M. Paul Bataillard (Notes et Questions) refers, for information concerning the Gypsies, to the Voyage dans le Nord et dans les Parties Centrales de l’Afrique, the journey of Denham and Clapperton, translated by Eyries and another (Paris, 1826, 3 vols. 8vo). These authors, he says, pretend to assimilate the “Chouâa” Arabs of Bornou with the Gypsies. Indeed, they expressly declare that their Arabic is almost pure Gypsy. This is, however, incompatible with another passage, which declares that these “Chouâas” have imported into Bornou the Arabic, which they speak purely.
I can only find[205] that the women of the Chouâa Arabs are described as “a very extraordinary race, with scarcely any resemblance to the Arabs of the north: they have fine open countenances, with aquiline noses and large eyes; their complexion is a light copper colour; they possess great cunning with their courage, and resemble in appearance some of our best-formed Gypsies in England, particularly the women; and their Arabic is nearly pure Egyptian.” Major Denman afterwards found the “Shouaas of the tribe of Waled Salamat, extending eastward quite as far as the Tchad.” He notes their difference from the Fellalahs, and their practice of sending plundering parties to Mandara. We also hear of their skill in the chase and their use of the spear on horseback.
FOOTNOTES:
[167] In Spain this is called “Germania,” which, however, refers not to the true Gypsy, but to the cant slang, or “Thieves’ Latin”; the French argot and the Italian gorgo, a mere farrago, which contained only a few words of Romani.
[168] Lane (chap. xx.), generally so correct, falls, according to Kremer, into an error when he explains Hawi simply by “performer of sleight of hand tricks” (Taschenspieler); the origin of the word, Hayyeh, “a snake,” shows its signification. Amongst the Sinaitic Bedawin almost every tribe has an official called the Hawi, who is supposed to be poison-proof, and to have the power of stanching wounds and curing hurts by his breath. The necessary qualification for this office is that the mother should make her babe swallow, before he has tasted other food, a cake composed of seven barleycorns, seven grains of wheat, a small scorpion, and a hornet, all pounded and mixed together (The Desert of the Exodus).
[169] Algeria as well as Morocco is full of Gypsies, including the 'Aysawí Dervishes.
[170] Gházi (plural Ghawázi) would mean in Arab “one who fights for the Faith,” or “a conqueror of infidels.” Europe has learned this much during the Russo-Turkish war (1877); but our papers ridiculously misused the term “Ghazi Mukhtar,” for Mukhtar Páshá Gházi is worse than any amount of “Sir Smith.” According to some authorities, the Egyptian Gypsies took this title to gratify their Oriental crave for grandiloquence. But, I would remark, in Persian it is synonymous with rope-dancer or courtisan; and perhaps both are derived from the Ghagar “Ghaziyah,” meaning a woman (?).
[171] The origin of the term is a Persian jeu de mots. “Bermek'am” would mean I am a Barmak; Bar-maken, I sup it up. These were the words spoken by Ja'afar the “Barmekide” when his poisoned ring caused the stones upon the arm of the Ommiade Caliph (Abd el Malik) to rattle—a general and popular superstition. It is quite possible that this memorable family belonged to the Gypsy tribe so common in Persia. According to Ibn Khálikán, the first great ancestor was the principal, or the grand prior, of the convent in Balkh called Nan-buhar (young spring), a palpable corruption of Nava bihára, in Sanskrit the “new monastery.”
[172] Hence an Englishman defined the Gypsy religion as “faith in fortune-telling.”