Reception in Tajourah.—Arrangements for our
stay.—Occupation.—Amusements.—Geological character of the
country.—Engaging camels for the journey.—Customs of the
townspeople.—Public buildings.—Religious ceremonies, law, and justice.
I JOINED Mr. Cruttenden at the house of the Sultaun, being directed on
my way by a party of little slave children, who formed a rather
troublesome train, as they kept importuning me for buttons and beads.
The younger girls and infants, however, could not by any inducement be
prevailed upon to come near me; and what with the shouting plaguing
boys, who followed behind, and the screaming flying children before me,
I began to think myself more of a curiosity than I had before believed
myself to be.
The Sultaun of Tajourah with considerable politeness placed us,
immediately on our arrival, in possession of the elevated cabin before
mentioned, and the room below, and then left us to hasten forward the
preparation of a meal, consisting of boiled rice, which was soon after
brought in. It was placed before us in a large saucer-like dish, with a
quantity of milk in a curious kind of basket, made of the larger nerves
of the doom palm leaf, sewed very closely together with a finer
description of the same material; the inside was overlaid by some black
vegetable matter, but of what character I could never properly
understand.
Having arranged our legs as decently as we could around the table, which
was merely a large mat of the palm leaf, we had nearly satisfied
ourselves before the arrival of some promised lumps of meat, which,
strong and tough, challenged the integrity of our teeth, in the vain
endeavours we made to do justice to this part of our host’s hospitality,
for we might almost as well have attempted to devour the piece of round
leather upon which it was brought. The latter piece of furniture, at all
events, afforded some degree of pleasure, for I saw immediately an
explanation of the obscure passage in Æneid, where the Harpy Celæno is
made to say—
... “Ambesas subigat malis absumere mensas,”
which has been by commentators considered improbable and absurd, from
the difficulty of supposing how tables, according to our ideas of them,
could be eaten. By the sailors in the Red Sea, and among the Arabs,
these leathern interpositions between the ground and the food are very
general indeed; and I do not see why, in the extremity of a castaway
crew, or in a time of famine, these tables, which they certainly are,
should not be devoured for want of other food; and parallel cases have
frequently occurred in modern times, in the numerous recorded incidents
where shoes and even the leathern peaks of soldiers’ caps have formed
the only sustenance that could be obtained under similar distressing
circumstances.
In accordance with the usual custom in Arabia, and which custom has
probably been imported from that country with the Mahomedan religion,
the first day of our arrival was spent in friendly conversation with the
people of the town, who were acquainted with Mr. Cruttenden from
previous intercourse. All allusion to the business we had come upon was
carefully avoided, the established etiquette of hospitable politeness
leaving to the stranger the first day of arrival for rest after his
journey, and for making him welcome on the part of his entertainers.
I now assumed the dress which had been recommended as the most
appropriate for my journey. Over a pair of loose drill trousers, I
donned a long yellow frock of nankeen, with sleeves narrowing to the
wrist, of a kind which has been used by the Arabs from the time in which
the Periplus was written, for among the articles of the commerce of the
Red Sea there enumerated, are these very frocks, and the material of
which they are made was then principally imported by Indian vessels, as
at the present day. A large straw hat, of the double Manilla kind, with
a thick layer of cotton wool between the two walls, formed a very light
covering for the head, and being quite impenetrable to the direct rays
of an almost vertical sun, was a sufficient protection against the evil
most to be feared, “a coup de soleil.”
The morning after our arrival, a survey was taken of the stores which,
during the past night, had been brought from the bogalow, and placed,
part in the lower room of our house, and part in the little court
adjoining, so that they might be under the eye of Nassah, one of the
Arab servants of Mr. Cruttenden, who was appointed to watch over, and
who in fact slept among and upon, the boxes and packages. The apartment
occupied by Mr. Cruttenden and myself was the elevated cabin,
immediately adjoining the residence of the Sultaun. It was rather a long
room, with a sloping roof, the centre of which was a few inches above
our heads, but at the sides was only two feet high from the floor. The
walls consisted of frames, in which were sliding shutters of most
irregular construction, and of every dirty colour that can be conceived.
The floor of the upper end was raised about a foot into a kind of dais,
or, as Mr. Cruttenden styled it, a spare bed, not being more than five
feet in its longest direction, and upon which had been spread his
sleeping carpets for the night. The entrance into our novel residence
was a square hole in the farther corner of the floor, through which we
ascended and descended, like stage ghosts, carefully inserting our toes
in any little crevices we could see among sundry dry and rotten sticks,
which assisted the mats in forming the wall of our lower apartment.
Besides Nassah and a young man named Abdullah, a native of Mocha, who
officiated as cook, we had another attendant, a slave who had been lent
to us by Shurmalkee, on account of his acquaintance with the Arabic and
Dankalli languages, and who was of considerable use to us as our private
interpreter.
Whilst we staid in Tajourah, our daily occupations were not of a very
varied character, yet still they were such that did not fatigue us with
their sameness. Every morning at sunrise, attended by Nassah, we
strolled down to the beach, and indulged ourselves in the health-giving
bath. Towards evening, accompanied by some of the chief men of the town,
we amused ourselves and astonished them by our dexterity with the rifle.
The Tajourah people themselves only boasted the possession of a solitary
matchlock, and the daring proprietor of this not unfrequently joined us,
trying his piece with a new silver mounted one which we had brought with
us as a present from Capt. Haines to Izaak, but as no inducement could
prevail either upon him or his son to discharge it, Nassah was always
called upon to relieve these gentlemen from the danger and honour of
firing.
The features of our orderly Nassah were a good specimen of those which
characterize a numerous class of Arabs, living on the sea-coast of
Arabia, who are decidedly of negro origin. The word which designates
them, in fact, expresses this; Seedee being derived from the word
_Assuard_, which signifies in the Arabic language, black. His face was
nearly triangular, the apex at the chin, the base a long flat forehead,
whilst his nose was the exact reverse of this, the apex being between
the eyes, and its base below spreading out into two large and flat-like
nostrils, which seemed to repose upon, rather than arise from, his dusky
cheeks. His mouth was an awful gap; but all the deformity of his
countenance was more than compensated by the pleasing expression of his
humorous looking little eyes, that told of single purposeness, fidelity,
and contentment; and that quiet resignment to circumstances, which was a
great characteristic of his manner and mode of expressing himself, “If
it please Allah,” “Allah has me in his keeping,” being favourite replies
of his. Tall and erect; his posture graceful without effort, in his well
arranged Arab costume his appearance was very picturesque. Always on his
guard from any surprise, and proud of his occupation, I could see that
he was sincerely attached to his master, Mr. Cruttenden. He acquitted
himself very well as a marksman, with the clumsy but handsome matchlock,
and was certainly the “magnus Apollo” of the black beauties of Tajourah.
Our rendezvous on occasions of these shooting matches, was generally on
the summit of a low cliff of coral limestone, which stood a few hundred
yards in rear of the town, and which extended two miles inland to the
base of a gravel bank, perhaps 100 feet high, capped by a thin stratum
of coarse black lava. The undermining of this bank is very rapid and
considerable during the rainy season, so that large masses of the
superincumbent lava are continually breaking off and rolling into the
beds of numberless temporary torrents below. The period of the first
appearance of this lava cannot have been more than a few hundred years
ago, and volcanoes have certainly existed on this coast within the
recorded history of the earth. A few miles in the interior, between
Raheita and Tajourah, is still a range of hills evidently of igneous
origin, called by the natives Jibel Jann, or Demon Mountains. The same
name is also given to a more recently active, but very small volcano
situated on the road to Shoa; and which was represented by the natives
to be the residence of some turbulent genius confined there by Soloman,
in accordance with some of the commonly received Arabic traditions.
This coral reef, however, afforded the most interesting proof of the
raising of the coast having occurred during the present existing state
of things, as regards the direction of winds and currents in the
surrounding sea, as also of its being constructed by the same species of
Zoophites, who are now producing its counterpart in the present bay. I
have stood on this old inland reef during the afternoon, when the
reflection of the sun’s rays from the surface of the present immersed
bed of coral, in front of Tajourah, has plainly showed the parallelism
of its outer edge with that of the reef upon which I was standing, and a
separation or indenture in the latter also corresponded exactly with the
narrow channel in which anchorage is now found near to the present
shore, and which must have been produced, in both cases, by the
operation of similar natural causes, acting under exactly similar
circumstances. More alteration in this part of the world has been
produced by volcanic action than can be conceived by endeavouring to
form an idea of it by comparison with the changes effected by the
occasional outbreaks of Vesuvius or Etna. Convulsions of the earth, and
ejection of molten lava upon a most extensive scale, can only account
for the great alteration which has evidently, in modern times, taken
place in the physical geography of the whole country of Arabia, the
eastern shore of Africa, and probably over a considerable portion of the
bed of the Indian Ocean in this neighbourhood.
Sir G. M‘Kenzie’s description of the phenomena which have attended
volcanic action in Iceland, approaches somewhat to that which may be
supposed was here once exhibited, or that a succession of convulsions,
similar to the great earthquake of Kutch, in Scinde, of which Sir S.
Raffles gives such an interesting account, have here, at some former
period, exerted the same appalling agents, and produced the extensive
alterations in the previous character of this once blessed land,
abounding with life and with natural beauty, but which is now, even by
the Arab, wandering over his almost equally miserable desert,
designated, and most appropriately, as the “deserted quarter of the
world.”
The day after our arrival was occupied in preparing and presenting such
presents as were intended for the chief people of Tajourah, generally
consisting of long robes or body-cloths of white calico, and fotahs, or
finely manufactured parti-coloured waistcloth, much prized by both the
Arabs and the Dankalli. After this important business was concluded to
the satisfaction of all, some conferences were held respecting the
number of camels we should require, to apportion fairly among the
numerous owners of them, the stores to be conveyed up; for the
remuneration that was determined upon being very high, plenty of
applicants were found putting in their claim to be employed. The
competition would have been very beneficial, could it have been brought
to bear upon the price required for each camel; but the unsophisticated
Adal savage was as acute upon such matters as the craftiest Chinese, and
the system of the Hong merchants of monopolizing the trade was fully
acted upon by the chief men of Tajourah. Mr. Cruttenden, as Wakeel of
the English Government, was obliged to transact all business through the
hands of the Sultaun’s agents, who were Izaak, the brother of the
Sultaun, and his friend and seconder on all matters of State policy,
Mahomed Cassim. These worthies really deserved whatever present they
received subsequently to my departure from Mr. Cruttenden, for the
trouble, anxiety, and real danger they must have incurred in satisfying,
pacifying, and denying the crowd of bullying murderers, who all required
a share of the hard, bright dollars, which were always sure to be poured
into the town in payment of those services the English Government might
require from them. Calahms, or councils, were being continually held,
now to settle quarrels arising out of the discussion, and then to
discuss again some other subject, until another quarrel had arisen.
Nearly a month was spent in this unsatisfactory manner, when Mr.
Cruttenden resolved upon immediately returning to Aden, taking with him
the packages, thus putting an end to the deception and procrastination
we had submitted to so long. He accordingly sent a letter to Captain
Young, who was still at Berberah, requesting him to send again
Shurmalkee’s boat to receive us. Immediately this transpired, which it
did only so soon as the messenger had departed, we observed a remarkable
increase of energy on the part of Izaak and Cassim, for during that day
we were disturbed by the continual succession of parties coming to
examine, and endeavouring to form some judgment as to the weight of, the
different boxes, favouritism showing itself in allowing friends to make
these surreptitious visits by night also, to determine the choice of
loads for their camels. Excuses the next day were also made for our long
detention, and assurances that we should certainly start the first
propitious day, which was considered to be the next Friday, at the time
of the afternoon prayer.
During the four weeks we had been compelled to reside in Tajourah, few
incidents occurred worthy of being recorded. Most of our time we were
sitting below in the court, on a rude, cord-bottomed couch, covered with
a mat. Close to the ends were placed two large pillows, belonging to Mr.
Cruttenden, for us to recline upon; whilst, before us, squatting upon
the ground, and ranged along the opposite wall, were generally some of
our Dankalli acquaintances, who seemed to be anxious to learn something
of our institutions and manners. Discussions upon the Christian religion
were very frequent; and they soon were made to understand the difference
between us and the Roman Catholic nations, whom they include under one
name—Feringee.
I also became acquainted with a singular mode of descent, or manner in
which the power and title of Sultaun is transmitted to the next
possessor. It appears that Tajourah is principally inhabited by two
subdivisions of the great Adu Allee tribe, the same from whom it has
been asserted the Abyssinian name of this people (Adal) is derived.
These two families (the Burhanto and the Dinsarrah) have each their own
Chief, who alternately assumes the supremacy of the town on the death of
the other, whilst the next expectant fills the office of Vizier, or
chief adviser. This mode of succession does not appear to be peculiar to
Tajourah, but to be a general principle of state economy through all the
important tribes; for, in the same manner, I had an opportunity of
observing, was determined the possession of the chief dignity among the
Debenee; and I was given to understand it was also the custom of the
Wahamah, and the Muditee of Owssa. The present Sultaun of Tajourah is
named Mahomed, and belongs to the Burhanto family; the Vizier, who was
absent on a pilgrimage to Mecca when we first arrived, was the principal
man of the Dinsarrah. He returned in time to receive a present, to
prevent him interfering in the arrangements, which were then just
completed, and a promise of future patronage on the next occasion of a
kafila being required by our Government. His arrival accelerated, in
some measure, our departure; for had we remained any time afterwards, he
would certainly, with his friends, have compelled a change in the
distribution of the stores, and thus have led to another detention, or
perhaps would have entirely prevented their going up to Shoa. Izaak and
Cassim, who had had it so far in their own hands, were therefore
interested in hastening the departure of the kafila; and from the day of
the Vizier’s first appearance in Tajourah, I found the boxes were
gradually removed from under our own care to the houses of the carriers.
On occasions of counsel, it was usual for the principal men of the town
(Hukells, as I heard them called) to assemble in front of the Sultaun’s
residence, where they sat upon their heels, or upon the large stones and
trunks of the date trees placed for that purpose. With his back leaning
against the enclosure of his own house, the Sultaun Mahomed occupied a
stone, with Izaak generally sitting on another by his side, together
helping the parties present to small cups of strong black coffee. This
was poured out of a long-necked, globular, earthenware vessel, of common
red clay, into the mouth of which was stuffed a quantity of dried grass,
to act as a strainer. The cups were of the same coarse manufacture,
being exactly in form and appearance like the very smallest flower-pots
in a green-house, except that the latter, without the aperture at the
bottom, would, I think, be much more elegant and convenient.
The usual dress of the males of Tajourah was the fotah, or waist-cloth,
and the sarree, which is an Indian term for part of a woman’s dress,
exactly corresponding to it in use and shape. It is a long robe, worn
round the body, generally of white calico, with a red or blue border at
the two extremities; it is usually among the townspeople seven cubits
long—that is, seven times the length of the hand and arm from the elbow.
Among the Bedouins—the people inhabiting the country—it is but three and
a-half, or about the same size as a Scotch plaid, which I noticed one
day, as I saw the two distinct and yet similar formed garments drying
together upon the ground after a shower of rain.
The ladies wear a long blue chemise with short sleeves, and a very heavy
necklace, made of beads, shells, or of large carved pieces of mother of
pearl, reposes upon their delicate bosoms. Ear-rings are a very
extraordinary vanity amongst them. They consist of large loops of
twisted brass wire, five or six in number, placed each through its own
perforation in the outer lobe of the ear; whilst depending from each of
these is one, sometimes two oblong plates of tin, or pewter, at least an
inch broad, and one and a-half inch in length. Bracelets and anklets of
brass and pewter, large and heavy, were very common among them; and as
they chanted their monotonous songs of prayer or grief, they clattered
them against each other as a kind of accompaniment to their voices. They
dressed their hair in a number of small plaits, which were connected
round the back of the head by parallel bands of red or white cotton,
interwoven with and crossing the hair transversely, and in this manner
forming a kind of tippet upon the neck and shoulders. I was once a
witness to the difficulty of unravelling or combing out this intangled
mass, which reminded me of the hair of Samson, interwoven with the web
of the loom. The lady whose hair was to be operated upon sat upon a
stone in the court, beneath one of our windows, and behind her, on her
knees, was a stout hale slave girl, who held in both hands a
long-handled wooden fork-like comb, having four very strong prongs,
which she dragged through the woolly, greasy, and black hair of her
mistress with the force of a groom currying a horse’s tail.
When not attired in their full dress, or are occupied in household
duties, the women wear nothing else but the fotah, or waistcloth, which
appears to be a garment common both to male and female Dankalli. The
better kind of fotah passes twice round the body, and the ends are
secured by the women by merely tucking them under a fold of the upper
edge; but the men fasten it up with the belt of their never absent short
knife. Sandals made of several layers of cow-skin, prepared with the
hair on and sewed together by a thong of leather, sometimes in a very
neat and ornamental manner, are worn by both sexes, and are secured to
the foot by a loop for the second toe, and slight strips of leather
crossing the ancle are attached to the heel, and to two small lappels on
the sides.
The slave children, who live in the houses of their owners merely for
the purpose of recruiting after their long and painful journey from
Abyssinia, live happily enough whilst in Tajourah; for too young to
comprehend the evils of their destiny, and their bodily wants being
carefully attended to, they soon regain their lost condition and health,
and are then forwarded to the markets of Mocha and other parts of the
Red Sea. They are nearly all dressed in a long dirty frock of very
coarse calico, which constitutes the whole of their apparel. The male
inhabitants of Tajourah have no other occupation than the traffic in
slaves, which they exchange for the merchandise of India and Arabia, but
principally the former, whose traders they meet at the fair of Berberah.
The women occupy themselves with household duties, and carrying water
from a well about half a mile from the town. The water is carried in
large entire skins of the goat, which they tan with the pounded bark of
a mimosa, very common in the jungle near the town, and which, moistened
with a little water, they rub well into the skin. If it be designed to
be divested of the hair, the skin, before being tanned, is left for two
or three days until slight putrefaction has commenced, and the hair is
then easily detached. The most laborious occupation of the women is
grinding the jowaree, or millet, which is imported into Tajourah from
Aden and the Persian Gulf. They use for this purpose a large flat stone,
concave from above downwards, and placed upon the ground, behind this
upon her knees, the woman, half-naked, with long depending skinny
breasts, hangs over the mill, passing and repassing the grain beneath a
large heavy rolling-pin of stone. During the progress of the operation,
she frequently sprinkles the bruised mass with water, until a fine
powdered paste is produced, which, without more preparation, is carried
away to be baked upon the kiln-like oven I have before described. It
requires some time to make a few pounds of bread in this manner; and
when baked into flat cakes of about one pound each in weight, they are,
as might be expected, very heavy, and of a disagreeable acid taste.
Whilst grinding, two or three slaves, or women, (for the same term is
applied to all,) relieve each other, so that labour, except in the house
of a poor man, is not great.
I saw in Tajourah two old men weaving, who had learned the art in
Abyssinia; also an Arab blacksmith. It is usual for all the young men to
be able to make their own sandals. One of their principal occupations
in-doors is to make wooden spoons, sometimes carved in a most elegant
manner, and fedeenahs, or rests for the head during the night, and which
are the constant companion of the Dankalli when journeying. They differ
considerably in form from the wooden pillows of the New Zealanders; but
still it is singular that a somewhat similar manner of resting the head
during the night is in use among these two distant and distinct nations.
The ancient Egyptians employed the fedeenah exactly of the shape of
those of the Dankalli; but these, it seems, were sometimes made of
alabaster, and covered with hieroglyphics.
The principal mosque of the place stood at the further end of a large
open space, reaching to the sea-shore, in the centre of which was the
solitary cannon used as a saluting battery on particular occasions, and
the touchhole of which vied in extent with the bore of the piece.
Occupying one side of the open space was the square enclosure of mats,
with little huts of the same material, which had been erected for the
use of the English agent in Tajourah, Mr. Hatchetoor, on the occasion of
the last kafila, or second division of the stores, being sent up to Shoa
with Messieurs Bernatz and Scott. Here, during one night, three of the
native servants were treacherously murdered as they lay asleep, by some
of the inhabitants of the town. On the other side were a few native
houses, standing in the usual compounds, or courts, and out of the doors
of which peeped, with a mixture of curiosity and alarm, several little
slave children whenever we passed by.
This mosque stood between the commencement of two narrow lanes, the one
leading through the town, the other to the Sultaun’s house, and
completed the third side of the irregular square, which was open towards
the sea. The mosque was built in a square form, with the untrimmed
branches of trees, as they were cut off in the jungle, and thatched with
leaves of the palm-tree, fastened down by the common string of the
country, made of the leaf of the doom palm split and twisted by the hand
into a strong rope; a small fence of stones, two or three feet high,
enclosed in front a little semicircular court, in which were planted
four palm-trees, two on each side of the entrance. In this court,
squatting under the shade of the trees, or idly lounging upon the top of
the wall, were collected all the idlers of the town; and as these,
besides gossiping and dozing, were particularly attentive to the daily
prayers and ablutions as prescribed in the Koran, I had not a doubt that
they were the worst characters in Tajourah, for I never met among the
Mahomedans a strict observer of the stated hours and forms of prayer,
but I always found him to be crafty, designing, and treacherous. The
only man I ever met with during my subsequent journey, who deliberately,
and for days, watched for an opportunity to assassinate me, was one of
these pharisaical rascals, who always chose the largest boulder or
detached piece of rock he could find, on which to exalt himself above
every one else during the performance of his prostrations or prayers.
Two other mosques, the only stone buildings in Tajourah, were much
inferior in size to the one I have just described, being but a foot or
two higher than the devotees; the roofs were flat, and a white
lime-wash, prepared from the roasted shell coral reef behind the town,
slacked with water, had been freely applied to the walls outside, but
having no windows, the interiors looked like open sepulchres. One of
these stood at a short distance behind the house of the Sultaun, the
other flanked the sea front of the town, at the opposite extremity of
which was a ruined stone building, of a square form, standing close to
the water’s edge, and which, I suppose, was meant originally for a
protecting tower, but nothing except the remains of the walls were left
to enable us to form any idea of its original character. The mosque on
the sea-shore was much frequented at the time of the morning prayers,
immediately before and after sunrise, great numbers of the inhabitants
taking advantage of the sea to indulge in a more extensive ablution than
they could conveniently perform during the rest of the day.
Although I always professed to be of the same religion as Mahomed, that
we both could have worshipped God together, and as regarded the stated
number of times, I might also have been an advocate for the first
proposal made to him by the angel Gabriel, of at least five hundred
prayers per day being necessary, still I objected to the laws and
regulations he had established, and preferred, with all deference to the
opinions of my Dankalli friends the institutes of Jesus; and as they
admitted he was a prophet sent from God, I contended that I could not be
much in error in following his instructions, even if judged by the
Koran. I did not find it necessary, therefore, to become, a convert to
Islamism, or I might, as the enterprising Burckhardt has done, dilate
upon their belief and form of worship.
I noticed, that they prayed very regularly five times a-day, with their
faces turned towards Mecca; once immediately before and again after
sunrise; then came the Assair, or afternoon prayer, between three and
four o’clock; and again before and after sunset. Each service is
preceded by carefully washing all parts of the body that are not covered
by the clothes. The ceremony commences by several devotees standing up
in one long row in front of the mosque, which is always so built as to
have a proper regard to the situation of Mecca. Their open hands are
first brought closely up to the ears, whilst they repeat some short
ejaculations respecting the greatness of God, the compassionate, the
only one; then stooping in the attitude of a low bow, the hands resting
on the knees, something of the same sort is again repeated, and down
they all sit together, in the Arab fashion, on the bent legs, not
crossed in front, like the Turks, but turned under them the contrary
way. After sundry satisfactory looks about them, and stroking their
beards, if they have any, all bend their heads to the earth, pressing
the forehead hard upon the ground two or three times successively; then,
after a little more sitting, turning to their right and left hands, they
repeat, in each position, protestations of peace with all the world, and
rising up, depart to their several avocations, meeting again at the next
stated hour of prayer, to repeat exactly the same devout ceremonial.
On one occasion, I had a good laugh at the little play of some boys of
the Sultaun’s household, who pretended to go through the ceremony of
circumcision, and in which they performed their parts with great
gravity, and all attention, no doubt, to the details of that, to them,
very interesting operation. It must be observed, that circumcision among
the Dankalli, as among other Mahomedans, is frequently deferred to a
very late period, the boys, or young men rather, being sometimes sixteen
or eighteen years old before they are thus made eligible for reception
into the paradise of the faithful. To proceed, however, with a
description of the ceremony, as it was acted in the little court before
our house. The door being thrown open by the attendants, a boy,
representing the grave old Kadee, with the operator, entered side by
side, followed by the father and the candidate for circumcision, and
these by a crowd of friends who, when the operation began, formed a
circle before the Kadee and the father, who sat very sedately upon a
couch. The operator, with a piece of stick, then commenced acting his
part, whilst the boy laid upon his back on the ground, kicking and
shrieking, pretended to suffer great pain, which, as in our pantomimes,
was, of course, the fun of the whole thing. He, unfortunately, overdid
his part, at least did it so naturally and with so much noise, that some
of the neighbours came rushing in to see what accident had happened.
Their appearance put to flight the whole company of juvenile actors, who
got off, however, with some tumbles over each other through the narrow
doorway, except the circumcised one, who being caught by Shurmalkee’s
slave, Abdullah, got a few cuffs upon the head, and a kick or two
behind, with a polite request that he should convey them to the mock
Kadee, as part payment of his expenses on the occasion. I took a note of
this as it afforded me an opportunity of completing the account of the
ceremonials of the Mahomedan religion by Burckhardt, all of which,
excepting the circumcision, and which, by the by, he must have submitted
to, he has so admirably described. Without compromising myself, I had an
opportunity in this farce of witnessing the principal features of the
first necessary step of Mahomedan proselytism, as performed according to
law.
I frequently observed a religious ceremony that seemed to be a
spontaneous outbreak of religious fervour on the part of individuals,
rather than a generally recognised portion of their devotions. Towards
evening, a large circle of some twenty or thirty men would commence a
loud and long-continued repetition of the word Allah, for nearly a
quarter of an hour; and then being served, each drank a small cup of
coffee, whilst one of their number, with an open Koran on the ground
before him, read a portion of one of the chapters, at the termination of
which would commence again the calling upon the name of Allah, rocking
themselves backwards and forwards in the most violent manner until
nearly exhausted, when another supply of coffee being ready, and a
portion of the Koran read as before, they prepared themselves for
another bout of the vociferation. This they called a zekar, and would
sometimes keep it up the whole night, much to the disturbance of their
less devout neighbours.
The Dankalli women are greater apparent devotees of Islamism than those
of any other eastern country I visited. Continually, whilst at work,
they chant some sacred passages of the Koran, or assemble in each
other’s houses to join in domestic zekars; and here I must observe, that
though somewhat attempted on the part of the Sultaun’s family, from an
affectation of Arab customs, the women are not precluded, except by
their own feelings of propriety, from the freest intercourse with the
men.
In their judicial proceedings, they affect to be directed entirely by
the law of the Koran, and have a very quiet fat old Kadee, who
superintends marriages, circumcisions, and other civil and religious
ceremonies; but from what I could learn from a conversation held by Mr.
Cruttenden with Cassim, very summary proceedings sometimes characterize
their administration of justice.
Ohmed, the eldest son of the Sultaun, had with real Eastern cunning,
obtained a present from us on the plea of his going to Abasha with me.
On the near approach of our departure he intimated, in reply to our
asking him if he were ready, that when he said he was going to Abasha he
meant to Gondah, and not with me to Shoa; and seemed highly pleased at
having thus outwitted Mr. Cruttenden. who supposed that by Abasha, Ohmed
meant to say that he was to accompany me to Shoa. Of course, under our
circumstances, Mr. Cruttenden could only take this deception in good
part; but in the evening, Ohmed and a good number of the principal men
being in our place, Mr. Cruttenden commenced the conversation by asking
Cassim, if there were justice to be procured in Tajourah? “Of course;
certainly. Do we not profess Islamism?” was the prompt and almost
offended reply. “Then how do you punish theft?” asked Mr. Cruttenden.
“Oh,” replied Cassim, “we drag the thief down to the beach, and haul him
about in the sea-water till his stomach is quite full, we then drag him
along the sand till he throws it up again; after that, we kill an ox,
eat him, and make the thief pay for it; and he then is received into
society again.” This was too amusing a relation not to be interpreted to
me by the kindness of Mr. Cruttenden, who postponed the application of
the reason of his inquiry, to the deceit practised upon him by Ohmed,
for the purpose of enjoying with me this account of the wild justice of
the Dankalli.
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