“Yá-Moulai, allow me to persuade you to buy the oldest you can find, to the end that Nakír and Munkar, when you come to die (God forbid), may pass you by as having already answered their cross-examination as to your spiritual preparedness. For my own part, being in sound health—praise be to God on high!—I have no faith whatever in the existence of those Inquisitors. I am of the opinion of the Persian grandee who, having stuffed the mouth of his dead groom with grain, and having opened the grave in due course, found the grain still in the groom’s mouth, and cried: ‘This is proof positive that he never answered Munkar and Nakír, and strong presumptive evidence that no such Inquisitors exist!’ Nay, grow not impatient with me. Am I not the least of thy slaves?”
The sceptical rogue chuckled, emitting a sound like that of a camel drinking water. The winding-sheet I bought cost about fifteen shillings. Later on I had it washed in the water of Zem-Zem. It measures about 8ft. by 4ft. In the middle the figure of a cypress tree is inscribed with the Verse of the Throne as a protection to the wearer from the Percussion of the grave; and other verses from the same chapter of Al-Beghar surround the hem thereof. For the life of me I could not help being sorry that I should not see myself in it as others would see me—a reflection which nearly stifled my guide with laughter. “Since you are still a good enough Muslim to be superstitious,” said he, “I would suggest that we should next visit a talisman-monger’s, for there you would find charms to protect you against the Evil Eye and the contagion of every disease.” Thither, therefore, we bent our steps.
The talisman-monger, as I discerned from his features, stern and passive, and from the determination of mind underlying them, was half-Turk, half-Syrian. The Syrians are of a resolute character, and seldom take a step that does not bring them nearer to the end they keep ever in view. In this regard they are the antithesis of the Egyptians, who seem utterly aimless if left to their own devices. In their attitude towards work the Syrians are more persevering than the Persians, and less conceited in character. They are at their best as men of action. As men of thought they are inferior both to the Persians, who are the Hamlets of the East, and to the Bedouins, whose wild, imaginative spirits equip them for pillage and for poetry alike. They are extremely fond of music, these cheery sons of a flowery soil, though here, again, they must yield the palm to the fiery clansmen of the Arabian deserts. The charm-seller, a characteristic specimen of his race, an excellent business man, was taken completely by surprise when I asked him to give a name to a certain cornelian set in silver gilt and inscribed with a Kurán text. “May God protect me from Satan,” he muttered in pious horror. “Here is a Muhammadan who knows not a Bábághúli!” Then, recovering slowly from his astonishment, he went on to explain that it is worn by a Muslim child in commemoration of the Aghigheh sacrifice, and I may repeat here that it forms the chief feature of the cover design to this volume.
After much bargaining I bought a Bábághúli for a couple of Turkish pounds, and found in it, beyond its usual interest, a magnificent example of Perso-Syrian work. The cornelian, which is circular in shape and slightly raised in the middle, is of a rosy shade, and measures about an inch in circumference. On it is engraved, in the finest Naskh writing, a short chapter of the Kurán, which must have cost the artist half-a-year’s labour. The stone is set in silver of a floral design, with two loops or links, through which are threaded strings of gold ending with tassels and a running noose for fastening round the arm. Round the centre stone are inlaid twenty-two rubies and emeralds, in alternate order, eleven of each. These stones alone, though they are not cut properly, are worth three times as much as I gave for the whole thing. I made haste to tie the Bábághúli round my biceps, more from fear of theft than any superstitious motive, and promised not to part with it in any circumstances; whereat my guide, sneering, said, “May the devil give you a wide berth, yá-Moulai!” the talisman-monger endorsing the wish by adding, “May it be auspicious.”
The wearing of a túgh, or silver chain, to which is attached a silver bowl called kashkúl, is confined to the Shiahs. It is worn round the neck by many Persian boys, and is changed every year until the boy is nine years old. By the end of that time he has nine chains laid by. These are sent, as propitiatory offerings, to the shrine of some saint, that of Abbas in Kerbela being the most sacred. Thus it comes about that a boy, so long as he wears the túgh, is called “the dog of Abbas,” and is said to be under the special protection of that saintly man. I turned to my guide. “How is it,” said I, “that he is called Abbas’s dog, and not ‘Allah’s dog,’ or, more becomingly still, ‘Allah’s child’?”
“I will answer you in a parable,” replied Seyyid ’Alí. “There was once a certain man who owned a flock of sheep. Every morning, when he drove his flock out of the fold to the pasture-land, he would say, ‘O Abbas, keep watch over my sheep, which I leave in your protection;’ and then he would go about his work until it was time to drive the sheep home again. One day he was too busy to act as shepherd, and so he sent his son in his stead. The boy, having brought the sheep to the grazing ground, said within himself: ‘I wonder why my father leaves the sheep in the care of Abbas. Did not Allah create them as well as him? Assuredly my father has committed a fault.’ And, so thinking, he left the sheep in charge of their Creator. Now it happened that, Abbas having resigned his office, a pack of wolves passed by, and, being famished, spared not even a lamb: so that when the father went in search of the sheep, he could not find a single one. Having questioned his son, he learned the truth. ‘Silly boy,’ said he, ‘knowest thou not that Allah takes care of all his creatures, of the wolves as well as of the sheep, whereas Abbas, listening to our entreaties, would keep the beasts of prey from attacking our flocks and herds? Be wiser to-morrow than you were this morning.’ So you see, yá-Moulai, that there is no use in trying to be anything to Allah beyond what one really is.”
At the end of nine years these chains are valued, and the price of them is distributed among the poor, after which they are sent to the shrine of Abbas. To the chain a pair of hands made of silver is sometimes hung, in memory of Abbas, whose hands were cut off on the plain of Kerbela. The talisman-monger had hundreds of these chains and bowls and hands in his shop, and also, among other things, heaps of mázús, or oak-apples. These oak-apples are used as charms by nearly all Muhammadans. Those in the shop were of two kinds. Some were nearly black and perfectly circular; others were of a light brown colour and spheroid in shape. Among those of a spheroidal shape was a mázú of exceptional beauty, evidently intended for a woman. The two ends of the hollow spheroid were set in silver with numerous figures exquisitely chased, one group of which was that of a female slave handing over the heart of her young mistress to the expectant lover. This particular kind of mázú, I was told, is suspended on a chain and worn on their breasts by the women. Other oak-apples are seen hanging from the tip of children’s caps on a silk band, along with prayer-bags made of green velvet and containing texts from the Holy Scriptures.
Meanwhile my guide, having struck up acquaintance with a countryman of his from Hamadan, was engaged in conversation with him. This new friend, Murshid Khan by name, was a tall swarthy fellow. He had come to buy a chip of the sacred tree talh’, an acacia which has small round golden blossoms, whereof he related the following legend:
“Many centuries ago a certain peasant went to cut wood in a forest near the city of Hamadan. This he had been wont to do every winter in order to eke out his livelihood, during the cold weather, as is still the custom among the peasantry in our parts. Now, it chanced that his axe struck against a branch of a talh’ which, as it happened, was in the way of the tree he was felling. To his consternation a stream of blood oozed out, followed by cries the most pitiable he had ever heard. They seemed, in their distressful anguish, to come from the heart of a mother that had lost her child. The axe fell from the peasant’s hand, and he himself sank to the ground in a faint. When he recovered consciousness it was to look for the talh’ ... only to find it gone! He returned to the city as fast as his legs would carry him and there he told his story, which was spread abroad among the people. And from that day to this the wood of the talh’ has been regarded as sacred. Children use it in the place of mázús, and barren women, if they hang a chip of it above their beds for the space of forty consecutive Fridays, will bear children in due course. This is so.”
Here the guide, Seyyid ’Alí, interrupted the speaker, saying: “Light of my heart, thou speakest the truth. In my country, in the town of Behbehan, near Shíráz, we have a famous way of protecting our women folk against the attacks of Aal—that cursed ogress who comes to cut out the liver of every mother after the birth of her child. First we draw four lines round the walls of the house; then at each of the four corners we plant a branch of the talh’ tree; and a dagger, with an onion atop, is stuck in the ground facing the door. This is the only possible way of keeping Aal out—may she be accursed!”