Satisfied as he generally is with one wife, the Egyptian Mohammedan is not by any means remarkable for continence. He may content himself with a single woman, but he may change her as often as he pleases, a privilege which is continually abused. The facility of divorce has had a most demoralising effect upon Egyptian manners.
A man may twice put away his wife and take her back without ceremony. If, however, he divorces her a third time, or deliberately unites in one act the effect of three, he cannot take her again until she has been married and divorced by another husband. The manner of divorce is sufficiently simple. The husband says, “I divorce thee,” and returns his wife about one-third of the dowry, with the effects which she brought at her marriage. He may do this through sheer caprice, without assigning or proving any reason; but when a woman desires to put away her husband, she must show herself to have suffered serious ill-treatment or neglect, lose the share of her dowry, and often go into a court of justice to prove her claim. With the man this is never required, as is indicated by the common proverb: “If my husband consents, why should the Kadi’s consent be necessary?”
A widow must wait three months, and a divorced woman three months and ten days, or, if pregnant, until delivery, before marrying again. The latter, in this case, must also wait an additional forty days before she can receive her new husband. Meanwhile her former proprietor must support her, either in his own house or in that of her parents. If he divorce her before the actual consummation of the marriage, he must provide for her more liberally. In case, however, of a wife being rebellious, and refusing to recognise the lawful authority of her husband, he may prove her to have offended, before a Kadi, and procure a certificate exempting him from the obligation to clothe, lodge, or maintain her. Thus she is desolate and without resource, for she dare not go to another home; but if she formally promise to be obedient in future, her husband must support or divorce her. When a wife desires to be freed from any man’s restraint and is unable to dissolve the union altogether, she may make a complaint and obtain a licence to go to her father’s house. In that case he, through sheer spite, generally persists in refusing to divorce her. Sometimes a man with a disagreeable mother-in-law quartered upon him, puts away his wife in order to be rid of both.
The slightness of the marriage tie, and the ease with which it may be severed, leads, as we have said, to a profligate abuse of the power thus assumed by the male sex. Numbers of men have, in the course of their lives, 10, 20, 30, or even 40 wives. Women, also, have as many as a dozen partners in succession. Some profligates have been known to marry a woman almost every month. A man without property may pick up a handsome young widow, or divorced woman, for about 10s., which he pays as dowry. He lives with her a few days or weeks, and then divorces her with the payment of about 20s., to support her in the interval during which she is prohibited from marrying again. Such conduct, however, is regarded as disreputable, so that few respectable families will trust a girl with any man who has put away many wives. The crime of adultery is laid down by the law as worthy of severe punishment. Four eye-witnesses, however, are necessary to prove the fact, and the woman may then be stoned to death. From the secluded nature of their lives, and from the nature of the offence itself, it is rarely that such testimony is to be had. Cases, therefore, scarcely ever occur before the public courts. Heavy and ignominious penalties are denounced against witnesses who make these charges and fail in the proof. Unmarried persons convicted of fornication may be punished by the infliction of one hundred stripes, and, under the law acknowledged by the Sumrh sect, may be banished for a whole year.
Egypt has in all times been famous for its public dancing girls, who were all prostitutes. The superior classes of them formed a separate tribe or collection of tribes, known as the Ghawazee. A female of this community is called Ghazeeyeh, and a man Ghazee. The common dancing girls of the country are often erroneously confounded with the Almeh—Awalim in the singular—who are properly female singers; though, whatever some authoritative writers may assert, they certainly practise dancing, as well as prostitution, especially since the exile of the Ghawazee. They perform at private entertainments, and are sometimes munificently rewarded. The Ghawazee, on the other hand, were accustomed to put aside their veils and display their licentious movements in public, before the lowest audience. The evolutions with which they were accustomed to amuse their patrons were commonly the reverse of elegant. Commencing with decency enough, they soon degenerated into obscenity, the women contorting their bodies into the most libidinous postures. The dress was graceful, but exposed a large portion of the bosom, and was frequently half thrown aside. The Ghawazee sometimes performed in the court of a house or in the open street; but were not admitted into the harems of respectable families. A party of men often met in a house, and sent for the dancers to amuse them. Their performances, on such occasions, were more than usually licentious, and their dresses less decent. A chemise of transparent texture, which scarcely hid the skin, and a pair of full trousers, was frequently all that covered them. Drinking copious draughts of brandy or some other intoxicating liquor, they soon laid aside even the affectation of modesty, and scenes took place like those with which the priests defiled the temples of India. Many of the women who thus degrade themselves are exceedingly beautiful. As a class, indeed, they are described as the handsomest in Egypt. They are distinguished, by the peculiar caste of their countenances, from all other females in the country, and there can be little doubt that they spring from a distinct race. They boast themselves of the Barmecide descent, but this is impossible to be proved. It has been conjectured that they are the lineal, as well as the professional descendants of those licentious dancers who exhibited naked—as these sometimes do—before the Egyptians in the age of the Pharaohs. Some imagine that the dancers of Gade, or Cadiz, ridiculed by Juvenal, were the prototypes of the modern Ghawazee; but it has been supposed, with more reason, that the Phœnicians introduced the practice thither from the East, where profligacy flourished at the earliest period.
It has been the pride of the Ghawazee tribes to preserve themselves distinct from all other classes of the population, to intermarry, and thus to perpetuate their blood unmingled. A few have repented their mode of life, and married respectable Arabs; but this has not often occurred. They never among themselves took a husband until they had entered on a course of prostitution. To this venal calling they were all trained from childhood, though all were not taught to dance. In this community of harlots, it is singular to find that the husband was inferior to the wife; indeed he was subject to her, performing the double office of servant and procurer. If she was a dancer he was generally her musician, and sat by quietly tinkling upon a stringed instrument, while she, his wife, exposed her person in the most indecent attitudes, and by every voluptuous artifice endeavoured to seduce the spectator. Profligacy never assumed a more infamous form than that of the husband assisting at the daily adultery of his wife. Some of the men earned a livelihood as blacksmiths or tinkers. Many of them, however, were rich, and the women, especially, were possessed of costly dresses and ornaments.
The Ghawazee generally followed the kind of life led by our gipsies, whom some, indeed, have traced to an Egyptian origin. Many, but not all, of the wanderers of this nation in the Valley of the Nile, ascribe to themselves a descent from a branch of the same family from which the Ghawazee claim to have sprung; but both traditions rest on doubtful testimony. The ordinary language of the Ghawazee is similar to that in use among the rest of the Egyptian population; but like all other unsettled, wandering tribes, they have a peculiar dialect, a species of slang, only intelligible to themselves. Most of them profess the Mohammedan faith, and they were accustomed to follow in crowds the pilgrim caravans to the sacred shrine at Mecca.
Every considerable town in Egypt formerly harboured a large body of the Ghawazee, who occupied a distinct quarter, allotted entirely to prostitutes and their companions. Low huts, temporary sheds, or tents, formed their usual habitations, since they were in the habit of frequently transplanting themselves from one district to another. Others, however, occupied and furnished handsome houses, trading also in camels, asses, and grain; possessing numerous female slaves, upon whose prostitution they also realized much profit. They crowded the camps and attended the great religious festivals, and on these occasions the Ghawazee tents were always conspicuous. Some joined the accomplishment of singing with that of the dance.
The inferior Ghawazee women resembled in their attire the common prostitutes of other classes, which also swarmed in Egypt. Many of these also, who were not Ghawazees, took the name, in order to increase the gains of their calling.
The system of marriage, to which we have slightly alluded, is worthy of more particular notice. The man who married a Ghazeeyeh was a low and despised creature. The saying is proverbial in Egypt, that “the husband of a harlot is a base wretch by his own testimony.” The law among the Ghawazee was, that a girl as soon as marriageable must prostitute herself to a stranger and then take a husband. He is constantly employed in looking for persons to bring to her, himself cohabiting with her only by stealth, for she would be exposed to shame and made the object of ridicule were it known that she had admitted her own husband to her embraces. Polygamy is unknown among the Ghawazee. In that community, indeed, as it existed previously to the edict of 1835, we find a system exactly the reverse of that in the midst of which it existed. The birth of a male child was looked upon as a misfortune, since he was of no value to the tribe. Women, on the contrary, were precious, because they were sought after by nearly the whole male population of Egypt. The Ghazeeyeh made it a rule never to refuse the offer of a person who could pay anything. The fashionable dancer, therefore, at country fairs, though glittering with golden ornaments, and arrayed in all the beauties of the eastern loom, would admit the visit of any rough and ragged peasant for a sum not exceeding twopence. In this manner, by seizing whatever was offered to them, they often accumulated wealth, dressed in superb attire, rich embroidery of gold, with chains of golden coins, and solid bracelets of the same costly metal. In many instances, when the Ghazeeyeh had lost or divorced her former husband, and become opulent upon the profits of her venal calling, she married some village Sheikh, who was proud of his acquisition. A virgin Ghazeeyeh was never induced to forsake her hereditary profession; but when she formed such an alliance, she made a solemn vow on the tomb of some saint, to be true to her new partner, sacrificed a sheep, and was generally faithful to her sacred engagement.