“Soon after his return from the mosque, the bridegroom leaves his friends in a lower apartment, enjoying their pipes and coffee and sharbat. The bride’s mother and sister, or whatever other female relations were left with her, are above, and the bride herself and the belláneh, in a separate apartment. If the bridegroom is a youth or young man, it is considered proper that he as well as the bride should exhibit some degree of bashfulness; one of his friends, therefore, carries him a part of the way up to the hareem. Sometimes, when the parties are persons of wealth, the bride is displayed before the bridegroom in different dresses, to the number of seven; but generally he finds her with the belláneh alone, and on entering the apartment he gives a present to this attendant, and she at once retires.
“The bride has a shawl thrown over her head, and the bridegroom must give her a present of money, which is called ‘the price of the uncovering’ of the face, before he attempts to remove this, which she does not allow him to do without some apparent reluctance, if not violent resistance, in order to show her maiden modesty. On removing the covering, he says, ‘In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful,’ and then greets her with this compliment: ‘The night be blessed,’ or ‘—— is blessed,’ to which she replies, if timidity do not choke her utterance, ‘God bless thee.’ The bridegroom now, in most cases, sees the face of his bride for the first time, and generally finds her nearly what he has been led to expect. Often, but not always, a curious ceremony is then performed.
“The bridegroom takes off every article of the bride’s clothing except her shirt, seats her upon a mattress or bed, the head of which is turned towards the direction of Makkah, placing her so that her back is also turned in that direction, and draws forward and spreads upon the bed, the lower part of the front of her shirt; having done this, he stands at the distance of rather less than three feet before her, and performs the prayers of two rakʾahs; laying his head and hands in prostration upon the part of her shirt that is extended before her lap. He remains with her but a few minutes longer. Having satisfied his curiosity respecting her personal charms, he calls to the women (who generally collect at the door, where they wait in anxious suspense) to raise their cries of joy, or zaghareet, and the shrill sounds make known to the persons below and in the neighbourhood, and often, responded to by other women, spread still further the news that he has acknowledged himself satisfied with his bride. He soon after descends to rejoin his friends, and remains with them an hour, before he returns to his wife. It very seldom happens that the husband, if disappointed in his bride, immediately disgraces and divorces her; in general, he retains her in this case a week or more.
“Marriages, among the Egyptians, are sometimes conducted without any pomp or ceremony, even in the case of virgins, by mutual consent of the bridegroom and the bride’s family, or the bride herself; and widows and divorced women are never honoured with a zeffeh on marrying again. The mere sentence, ‘I give myself up to thee,’ uttered by a female to a man who proposes to become her husband (even without the presence of witnesses, if none can easily be procured), renders her his legal wife, if arrived at puberty; and marriages with widows and divorced women, among the Muslims of Egypt, and other Arabs, are sometimes concluded in this simple manner. The dowry of widows and divorced women is generally one quarter or third or half the amount of that of a virgin.
“In Cairo, among persons not of the lowest order, though in very humble life, the marriage ceremonies are conducted in the same manner as among the middle orders. But when the expenses of such zeffehs as I have described cannot by any means be paid, the bride is paraded in a very simple manner, covered with a shawl (generally red), and surrounded by a group of her female relations and friends, dressed in their best, or in borrowed clothes, and enlivened by no other sounds of joy than their zaghareet, which they repeat at frequent intervals.” (Lane’s Modern Egyptians.)
(For the law of marriage in Ḥanafī law, see Fatāwā-i-ʿĀlamgīrī, p. 377; Fatāwā-i-Qāẓī K͟hān, p. 380; Hamilton’s Hidāyah, vol. i. p. 89; Durru ʾl-Muk͟htār, p. 196. In Shīʿah law, Jāmiʿu ʾsh-Shattāt; Sharāʾiʿu ʾl-Islām, p. 260. For marriage ceremonies, Lane’s Egyptians; Herklots’ Musalmans; Mrs. Meer Hasan Ali’s Musalmans; M. C. de Perceval, Hist. des Arabes.)
MARS̤ĪYAH (مرثية). A funeral elegy. Especially applied to those sung during the Muḥarram in commemoration of al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusain.
MARTYR. The Arabic word for “martyr” in the Qurʾān, and in Muslim theology, is shāhid (شاهد), pl. shuhūd, or shahīd (شهيد), pl. shuhadāʾ, the literal meaning of which is “present as a witness.” It implies all that is understood by the Greek μάρτυς, and the English martyr; but it is also a much more comprehensive term, for, according to Muḥammadan law, not only those who die in witness of, or in defence of the faith, are martyrs, but all those who die such deaths as are calculated to excite the compassion and pity of their fellow men.
The word occurs in the Qurʾān, [Sūrah iv. 71]: “Whoso obeys God and the Apostle, these are with those with whom God has been well pleased—with prophets (nabīyīn), and confessors (ṣiddīqīn), and martyrs (shuhadāʾ), and the righteous (ṣāliḥīn): a fair company are they.”
A perfect martyr, or ash-shahīdu ʾl-kāmil, is one who has either been slain in a religious war, or who has been killed unjustly. But the schools of divinity are not agreed as to whether it is necessary, or not, that such persons should be in a state of ceremonial purity at the time of their death, to entitle them to such a high rank.