It is customary in all Wadaï to give to any pretty girl the surname of Habbabeh, the title of the first wife of the Sultan. After this she cannot be married until she has been presented to the Sultan, who has the option of keeping her for his harem or of sending her back to her father.
Few persons occupy a lofty position for more than two years. After that they are removed to other posts or fall into disgrace. There is an extensive system of inspection organised. Malversation is severely punished.
There are various kinds of punishment established by the Koran and by the laws of different countries. Murderers are decapitated in Egypt, or cut to pieces with swords, or hanged, or impaled. In the times of the Mamlooks, a frightful punishment was that of the Shamyal. The body of the criminal was placed in a great basin and stained with tar, which was set on fire, and in this state he was carried about the city on the back of a camel. The last person who suffered this punishment was a woman named Jinieh, who used to decoy young women into her house to assassinate them. Other criminals were burned, others were buried alive. In the year 1797 of the Christian era there was a Turk who used to put men in a deep pit, and sit over it to take his meals until they died. In Tunis it is still customary to pound people in mortars. A Sultan of Morocco once put a Jew in a barrel, the inside of which bristled with nails, and ordered it to be rolled down a hill. There are various other kinds of punishments, by drowning, strangling, poisoning, starvation, or the cannon. The Defterdar Bey, in Egypt, used to call the cannon employed for this purpose his Kadi, and when he condemned any one to that kind of death, used to say simply,—“Take him to the Kadi.”
Many of the punishments ordered by the Muslim law have fallen into disuse. For some time robbers have begun to be sent to the galleys, instead of having their hands cut off. In Soudan people are allowed to buy themselves off from condemnations, even for incest and murder.
In Darfur the most common punishments are imprisonment and stripes. The prison is an inclosure without roof or flooring, in which the convict is thrown with irons on his feet and a collar round his neck. The gaolers are eunuchs. The prisoners are obliged to occupy themselves in tanning hides, and if they do not perform their appointed task in a proper time they are severely punished. If they oversleep themselves in the morning, they are dreadfully beaten for a long time. Those who are condemned for life have their irons rivetted on.
Among the Forians, they have what they call the bortoan-bau, or break-melon. When an individual is condemned to death by the Sultan, he says,— “Break the melon;” upon which the executioners seize the condemned man, and raising him in the air, drop him down several times head foremost until he be dead. Men are sometimes stretched between two posts and beaten with the prickly branches of a stinking tree, until death nearly ensues. Murderers are killed with a lance by the nearest relation of the victim. There is a commutation established for a broken tooth, or any other wound.
In Wadaï the punishments determined by the religious laws are applied according to the very terms of the Koran.[53] The Sultan has also the right to condemn to death, to stripes, or to imprisonment. When he wants to put a criminal to death, he says to his Kabartou, “Take that man and crush him,” and he is immediately led out to the Fasher and killed with clubs. Stripes are administered with whips made of the hippopotamus’ hide; and men are often known to receive a hundred or a thousand blows without a cry. Prisoners have sometimes their legs tied round trees, at other times their feet are put in a kind of fetter called a scorpion.
CHAPTER VIII.
Magic — Public Opinion — Story of an Elephant — A bold Orator — Too much of a Good Thing — Anecdote — Three Presents — A huge Pipe — Milk-drinking — Dress of the Wadaïans — Music — Frontlets — Amchinga — Dress — Duties of Women — Love — A Turguenak and a King’s Slave — Intrigues — Their cause — A Story of Passion — Unfaithful Women — Afrits or Devils — A violent Lover — Morals in Soudan.