. Beasts as well as men see it, and it is hardly possible to restrain the thirsty camels from rushing to the seeming water.
The Arabs call the mirage, “Water of the Jinns,” and believe that it is an illusion caused by the jinns—our old friends the geni of “The Arabian Nights.” A very vivid account of this phenomenon is given in St. John’s “Egypt and Nubia:”—
“I had been riding along in a reverie, when, chancing to raise my head, I thought I perceived, desertward, a dark strip on the far horizon. What could it be? My companion, who had very keen sight, was riding in advance of me, and, with a sudden exclamation, he pulled up his dromedary and gazed in the same direction. I called to him, and asked him what he thought of yonder strip, and whether he could make out anything in it distinctly. He answered that water had all at once appeared there; that he saw the motion of the waves, and tall palms and other trees bending up and down over them, as if tossed by a strong wind. An Arab was at my side, with his face muffled up in his burnous; I roused his attention, and pointed to the object of our inquiry. ‘Mashallah!’ cried the old man, with a face as if he had seen a ghost, and stared with all his might across the desert.
“All the other Arabs of the party evinced no less emotion; and our interpreter called out to us, that what we saw was the evil spirit of the desert, that led travellers astray, luring them farther and farther into the heart of the waste, ever retreating before them as they pursued it, and not finally disappearing till its deluded victims had irrecoverably lost themselves in the pathless sands. This, then, was the mirage. My companion galloped toward it, and we followed him, though the Arabs tried to prevent us, and erelong I could with my own eyes discern something of this strange phenomenon. It was, as my friend reported, a broad sheet of water, with fresh green trees along its banks; and yet there was nothing actually before us but parched yellow sand. The apparition occasioned us all very uncomfortable feelings, and yet we congratulated ourselves in having seen for once the desert wonder.
“The phenomenon really deserves the name the Arabs give it, of Goblin of the Desert; an evil spirit that beguiles the wanderer from the safe path, and mocks him with a false show of what his heated brain paints in glowing colors. Whence comes it that this illusion at first fills with uneasiness—I might even say with dismay—those even who ascribe its existence to natural causes? On a spot where the bare sands spread out for hundreds of miles, where there is neither tree nor shrub, nor a trace of water, there suddenly appeared before us groups of tall trees, proudly girdling the running stream, on whose waves we saw the sunbeams dancing. Hills clad in pleasant green rose before us and vanished; small houses, and towns with high walls and ramparts, were visible among the trees, whose tall boles swayed to and fro in the wind like reeds.
“Far as we rode in the direction of the apparition, we never came any nearer to it; the whole seemed to recoil step by step with our advance. We halted, and remained long in contemplation of the magic scene, until whatever was unpleasant in its strangeness ceased by degrees to affect us. Never had I seen any landscape so vivid as this seeming one, never water so bright, or trees so softly green, so tall and stately. Everything seemed far more charming there than in the real world; and so strongly did we feel this attraction that, although we were not driven by thirst to seek for water where water there was none, still we would willingly have followed on and on after the phantom; and thus we could well perceive how the despairing wanderer, who with burning eyes thinks he gazes on water and human dwellings, will struggle onward to his last gasp to reach them, until his fearful, lonely doom befalls him.” This singular illusion and its effect upon travellers is well [illustrated] by the artist, on the 679th page.
“We returned slowly to our Arabs, who had not stirred from the spot where we left them. Looking back once more into the desert, we saw the apparition gradually becoming fainter, until at last it melted away into a dim land, not unlike a thin mist sweeping over the face of a field (Hochländer). It was probably this phenomenon, which is beheld as well in Hadramaut and Yemen as in the deserts of Egypt, which gave rise to the fable of the Garden of Irem, described in the story of the Phantom Camel, in the ‘Tales of the Ramad’han.’”
I cannot part from the Arab superstitions without mentioning one which is of very great antiquity, and which has spread itself widely over the world. I allude to the celebrated ink-mirror of the Arab magicians, in which they see, through the eyes of another, the events of the future and the forms of persons far distant.
The mirror is made as follows:—The magician calls a very young boy, not old enough, according to their ideas, to be tainted with sin, and makes him sit on the ground. The magician sits opposite him, holding the boy’s opened right hand in his, and after repeating prayers, and burning incense, he draws a crossed square on the palm of the hand—thus
—writes cabalistic words in all the angles, and pours about a spoonful of ink into the centre. More prayers and suffumigations follow, and the boy is then directed to look closely into the ink. Should he be really pure, and a fit subject for the magic art, he sees a series of figures, always beginning with a man sweeping the ground, and ending with a camp, with the sultan’s tent and flag in the centre. These vanish, and the mirror is left clear for any figure which may be invoked.
All parties seem to have the most implicit belief in the proceeding; and though several boys in succession may fail to see anything but the reflection of their own faces, the failure is set down to their bad moral character, and others are tried until one is found who possesses the requisite vision. It is a curious fact that the magician himself never pretends to this inner sight, the sins which he has committed being an effectual hindrance. Educated Europeans have often witnessed this curious ceremony, and have given different accounts of it. With some it has been an utter failure, the boy evidently trying to deceive, and inventing, according to his ability, scenes which are supposed to be represented in the mirror. With others it has been as singular a success, European scenes and persons have been described accurately by the boy, though the greatest care was taken that no clue should be given either to the magician or the boy.