The Moors are, for the most part, more cleanly in their persons, than in their garments. They wash their hands before every meal, which, as they use no knives or forks, they eat with their fingers: half a dozen persons sit round a large bowl of cuscasoe, and, after the usual ejaculation (Bismillah) “In the name of God!” each person puts his hand to the bowl, and taking up the food, throws it, by a dexterous jerk, into his mouth, without suffering his fingers to touch the lips. However repugnant this may be to our ideas of cleanliness, yet the hand being always washed, and never touching the mouth in the act of eating, these people are by no means so dirty as Europeans have sometimes hastily imagined. They have no chairs or tables in their houses, but sit cross-legged on carpets and cushions; and at meals, the dish or bowl of provisions is placed on the floor. They have an excellent dish, which they call El Kalia; it is prepared without salt; the meat is cut in long slips, about an inch wide, and hung in the air for a few days, when it is put into jars, which are filled with clarified butter (Smin): this preparation will keep several years; it is used by the rich and affluent when crossing the Desert to Timbuctoo, or when on a journey to Mecca, and indeed whenever they travel through a country where food is not readily procurable. Bread is seldom used in the traverse of the Desert, but certain flat cakes, similar to crumpets, but without leaven, are kneaded, and put on embers, where they are half baked, and eaten with honey and butter by the merchants and traders who accompany the caravans.
The women are not less cleanly than the men; for besides performing the usual ablutions before and after meals, they wash their face, hands, arms, legs, and feet, two or three times a day, which contributes greatly to their beauty. The poorer classes, however, look deplorable, and excite disgust. The faces of the old women appear shrivelled, from the immoderate use of cosmetics and paint during their youth.
The chief delight of the women is to attend diligently to their children, and a numerous posterity is fervently desired. In obedience to the injunction of Mohammed, mothers suckle their children two years.[142] When circumstances oblige them to take a nurse, she is not treated as a servant, but becomes one of the family, and passes her days among the children she has suckled, by whom she is ever afterwards cherished and protected; the children are taught to consider her as their own relation, and she is called (Emuh d’el Hellib) the milk mother: in case of future adversity, she never applies ineffectually for succour to these children, who consider it a duty incumbent on them to assist her to the utmost extent of their power. These milk-mothers are chosen from well formed, young, and healthy women. The new born infant is not swaddled up in a profusion of clothes, but is laid naked on a carpet, and exposed in a lofty and spacious apartment, where, breathing freely, it gradually acquires strength, while daily ablution renders it vigorous and healthy. The females are not taught to read or write, but learn early, and from experience, the domestic offices of the household; their body and limbs are never confined by tight dresses, their garments are loose and easy, suffering the limbs to have free action, and the body to take its natural form; they are occupied in grinding the corn, baking the bread, and preparing the food for their husbands and family. Ancient custom, and a predilection for the manners of their primogenitors, rendering these necessary occupations pleasant and agreeable.
The male children, whose mode of education is equal throughout the empire, on attaining the eighth year (not eighth day, as some have asserted,) are circumcised, and then begin to study the Koran. He is taught to fear and adore God, to respect old age and his parents; he is initiated in the principles of hospitality, which virtues being inculcated at school, and being afterwards seen constantly practised in his father’s family, then cannot fail to be, at the age of puberty, indelibly engraven on his heart. His inclination directs him to learn the useful arts, the care of the flocks, the tillage of the soil, or the exercise of arms; those engaged in the latter are particularly noticed by the Emperor, and if they discover a Machiavellian or despotic policy, they are generally promoted to the government of some province or town.
The Moors are not very fond of games or diversions; they are often seen sitting in the streets for hours together, sometimes in a dull lethargic humour, at others so vociferous and full of action with each other, that a person unacquainted with their manner would suppose they were going to fight.
Their usual games are leap-frog, jumping, and foot-ball; the last is the favourite diversion, at which they do not seek to send the ball to a goal, but kick it up, and amuse themselves with it, without any definitive purpose.
Of their military exercises the (lab el Borode) riding full speed, and firing, is the only one; this is performed by all those who keep horses; a party starts off together, and running full gallop fire their muskets, stopping short close to some wall, those being considered the best horsemen who approach nearest the wall, and stop shortest; they then return, load again, and renew the race: this is the mode after which they charge an enemy.
In the markets and public streets are seen expert jugglers, who perform astonishing feats of leger-de-main with most curious and unaccountable deceptions: the province of Suse is most celebrated for these arts.
Certain theatrical orators go about the most busy parts of the cities, and arrest the attention of the passengers by declamation. Some of these players personify all the various characters of a drama with exquisite spirit and humour. In the evening these amusements are laid aside and the Assfæhna, or dancing boys, excite the attention of the populace; these boys are accompanied by a governor, or master, who is indispensibly of a musical turn, and is accompanied by a kettle-drum, a flute made of a reed, and similar in sound to the pandean pipe, and an instrument with two strings, somewhat like the Greek lyre. These dancers are habited in gaudy attire, and move their feet in dancing without taking them off the ground, but gradually proceeding forwards, till they, by a signal from their chief, vault into the air, and perform various evolutions somewhat similar to the tumblers at Sadler’s Wells. Decency forbids the recital of what usually occurs after this entertainment is terminated.
Amongst the Arabs the girls dance in a very superior style; the Arabian ladies of the Mograffra tribe, as well as those of Woled Abbusebah, eminently excel. I remember passing a night in one of their douars, on the confines of Sahara, with a large party of Arabs, and instead of going to sleep, the Sheik of the douar sent for six elegant females, who engaged our admiration till the morning. Judging of the movements of these dancing Arabs with the sentiments of an Englishman, they would be thought somewhat lascivious; but the manners and customs of the country reconciles to propriety these spirited movements. Signor Andrea de Christo, a Venetian merchant, was with me, and declared that he had never seen better dancing in Italy.