I.—HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF THE EAST.
(Under the Direction of Professor E. H. Palmer.)
Colonel Malleson certainly did well to claim permission to rewrite Sir John Kaye’s last volume (History of the Indian Mutiny, by Colonel Malleson, Vol. I., London: W. H. Allen & Co.), and comparison of the two may afford to the historian of the future valuable aid in interpreting the volumes yet to come. A great part of the present must be held to be the work of the virulent pamphleteer and violent partisan rather than of the historian; and if the quotations of, and references to, the Red Pamphlet indicate relations between Colonel Malleson and its author, the publishers cannot be held to have exercised a wise discretion in their choice.
The task of the reviewer of such a book is unusually heavy. Book for book, almost chapter for chapter, it is intended to replace Sir John Kaye’s work, and the reviewer therefore needs to study the two carefully, and to compare them minutely. Colonel Malleson, no doubt, had access to Sir John Kaye’s materials, but within a certain field seems to have been unable to see the other side of any question. To arm, to leave Sepoys armed, is simply to detain European troops to watch them; it is nothing that to disarm them is to drive them, and all their connections, wild with terror as sheep marked for the slaughter; yet he cannot be ignorant of the cases in which a few bad men committed a regiment, and how whole regiments “went” in terror of their masters’ vengeful distrust.[105] In saying, as he does so confidently, that by enrolling the Calcutta Volunteers on their first offer, on 20th May, Lord Canning would have set free half a European regiment, Colonel Malleson must have been thinking of what the Volunteers might have been fit to do had they been enrolled and drilled six months before,—provided they had been willing to take the day-work of garrison duty, and to think more of the State than of the house and furniture at Ballygunj: the real profit of the enrolment was the confidence and cheerfulness organization gave to the Europeans themselves. And—to take a more important instance—the “Gagging Act” was an insolent expression of distrust of Englishmen, an attempt to prevent their opinions reaching England in print. For distrust of their discretion English editors had given cause enough, and for influencing English opinion, as Indian newspapers may be said to be unknown in England in their original sheets, a letter from the editor of the Friend of India to any English paper would have been as sure of English readers, and of as much weight with them, as if it had been set up in the damp printing-house at Serampore.
Colonel Malleson quotes from the “Red Pamphlet,” as Sir John Kaye had done before him, a smart description of “Panic Sunday.” From Colonel Cavanagh’s report it seems pretty clear that the higher classes—the “society”—of Calcutta were not among the refugees in the fort, and as Secretaries to Government and Members of Council may be counted on the fingers, it would be as well if the historian would name the fugitives before death takes all who could answer the charge. We have had access to the diary of a young civilian, then a guest of the Member of Council who lived furthest from Government House, away in Alipore, beyond the house of the Lieutenant-Governor and the great jail of Alipore and the lines of the native regiment which was the great terror of Calcutta: on that Sunday, host and guest went to the Cathedral twice as usual, and after the evening service the guest returned home, while the host drove to Calcutta to call on some cousins; as the cousins had driven to Alipore, and the visitors at both houses waited a while those households at least were afoot till a later hour than usual, and at last went to bed as usual without closing an extra door.
The second chapter closes with an impassioned peroration, wherein the removal of Mr. William Tayler from his post at Patna is likened to the judicial murder of Lally, and the starvation of Dupleix. It is clear enough, from Colonel Malleson’s account, that Mr. Tayler liked to carry out his own plans too well to risk interference by over-frankness to his superiors. In the face of an enemy such concealment may be as mischievous as disobedience, and Sir John Kaye reminds us that at an earlier date confidence in Mr. Tayler’s judgment had been shaken; and his report of his message to his district officers, the report which immediately preceded, and probably led to, his suspension, says nothing of the clause which sets the treasure above anything save human life. Under any circumstances Mr. Tayler’s defence is not helped by sharp censures on Mr. Money, or by blindness to the fact that the best intelligence made a march to Patna seem more perilous than the far longer one through a jungle country to Calcutta. Wise after the event, indeed, we may see that Mr. Tayler’s forecast was sounder than Mr. Halliday’s; but the Lieutenant-Governor, and Lord Canning too, could only act on the circumstances known to them, and Mr. Tayler was replaced by an officer of yet higher rank in the official hierarchy, and probably forestalled renewed promotion by resigning the Service as soon as he could get a pension. But why were not his services rewarded? asks Colonel Malleson, ready with the hard word “intrigue.” But who were the sharers in the intrigue, and who was to profit by it? Men whom Lord Canning sharply rebuked and degraded were yet recommended by him for honour, and no courteous letter from Mr. Talbot can do away with the fact that the Viceroy, writing when all heat of strife was over and all facts known, yet did not obtain for Mr. Tayler any distinction.
On one point, however, we are bound to protest against Sir John Kaye’s harsh judgment: to him the arrest of the Wahabi leaders was a scandalous breach of the usages of war. But they were unquestionably subjects of the British Crown, and the question surely is—would they have resisted arrest by ordinary process or not? If not, they had to thank Mr. Tayler for courteous consideration in arresting them himself, and detaining them in honourable captivity; in resisting they would have been guilty of that rebellion against their sovereign in which there was too good reason to believe them sharers.
On the many points whereon both authors are in substantial accord it would be waste of space to touch, and we pass to the other important episode in which Colonel Malleson traverses Sir John Kaye’s judgment, and here our verdict is with the later author: in treating of Durand’s conduct at Indore, Colonel Malleson seems to have risen above the region of personal feeling, if not of personal knowledge; so that while his full and vivid narrative shows plainly the difficulties, political and strategical, of Durand’s position and also of his retreat, he shows as clearly that it is no simple case of Durand versus Holkar, but one in which each may be commended without loss of credit to the other.
So much space has been of necessity devoted to the chief points on which the two authors are at variance, that none is left for the transactions which Colonel Malleson’s changed arrangement brings into the present volume, though Kaye had intended for them a place in some later one. His work in the new field makes us only the more regret that he did not bring to his task the unbiassed mind of a man who had never known the author of the Red Pamphlet or Mr. William Tayler. But we would, in a concluding word, beg him to revise his Indian spelling; to a man who has once felt the charm of a fancy rule the claims of established usage go for nothing, but at all events he may be decently consistent; why does Colonel Malleson double so many letters which in Urdu are single, and why does he spell the name of the ancient and famous, if now obscure, town of Jaunpore as though it were “the City of Life”?
Captain Low’s History of the Indian Navy (2 vols., London: Bentley & Son) has long been reproachfully demanding notice; it is easy to say something about such a work, not easy to treat it worthily. A man could hardly put together 1100 pages of small type without recording many noteworthy facts, but all matters of interest might have been packed in much smaller compass, and so packed would have found more readers and a more favourable verdict.
The two volumes trace the rise and fall of the Navy from its germ in the “ten grabs and galivats” taken up for the defence of the factory and shipping of Surat in 1615, through the period of its glory when its ships bore the Company’s flag alongside of the Royal Navy on many hard-fought days, through its decline, when they carried mails or transported troops with rare enjoyment of a brush, to its abolition in our own time, when, less fortunate than its sister service, it fell a victim to mutiny and disorders in which it had no share.
The first period in its history ends with the year 1759, when, with the capture of Gheriah, and the destruction of Angria’s power, piracy as a business of State came to an end, and when the ruin of the Seedee, and the substitution of the Company as High Admiral of the Mogul Empire, placed the local Marine first among the maritime powers of India. Its first serious service was in the operations which broke the power of the Portuguese in the Gulf, and in 1622 reduced Ormuz from an emporium of proverbial wealth and magnificence to its normal condition of a poor barren island, and for many years the Portuguese found it as much occupation as the pirates who might well have been its first concern. No doubt the captains of well-armed India-men, whose crews were borrowed for service on grabs and galivats, looked down on the latter as a sort of coastguard, but the aid of such light craft was invaluable against the shoals of small vessels which beset new-comers fore and aft, pouring down crowds of well-armed men from their long overhanging prows. For in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the shores of the Indian Ocean swarmed with pirates, kept down indeed by the Portuguese in the heyday of their power, but making head again till, by the middle of the seventeenth century, according to Italian travellers, they feared none but Dutch and English, and these only for a pestilent practice of firing the magazine rather than surrender. Yet to the Mogul governor of Surat probably the pirate of home growth was less objectionable than the intrusive trader; and indeed the Nuwab was not without excuse if he regarded the European as a more powerful pirate, seeing that some commanders took by force goods which the native owner would not sell, others ransacked ships not said to belong to the Mogul’s ports, the mutinous crews of others became open pirates; and lastly, we find Captain Kidd, and other heroes of the black flag, practising their vocation in these seas. The native pirate, the European rival, and the professional rover, kept the local marine pretty well employed, but it is not always easy to distinguish between the services of this body and the Company’s armed trading ships.
Of more interest to the Mogul Government than foreign trade were the vessels in which Mahomedan pilgrims of all ranks sailed to Arabian and Persian shrines, and for their benefit it came to terms with the Seedee, better known to us as the Hubshi of Jinjirah, the boldest of the pirates, giving him a large allowance and high rank to secure his convoy. The Company made more than one attempt to supplant him, and indeed furnished ships to guard the Mocha-Jeddah fleet in 1698, but the Seedee kept his office till 1759; in the general decay of the central power he first neglected, then openly defied, the Governor of Surat, and instead of protecting trade became its chief oppressor; till at last, in 1759, after much negotiation, the Nuwab induced the Bombay Government to intervene, and as a reward obtained for the Company the Seedee’s office. What direct profit the Company derived from the appointment Captain Low does not tell us; the omission can hardly be the consequence of the lamented destruction of papers which followed the sale of the old India House, for he records that in 1694 the Seedee’s subsidy amounted to four lacs, no doubt considerably bettered by presents, and in 1735 the money allowance was but a lac and a half: the revenues of the districts and customs assigned to the Company went to support the Surat squadron, but the fees of office granted to the officer who was its deputy amounted, to near a lac of rupees a year; it is well to remember that the holder’s gross pay was but Rs.1,000 a year, that the Governor of Bombay had but some £500, and that till near the end of the century private trade was allowed: no one, however, was permitted to enjoy this great prize for a second year. Whatever were the profits to the Company, the Nuwab could see that it did more for its wages than the Seedee, for in the next nine years the Surat squadron destroyed near a hundred pirate vessels of the Gulfs of Cutch and Cambay.
After another seventy years the Bombay Marine became in name what, as the only local armed fleet, it had long been in fact—the Indian Navy. Wherever round the basin of the Indian Ocean there had been fighting in those years, the vessels of the Bombay Marine had borne the British flag with honour, though the services of officers and crews, both afloat and ashore, had been too sparingly recognised. And in those years was commenced the series of surveys which are still the chief authorities for the navigation of the Eastern seas, and have given the names of Rennie, Moresby, Haines, and Taylor a permanent place in history. But men who entered the Bombay Marine were still serving efficiently when the Indian Navy was abolished, in the belief that ships of the Royal Navy would carry on the police of the seas as efficiently, but at less annual cost, and that other arrangements might be made for the business of inland navigation and transport; the necessity for recurrent shore surveys seems not to have been foreseen, though already a special department has been created and placed under a retired officer of the Indian Navy. It is impossible not to admit that, through its want of influential friends, the Service was treated unjustly. The guarantee of “Colonel Sykes’s clause” has, through repeated agitation, been made so effectual for officers of the Indian Army that men of forty have retired as full colonels, because all their regimental seniors had joined the Staff Corps, while the officers of the Indian Navy were forced to retire without appeal on something like the pension of their rank. But they must have felt a grim satisfaction in knowing that they had outlived the piracy which had been the scourge of Western India and the first cause of the creation of the force; their last serious service was in administering a final pounding to their old enemies the Waghers, the last survivors of the flourishing pirate communities of Kattyawar.
Besides surveys of the Eastern seas, European nations trading with India are indebted to the Indian Navy for the opening up of the Overland Route, and so, indirectly, for the construction of the Suez Canal. Without steam, indeed, the Red Sea could never have become a highway of commerce, while with its extended use that great canal could not for ever be closed; but the Hugh Lindsay of the Indian Navy, the first steamer constructed in the East, which, after thirty years of service, was still staunch enough for work as a tug at Kurachi, was the first steamer to appear on its waters, making the voyage to and from Suez in 1830, under the command of Captain John Lindsay. The expense of the voyage, however, was so great that, after seven trips, the Court bade the Government of Bombay only repeat it in case of emergency, and it was reserved for Lieutenant Waghorn, also of the Indian Navy, by sacrifice of his private fortune and professional prospects and ten years’ unceasing labour, to prove that communication with India through the Red Sea was not only a luxury of State, but a profitable commercial enterprise. From his labours all have profited save himself and his family, and the only public acknowledgment of his services is a bust in the Canal Garden at Suez.
With some labour, caused by the want of an index, many notices of interest might be quarried from Captain Low’s pages. The early history of Bombay, the antecedents of the rulers of Muscat and Zanzibar, the settlement at Aden, the true story of Perim, the achievements of the Sepoy Marines, who are now represented by two regular regiments of the Bombay Army, all invite notice, but our space is exhausted. Yet we must find room to mention the self-denial of Commodore Hayes, who, rather than embroil the Company with China, released two junks captured in running the blockade from Batavia with Dutch property, and so sacrificed his large share of £600,000 lawful prize; and the gallantry of Midshipman Denton, who, unable to board a proa, lashed her bowsprit to the taffrail of his gunboat, and so continued his course, fighting her all the time. And for contrast with the experience of the Bay of Bengal, where we believe that the full pressure of a great cyclone has never been recorded, as the anemometers have broken with a pressure of sixty pounds, we may note that, in the cyclone of November, 1854, so famous at Bombay, the pressure did not exceed thirty-five pounds to the square foot: with such a storm as that which raged in Calcutta in October, 1864, the whole native town of Bombay would come down like a house of cards. We are sorry not to have been able to notice Captain Low’s labours more favourably; particular points which we had noted for objection we will pass over in silence.
Captain Richard Burton is facile princeps of modern travellers. There scarcely any part of the world which he has not visited, and wherever he goes he seems to have the history, geography, and ethnology of the country at his fingers’ ends. His last important contribution to geographical science is the account of his visit to the Land of Midian, whither he went, commissioned by the ex-Khedive of Egypt, in search of the gold mines of which the ancient Arab geographer and others speak. The results of his expeditions are published in two works: The Gold-Mines of Midian and the Ruined Midianite Cities (London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1878) and The Land of Midian (Revisited), 2 vols., issued by the same publishers during the present year. Having received an invitation from the ex-Viceroy, Captain Burton proceeded to Cairo in March, 1877, where an expedition was organized for the purpose of exploring the auriferous region. The author’s comparison of the Cairo of the present time with the city as he knew it in his old pilgrim days, and as it is described in Lane’s “Modern Egyptians,” forms, although only incidental, a very interesting portion of the book. The chapter on Suez also is a good specimen of Captain Burton’s style, and contains at once a topographical sketch, an archæological and historical description, and a chatty and amusing account of the modern city, its society, and surroundings. Midian, called nowadays by its inhabitants, as by the mediæval Arabic geographers, Arz Maydan, the Land of Midian, is that part of Arabia which occupies the east coast of the Gulf of Akabah, and extends some two degrees further to the south. The borders are somewhat difficult to ascertain, and it is probable that the ancient Midianites, like some of the larger and more powerful Bedawin tribes of the present day, wandered far and wide, and that their limits shrunk or extended according to their numbers, or the resisting power of their neighbours. The ancient history of the land is told by Captain Burton in a most exhaustive manner, the Biblical accounts being supplemented by copious references to Greek, Latin, Jewish, and Arabic writers of all ages. The quantity of gold, silver, and other metals mentioned in Numbers xxxi. 22, as being produced by Midian, was curiously borne out by the results of the expedition. A lengthy and learned notice is also given of the Nabathæans, whose former rock-cut capital, Petræa, is still one of the marvels of Arabia; whose king, or ethnarch, Aretas (in Arabic, El Hareth), is mentioned in the New Testament; and whose rule embraced so large a portion of Syria and Arabia, and extended late into Christian times.
The discovery that gold existed in Midian was in the first place due to Haji Wali, familiar to the readers of Captain Burton’s “Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina” as the companion of the author in the caravanserai at Cairo while preparing for the journey to Hejjaz. The old Haji was once returning from a visit to Mecca, when halting by the shore of the Gulf of Akabah he scooped up a handful of granitic sand which sparkled in the bed of the wady and took it with him to Alexandria. There he took his specimen to an assayer, and, although the glitter which had attracted him proved only to be produced by the presence of mica, his sand when smelted in a crucible yielded a comparatively large portion of pure gold. The information of the discovery was not received with encouragement by the official to whom Haji Wali communicated it, and the latter ceased to think more of the subject. The assayer, however, set out for the new Eldorado and lost his life, probably murdered by the Bedawin. Captain Barton believes that the secret of the gold has never been really lost, and that the washing of sand has always been clandestinely carried on. Be that as it may, Captain Burton, believing the Haji’s story, endeavoured to recommend his discovery to the notice of the Egyptian authorities, who pooh-pooh’d the whole thing, and merely remarked that gold was becoming too common. For nearly a quarter of a century Captain Burton kept the secret to himself, but at length he again sought out his old friend Haji Wali, obtained from him more exact information as to the locality, and carried him off with the expedition, the means for organizing which Ismail Pasha furnished. The results of the expedition, which was only a pioneer one, were sufficient to corroborate all that the Haji had said, and to confirm Captain Burton’s own prognostications drawn from the ancient sources which his extensive learning enabled him to consult. The adventures of the party fill the remainder of the first of his two books and form extremely pleasant reading.
The second of the two books contains somewhat less antiquarian research, but more practical information than the first. It is a record of the second expedition (also equipped at the expense of the Egyptian Government by order of the ex-Khedive), and is full of pleasant travel-talk and adventure. Setting out from Cairo in a sickly season and under the most unfavourable circumstances—the resources of the country being drained by distress at home and the Turkish-Russian war abroad—they at length got under way once more for the desert, not without encountering hair-breadth escapes from the bursting of some of the tubes of the engine of their steamer. Once landed, the initial difficulties of desert travel had to be encountered. “It had been reported,” says Captain Burton, “that I was the happy possessor of £22,000, mostly to be spent in El-Muwaylah. The unsettled Arabs plunder and slay; the settled Arabs slander and cheat.” These, however, were soon smoothed over by the commander’s tact and firmness, the rival claims of two tribes to act as escort were disposed of, and the work of the expedition then began.
The first march, through Madyan proper (North Midian), occupied fifty-four days. The country was essentially a mining district, and very rich in mineral wealth, though, strange to say, it had not been much worked by the ancients. The first expedition found free gold in the basalt, but the researches of the second yielded none. The second march, through South Midian, lasted eighteen days. Its principal object was to ascertain the depth from east to west of the quartz formations, and to explore the virgin region towards the east. Here, however, they were stopped by the exactions and turbulent conduct of the Maazeh, who tried to pick quarrels with their Huweitat guides, and made it impossible for Captain Burton to proceed without such loss of time and other inconveniences as must have sacrificed the other and more important objects of the expedition. The last journey was through the southern portion of Midian, and lasted twenty-four days. This part of the country has been systematically worked in former times, and it is here that the gold and silver mines are placed by the mediæval Arab geographers.
Throughout Midian, ruined towns, villages, mining stations, and smelting furnaces were found, testifying to the former mining industry of the country, and described by Captain Burton in his usual graphic and careful style.
That Midian abounds in mineral wealth, and that gold and silver may be found in plenty there, is clear both from the documentary evidence of the author and from the testimony of the physical and geological features of the country. The very first reconnaissance showed a formation exactly reproducing “the conditions which Australia shows, and which produced the huge ‘welcome nugget’ of Ballarat.” The country also closely resembles the known gold-working sites of Ancient Egypt, but with filons of larger size. Some of these “Ophirs of Egypt Proper” yielded the treasury of Ramses the Great the enormous sum of £90,000,000 a year, as hieroglyphic inscriptions tell us. Herodotus, too, tells us of the immense wealth in the precious metals possessed by some of the Pharaohs. The modern Bedawins have legends of “gold pieces, square as well as round, bearing, by way of inscription, ‘prayers’ to the Apostle of Allah,” which Captain Burton suspects to be “the Tibr, or ‘pure gold-dust,’ washed from the sands and cast probably in rude moulds.” The close proximity to the sea and the facilities of the country for transport, it being “prepared by Nature to receive a tramway,” remove half the difficulties of working.
That the specimens brought back by Captain Burton’s expedition did not actually yield a larger proportion of the precious metals is in all probability due to the fact that they had no expert with them, and did not, therefore, sufficiently seek for and select stone from the auriferous rocks, but brought away much that the ancients had rejected, or left as unworkable. He is, however, convinced, as the impartial reader of his work must also be, that the gold land of Midian is still a fine field for commercial enterprise, which would soon restore to it the advantages which all ancient authorities declare that it once possessed.
“The Land of Midian” attracted another explorer besides Captain Burton—namely, the late Dr. Beke, an account of whose labours has been given to the world by his widow in a bulky volume on the subject. His object was to discover the “true Mount Sinai,” which he identified with a certain Jebel Barguir, otherwise the “Mountain of Light,” on the Eastern shore of the Gulf of Akaba, and in which he fancied he saw the “volcano,” the existence of which he had previously conjectured in his pamphlet, “Mount Sinai a Volcano.” To make this theory accord with the Scriptural account, he had not only to shift the scene of the Law-giving from the Sinaitic Peninsula to the other side of the Gulf, but he was obliged to find another Mizraim than Egypt, and boldly sacrificed hieroglyphic, Biblical, and classic testimony, as well as that of tradition, to his own hypothesis. In confirmation of his theory, he found indications that the Mountain of Light was regarded as a holy place, and discovered ancient inscriptions near the summit, of which he brought copies home in triumph. Unfortunately, however, the name Barguir turns out to be his own corruption of Bakir, a well-known Mohammedan name, and, in the present instance, that of the petty Arab saint whose tomb gives the only sanctity the mountain may possess, while the proper name of the mountain is Jebel el Yitm; the inscriptions are only the ordinary Nabathæan graffiti and Arab-tribe marks, which are so common all over Arabia Petræa; and lastly, there is no volcano at all. The volume is interesting, as it contains much topographical information about a country the ancient history and future prospects of which render it of the highest importance; but as a contribution to the literature of the much-vexed question of the Exodus the late Dr. Beke’s work is absolutely useless. Whether the so-called Peninsula of Sinai is really the scene of the early portion of that drama, the recent Egyptian researches of Dr. Brugsch Bey have rendered very doubtful; but wherever Mount Sinai has ultimately to be placed, it is not that discovered by Dr. Beke.
As Mrs. Burton supplemented the “Unexplored Syria” of her husband and the late C. F. Tyrwhitt Drake with her own more personal but none the less interesting “Inner Life of Syria,” so she has now embodied her own impression of the various localities which she and Captain Burton have visited during the last few years in a pleasant book entitled, A. E. I.: Arabia, Egypt, and India (London: W. Mullan & Son, 1879). Mrs. Burton’s pages are eminently readable, her powers of observation are keen, and her descriptions always fresh and vivid. If the spots she writes about have been often before depicted by pen and pencil, she yet finds something new to say, and some interesting and little-known historical incident to narrate, concerning them. The latter part of the book, containing a history and description of the old Portuguese settlement of Goa, and a minutely-detailed account of the life and works of St. Francis Xavier, the Apostle of the Indies, will be new to most readers and read with interest by all. The book is one which may be taken up at any moment with the certainty of finding something to amuse, instruct, or furnish food for earnest thought.
Egypt to Palestine, by S. C. Bartlett, though bearing the name and address of a London publisher (Sampson Low, Marston, & Co.) on the title-page, is evidently the production of an American firm, the name of which, indeed, appears on some of the maps. The book is well got up, and as a description of the localities, their antiquities and history, is equal to the average of such publications. It is, however, entirely composed of materials collected from the works of other authors, taken often without acknowledgment, and is profusely illustrated by pictures and maps copied from other works, the sources of which are never acknowledged at all. The only passages at all original in the work are those which describe Mr. Bartlett’s own journey, the highest interest of which consists in an occasional enumeration of the hymns he and his companions sang to the Arabs (cf. p. 193), and which would have much the same effect on the Tiyahah as the performances of the howling dervishes have upon an American tourist.
Sir Lewis Pelly has published, in two handsome volumes, a literal translation of the text of the Miracle Play of Hasan and Husein (London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1879), as performed throughout India and Persia during the month of Mohurram, by the Shiah Mohammedans. The progress of Islam in its early days was so rapid that, in a short time, it had overwhelmed Persia, Egypt, Syria, and a large portion of the rest of the Byzantine Empire in its tide of conquest. The death of Mohammed naturally brought forward rival claimants to the supreme authority, and the dispute ultimately resolved itself into one between Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, and representative of the Hashimi clan, and Moawiyeh, the representative of the Ommayeh family, between whom and the Hashimis an old feud existed, originating in their rival claims to be the hereditary guardians of the Kaabeh Temple at Mecca. These two parties offered an obvious rallying point for the two opposing factions in El Islam, the conquered Persians and the conquering Arabs, the former of whom resisted the traditional ceremonial law with which their Semitic co-religionists would have trammelled them. The consequence was that the Aryan faction rallied round Ali, and the Arabs round Moawiyeh. The latter proved the stronger party, and were known as Sunnis, followers of the Sunnah or traditional law, while the adherents of the former were designated Shiahs or Sectarians, and thus originated the first great schism in Mohammedanism. The struggles of Ali’s party for supremacy, his own murder, and the subsequent massacre of his sons, Hasan and Husein, who lost their lives under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, are the incidents on which the drama is founded, and the memory of which has kept alive the rancorous ill-feeling between the two sects. In the play itself the historical element is largely mixed with the marvellous and legendary, and the dramatic unities are wholly neglected; but it nevertheless exhibits enough of the real facts to give it an intense living interest, while the antiquated language and strange incidents that are introduced carry us back to the remotest times. An admirable introduction contains a notice by Dr. Birdwood, C.S.I., of the origin of the Shiah schism, and of the ceremonies with which the Mohurram festival is celebrated throughout India and Persia; and Mr. A. N. Wollaston, of the India Office, has both edited the text and illustrated it with some concise and appropriate notes.
Dr. Charles Riew has just issued the first volume of his Catalogue of the Persian MSS. in the British Museum (London: 1879), containing Christian and Mohammedan Theology, and the works on History and Geography of which the Museum has a large and important collection. Amongst these are the Jámi ut tawárikh, written in the seventh—eighth centuries of the Hejra, and comprising the histories of all the principal Turkish and Mongol dynasties; the Táríkh i Rashídí, a history of the Khans of Mogolistan and of the Amirs of Kashgar; and the Zafar Namah, the earliest authentic history of Timur, written by his order in 1404 A.D. A brief but complete analysis of each manuscript is given, enabling scholars to refer at once and without difficulty to any portion of the histories without the labour of looking through an often voluminous manuscript. The value of such a scholar-like production as this Catalogue is cannot be over-estimated; it has, in fact, placed within reach of the student of history most important and authentic works, the very existence of which was unknown except to a few Orientalists. The second volume is already complete in MS., and will be shortly published. We shall look forward to it with great interest, as the British Museum possesses a magnificent collection of Persian poetical and other works.
A Pahlavi Dictionary, by Dastur Jamaspji Minocheherji Jamasp Asana, of which the first two volumes have just appeared (London: Trübner and Co., 1879), supplies a want long felt by students of the old Persian speech. Pahlavi is the name applied to the old Persian tongue, and more particularly to that phase of it which was spoken during the reigns of the Sassanian kings. It is of great interest to the philologist, inasmuch as it contains a large admixture of Semitic words, derived, however, from a different source than the Arabic element in modern Persian, and appears to be akin to the Assyrian. It is sometimes called Huzvaresh, though this word seems to be more properly applied to a particular method of reading, by which, when a Semitic word occurs in the text, the priest reads the Aryan equivalent, just as we in English say “pounds, shillings, and pence” when we meet with the signs £ s. d., and read “namely,” though we write and print “videlicet” or “viz.” Dastur Jamaspji Asana interprets the word Huzvaresh to mean the “language of Assyria,” a suggestion which, if correct, throws some light on the origin of the language. The etymology of the word Pahlavi has been the subject of much discussion, but the latest as well as the most reasonable conjecture is that of Dr. Haug (followed by the author of this Dictionary), that it is identical with Parthva, the Parthia of the classical writers; that most warlike and important nation having given its name to the language, just as the province of Pars has given the name to the language of modern Iran. The great difficulty in compiling such a dictionary as the present, apart from the unsatisfactory nature of the available texts, is that the alphabet is so very vague and confused. The language contains a very great number of sounds which the alphabet, borrowed from the Semitic, is incapable of expressing; the same letter, therefore, is often used for different sounds, and combinations of the various letters again often express simple sounds. This makes the arrangement very difficult, but the author of this work has adopted the only safe method, that of arranging the words according to the alphabetical order of the letters rather than in order of sounds. A table, in which the various combinations of the letters are explained, also much simplifies reference. The author has in all cases followed the traditional reading and interpretation of words, leaving to the more critical scholars of Europe the task of investigating them from a scientific point of view.
Dr. Haug’s Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsis (Trübner’s Oriental Series, 1878) is another most important contribution to comparative theology and philology. The nature of the doctrines of Zoroaster and the rites and ceremonies of the Magians had for centuries exercised the uninitiated. The earliest mention of them occurs in the Prophet Jeremiah (xxxix. 3), who speaks of the rab mag (chief of the Magi) as forming part of the retinue of Nebuchadnezzar at his entry into Jerusalem; Ezekiel calls the Persian king Cyrus (who professed the religion of the Magi) the “anointed of the Lord;” the New Testament speaks of Magi from the East—translated “wise men” in our version—as the first to pay homage to our Lord; and the old Persian language has supplied, through the New Testament also, the name Paradise, which is universally employed to represent heaven throughout the civilized world. Herodotus also mentions them, and testifies to the purity of their worship and their morals, and other Greek as well as Latin writers have treated at more or less length on the subject of the Magi. But these scattered and incomplete notices were all that scholars had until Hyde, the celebrated Oxford scholar, in 1700, collected all the ancient sources of information into a volume Historia religionis veterum Persarum eorumque Magorum. The original texts of the Zend Avesta, &c., however, of which some manuscripts had been brought to Europe, were still sealed books, and the Parsi priests in India and Persia strictly refrained from affording any information upon their contents. At length, in 1754, Anquetil Duperron, an enterprising Frenchman, undertook a journey to India with the express intention of procuring manuscripts and learning the Zend language, in both of which purposes he succeeded, and published ten years later the first known translation of the Zend Avesta. His work was by many scholars, Sir William Jones and Richardson, the Persian lexicographer, amongst the number, regarded as worthless, Richardson maintaining that the texts themselves were forgeries, while Sir William Jones endeavoured to prove that Anquetil had been the victim of priestly fraud and deception. Nearly a century later Eugene Burnouf, an eminent French Sanscrit scholar, proved his countryman’s work to be genuine, corrected many of his faults, and placed the study on a sounder scientific basis. Others, especially German and Scandinavian savants, followed in the same path, forming, however, different schools of interpretation, until at last Dr. Martin Haug brought order into the confusion, and succeeded in bringing the study of Zend within the limits of exact philological science. The foundation of all these studies must of course necessarily be the traditional interpretation handed down by the Parsi priests, but this would have been comparatively useless without the investigation of European scholars. Many of the Avesta texts are furnished with Pahlavi translations and comments, but the Pahlavi itself was but imperfectly understood, and the whole subject was for a long time in hopeless confusion; the reader may, however, take up Dr. Haug’s Essays with the full assurance that he has the most trustworthy account of the Parsis, their Scriptures, history, and religious rites, that can be now ascertained. Anything like a résumé of such a work would be out of place here, but we can cordially recommend it as, with all its recondite erudition, a most readable book.
Mr. Bernard Quaritch, of Piccadilly, has published a romance in modern Arabic, entitled, The Autobiography of the Constantinople Story-teller, edited by Mr. J. Catafago, a well-known Arabic scholar, and said to be the work of an Englishman, Colonel Rous. It is principally as a curiosity of literature that it will be read, as it does not narrate any very novel or original adventures, and the style is very simple and unpretending. It, however, contains some clear and concise descriptions of many localities in the East which are but little known to the ordinary reader, and will be welcome to the student of Arabic as an easy text-book of the language.
Professor James Sanua, late of Cairo, is an enthusiastic politician and an original satirist. We have just received thirty numbers of an Arabic comic paper, written, illustrated, and published by him in Paris, and directed against the ex-Khedive of Egypt, whose misgovernment he mercilessly exposes, and whose deposition it was his avowed object to bring about. The editor, a native of Egypt, and a Copt by religion, was for many years engaged in tuition in some of the highest families of Cairo. Possessing a keen sense of humour and a great mastery over the Arabic language, he used to pass his evenings in improvising a sort of dramatic entertainment, in which he himself sustained all the characters, and in which he satirized the social foibles of his fellow-countrymen. The originality of his séances soon attracted large audiences, and amongst the visitors and admirers were the Khedive and the princes of his family. The opportunity was too good to be lost, and Professor Sanua passed from mere social topics, and administered sound and severe castigations to his august visitor for his misgovernment and oppression of the fellaheen. This boldness drew down upon him the displeasure of Ismail Pasha, and Abu Naddára Zerka (the Father of Blue Spectacles), as he was nicknamed, found it convenient to withdraw to Paris, where he published his paper. It is written for the most part in the vulgar Egyptian dialect, and contains articles upon, and illustrations of, the principal events of the latter part of the reign of the deposed prince. The pictures, which are rude, but full of force, are explained in a French introduction, which is prefixed to the collected thirty numbers, and form a very interesting and curious record of modern Egyptian history.
A new paper, literary and political, has just been advertised at Constantinople. It is to be written in the Arabic language, and edited by M. G. Dellal, a native of Aleppo, and an accomplished Arabic scholar and poet. Modern Arabic literature is exceedingly plentiful at the present time, and Beyrout has long been a centre of activity. Sheikh Nasyf el Yazji, who died some few years ago, gave a great impulse to the study of Arabic by his “Majma‘ el Bahrain,” a book in imitation of the “Macamat” of Harírí, and containing in a small compass more information on the Arabs of the classical period, their customs, histories, proverbs, &c., than perhaps any other work. Dr. Butrus Bustani, of the same town, earned for himself a lasting name by his Arabic lexicon, “Muhít el Muhít,” which has not only a native but a European reputation; and the same eminent scholar has established a press, from which have emanated many standard Arabic works, and numerous translations of valuable European works on science and history. A magazine entitled El Jinán, “The Garden of Paradise,” is also published there fortnightly, and contains, besides political articles and general news, a great deal of interesting miscellaneous information. The last important publication of the “Matba‘ al Maarif,” or “Scientific Press,” as it is called, is an Encyclopædia in the Arabic language, on the plan of the European Conversation-lexicons.