Mysteries of the Libyan Desert

by W. J. Harding King

In the evening the funeral feast and what is known as a khatma is held at the deceased’s house, when one or more fikis—holy men of a humble kind, frequently the village schoolmasters—chant from the Koran the sixty-seventh chapter known as the Surat el Mulk (the chapter of the kingdom) which deals largely with the punishments that await unbelievers when they get to hell. Food is usually provided for all present. That carried in the procession is distributed at the grave.

The night following the funeral is usually called by Mohammedans the Leylet el Wahsha, or night of desolation, though it is also sometimes known as the Leylet el Wahada, or “night of solitude,” because Moslems believe that the soul remains with the body during this first night after burial.

The female relations of the deceased go to visit the grave daily in the oasis for fifteen days, and longer if he was much beloved.

The grave, I have heard—I have not looked into one—is of the usual Moslem pattern, with the lahd, or recess at the side of the bottom, in which the body is laid. They are so oriented that the corpse, when lying on its side, faces towards Mecca. The recess is walled up before the grave is filled in.

Mohammedans believe that as soon as the mourners have left the cemetery, the grave is visited by two coal-black angels with china blue eyes, called Munkar (the “Unknown”) and Nakir (the “Repudiating”) whose business it is to question the dead man as to his belief in Mohammed and Allah, and if necessary to inflict upon him the “punishment of the grave.” One of them seizes him by the tuft of hair that most Moslems have on the top of the head, and raises him into a sitting position, while the other puts the questions. Should his answers prove satisfactory the grave is greatly enlarged and filled with light, and the defunct is thrown into a deep sleep that lasts until the Resurrection. But if the corpse proves to be that of an infidel, he is beaten to a jelly with an iron club.

In view of the visit of these two angels, it is usual, before the burial party leaves the grave, for a fiki (holy man) to seat himself before it, and proceed to instruct the corpse as to the answers he is to give when they come.

The funeral processions I saw in the oases seemed to have little of the solemnity associated with a European interment. That of the guardian of the tomb already referred to—although the corpse was that of a man who might have been supposed from his occupation to have been somewhat of a saintly character—on seeing me standing by with a camera, hesitating to take a photograph for fear of intruding on such a solemn occasion, of their own accord came in my direction, and one of them volunteered the information that I could photograph them if I wished to do so. Unfortunately the light was too bad to enable me to avail myself of the invitation.

It is curious to note that in Dakhla Oasis—though this is not so apparently in Kharga—both funeral and circumcision feasts are sometimes held at the tombs of the local religious sheykhs.

The methods of celebrating some of the religious festivals differ slightly in the oases from the usages of the Nile Valley. The tenth day of Moharrem, the first month of the Moslem’s year, is the anniversary of several important events in their religion, and is kept as a fête throughout Egypt; it is known as Yum Ashura “the tenth day.”

It is said to be the anniversary of the day on which Noah first issued from the ark after the flood; and Adam and Eve—who, according to the Moslems, somehow lost sight of each other on their expulsion from the Garden of Eden—are said to have met again for the first time afterwards on this day. Some say that this is the day upon which Allah created them, and also that heaven, hell, life and death, the pen with which Allah wrote down the predestined actions of all mankind, and the exact number of all things that were to be ever created and the tablet upon which they were all recorded, were all created on this day. But more especially it is the anniversary of the day upon which El Hussein, the son of ’Ali, and the prophet’s grandson, was killed in the Battle of Karbala.