According to the Turks and Syrians, the Kurbat girls are not so chaste as their European sisters; yet they wear till marriage the “lacto diklo,” a certain cloth, in token and in pledge of spotless virginity, which the bridegroom alone is permitted to take off. The women dress like the lower orders in Syria; but they affect more ornaments of silver and brass, ear-and nose-rings, armlets and bracelets, anklets and bangles. They spin, take care of the poultry, ducks, cats, and children, and cook exactly like the English Gypsy women. Especially they tell fortunes, which practice, confined to a certain caste but forbidden to others, seems to be a kind of sacerdotalism.
The Kurbat, like their brethren all the world over, have no written characters or symbols for letters or words. Their Shaykh told Newbold that, although they themselves could not write, two men in the tribe could write. As, however, neither the men nor specimens of their writing were produced, the inference drawn from this, and other similar inquiries, was that “the written characters, or symbols, of their language, or rather jargon, have either been lost, or are known to only a few, who superstitiously keep them secret.”[165] In the bazars of Syria they speak Arabic or Turkish; at home they use their own tongue.
The following scanty list of Kurbat words was obtained viva voce from the Aleppo tribes, and were subsequently checked by comparison with the tribe near Antioch:
[The above list is printed exactly as written by Burton; but it has been found impossible to verify it from other sources.]
§ 5. The Gypsies of the Haurán, South-Eastern Syria.
In January, 1871, I accompanied the Damascus Pilgrim Caravan some marches; and at Mazáríb in the Haurán, the well-known station near which Ali Beg el Abbasi, the Spaniard, was poisoned, I found three Gypsy tents. The inmates called themselves Nawar, a popular term throughout the country. In the same way as the Romá of Spain affected to be devout Christians “living in a peaceable Catholic manner,” so the head of the little party I discovered insisted upon all his people being born Muslims, evidently disliking the suspicion that they belonged to the “obsolete faith,” Christianity, with which the ignorant faithful confused all later creeds. (These people thus saved themselves from exile when Sultan “Báyezíd” expelled all Gypsies from the Ottoman Empire.) In proof of his assertion he recited a verse of the Koran with peculiar twang. The headquarters of the tribe and the abode of the chief Shaykh were at Ghazzeh, and Muhammad and his “lamentable retinue” had wandered northwards, intending to stay four or five days at Mazáríb—in fact, whilst the caravan was passing. Their peculiar industries were metal-work and making sieves, so they stated; but to these their neighbours added plundering and petty larceny, together with trading in asses and horses. According to my informant, many of his people attend the Haj, doubtless to throw dust into Muslim eyes.
My Syrian companions compared the general look of the dark-skinned, tanned dwellers with the Ashdán, whilst they found a certain resemblance between the Roumís and the women of a certain Arab tribe who camped about near Damascus; but the long, coarse, lank hair, with the duck-tail under curl, the brown white eyes, whose peculiar glance is never to be mistaken, the prominent Tatar-like cheekbones, and the irregular-shaped mouths, suggested Hindu origin and physiognomy. The beard was long and somewhat wavy, possibly the result of inhabiting for generations a hot dry land. Some have gashed faces like the “Bohemians” when they first entered Paris. Their women, adorned with ear-rings and necklaces, bracelets and anklets of brass and tinsel, were Macbethian witches; and both sexes, like the outcasts of India generally, seem to abhor cold water. I tried them with a few words of Sindhi, introduced into Hindustani, when their faces assumed the normal puzzled expression, and their eyes appeared to close and film over. Of magic and divination they would not speak to a stranger; but they readily gave me the following words: Ag, fire (pure Hindi); Ake, eye (Aukh); Chirí, knife (Churi); Goray, horse (Ghora); Kálá, oracle (pure Hindi); Munám, bread (an Arabic corruption?); Pánay, water (Pani); Zari, mouth (?). Conversing with one another they spoke fluently, and introduced few Arabic words.
The Nawar make their appearance with the Eastern Bedawin, Wuld Ali, and others about the beginning of summer, and occupy huts built of cane, sticks, and mud. The roofs are hides weighted with sticks. They work at getting in the harvests, and they are said to work much harder than the average husbandman. Of course they are charged with plundering poultry. They speak bad Arabic, and talk together in their own tongue; wherefore the peasants affect to despise them. In fact, here, as elsewhere, they constitute a strange sort of commonwealth amongst themselves—wanderers, impostors, and jugglers.