The ’Id el Saghir, or lesser festival, that concludes the Ramazan, began at dawn on May 26th; the usual public prayers were recited in the mosques, and at 8.30 A.M. the squadron, dressed with flags, fired whilst the townsmen followed suit. The servants and slaves gathered in their new clothing to kiss the master’s hand and to wish him a happy festival. The Princes rode out in state. In the bazars an endimanché mob assembled despite the heavy rains, and before sunset they trooped through the miry lanes to witness the races at Mnazi Moyya, which take place only when the tide is out. These festivities—they have already been described—continued to a late hour, and thus passed away the earliest and the noisiest day of the ’Id.
The second and the third days are diluted copies of the first; visits are exchanged between all acquaintances, and the Prince holds levées in full Darbar. Here the sons of Sayyid Said and their blood relations occupy one side of the long bare hall, opposite them are the high officials and interpreters, whilst the honoured guests sit by the ruler at the Sadr, or top of the room, and fronting them, near the door, stand the eunuchs and the slaves. On leaving, as on entering, the stranger shakes hands with the whole family according to seniority, and he is accompanied by the Prince either a few paces or to the doorway, the steps, in fact, being carefully proportioned to his rank.
There is little peculiarity in the religious ceremonies of the Zanzibar Arab. An Azan (call to prayer) is repeated in the ear of the new-born babe, and on the Arba’in (40th day) the mother and infant are bathed, and become pure—until then the husband will not sit by his wife’s side. On this occasion the head of the male child is shaved, as usual amongst Moslems. Marriage is expensive, seldom costing the respectable man less than $500; all the food provided for the[the] occasion must be eaten, even if guests be sought in the streets; this indeed is the rule of Arab feasts. Half the Mahr, or settlement-money, should be paid before the Fatihah is recited; the remainder is claimed upon separation or after the husband’s death. A woman cannot demand divorce except for the usual legal reasons, and the ‘Iddeh,’ or interval before re-marriage, is three months and ten days. After a Khitmah or perlection of the Koran, the relict, who has hitherto been confined to the house, is bathed by her feminine friends, in token of readiness for engagement. Many widows refuse to change their condition, and apply themselves to money-making by commerce, plantations, or slave-dealing. I heard of one jovial ‘Armalah’ who invited Europeans to petit soupers and parties fines, in which merriment takes precedence of modesty. The Arab women of Zanzibar appear unusually spirited, especially when compared with their lords; in every great house some energetic petticoat or rather trowsers takes or forces her husband or her brother to take the lead—perhaps, as nearer home, they are the more courageous and venturous in braving danger because the risk and the brunt do not fall upon their heads. Men of pure family will not give their daughters to any but fellow-clansmen. They themselves do not object to Waswahili, and negro-girls, but the single Arab wife—there is rarely more than one—rules the concubines with a rod of iron.
Men, women, and children weep at funerals, but it is not the custom to hire ‘keeners.’ The feminine mourning dress is black, and the period, as general among Moslems, lasts 40 days. Contrary to Arab custom, the graves are lined with boarding. The exterior is a wall of coralline rag and lime from a foot to a foot and a half high, with little raised steps at the head and feet; here a porcelain saucer or an encaustic tile is sometimes mortared in by way of ornament. Old cemeteries abound throughout the city and the suburbs, sometimes showing offensive sights. A simple slab sufficed for the late Sayyid’s ancestors; on the spot, however, where he and his son Khalid lie, they are building a dwarf truncated pyramid of stone and cement, an unusual memorial to a Bayazi or a Wahhabi. Of late years the Arabs have begun to inter their slaves. Formerly the corpses were thrown to the beasts or tossed into the sea, and from the windows of H.M.’s Consulate I have seen more than one body bleached snow-white by sea-water, and stranded upon the beach where no one cared to bury it.
During the reign of the last ruler, El Islam at Zanzibar was tolerant by compulsion; the Shiahs were allowed an Imambara at which they bewailed the death of Hasan and Husayn—few Sunni countries would have tolerated the abomination. But as these ‘sectarians’ almost worship whilst others absolutely adore Ali and his descendants; and as the ‘Khariji’ schism slew the former and well-nigh damns all the rest, they join issue and agree to differ. This indeed is a recognized rule in religions, where the most minute distinctions cause and perpetuate the deadliest feuds, and the family quarrel will not be reconciled, because love perverted becomes not indifference but hate.
The Arabs are here all Shafei or Bayazi. As the latter schism is now rare under that name in the Moslem world, some notice of it may be considered advisable. I have seen the Bayazi confounded with the Mutazali (Motazilites who support Free-will versus Predestination), but there is an important difference: the latter hold Ali in high esteem and object only to the Caliph Muawiyah.
The Bayázi, also called Abázi,[[101]] Ibáz and Ibáziyyeh derive their name from Abdullah bin Yahya bin Abáz (in our dictionaries ‘Ibáz’). Some authors have corrupted this name to Beydan, that of a Persian sectarian; others translate it the ‘Whites,’ as opposed to the green of the Fatimites, and the black of the Abbasides. This arch-heretic, according to the Jehan-Numa, began to preach under the reign of El Merwan, the last Ommiade Khalifeh, between A.H. 127-132 (A.D. 744 and 749), and was shortly afterwards conquered and put to death. His tenets spread far and wide amongst the Khawárij of Nezwah, extended to the littoral, and filled the land with battle and murder.
The Bayazi, who through their Imams governed Oman for 163 years, beginning from A.D. 751, are thus one of the many Khariji (in the plural Khawárij) sects whose origin may be traced in the rival faiths of Saheism and Kuraysh idolatry; in the contest of the ‘Prophets’ Mohammed and Musaylimeh, and in the political interference of the first Caliphs between the turbulent tribes of Oman. Under the names of Shurah (شراه), Haruriyah (حرورّيه), and Muhakkimah (محکمّه[محکمّه]), these ‘Seceders’ were once numerous in northern Africa, Spain, and Arabia; in A.D. 1350 Ibn Batuta found them at Timbucktu. They are now mostly confined to a few cities in Morocco, and to the parts about Maskat. Some theological writers derive these Kharijites from the malcontents who declared that both Ali and Muawiyah had forfeited their right to the Caliphate by appealing from Allah’s judgment to human decisions, and who carried out their objection by murdering Ali and by attempting the murder of Muawiyah and Amru. Their descendants are held to have formed 20 schools like the Shiahs (or Rawáfiz) and the Mutazali; whilst the Marjiyyeh number six; the Mujbirah or Sunnites four, and, together with the Batiniyah, the Hululiyah, and the Zaydi, make up the 73 divisions into which the first Moslem declared El Islam would split. The principal Kharijite schools (Usul el Firak) have, however, been reduced to the following five. The first four are now common only in books.
1. The Azarikah, or followers of Abu Rashid Nafi’ ibn el Azrak. They permit, in religious warfare, the massacre of women and children; they do not lapidate adulterers, Koranic command being absent, and they severely punish the male, not the female, slanderer of the Faithful.
2. The Najdát, disciples of Najdat bin Amir, formerly abounded in Mekran, Kerman, Mosul, Mesopotamia, Seistan, and Oman. They hold persistency in the minor sins (Sughair) equivalent to polytheism (Shirk); whereas mortal sins are not damnable unless accompanied by persistency (Israr).