They are exactly in the same predicament with the other sex as to inheritance of land, and receive possession by paying a fine to the government, from which none are exempted. In fact, their situation is in many respects better than that of men. Public opinion is in their favour, and their property is generally more respected, and they are treated more equitably than males. Their complaints, in case of injustice, sometimes carried even to intemperance, are heard with more patience.
A large portion of landed property having devolved to a widow at Monfalût in Said, Solyman Bey, Senjiak of Said, desired to purchase it at the price the widow might demand. She refused, and he afterwards married her to gain possession, though she was both old and diseased.
English edit. Vol. I. p. 216. Volney says, that when there are no ships at Suez, that town has no other inhabitants than the Mamlûk governor, and a garrison, consisting of twelve or fourteen persons.—In Suez are twelve or thirteen mosques, which could never have been designed for a garrison of so few persons. There are also several coffee-houses. In truth the inhabitants are not numerous, but there are four or five considerable merchants constantly residing there, who have their correspondents at Kahira, and in the towns of Arabia, and conduct the commerce between Egypt and India. There is consequently a proportionate number of their dependents, and persons who manage commercial affairs of a less considerable kind. There are ship-builders, and several other artificers; a large khan or okal where merchandize is lodged; some Greek Christians constantly residing there; Mohammedan ecclesiastics, and others; and a number of fishermen and people more immediately connected with the sea. The population is restrained by the difficulty of procuring water, scarcity of provisions, and other inconveniences; but invariably much exceeding the estimate here given.
P. 263. Volney remarks, that the horizon is every where flat, even in the Upper Egypt, and refers for a proof of his assertion to Norden’s Plates, which demonstrate precisely the reverse. The fact is true indeed as to Lower Egypt, but from Kahira upward to Assûan there is only a very small space where the view is not terminated by the mountains, of various aspects, on each side.
No. V.
Some remarks on the account of Egypt, contained in the recent correspondence of the French officers who accompanied Buonaparte to that country. The work referred to is intitled, Paris, pendant l’annee 1798. Par Peltier. Vols. xix. and xx.
Vol. 19, page 455. The distance from Cairo to the cataract is about 360 Geog. miles. The Nile is never an impetuous torrent, nor does it ever overflow its banks in the whole course from Assûan to Kahira, but is admitted at proper times into the transverse channels prepared for it.
P. 457. The Arabs, it is evident, would not build walls of much greater extent than the habitations they proposed to defend. A very small part of these being now filled, shews that the decay the city has undergone since the Turks became possessed of it, has even been greater than what it sustained from the time of Severus to the Saracenic conquests.
P. 459. Old Kahira is not Fostat, but Misr el attîké, further South.