75.—A FELLAH WOMAN AND CHILDREN.
“The Fellahs have but a feeble conception of the dignity of man and of their own value; the only answer they give to blows is a complaint. Sometimes, indeed, they rebel like a flock of sheep, but with a conviction that their effort will be of no avail. It is thus, at the times of conscription, they resist the soldiery; but after a few have been killed, the rest allow themselves to be huddled on board the man-of-war, in which they are taken down the Nile to Cairo, the women and the young girls following them for some miles along the banks with cries and lamentations. A Fellah’s existence is not essentially more unhappy than that of our peasant hinds. His disposition is rather cheerful than melancholy; and every circumcision, every marriage, is the excuse for a holiday, shared by the whole village. Their songs and their dances are redolent of the spontaneous mirth instinctive in negroes. But with everything to render life agreeable, the consciousness of rights and obligations, that something that constitutes the freeman and the citizen, is wanting in them. The Fellah is fond of his home and of his hamlet; but Egypt is for him neither a nation nor a fatherland. It is astonishing at first sight to notice this degradation of the human species, so sad to behold; however, if the oppressive tyranny of the Mamelukes, the deep degradation of Egypt under the Greek and Roman dynasties, and the old caste law, condemning the mass of the population to the slavery of the soil, are remembered, it is easy to understand why the Fellah, ground down under the sway of the Pharaohs, stupefied under that of the Romans, and crushed by Mussulman fatalism, is slow to respond to the efforts and to the intellectual tendencies of the government of Saïd Pacha. Since the Arab conquest, the soil has been legally the property of the sultans, the emirs, and the beys. The feudal system that once theoretically existed amongst us was rigorously carried into practice in Egypt. The whole of the crop harvested by the Fellahs passed, with the exception of a modicum necessary for their absolute existence, into the granaries of the land-owners. Now-a-days the Viceroy has abandoned the practice of monopoly; he is anxious to change arbitrary rights into regular taxes; he has yielded his just claims to the labourer, and assured to the peasant his right of succession to the fields he has watered with the sweat of his toil. But it takes a long interval to blot out the horrible stamp of their past slavery.
76.—A FELLAH DONKEY BOY.
“The sailors of the Nile, sons and relations of the Fellahs, resemble them in their ignorance, in their humility, in their contempt for life, and in their natural disposition to laughter, to song, and to the dance. But their wits are becoming sharpened by perpetual contact with strangers; and their minds are busy on many things undreamt of by the Fellah.”
The same travellers tell us, in speaking of Egyptian marriages:—
“Marriage in Egypt is not a public act strictly registered by the law. When the bridegroom and the bride’s parents have come to an understanding, when the sum to be paid by the husband has been agreed upon (the wife brings no dower), the celebration of the union takes place before two witnesses. Sometimes the cadi is apprized; but this is a formality that is often neglected. In such a union, without any ulterior guarantee, the wife is but a purchased slave. When the husband tires of her he sends her back; she can only claim a divorce on one single ground, for a reason considered by us also as a serious injury. No legal notice is taken of the birth of children, who are consequently placed in a precarious position until they are old enough to look after themselves. Their death is easily concealed; and they occasionally perish by the hand of one of the other wives, rivals of their mother. A common custom allows the Nile sailors to have two wives, one at Girgeh, for instance, and another at Assouan. The husband passes a month with each of them in turns, as his business allows him. He brings with him a few piastres, a piece or two of blue cotton stuff, often some little seaman’s venture, that the wife proceeds to dispose of on his departure. He receives in exchange the products of the place, that in turn go to swell the trade of the other wife. We had on board a cargo of earthenware, salt, and pipes. The sailors disembarked them here and there as they went up the river, expecting to find on their return stores of tobacco, dates, and horse-trappings. Polygamy looked at in this light is productive; but it loses ground notwithstanding every day, not amongst the poor only, but amongst the rich, who have in most cases but one legitimate wife at a time. Besides, there is but one real cause for polygamy—the premature old age of the women. When the men give up the practice of marrying mere children, who become rapidly worn out by the fatigues of precocious maternity, polygamy will cease to exist.”
[Fig. 77] represents the dress of a Cairo lady.