CHAPTER VI
THE GYPSY IN AFRICA
§ 1. The Egyptian Ghajar or Ghagar
If there is anything persistent in Gypsy tradition, it is the assertion that the Gypsies originally came from the banks of the Nile—that Egypt, in fact, gave them a local habitation and a name. Yet, curious to say, this is the country, and the only country, where a tribe of the Romá, preserving the physiognomy and the pursuits of its ancestors, has apparently lost its old Aryan tongue, or rather has exchanged it for a bastard argot, mostly derived from Arabic.[167] Nor does this phenomenon seem to be of modern date. A very rare Italian comedy of the middle sixteenth century, La Cingana, pronounced “Tchingana,” was expected to yield treasures of philological lore; but on investigation it proved that the Gypsies spoke only a corrupt Arabic.
The following pages are mostly taken from the well-known work Aegypten, etc. (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1860), by the famous Orientalist, Alfred von Kremer. As will be seen, he made a careful study of the “Zigeuner” or “Aegypten,” the “Ghagar”; whereas these interesting families of the Gypsy race, a people of wanderers, who have nowhere a house, and who have everywhere a home, are most perfunctorily treated of by Lane.
“On the banks of the Nile,” says Von Kremer, whose words I shall now quote, as in other places, “the Ghagar men, like the Polloi of Herodotus, are tinkers, ape-leaders, rope-dancers, and snake-charmers; whilst the women are Áhnahs, prostitutes, and fortune-tellers. They are very numerous; they trade in asses, horses, and camels, and, as pedlars (Baddaah), they manage almost all the petit commerce of the country. The Ghagar buy goods wholesale in Cairo, and frequent the two annual fairs of Tantá; that of May was instituted about 1853, and entitled the Maulid El Shilkáni (birth-festival of the Shaykh El Shilkáni), who is buried some three hours’ march from Beni Suef. Thus they not unfrequently become rich.
“The Háwi[168] (snake-charmers) and the snake-eaters (Rifaijjeh) live at Cairo; and many travellers have seen the disgusting spectacle without suspecting that the Dervish’s frock covered the ‘tinkler.’ These classes are useful to the naturalist, as they have always a supply of live or dead serpents, with and without poison-fangs, lizards, uromastix, jerboas, jackals, wolves, ferrets (Stinkthiere), and so forth. They find and catch serpents with surprising dexterity: armed with a bit of palm frond to tap the walls and ceilings, and with a pipe whose tones draw the reptiles from their hiding-places, they rarely fail to make captures, as the older houses of Cairo are mostly haunted by harmless snakes. This proceeding of course awes the ignorant, and none dare to engage a room when the Háwi has declared it to be snake-possessed.
“The term ‘Ghagar’ or ‘Ghajar’ is general; the people, according to their own account, are divided into tribes, who all, however, represent themselves to be pure Arabs and wandering immigrants from the West.[169] The date of this movement is apparently unknown; but its reality is confirmed by the fact that all, without exception, belong to the Maliki school, prevailing in Morocco and in North-West Africa. They are vagrants by profession, and obtain written permission to travel, either from the police or from the Guild Shaykh of the Rifai Dervishes.
“The most numerous tribe everywhere in Egypt is the Ghawázi;[170] in every city, town, and village there are representatives of these arch-seductresses, whose personal beauty makes them dangerous. They call themselves Baramaki,[171] and derive themselves from the Persian Barmekides, the historical house ruined and annihilated by the Khalif Harun-er-Raschid. Yet they are very proud of their Bedawin descent; and they lead the lives of the sons of the desert, dwelling in tents, which they carry from fair to fair. The maidens are dancers, the old women spae-wives;[172] the girls rarely marry before securing a competency, and they often take their slaves to husband. The Gháziyah’s goodman is generally nothing more than a servant, who brings her new acquaintances, and who pipes or drums when she dances. There are cases of these girls marrying village chiefs; and their after-lives are as correct as their youth was dissolute (compare p. 145, Burckhardt’s Arabic Proverbs: London, 1830). The Ghawázi speak the Gypsy jargon which is in use amongst all the other tribes.