While I remained at Aleppo, I walked, as I before told you, frequently about the streets; and I think I never was witness to so many broils in all my life put together, as I was in my wanderings there—Not a time I went out that I did not observe one, two, three, and sometimes half a dozen or more. They have nothing terrible in them however, and, were it not extremely disgusting to see men scold, would be very entertaining; for I will venture to say that a street battle “à la Turque” is one of the most ludicrous exhibitions in the world. The parties approach to each other, and retreat mutually, as the action of the one gives hopes to the other of victory, lifting their hands, and flourishing them in the air, as if ready to strike every moment, grinning and gnashing their teeth, while their beard and whiskers besprent with the spume of their mouths, and wagging with the quick motion of their lips and ghastly contortions of their jaws, present the most ridiculous spectacle imaginable. They reminded me at the time of a verse in an old English Ballad:—
’Tis merry in the hall,
When beards wag all.
Nothing, in fact, can exceed the extravagance of their gesture: the vehement loudness of their voice, or the whimsical distortions of their countenances, in which are displayed sometimes the quickest vicissitudes of fear and fury, and sometimes the most laughable combination of both. All this time, however, not a single blow is actually struck; but they compensate for the want of bodily prowess by the exercise of the tongue, denouncing vengeance against each other, threatening instant demolition, lavishing every bitter reproach, every filthy epithet, and every horrible imprecation that they can think of, and both boasting occasionally of their patience and forbearance, which fortunately enabled them to refrain from annihilating their adversary. At last the fray gradually decays: exhausted with fatigue, and half choaked with dust and vociferation, they retreat gradually backwards to their own doors; where summing up all their malignity into a most horrid execration, they part for the time, and retire to vaunt in empty threat, and growl away their rage, in the recesses of their Haram.
Yet those people are found terrible in battle by the Christian troops that have from time to time been opposed to them: here, if proof be wanting of the effects of Religion on the human mind, is an incontrovertible one of its powerful operations. Under the influence of their faith, which tells them that they go to Paradise instantly if killed in battle with Infidels, they perform prodigies of valour fighting against Christians; while, forbidden by that faith to imbrue their hands in the blood of a true believer, their passions have been gradually brought under the dominion of their religion, till that which at first was faith at last becomes habit, and the appropriate energy and courage of the man has sunk into the degrading and emasculant efforts of the woman.
The practice of fighting, or personal conflicts between individuals of the same society, seems to have been condemned by the universal consent of all religions. The Gentoos, as well as all the other sects of the various parts of the East through which I have travelled, give vent to their passion in nearly the same manner as the Turks. The Christians too are most strictly forbidden to strike one another by the great Author of their faith: but it is their good fortune, that they not only have the best religion in the world for their guidance, but that they are the only people in the world who claim exemption from the penalties of that religion, and think themselves wronged and their personal rights infringed, if they are refused the privilege of breaking through its rules whenever those rules are at variance with their convenience.
Be it your care, my dear child! to fortify your mind with the spirit of true religion and sound morality, and let your practice in life be ever guided by their precepts.