The ostensible trades of the Persian Gypsies are those of the blacksmith and tinker, the tinner of iron, makers of winnowing sieves, cattle doctors, and fortune-tellers; they are also workers in gold, and forge the current coins of Persia and Turkey. Others are Zíngar (saddle-makers); and Newbold adds, evidently without sufficient basis: “Hence the Zinganeh, a Kurdish tribe who are supposed to be of Gypsy origin, the Italian, Spanish, and German word for Gypsy, Zingari, etc.” Finally, they are vendors of charms and philters, conjurers, dancers, mountebanks, and carvers of wooden bowls.
The professors of these arts wander about in separate bands; but they must not be confounded with independent tribes of vagabonds and outcasts of various tribes who lead a roving, thieving Gypsy life, but are not Gypsy. Their Persian neighbours hold them to have a separate origin; but identity of feature and language prove them to be one and the same stock. They divide themselves into two classes, the Kaoli or Ghurabti, the Kurbat of Syria and the Gavbar. Both names are of disputed origin, and even the Persians and the Gypsies are at variance. Kaoli is generally supposed to be a corruption of Kabuli (a man from Kabul). From this old and venerable city, Sir John Malcolm states, the Dakrám-i-Gúr imported into Persia twelve thousand singers and musicians; and the dancing girls of Persia are to this day called Kaoli. Khurbat, of which Kurbat is a corruption, involves, it is said, the idea of wandering. Gavbar is equally obscure; the meaning would be “one who takes pleasure in cattle”; but the Persians call a herdsman “Gan-ban,” never “Gav-bar.” The true Kaoli and Gavbar, who, like their brethren in Sindh, Syria, and Egypt, outwardly profess El Islam, rarely, if ever, intermarry with Persians, Turks, or Arabs. And whilst the latter regard them as distinct in origin from themselves, in fact as Hindus, would their wretched Pariahs, the Gáo-bár, claim the honour of being Sayfids, or descendants of the Apostle?
§ 4. The Gypsies of Syria.
According to Newbold, the Gypsies of Palestine and South Syria[162] are called Náwer; while in Asia Minor and North Syria they style themselves Kurbat, Rumeh, and Jinganeh (Chinganeh). The signification of Kurbat is doubtful, but is only supposed to mean a wanderer from his own land, a stranger, derived from the Arab root Gharaba, “he went far away.” The two last terms he holds related to the Spanish Romani (?) and Zincali, and the German Zigeuner. They are true to the character of their race; they disdain to be shepherds or tillers of the soil; and they feed like vultures and carrion upon the credulity and superstitions of mankind. Bedawin of the intellectual world, they juggle the simpler sons and daughters of cities by pretended skill in the occult, more especially chiromancy. Some are dancers and minstrels, while others vend charms, philters, and poisons. Like their English brethren, the men are profound adepts in horseflesh, in donkey-dealing, and in game-snaring; but instead of tinkering pots and kettles, they spin cotton and woollen yarns for their clothes and tents, and they make and mend osier-baskets. This and making wooden boxes were the favourite handicrafts of the Gypsies when they first entered Europe.
In winter they camp on the outskirts of large towns, in a sort of half tent, half hut, which is readily removed. During the fine months they go forth into the plains or mountains, where they affect tents or ruins, but never far from the haunts of their prey, mankind. Their migrations, if regular, are not of a great extent; and they never wholly forsake a country unless driven away by absolute persecution.
Shaykh Rasscho, the head of the Aleppine Gypsies, and responsible for their poll tax, informed Newbold that his tribe was divided into thirty houses, of whose names he could only remember twenty-eight. It is not material to give these names, but they are evidently Muslim names of men who probably belonged to “heads of houses.” The old Gypsy declared that Kurbat, Nawar, Rumeli, and Chinganeh were all of the same family, and had lived in Syria and Asia Minor since the creation.
These people in no way differ physically from the European tinkers. They have the same slender, well-knit figures, rather below middle size, tawny skins, rather prominent cheekbones, and straight black hair. The facial angle is rather Hindu and Tatar than Turkoman, and they have the Hindu’s long horse-tail hair. Dark eyes are not invariable; in the mountains of Antioch the colour is sometimes grey or blue, and the same occurs occasionally among the Arabs of Petra and Palmyra, among the Syrians, the Zebeks, and other races of Asia Minor. A great mixture of blood is the cause. The Zebeks of Smyrna have now been deputed to represent the bandit regular troops of Turkey as opposed to the bandit police. The Asiatic Gypsy has also that peculiar indescribable appearance and expression of eye which is so strongly developed in the Romá of Morocco and Moorish Spain, “a feature which, like the brand on the forehead of the first murderer, stamps this marked race over the whole globe, and when once observed is never forgotten. The ‘Evil Eye’ is not the least of the powers with which this people is superstitiously invested; and if there be any truth in the overstrained (?) doctrines of animal magnetism, one could not possibly frame to the imagination an eye so well calculated, so intense a magnetic force.”[163]
These Gypsies have never been seen to pray or perform any religious rite; some of their elders, like the Druzes and other Syrian tribes, circumcise their children, and conform to the exterior observances of El Islam.
Shaykh Rasscho could repeat with sundry mistakes the Arabic Faith Formula, omitting the second half, “Muhammad is the Apostle of Allah.” He said that he and his tribe acknowledged one supreme, everlasting, omnipotent Being, and believed in an existence after death, a state of reward and punishment connected with metempsychosis. He denied the charges made against the Kurbat by Syrians, Muslims, and Christians that they worshipped the stars or the creative principle under a symbol. He also denied that they abhorred the eel and the celebrated black fish of the Antioch Lake, like the Jews, to whom the Mosaic Law—which, by-the-bye, is equally binding upon Muslims—makes it unclean, because it lacks fins and scales.[164] Newbold, however, was assured that the Kurbat, who, like the India Pariahs, are the flayers of animals dying a natural death, devour the carcases of all animals except the man and the hog.