IV
BREAD AND SALT
"There would be nothing eatable," says Plutarch, "without salt, which, mixed with flour, seasons bread also. Hence it was that Neptune and Ceres [or Poseidon and Demeter as the Greeks called them] had both the same temple."[17] And from the days of Plutarch until now, as has been already mentioned, it has been customary to speak of the "covenant of salt" as synonymous with the "covenant of bread and salt;" or as identical with the covenant of food-sharing in the rite of hospitality. But the covenant of salt among primitive peoples has, and ever has had, a sacredness and depth of meaning far beyond what is involved in the ordinary sharing of food.
Even the sharing of water between two persons, or the giving and receiving of a drink of water, is a compact of peace for the time being, as a truce between enemies.[18] The sharing of bread, or of flesh, means yet more than the sharing of water. It brings those who join in it into the league or treaty of hospitality, by which the host is pledged to his guest while he is a guest, and for a reasonable time after his departure.[19]
Durzee Bey, a native chieftain in Mesopotamia, having put a bit of roast meat into the mouth of Dr. Hamlin, as they sat together in his domicil, said: "By that act I have pledged you every drop of my blood, that while you are in my territory no evil shall come to you. For that space of time we are brothers."[20] "Where enmity subsists, the fiercer Arabs will not sit down at the same table with their adversary; sitting down together betokens reconciliation."[21]
A covenant of salt is, however, permanent and unalterable, as the truce or treaty is not. Yet this distinction, recognized by Orientals, does not seem to be observed by all writers on Oriental customs, even by those who are generally observant and experienced.
It is true that the sharing of salt is usually an accompaniment of bread-sharing; hence, a covenant of salt between two parties is generally, although not always, made by their partaking of bread and salt together. Moreover, because salt is a common ingredient in Oriental bread, the eating of bread with another in the East may include the sharing of salt with him; but in such a case it is the salt, and not the bread, which is the nexus of the perpetual covenant, in its distinction from the temporary compact of hospitality in the sharing of bread. The bread is the vehicle of the covenant-making salt. Indeed, they have it for a proverb among Arabs and Syrians, "My bread had no salt in it," as a mode of accounting for any act of treachery, or failure in fidelity toward one who was a partaker of the bread of hospitality.
In the famous Oriental story of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," the captain of the robber band who had visited Ali Baba in order to murder him was unwilling to partake of any food which had salt in it. This carefulness it was that excited the suspicion of Morgiana, the faithful slave girl, and led her to ask, "Who is he that eateth [only] meat wherein is no salt?" And when she recognized the robber captain under his disguise, she said to herself: "So ho! this is the cause why the villain eateth not of salt, for that he seeketh now an opportunity to slay my master, whose mortal enemy he is."[22] This man was ready enough to partake of bread and flesh as a guest, and then strike his host to the heart in violation of all the obligations of hospitality; as, indeed, has been done in many a case in the East in early and in recent times,[23] but he could not consent, robber and murderer as he was, to disregard a sacred "covenant of salt."
The story of the origin of the dynasty of the Saffaride Kaleefs, in the ninth century, is an illustration of the surpassing power of the covenant of salt. Laiss-el-Safar, or Laiss the coppersmith, was an obscure worker in brass and copper, in Khorassan, a province of Persia. His son Yakoob wrought for a time at his father's trade, and then became a robber chieftain.
Having on one occasion found his way by night through a subterranean passage into the treasury of the palace of the governor, Nassar Seyar, who was then in control of Seiestan, Yakoob gathered jewels and costly stuffs, and was proceeding to carry them off. Striking his bare foot, in the darkness, against a hard and sharp substance on the floor of the room, he thought it might be a jewel, and stooped to pick it up. Putting it to his tongue, to test it after the manner of lapidaries, he discovered that it was rock salt that he had tasted in the governor's palace. At once he threw down his bale of stolen goods, and left the palace by the way he had entered.