CHAPTER XXI.
LIFE AND HABITS OF THE FELLAHÎN.
IN the last chapter the Fellahîn have been considered in their religious aspect, and matters connected with the possible origin of their race have been discussed; but we have now to sketch their manners and customs.
The wonderful account given by Lane of the life of townsmen in Egypt, would apply almost equally well to the middle classes in Damascus and Jerusalem; but the life and manners of the peasantry are far more valuable in illustration of the Bible narrative than are those of the townsmen; and for this reason the present sketch, however imperfect, will, I hope, prove of some value, by drawing attention to a people who have been as yet but little studied, and who are often confounded with the Bedawîn, or with the governing nation—the Turks—of whom, perhaps, scarcely a hundred are to be found in Palestine.
A Fellah village consists of from twenty to a hundred cabins, huddled together, generally on rising ground and near water. In the hills the village is built principally of stone, the materials being collected from ancient ruins, and hardly ever, I believe, fresh quarried; in the south the roofs have stone domes, in the north they are of brushwood, supported on logs or beams as rafters, and covered with mud, which requires to be rolled every year. The interiors generally contain no furniture beyond bedding, mats, and cooking utensils; the house has no chimney, and the smoke of the wood fire goes out at the wooden door, or by the unglazed windows. Among the better class of the peasantry a few carpets will be found in use; and a raised diwân, as described in the account of our feast at Jeb’a, occupies part of the room. The village generally has one high house, of two storeys, in its middle, where the Sheikh or hereditary chief lives; booths are erected in summer on the roofs of the houses, where the inmates sleep at night; on the outskirts of the village are orchards of fig or pomegranate, with hedges of prickly pear, and perhaps fine olive-groves; close by is the Mukâm, with its white dome, and round it the shallow graves with rough headstones, between which the purple iris (or lily of Palestine) grows very commonly, while in the better-built tombs a little hollow for rain water is scooped in the covering slab of stone, as an act of charity towards thirsty birds.
In the plains the only difference in the villages is, that the cabins are built of sun-dried brick, and roofed with mud. The bricks are made in spring by bringing down water into ditches dug in the clay, where chopped straw is mixed in with the mud; thence the soft mixture is carried in bowls to a row of wooden moulds or frames, each about ten inches long by three inches across; these are laid out on flat ground and are squeezed full, the clay being then left to harden in the sun. The houses thus built require to be patched every year, and the old roofs are covered in spring with grass self-sown, which withers as soon as the sun becomes strong (Ps. cxxix. 6).
The population of a village averages about four hundred, ranging from thirty or forty, up to a thousand in the well-built Galilean towns. The men are employed in agriculture, the boys tend the flocks, the women cook and fetch water. The first scene on approaching a village is that at the well or spring, to which lithe damsels and portly matrons, scantily clad, bring down the great black or brown jars, returning rapidly with the load of water poised on a pad on the head. The screaming, scolding, and chatter of these crowds of women passes all description; if of one of them the traveller asks for the Sheikh, he still receives the old answer, “Behold, he is before you” (1 Sam. ix. 12).
On entering the village the Ghŭfr or “watchman” (2 Sam. xviii. 24) is next met, and the stranger is brought to the guest-house (Saha), where he is served with coffee, and entertained at the public expense, a small gratuity being given to the Ghŭfr on leaving. The visitor will be struck above all with the power exercised by the Sheikh, or by the elders, and with the respect for age, and for etiquette, leaving the impression of a patriarchal form of society, which really exists among the villagers.
The food of the peasants is almost entirely vegetable, consisting of unleavened bread dipped in oil, of rice, olives, grape-treacle (Dibs), clarified butter (Semn), and eggs, besides gourds, melons, marrows, and cucumbers; in times of scarcity the Khobbeizeh, or mallow, cooked in sour milk or oil, forms an important element. Meat they hardly ever touch, save at the great feast, or at the Kod sacrifices; and their drinks consist simply of water and coffee, both of which they imbibe in enormous quantities. To this diet the beauty of their white teeth, the toughness of their constitutions, the rapidity with which their wounds heal, are no doubt traceable, while the prominent stomachs of the children are due to drinking too much water. Coffee with lemon-juice is also commonly used as a remedy for dysentery.
The costume of the Fellahîn differs in various parts of Palestine, resembling that of the Egyptians in the south, and that of the Lebanon mountaineers in the north, while in Samaria it is more distinctive. The dress of Christians is also entirely different from that of the Moslems.