According to the Arab belief, the spirit of man is bound to pass a certain time on earth, and a natural death is the token of reaching that time. Should he be killed by violence, his spirit haunts the spot where his body was buried, and remains there until the term on earth has been fulfilled. The same Arab told Mr. Taylor that for many years, whenever he passed by night over the place where Napoleon defeated the Mamelukes, the noise of battle was heard, the shouts of the soldiers, the cries of the wounded, and the groans of the dying. At first the sounds were loud, as of a multitude; but year by year they gradually decreased, as the time of earthly sojourn expired, and at the time when he told the story but few could be heard.
Among some of the tribes they have a rather odd superstition. A traveller was struck with the tastefulness of a young girl’s headdress, and wanted to buy it. She was willing enough to sell it for the liberal price which was offered, but her father prohibited the sale, on the ground that from the headdress could be made a charm which would force the girl to fly to the possessor, no matter in what part of the world he might be.
It is not wonderful that, saturated as they are with these ideas, many of the wonders of nature appear to them to be of supernatural origin. Chief among them is that extraordinary phenomenon, the mirage, in which a place far below the horizon is suddenly made visible, and appears to be close at hand. Even in our own country we have had examples of the mirage, though not in so striking a manner as is often seen among the sandy plains of Arabia. Water is a favorite subject of the mirage, and the traveller, as he passes over the burning plains, sees before him a rolling river or a vast lake, the palm trees waving on its edge and reflected on its surface, and the little wavelets rippling along as driven by the wind. Beasts as well as men see it, and it is hardly possible to restrain the thirsty camels from rushing to the seeming water.
The Arabs call the mirage, “Water of the Jinns,” and believe that it is an illusion caused by the jinns—our old friends the geni of “The Arabian Nights.” A very vivid account of this phenomenon is given in St. John’s “Egypt and Nubia:”—
“I had been riding along in a reverie, when, chancing to raise my head, I thought I perceived, desertward, a dark strip on the far horizon. What could it be? My companion, who had very keen sight, was riding in advance of me, and, with a sudden exclamation, he pulled up his dromedary and gazed in the same direction. I called to him, and asked him what he thought of yonder strip, and whether he could make out anything in it distinctly. He answered that water had all at once appeared there; that he saw the motion of the waves, and tall palms and other trees bending up and down over them, as if tossed by a strong wind. An Arab was at my side, with his face muffled up in his burnous; I roused his attention, and pointed to the object of our inquiry. ‘Mashallah!’ cried the old man, with a face as if he had seen a ghost, and stared with all his might across the desert.
“All the other Arabs of the party evinced no less emotion; and our interpreter called out to us, that what we saw was the evil spirit of the desert, that led travellers astray, luring them farther and farther into the heart of the waste, ever retreating before them as they pursued it, and not finally disappearing till its deluded victims had irrecoverably lost themselves in the pathless sands. This, then, was the mirage. My companion galloped toward it, and we followed him, though the Arabs tried to prevent us, and erelong I could with my own eyes discern something of this strange phenomenon. It was, as my friend reported, a broad sheet of water, with fresh green trees along its banks; and yet there was nothing actually before us but parched yellow sand. The apparition occasioned us all very uncomfortable feelings, and yet we congratulated ourselves in having seen for once the desert wonder.
“The phenomenon really deserves the name the Arabs give it, of Goblin of the Desert; an evil spirit that beguiles the wanderer from the safe path, and mocks him with a false show of what his heated brain paints in glowing colors. Whence comes it that this illusion at first fills with uneasiness—I might even say with dismay—those even who ascribe its existence to natural causes? On a spot where the bare sands spread out for hundreds of miles, where there is neither tree nor shrub, nor a trace of water, there suddenly appeared before us groups of tall trees, proudly girdling the running stream, on whose waves we saw the sunbeams dancing. Hills clad in pleasant green rose before us and vanished; small houses, and towns with high walls and ramparts, were visible among the trees, whose tall boles swayed to and fro in the wind like reeds.
“Far as we rode in the direction of the apparition, we never came any nearer to it; the whole seemed to recoil step by step with our advance. We halted, and remained long in contemplation of the magic scene, until whatever was unpleasant in its strangeness ceased by degrees to affect us. Never had I seen any landscape so vivid as this seeming one, never water so bright, or trees so softly green, so tall and stately. Everything seemed far more charming there than in the real world; and so strongly did we feel this attraction that, although we were not driven by thirst to seek for water where water there was none, still we would willingly have followed on and on after the phantom; and thus we could well perceive how the despairing wanderer, who with burning eyes thinks he gazes on water and human dwellings, will struggle onward to his last gasp to reach them, until his fearful, lonely doom befalls him.” This singular illusion and its effect upon travellers is well [illustrated] by the artist, on the 679th page.
“We returned slowly to our Arabs, who had not stirred from the spot where we left them. Looking back once more into the desert, we saw the apparition gradually becoming fainter, until at last it melted away into a dim land, not unlike a thin mist sweeping over the face of a field (Hochländer). It was probably this phenomenon, which is beheld as well in Hadramaut and Yemen as in the deserts of Egypt, which gave rise to the fable of the Garden of Irem, described in the story of the Phantom Camel, in the ‘Tales of the Ramad’han.’”
I cannot part from the Arab superstitions without mentioning one which is of very great antiquity, and which has spread itself widely over the world. I allude to the celebrated ink-mirror of the Arab magicians, in which they see, through the eyes of another, the events of the future and the forms of persons far distant.