A DRUZE ÂAKEL.
Their enemies, however, say that their sanctity consists in observing certain days of prayer, in letting their beard grow, in seldom or never being seen to smoke or to drink coffee; in studiously concealing from vulgar eyes their peccadilloes, and in withdrawing from public view to perform their devotions; which, add they, are most impure abominations, for they are grounded on a belief in the transmigration of souls, in non-entity after death, and in the lawfulness of incestuous cohabitation between daughters and fathers, or brothers and sisters. Neither do their revilers scruple to aver that they are idolaters, and worship the image of a calf. My subsequent knowledge of them leads me to subscribe to no such opinion, but to conceive that religious feelings, or pretended ones, lead some of them to a real or apparent sanctity, as in other sectaries and in all religions. And, although no deity is too gross for ignorance and superstition, no mode of worship so absurd that sophistry cannot find arguments to accredit it, and no avenging power so imbecile that priestcraft will not erect a tribunal upon its terrors, still there is, in general, such a positive and indignant denial of idolatry from all respectable Drûzes, that we do not think travellers are warranted in propagating the report. In a visit to Shaykh Daher, at the village of Rûm, one of the most venerable of the Drûze shaykhs, and one most in repute for his learning, the conversation turned on religious subjects, and I requested him to solve me certain points, upon which, like other Europeans, I had hitherto been able to obtain no correct information.
“I know,” he interrupted me, “what you are going to ask. Like most new comers, you have been probably entertained with a number of strange stories respecting us, by the consuls and European merchants of the seaports, who treasure up these anecdotes as the best food for such travellers, as come prepared to listen only to the marvellous. These Franks are no more acquainted with our domestic habits or religious tenets than I am with what is transacted in the privy council of England. They will tell you we are an incestuous nation, idolaters, and I know not what: but let me ask you whether there have been, among such as have apostatized from us, any who have made authenticated disclosures of this nature. Rather regard our simple habits of life as proofs to the contrary. We seek no proselytes: we wear no garments of gold or silver, and affect the colours of blue, white, and black, as being the least showy. Our tarbûshes (skullcaps) and turbans differ from those of the jahel or uninitiated of our people, and of people in general, as a distinctive mark by which we may be known. We are mild and peaceable in our habits, but can go to war to defend ourselves. We accommodate ourselves to the prejudices and customs of those among whom we live; hence you see us oftentimes praying in mosques, and enduring the privations of Ramazàn. We are said to have two doors to our houses, because we will not allow our women to go out by the same way that a stranger enters; and that a woman, in case of violence from a man, may more readily escape: but these are reports too absurd to require refutation. Retired and modest behaviour in our wives is their brightest ornament; and we wish them not to meet the gaze of visitors: hence we afford them every facility for escaping observation.
“Continence we hold as a virtue, and we endeavour to resist the blandishments of women. On this account there are certain of us who marry, but cohabit not with their wives. In such a case, previous to wedlock, the wife is made to understand that she will be in the light of a housekeeper only: and, as she is generally an aâkely,[83] her aim is consonant with that of the man whom she espouses. We smoke not, nor drink coffee, because they are indulgences without any advantage. We eat no meats but what are cooked by the initiated: for our object is to avoid intercourse with those with whom we must labour under restraint. Money received in the shape of a tax or an impost we hold to be unlawful: and this prohibition defends us at least from some vices which originate in money-getting.”
In fine, from what I could learn from the conversation of another shaykh, named Kalyb, the tenets of the Drûzes are as follow. The books held sacred by them are four: the Old and New Testament; the Koran; and their own, which is the essence, say they, of the other three. They have two questions, which I believe to be a sort of countersign of their religion. Which was created first, the egg or the hen? Which was made first, the hammer or the anvil? and which seem to be puzzles, to bring man to a sense of his own incapacity to scan the works of the Creator. According to them, one is not prior to the other, and hence they believe the world was created, peopled, and stocked at once with rational and brute animals; which to Omnipotence is just as easy as any other way. Their paradise is eternal, and so is their hell; and the bliss of the one or the pains of the other are inconceivably great, but of what kind they were I could not learn. They do not believe in the transmigration of the soul: for they say the soul is of too divine a nature to take up its habitation in the body of a beast.
A Drûze, who is an âakel, if he make a promise, is bound to perform it, even at the hazard of his life. A Drûze may become an âakel, and wear the turban peculiar to an âakel, at any age, provided his conversation and actions are such as render him worthy of being so. Fornication, adultery, and murder, are insuperable obstacles. He that has divorced a woman must never see her again; and, if he should chance to enter a room where she is, she must retire immediately.
There is a very prevalent notion among them that there are Drûzes in England, or else that the tenets of some sect (they mean the Quakers) are very much like their own. When familiarity had in some degree emboldened me, I said to Shaykh Kalyb that, as I had so often been told that the Drûzes worshipped a calf as a divinity, I supposed their religion was something like that of the Hindoos, who worshipped the same animal. But he assured me positively that, if that animal were sacred in their eyes, they could not eat of it, which I very well knew they did; and that those who had said they had seen images of a calf among them must have been mistaken.
I thanked the shaykh for his information, which I thought was as likely to be true as that of those who averred the contrary. But that I may not be accused of favouring the Drûzes, for whom I confess I felt a partiality, it becomes me not to conceal what was related to me by a Christian in great estimation for his learning, on Mount Lebanon.
He said that, during the incursions made by El Gezzàr Pasha into the Drûze country, in which their temples and houses were ransacked, books relating to their religion had been found and carried to Acre. In one of these is the following passage:—“The Ansáry are fools, because they allow crimes to be venial that are not secret:” from which it is to be inferred that the Drûzes hold what is done in secret to be lawful and just, even if it be what is generally considered as criminal. “And this, moreover,” (added the reverend gentleman, my informant,) “is conformable to their practice, in which incest, murder, and other crimes, have been committed very commonly where the proof of the commission was not easily to be made out.”
It is certain, however, that, when assembled at their khalweh or megesy on a Thursday evening, the vigil of their Sabbath, after a time the jahel quit the place, and the âakel remain alone: upon which occasions some of them walk round the building, and take great care that no curious person be lurking near. Besides the Drûzes of Mount Lebanon, there are several villages of them in Gebel Aâly near Aleppo, at Hasbeyah, in the Horàn, and at Wadytain, where they first settled, all which districts are to the south and south-west of Damascus.