Though very submissive to their governors, the felláheen of Egypt are not deficient in courage when excited by feuds among each other; and they become excellent soldiers.
In sensuality, as far as it relates to the indulgence of libidinous passions, the Egyptians, as well as other natives of hot climates, certainly exceed more northern nations; yet this excess is not to be attributed merely to the climate, but more especially to the institution of polygamy, to the facility with which divorcements are accomplished whenever a man may wish to marry a new wife, and to the custom of concubinage. It is even said, and, I believe with truth, that, in this respect, they exceed the neighbouring nations, whose religion and civil institutions are similar;[[425]] and that their country still deserves the appellation of “the abode of the wicked,” which, in the Kur-án,[[426]] is, according to the best commentators, applied to ancient Egypt, if we take the word here translated “wicked” in its more usual modern sense of “debauchees.”—A vice for which the Memlooks who governed Egypt were infamous was so spread by them in this country as to become not less rare here than in almost any other country of the East; but of late years, it is said to have much decreased.
The most immodest freedom of conversation is indulged in by persons of both sexes, and of every station of life, in Egypt; even by the most virtuous and respectable women, with the exception of a very few, who often make use of coarse language, but not unchaste. From persons of the best education, expressions are often heard so obscene as only to be fit for a low brothel; and things are named, and subjects talked of, by the most genteel women, without any idea of their being indecorous, in the hearing of men, that many prostitutes in our country would abstain from mentioning.
The women of Egypt have the character of being the most licentious in their feelings of all females who lay any claim to be considered as members of a civilized nation; and this character is freely bestowed upon them by their countrymen, even in conversation with foreigners. Numerous exceptions doubtless exist; and I am happy to insert the following words translated from a note by my friend the sheykh Mohammad ’Eiyád Et-Tantáwee, on a passage in “The Thousand and One Nights.” “Many persons reckon marrying a second time among the greatest of disgraceful actions. This opinion is most common in the country-towns and villages; and the relations of my mother are thus characterized, so that a woman of them, when her husband dies while she is young, or divorces her while she is young, passes her life, however long it may be, in widowhood, and never marries a second time.”—But with respect to the majority of the Egyptian women, it must, I fear, be allowed, that they are very licentious. What liberty they have, many of them, it is said, abuse; and most of them are not considered safe, unless under lock and key; to which restraint few are subjected. It is believed that they possess a degree of cunning in the management of their intrigues that the most prudent and careful husband cannot guard against; and, consequently, that their plots are seldom frustrated, however great may be the apparent risk of the undertakings in which they engage. Sometimes, the husband himself is made the unconscious means of gratifying his wife’s criminal propensities. Some of the stories of the intrigues of women in “The Thousand and One Nights” present faithful pictures of occurrences not unfrequent in the modern metropolis of Egypt. Many of the men of this city are of opinion that almost all the women would intrigue if they could do so without danger; and that the greater proportion of them do. I should be sorry to think that the former opinion was just; and I am almost persuaded that it is over-severe, because it appears, from the customs with regard to women generally prevailing here, that the latter must be false. The difficulty of carrying on an intrigue with a female in this place can hardly be conceived by a person who is not moderately well acquainted with Eastern customs and habits. It is not only difficult for a woman of the middle or higher classes to admit her paramour into the house in which she resides, but it is almost impossible for her to have a private interview with a man who has a hareem in his own house; or to enter the house of a man who is neither married nor has a concubine-slave, without attracting the notice of the neighbours, and causing their immediate interference. But, as it cannot be denied that many of the women of Egypt engage in intrigues notwithstanding such risks, it may be supposed that the difficulties which lie in the way are the chief bar to most others. Among the females of the lower orders, intrigues are more easily accomplished, and frequent.
The libidinous character of the generality of the women of Egypt, and the licentious conduct of a great number of them, may be attributed to many causes; partly to the climate, and partly to their want of proper instruction, and of innocent pastimes and employments:[[427]] but it is more to be attributed to the conduct of the husbands themselves; and to conduct far more disgraceful to them than the utmost severity that any of them is known to exercise in the regulations of his hareem. The generality of husbands in Egypt endeavour to increase the libidinous feelings of their wives by every means in their power; though, at the same time, they assiduously study to prevent their indulging those feelings unlawfully. The women are permitted to listen, screened behind their windows of wooden lattice-work, to immoral songs and tales sung or related in the streets by men whom they pay for this entertainment; and to view the voluptuous dances of the ghawázee, and of the effeminate khäwals. The ghawázee, who are professed prostitutes, are not unfrequently introduced into the hareems of the wealthy, not merely to entertain the ladies with their dances, but to teach them their voluptuous arts; and even indecent puppets are sometimes brought into such hareems for the amusement of the inmates.—Innumerable stories of the artifices and intrigues of the women of Egypt have been related to me. The following narratives of late occurrences will serve as specimens.
A slave-dealer, who had been possessed of property which enabled him to live in comfort, but had lost the greater part of it, married a young and handsome woman in this city, who had sufficient wealth to make up for his losses. He soon, however, neglected her; and as he was past the prime of life, she became indifferent to him, and placed her affections upon another man, a dustman, who had been in the habit of coming to her house. She purchased for this person a shop close by her house; gave him a sum of money to enable him to pursue a less degraded occupation, as a seller of grain and fodder; and informed him that she had contrived a plan for his visiting her in perfect security. Her hareem had a window with hanging shutters; and almost close before this window rose a palm-tree, out-topping the house. This tree, she observed, would afford her lover a means of access to her, and of egress from her apartment in case of danger. She had only one servant, a female, who engaged to assist her in the accomplishment of her desires. Previously to her lover’s first visit to her, she desired the servant to inform her husband of what was about to take place in the ensuing night. He determined to keep watch; and having told his wife that he was going out, and should not return that night, concealed himself in a lower apartment. At night, the maid came to tell him that the visitor was in the hareem. He went up, but found the hareem-door shut. On his trying to open it, his wife screamed; her lover, at the same time, escaping from the window, by means of the palm-tree. She called to her neighbours,—“Come to my assistance! Pray come! There is a robber in my house!” Several of them soon came; and finding her locked in her room, and her husband outside the door, told her there was nobody in the house but her husband and maid. She said that the man they called her husband was a robber: that her husband was gone to sleep out. The latter then informed them of what had passed, and insisted that a man was with her: he broke open the door, and searched the room; but, finding no man, was reprimanded by his neighbours, and abused by his wife for uttering a slander. The next day, his wife, taking with her, as witnesses of his having accused her of a criminal intrigue, two of the neighbours who had come in on hearing her screams for assistance, arraigned her husband at the Mahkem′eh as the slanderer of a virtuous woman without the evidence of his own sight or of other witnesses. Being convicted of this offence, he was punished with eighty stripes, in accordance with the ordinance of the Kur-án.[[428]] His wife now asked him if he would divorce her; but he refused. For three days after this event, they lived peaceably together. On the third night, the wife, having invited her lover to visit her, bound her husband hand and foot, while he was asleep, and tied him down to the mattress. Shortly after, her lover came up, and, waking the husband, threatened him with instant death if he should call, and remained with the wife for several hours, in his presence. As soon as the intruder had gone, the husband was unbound by his wife, and called out to his neighbours, beating her at the same time with such violence that she, also, began to call for assistance. The neighbours coming in, and seeing him in a fury, easily believed her assertion that he had become raving mad, and, trying to soothe him with kind words, and prayers that God would restore him to sanity, liberated her from his grasp. She procured, as soon as possible, a rasool from the Kádee; and went, with him and her husband and several of her neighbours who had witnessed the beating that she had received, before the judge. The neighbours unanimously declared their opinion that her husband was mad; and the Kádee ordered that he should be conveyed to the Máristán[[429]] (or common mad-house): but the wife, affecting to pity him, begged that she might be allowed to chain him in an apartment in her house, that she might alleviate his sufferings by waiting upon him. The Kádee assented, praising the benevolence of the woman, and praying that God might reward her. She accordingly procured an iron collar and a chain from the Máristán, and chained him in a lower apartment of her house. Every night, in his presence, her lover visited her: after which she importuned him in vain to divorce her; and when the neighbours came in daily to ask how he was, the only answer he received to his complaints and accusations against his wife was—“God restore thee! God restore thee!” Thus he continued about a month; and his wife, finding that he still persisted in refusing to divorce her, sent for a keeper of the Máristán to take him. The neighbours came round as he left the house: one exclaimed, “There is no strength nor power but in God! God restore thee!”—another said, “How sad! He was really a worthy man:”—a third remarked, “Bádingáns[[430]] are very abundant just now.”—While he was confined in the Máristán, his wife came daily to him, and asked him if he would divorce her. On his answering “No,” she said, “Then chained you may lie until you die; and my lover shall come to me constantly.” At length, after seven months’ confinement, he consented to divorce her; upon which she procured his liberation, and he fulfilled his promise. Her lover was of too low a grade to become her husband, so she remained unmarried, and received him whenever she pleased; but the maid revealed the true history of this affair, and it soon became a subject of common talk.
When the wife of a man of wealth or rank engages in a criminal intrigue, both she and her paramour generally incur great danger.[[431]]—Last year, the wife of an officer of high rank in the army took advantage of the absence of her husband from the metropolis (where he always resided with her when not on military duty) to invite a Christian merchant, of whom she had been in the habit of buying silks, to pay her a visit. He went to her house at the time appointed, and found a eunuch at the door, who took him to another house, disguised him in the loose outer garments and veil of a lady, and then brought him back, and introduced him to his mistress. He passed nearly the whole of the night with her; and, rising before she awoke, put into his pocket a purse which he had given her, and went down to the eunuch, who conducted him again to the house where he had put on his disguise: having here resumed his own outer clothes, he repaired to his shop. Soon after, the lady, who had missed the purse, came and taxed him with having taken it: she told him that she did not want money, but only desired his company; and begged him to come to her again in the ensuing evening, which he promised to do: but in the afternoon, a female servant from the house of this lady came to his shop, and told him that her mistress had mixed some poison in a bottle of water which she had ordered to be given him to drink.—This mode of revenge is said to have been often adopted when the woman’s paramour has given her even a slight offence.
It is seldom that the wife of a Muslim is guilty of a criminal intrigue without being punished with death if there be four witnesses to the fact, and they or the husband prosecute her; and not always does she escape this punishment if she be detected by any of the officers of justice: in the latter case, four witnesses are not required, and often the woman, if of a respectable family, is put to death, generally in private, on the mere arbitrary authority of the government: but a bribe will sometimes save her; for it will always be accepted, if it can with safety. Drowning is the punishment now almost always inflicted, publicly, upon women convicted of adultery in Cairo and other large towns of Egypt, instead of that ordained by the law, which is stoning.—A few months ago, a poor woman of this city married a man whose trade was that of selling fowls, and, while living with him and her mother, took three other lodgings, and married three other husbands; all of whom were generally absent from the metropolis: so she calculated that when any of these three persons came to town for a few days, she might easily find an excuse to go to him. They happened, unfortunately for her, to come to town on the same day; and all of them went, the same evening, to inquire for her at her mother’s house. Being much embarrassed by their presence, and her first husband being also with her, she feigned to be ill, and soon to become insensible; and was taken, by her mother, to an inner room. One of the husbands proposed to give her something to restore her: another wished to try a different remedy: they began to contend which was the best medicine; and one of them said, “I shall give her what I please: is not she my wife?” “Your wife!” exclaimed each of the three other husbands at the same time: “she is my wife.”—Each proved his marriage: the woman was taken to the Mahkem′eh; tried; condemned to death; and thrown into the Nile.—Some time ago, when I was before in this country, a similar case occurred: a woman married three soldiers, of the nizám, or regular troops. She was buried in a hole, breast-deep, and then shot.
A woman may sometimes, but very rarely, trust in palliating circumstances, or the support of powerful friends, to save her from the penalty of death, in case of her detection in a criminal intercourse; as in the following instance.—The Básha, last year, gave one of the slaves in his hareem in marriage to a rich slave-merchant, from whom he had purchased many of his memlooks and female slaves. This man was not only unfaithful to her, but utterly neglected her; and she, in consequence, formed an improper intimacy with a merchant of whom she was a frequent customer. One day, when her husband was out, a black slave belonging to him happened to see a man’s head at a small aperture in a window of the hareem. He immediately went up to search the room of the wife; who, hearing him coming, locked her paramour in an adjoining closet. The slave broke open the door of the closet; and the man within rushed at him with a dagger which he wore in his girdle; but the former seized the blade in his hand; and the woman held him until her lover had escaped: she then kissed the slave’s hand, and implored him not to cause her death by informing her husband of what had passed: she, however, found him inexorable: he immediately went to his master, showing his bleeding hand, and telling him the cause of the wound. The woman, meanwhile, fled to the Básha’s hareem, for protection. Her husband demanded of the Básha that she should be given up, and put to death; and, the request being deemed a proper one, she was brought before her former master to answer for her crime. She threw herself at his feet; kissed the skirt of his clothing; and acquainted him with her husband’s vicious conduct, and his utter neglect of her; and the Básha, feeling himself insulted by the husband’s conduct, spat in his face; and sent back the wife to his own hareem. Her paramour did not live long after this: he was smothered in the house of some courtesans; but none of these women was punished, as it could not be proved which of them committed the act.
For their sentiments with regard to women, and their general conduct towards the fair sex, the Egyptians, in common with other Muslims, have been reprehended with too great severity. It is true that they do not consider it necessary, or even delicate, to consult the choice of a girl under age previously to giving her away in matrimony; but it is not less true that a man of the middle or higher classes, almost always, makes his choice of a wife from hearsay, or as a person blindfold; having no means of seeing her until the contract is made and she is brought to his house. It is impossible, therefore, that there should be any mutual attachment before marriage. Both sexes, in truth, are oppressed by tyrannical laws and customs; but, happily, they regard their chains as becoming and honourable: they would feel themselves disgraced by shaking them off. As to the restraint which is exercised towards the women, I have before remarked that it is in a great degree voluntary on their part, and that I believe it to be less strict in Egypt than in any other country of the Turkish empire: it is certainly far less so than it has been represented to be by many persons. They generally look upon this restraint with a degree of pride, as evincing the husband’s care for them; and value themselves upon their being hidden as treasures.[[432]] In good society, it is considered highly indecorous to inquire, in direct terms, respecting the health of a friend’s wife, or of any female in his house, unless she be a relation of the person who makes the inquiry.—One of my Egyptian acquaintances asking another native of this country, who had been in Paris, what was the most remarkable thing that he had seen in the land of the infidels, the latter, thinking lightly of all that he had observed really worthy of exciting the admiration of an unprejudiced and a sensible man, gave the following answer:—“I witnessed nothing so remarkable as this fact. It is a custom of every person among the rich and great, in Paris and other cities of France, frequently to invite his friends and acquaintances, both men and women, to an entertainment in his house. The rooms in which the company are received are lighted with a great number of candles and lamps. There, the men and women assemble promiscuously; the women, as you well know, unveiled; and a man may sit next to another’s wife, whom he has never seen before, and may walk, talk, and even dance with her, in the very presence of her own husband, who is neither angry nor jealous at such disgraceful conduct.”