London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 4

by Henry Mayhew

It was not only in the more populous cities and districts of Lower Egypt that the Ghawazee pursued their double calling of dancer and prostitute. Those in the Upper country were equally addicted to that immoral calling, and were, in proportion, equally encouraged. Even in the small villages a company of them was usually to be found, glittering in finery of gaudy colours, unveiled, and clothed only in those light transparent garments in which the members of the same sisterhood are represented on the monuments—a loose chemise of gauze, a scarf negligently hung about the loins, and loose trousers of the most delicate texture. Their dances were exhibitions of unrestrained indecency,—attitude, look, and movement being equally lascivious. They also sang and played on the viol, lute, tambour, lyre, or castanet. The common prostitutes of the meaner class excelled them, at least in the affectation of modesty. Many of the Ghawazee, however, appear sensible of the degradation to which they are consigned.

The dance of the Ghawazee was, to the Egyptians, what an opera ballet is in England—the representation of some episode, generally of love. Formerly there was, near Cairo, a little village called Shaarah, the Eleusis of modern Egypt, where the mystical rites of Athor were, until recently, celebrated. It was a collection of small mud huts, distinguished from those of the common people by superior cleanliness and comfort. Numbers of the Ghawazee dwelt here, and when Mr. J. A. St. John visited their abode, came out to meet him, dressed in elegant attire, with a profusion of ornaments. All were young—none were more than twenty, many not more than ten years of age. Some were exceedingly handsome, while others, to an European judge, appeared quite the reverse. In this village lived a considerable number of the Ghawazee. The greater part of their lives was passed in the coffee-house, where they lounged all day on cushions, sipping coffee, singing, and indulging in licentious conversation. In the great room a hundred might assemble, and here they were visited by the profligates of Cairo, to whom the village of Shaarah was a regular place of resort. In the towns they frequented the common coffee-houses, and in the smaller hamlets up the valley, they wandered all day among the dwellings, or reclined on benches in the open air until a boat with travellers appeared on the Nile, when they immediately hurried down to the shore and commenced their lascivious songs. The Arabs have the reputation of being extremely profligate, and when on their journeys never visited a city or village without paying a visit to the Ghawazee quarter. Indeed, the manners of the population have been debased under every vicious influence. A despotic government, an epicurean religion, and the spirit of indolence thus engendered, have encouraged among the men every species of crime against nature. The corruption which brought a curse on the Cities of the Plain is emulated in the cities of Egypt.

When Burckhardt wrote, about 1830, the number of males and females of the Ghawazee nation in Egypt was estimated at from 6000 to 8000. Their principal settlements were in the towns of the Delta in Lower Egypt, and, in the Upper country, at Kenneh, where a colony of at least 300 generally resided. The scattered companies generally formed a great concourse at Tanta, in the Delta, at the three annual festivals, when a vast multitude was collected from all parts of the valley. Six hundred Ghawazee have on such occasions pitched their tents near the town. During the reign of the Memlooks, the influence of these women was, in the open country, very considerable. Many respectable persons courted their favour. They were accustomed to dwell in the towns until the brutality of the soldiers—who sometimes killed one in a fit of jealousy—drove them into the rural parts. At each of their chief places of sojourn one was invested with the title of Emir, or chief of the settlement. She was entitled to no authority over the rest, yet exercised much influence by virtue of her dignity. In Cairo itself their number was small, and they inhabited a spacious Khan, or hotel, overlooked by the castle. “In a city,” says Burckhardt, “where among women of every rank chastity is so rare as at Cairo, it could not be expected that public prostitution should thrive.” This is a harsh judgment on the character of the Caireen females, and, according to the accounts of most travellers, it is unjust.

Before Mohammed Ali, instigated by the priests, made his awkward crusade against the Ghawazee tribes, the public prostitutes were put under the jurisdiction of a magistrate—an aga, or captain of the dancing girls. He kept a list of them, and exacted from each a sum of money by way of tax. He also acted as a censor on the general morality of the people. One of these agas took upon himself an extension of his jurisdiction, and whenever he found a woman, no matter of what class, who had been guilty of a single act of incontinence, he added her name to the list of common prostitutes, and extorted the tax from her, unless she could offer him a sufficient bribe, and thus escape the infamy. Nor was this all. To gratify private revenge, he sometimes inserted in his list the names of respectable ladies; but was at length detected and punished with death. Whenever a party of Ghawazee was engaged, they had to pay to their chief a sum of money and procure his permission to dance. This practice was pursued by persons who farmed the tax, until Mohammed Ali was smitten by a sudden reverence for morals, and made an attempt, characteristic of his vulgar genius, to abolish the profligacy of Egypt. In June, 1834, a law was published compelling the Ghawazee throughout the country to retire from their profession. It is said that the Moolahs, or Muslim bishops, objected to them, not on account of the impurities they practised, but because it was a scandal that women belonging to the race of true believers should expose their faces to infidels for hire. An agitation was raised on the subject; a storm of sacerdotal rage assailed the palace; and the viceroy, priest-ridden, banished all the dancers to Esneh, 500 miles up the Nile. There they were herded together, with a small stipend from government to keep them from starvation. The effect of this truly barbarian device was just what might have been expected. The profligacy, which had been chiefly confined to them, broke out in other classes, and demoralization advanced several steps further. It is said that the Moolahs repent their policy, since some additional burdens have been laid on them to make up for the loss of revenue.

Under the old system, when all the known prostitutes paid a tax, the amount contributed by those of Cairo alone was 800 purses, or 4000l., which was a tenth of the income-tax on the whole population. This will suggest an idea of the numbers in which they existed. The Ghawazee formed the chief element in this system of prostitution, and Mohammed Ali imagined that with one stroke of the pen he could obliterate this blot on the social aspect of Egypt—he who had so worn himself out with licentious pleasures that his physicians had to persuade him to disband an army of concubines which he had kept at the expense of his miserable people. At once prostitution was denounced as a crime. The Ghazeeyeh daring to infringe the new law was condemned to fifty stripes for the first, and imprisonment with severe labour for the second, offence. The punishments of these and of all other women were illegal, according to the code of the Prophet. It has, however, been a blessing to the Mohammedan population of the East that their great lawgiver left his frame of legislation, for, invested with the authority of religion, it has been some check on the caprice of tyrants.

The men, also, who were detected encouraging the Ghawazee were made liable to the punishment of the bastinado. Legal enactments, however, cannot purify the morals of a whole community. Prostitution was abolished by law, but remained in practice as flagrant as ever. The Egyptians borrowed a device from the Persians. When a man desires to have intercourse with a woman of the prostitute class, he marries her in the evening and divorces her in the morning. The dowry he pays her is no more than she would receive were this transaction not to take place. She dare not apply for the usual stipend to maintain her afterwards. Even these connections are often kept entirely secret. The dancing has been more successfully suppressed, for many of the performances were public; but the Europeans, as well as the rich natives, frequently indulge by stealth in the prohibited amusement.

The Almehs, at least since the banishment of the Ghawazee, dance, and prostitute themselves, as well as sing—though their name implies neither practice, meaning simply “learned or accomplished women.” When an entertainment of the kind is given, it is usual to choose for the scene a lonely house in the outskirts of the city, surrounded by a garden with a high wall. There, with the windows veiled, parties meet, and the dancers are introduced. Women with children at the breast come sometimes to take part in these abominable orgies; but do not usually, unless excited by the men, develop all their powers of licentious expression. Occasionally a party of soldiers breaks in on the forbidden revel, and the girls are carried off to prison, where stripes, or, perhaps, sentences of banishment, await them.

There are, however, in Egypt considerable classes of women solely devoted to prostitution, who practise none of the accomplishments in which the Almeh and Ghawazee excel. Among them is a peculiar tribe called the Halekye, whose husbands are tinkers or horse and ass doctors. They wander about the country like gipsies, and most of the women engage in prostitution. Prostitutes of the common order swarm in all the cities and towns of the valley. In and about Cairo they are particularly numerous, whole quarters being inhabited exclusively by them. Legislation is powerless to suppress their calling. Their dress differs from that of the other sorts of women only in being more gay and less disguising. Some even wear the veil and affect all the airs of modesty. Many are divorced women, or widows, or wives of men whose business has obliged them to go abroad. The wives of many of the Arabs, if neglected for a short time, slide easily into prostitution. When Ibrahim Pasha was away on the expedition to Syria, it was said that on his return the soldiers would find all their wives courtezans; but this, of course, was a satire.

Numbers of the common prostitutes in Cairo have been accustomed to sell pigeons and other birds in the different bazaars. Hence has arisen a proverb, that a person who marries in the bird-market must divorce his wife next morning. We find in these popular sayings many indications of the features which mark the system in Egypt. We have some in allusion to the shouts and disorderly conduct of persons issuing from the brothels in the morning, and others describing the career of the prostitutes themselves. “The public woman who is liberal of her favours does not wish for a procuress.” “If a harlot repent she becomes a procuress.”

One reason assigned for the practice of early marriages is, the proneness of the young men to be seduced by prostitutes. It is only just, however, to observe, that in Alexandria, though it is considered the refugium peccatorum of the Mediterranean, the European community has preserved itself to an unusual degree uncontaminated by the general corruption of the male population.