(1876.)
The following notes are drawn from E. W. Lane’s charming and instructive
“Manners and Customs of the Modem Egyptians” (fifth and standard ed.,
1860), a worthy companion to Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s book on the Ancient
Egyptians, and written about forty years since, before
steam-communication had materially changed that people. The muédoins,
whose summons to prayer is one of the few audible charms of the East to
a western, are generally chosen from the blind, in order that the harems
and terraces of houses may not be overlooked from the minarets. _Our_
callers to prayer are generally blind also; but this is because few
clearsighted men will in these days accept the office. The imams or
priests and other religious officials are all paid from the funds of
their respective mosques, and not by any contributions exacted from the
people: a lesson to us with our State Church. The imâms have no
authority above other persons, and enjoy no respect save for reputed
learning and piety; they are not a distinct order of men set apart for
the ministry, but may resign or be displaced, losing with the office the
title of imâm; they chiefly obtain their living by other means than
service in the mosque (for which their salaries are as a rule only about
a shilling a month), many of them being tradesmen: here surely are
several good lessons for us. The mosques are open all day, and the great
mosque El-Azhar all night; the Muslims have great reverence for them,
yet in many of the larger ones persons lounge, chat, eat, sleep, spit,
sew, etc.: another lesson to us with our churches nearly always closed
and useless. The Muslim does not abstain from business on the Friday,
his Sabbath, except during the time of prayer, and for this he has the
authority of the Kur-ân: when will our bigoted Sabbatarians learn so
much liberal wisdom from him? The Prophet did not forbid women to attend
public prayers in the mosques, but pronounced it better for them to pray
in private; in Cairo they are not admitted to the public prayers, it
being thought that their presence would inspire a wrong sort of
devotion. The result is that few women in Egypt pray at all. If ours
were in like case, how many churches and chapels would attract large
congregations? The Egyptians, like the modern Arabs, are not a truthful
people, but there are some oaths which few would falsely take; such as
swearing three times by “God the Great,” or on a copy of the Kur-ân “By
what this contains of the word of God!”—I wonder whether the Christian
Englishmen are few who falsely swear by God and on the Bible. Mr. Lane
witnessed many instances of forbearance in persons of the middle and
lower classes when grossly insulted; and often heard an Egyptian say on
receiving a blow from an equal, “God bless thee,” “God requite thee
good,” “Beat me again”: how many of the Christians obey in like manner
one of the plainest precepts of Christ? In general a quarrel terminates
by one or both of them saying “Justice is against me”; often after this
they recite together the first chapter of the Kur-ân; and then,
sometimes, embrace and kiss one another. If a similar custom prevailed
here there would be little serious quarrelling; for the men would all
avoid disputes save with pretty girls and charming women, and would
always make it up very quickly with them. The Muslim believes that there
have been six great Prophets and Apostles—Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses,
Jesus, Mohammed; each of whom received a revealed law or system of
religion and morality, each of the first five abrogated and superseded
by the next, though all were the same in essentials. Thus the Jews from
the time of Moses to that of Christ, and the Christians (if they did not
accept the corrupt and idolatrous doctrine of the divinity of Jesus)
from the time of Christianity to that of Mohammed, were true believers.
Of course the last is the greatest Prophet, and since his revelation the
Muslims only have been the faithful. The Pentateuch, Psalms and Gospels,
though of divine origin, have been so much altered as to contain very
little of the true Word of God; but the Kur-ân is supposed to have
suffered no essential change whatever. Jesus was born of a pure virgin
by the miraculous operation of God, without any father human or divine.
When he had fulfilled the object of his mission, he was taken up to God
from the Jews who sought to slay him, and another man, on whom God had
stamped the likeness of Jesus, was crucified in his stead. He will come
again upon earth, to establish the Muslim religion and perfect peace and
security, after having killed Anti-Christ, and to be a sign of the
approach of the last day. In all these doctrines the Muslims are
decidedly more consistent and liberal, as well as somewhat less
superstitious than the Christians, with their God-man and trinity in
unity, their damnation of Mohammed as a mere impostor and of his
religion, El Islam, as a vile fabrication of stolen materials. “The
Egyptians pay a superstitious reverence not to imaginary beings alone:
they extend it to certain individuals of their own species; and often to
those who are justly the least entitled to such respect. An _idiot_ or a
_fool_ is vulgarly regarded by them as a being whose mind is in heaven,
while his grosser part mingles among ordinary mortals; consequently, he
is considered an especial favorite of heaven. Whatever enormities a
reputed saint may commit (and there are many who are constantly
infringing precepts of their religion) such acts do not affect his fame
for sanctity: for they are considered as the results of the abstraction
of his mind from worldly things; his soul, or reasoning faculties, being
wholly absorbed in devotion, so that his passions are left without
control. Lunatics who are dangerous to society are kept in confinement;
but those who are harmless are generally regarded as saints. _Most of
the reputed saints of Egypt are either lunatics, or idiots, or
impostors._” wonder whether this applies at all, and if it does, to what
extent, to the countless saints of our Most Holy Catholic Church of
Christendom. In Egypt, as in other countries of the East, Muslims,
Christians, and Jews adopt each other’s superstitions, while they abhor
the leading doctrines of each other’s faith. “In sickness, the Muslim
sometimes employs Christian and Jewish priests to pray for him: the
Christians and Jews, in the same predicament, often call in Muslim
saints for the like purpose!” So much human nature is there in man, not
to speak of woman. The Muslims profoundly reverence the Kur-ân, yet will
quote it on the most trivial occasions in jest as well as on the most
important in earnest. They are generally fond of conversing on religion
among themselves; and the most prevalent mode of entertaining a party of
guests among the higher middle classes, in Cairo, is the recital of the
whole of the Kur-ân, which is chanted by special persons hired for the
purpose, or other religious exercises. This chanting of the Kur-ân takes
up about nine hours. When will our fashionable Bibliolaters issue
invitations for the treat of hearing poor curates or scripture readers
intone the whole of the Bible, or even so much of it at a time as might
be got through in nine hours? When, oh when?
Ladies will learn with approval that it is thought improper, and even
disreputable, for a man to be single. Mr. Lane was a bachelor during his
first two visits to Egypt; and in the former of these, having to change
his residence, engaged another house. The lease was duly signed and some
money paid in advance, but the inhabitants of the neighborhood (who were
mostly descendants of the Prophet) would not have an unmarried man in
their midst. The agent said they would gladly admit him if he would but
purchase a female slave, thus redeeming himself from the opprobrium of
not possessing a wife of some sort. He managed to secure a house in a
less scrupulous quarter, but had to engage that no creature wearing a
hat should visit him. The Sheykh or chief of this quarter often urged
him to marry; Lane objected that he intended to live in Egypt only a
year or two longer. The Sheykh answered, with great moral force and
earnestness, that a handsome young widow a few doors off would be glad
to marry him, on the express understanding that he should divorce her on
going away; while of course he could do so earlier if she did not suit
him. Now this young widow, in spite of her religion and veil, had
several times contrived (the Sage saith that there is nothing a woman
cannot contrive, except to refrain from contriving) to let our Oriental
Englishman catch a glimpse of her very pretty face; and the miserable
bachelor was reduced to plead that she was the very last woman he would
like to marry _pro tempore_, for he felt sure that once wed he could
never make up his mind to part with her. Doubtless all our single men,
and especially our Christian young men, would much rather be deemed
disreputable and denied decent lodgings than establish their character
for virtue and respectability by buying female slaves, however cheap, or
marrying nice young widows divorcible at pleasure!
As to polygamy, Mr. Lane remarks that it can only be defended as
preventing a greater immorality than it occasions; and that Mohammed,
like Moses, did not introduce but limited and regulated it. The ancient
Egyptians had but one wife each, though they might have slave
concubines. Polygamy, however, is rare, and rarer among the upper and
middle classes than the lower; “I believe that not more than one husband
in twenty has two wives.” 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. A man may divorce his
wife twice, and each time take her back without any ceremony, unless she
has paid for it by resigning the reserved third of the dowry, furniture,
etc.; but if he divorces her the third time, or puts her away by a
triple divorce conveyed in one sentence, he cannot receive her again
until she has been, married and divorced by another husband, who must
have consummated his marriage with her. To divorce her, he simply has to
say, “Thou art divorced,” or “I divorce thee”; but the woman cannot
separate herself from her husband against his will, unless it be for
some considerable fault on his side, such as cruel treatment or neglect.
The facility of divorce has depraving effects, upon both sexes. Many men
in the course of ten years have married twenty, thirty, or more wives;
and women not far advanced in age have been wives to a dozen or more
successively. “I have heard of men who have been in the habit of
marrying a new wife almost every month.” But such conduct is generally
regarded as very disgraceful; and few persons in the upper or middle
classes would give a daughter in marriage to a person who had divorced
many wives.
The women deem it more incumbent to cover the upper and back part of the
head than the face; and more requisite to conceal the face than most
parts of the person. Many among the lower classes never conceal their
faces; women may often be seen with nothing but a narrow strip of rag
round the hips. The face-veils have the advantage of leaving the eyes
visible, which are generally the most beautiful of the features; fine
figures being more common than altogether handsome faces; though some
faces are of a beauty distinguished by such sweetness of expression that
they seem the perfection of female loveliness, “and impressed me at the
time with the idea that their equal could not be found in any other
country.” The women of Cairo are less strictly guarded than in most
Eastern lands; wives are proud of the restraint as showing that the
husbands value them highly, looking upon themselves as hidden treasures.
To such an absurd extent do Muslims carry their feeling of the
sacredness of women that entrance into the tombs of some women is
forbidden to men; and a man and woman are never buried in the same
vault, without a wall between them—as if their very corpses might get up
to mischief. For adultery on the part of the woman the Kur-ân prescribes
death by stoning, but drowning is generally substituted. Unless detected
by an officer of justice _four eye-witnesses are required_; failing
these, the accuser is to be scourged with eighty stripes. This
extraordinary law is traced to an accusation of adultery against the
Prophet’s favorite wife “Aïsheh,” who was thus absolved from punishment,
and subsequent revelations established her innocence. If we had a
similar law here we might close our Divorce Court. If a husband without
any witnesses accuses his wife of adultery, he must swear four times by
God that he speaks the truth, and the fifth time imprecate God’s curse
on himself if he is a liar; but the wife can counterbalance this by
swearing four times by God that he is a liar, and the fifth time
imprecating God’s wrath on herself if he speaks the truth. The
commentators and lawyers have agreed that in this dilemma the marriage
must be dissolved. When a peasant woman is found to have been unfaithful
to her husband, in general he or her brother throws her into the Nile,
with a stone tied to her neck; or cuts her to pieces and then throws
these into the river. In most instances a father or brother punishes in
the same manner an unmarried daughter or sister who has been guilty of
incontinence. These relatives are considered more disgraced than the
husband by the crime of the woman; and are often despised if they do not
thus punish her. Women in easy circumstances are put to bed for from
three to six days after childbirth; but poor women in the same case
seldom take to bed at all, and after a day or two resume their ordinary
occupations, if these do not require great exertion.
The law of inheritance is remarkable in two respects; primogeniture is
not privileged, and in most cases the share of a female is half that of
a male in the same degree of relationship. A debtor is only kept
imprisoned for debt if he cannot prove himself insolvent; but if able,
he may be made work out what he owes. Apostacy from the faith is death
if not recanted on three warnings. Blasphemy against God or any of the
Great Prophets, whether repented or not, is instant death: on the ground
that apostacy or infidelity is but ignorance and misjudgment, while
blasphemy shows utter depravity. If Christians blaspheming Mohammed were
punished as are Muslims blaspheming Christians, what a number of our
enlightened clerical teachers would have died the death of malefactors!
The Copts, or descendants of the ancient Egyptians, said to number about
150,000, are Christians, but scarcely a credit to that religion whose
votaries boast of its civilising and elevating character. The fact is
that in advanced countries the Christianity has been civilised by the
Secularism, not the Secularism by the Christianity; in countries where
the sciences and arts are stationary or retrograde, Christianity proves
that it has in itself no motive-power, and is generally even more
degraded than the other superstitions around it. Mr. Lane almost
despaired of learning anything about these Copts, until he had the good
fortune to become acquainted with a character of which he had doubted
the existence—a Copt of a liberal as well as an intelligent mind. They
hate the Greeks and all other Christians not of their own sect much
worse than they hate the Muslims themselves. The priests are supported
only by alms or by their own industry. Their language is a dead one.
They pray seven times a day, in the course of these reciting the whole
Book of Psalms, as well as chapters of the Bible, prayers, etc.: a fine
example to their lax co-religionists here. They have long and arduous
fasts. In spite or because of all this, they bear a very bad character
as sullen, avaricious, abominable dissemblers, cringing or domineering
according to circumstances. The one respectable Copt discovered by Lane
admitted that they are generally ignorant, faithless, worldly, sensual,
and drunken; he declared that the Patriarch was a tyrant and suborner of
false witnesses; that the monks and priests in Cairo are seen every
evening begging and asking the loan of money, which they never repay, at
the houses of their parishioners and other acquaintances, and procuring
brandy if possible wherever they call. So much for our esteemed
fellow-Christians in Egypt, descendants of what in heathen times was
long the foremost nation in the world.
“Women are not to be excluded from paradise, according to the faith of
El Islam; though it has been asserted by many Christians, that the
Muslims believe women to have no soul. In several places in the Kur-ân,
Paradise is promised to all true believers.” They will be admitted by
God’s mercy on account of their faith, not of their good works; but
their felicity there will be proportioned to their good works. The very
meanest male in Paradise is promised eighty thousand beautiful youths as
servants, and seventy-two wives of the daughters of Paradise. These
celestial virgins we commonly call houris, but learned and accurate
Mr-Lane terms them hooreeyehs, vividly suggesting that the Muslim saints
burst into rapturous and prolonged hoorays on first perceiving them. He
may also have the wives he had here below, if he wants them; and
doubtless the good will desire the good. On behalf of the earthly fair
sex, I must emphatically protest against this part of the heavenly
arrangements. How do we know that the good husband will desire the good
wife, however good, when he has two-and-seventy maidens of Paradise all
to himself? The trust that he will, cannot be trusted; it is a
perfidious consolation to poor women. No wonder Muslim wives are
obsequious, when it depends on the will, pleasure or caprice of their
husbands whether they shall be re-married in the other world or not.
Mrs. Caudle herself would scarcely hazard a curtain lecture with this
atrocious alternative in prospect. Try to fancy being an old-maid or
grass-widow for ever and ever where all the men are very much married,
having six dozen wives each at the very lowest! Such a heaven to a good
woman were ten times crueller than hell. When the Muslim women have been
aroused to a sense of their rights, they will insist on being treated in
the next world on equal terms with the men: the meanest woman of the
faithful (supposing any woman can be mean) shall have her eighty
thousand beautiful servants, and her seventy-two husbands of the youths
of Paradise, resplendent, adoring, ever obedient. This settled first, it
will be a question for consideration between herself and her terrene
spouse whether they shall combine their several establishments, or agree
to be divorced by death. But I digress; women always lead us into
digressions, only these are usually much more interesting than the dusty
high-road along which it is our business to trudge. The meanest of
Muslims will further have a very large tent bejewelled with pearls,
jacinths and emeralds. He will be waited on by three hundred attendants
while he eats, and served in dishes of gold, whereof three hundred shall
be set before him at once, each containing a different kind of food,
“the last morsel of which will be as grateful as the first.” This
absence of satiety, this ever-fresh vigor, I believe, is to mark all his
enjoyments, however freely he may indulge in them. Though wine is
forbidden in this life, he may drink of it _ad libitum_ in the next, and
the wine of Paradise doth not inebriate. He shall have perpetual youth,
and as many children as he may desire. He shall be ravished with the
songs of the angel Israfeel, “whose heart-strings are a lute, and who
has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures.” I really cannot go on;
my feelings are too much for me. I remember when young being taught to
sing (or rather to squall; for my voice could never have been mistaken
for that of the angel Isrâfeel, even by a frequenter of revival meetings
or music halls):
“I thank the goodness and the grace (grays?)
Which on my birth have smiled,
And made me in these Christian days (dace?)
A happy English child.’*
But now that I am a man, this same consideration fills me with bitterest
sorrow and anguish, so that I am ready to bellow:
I curse the evil and disgrace
Which have my birth defiled,
Who would have been in other case
A happy Muslim child!
Yea, when I contrast these glowing and glorious prospects held out to
the faithful by the Kur-ân, with the everlasting singing in white
night-gowns, amidst the howling of elders and composite beasts all over
eyes (what our Heine terms “all the menagerie of the Apocalypse”), in
adoration of a God like a jasper and sardine stone to look upon, and of
a Lamb with seven horns and seven eyes; then do I wring my hands and
beat my breast and tear my hair, sighing and sobbing, moaning and
groaning, weeping and lamenting most piteously—Alas! and alas! and alas!
why was I bom in a Christian land and reared for the Christian Heaven?
Would that I had been born among the Muslims and brought up in the faith
of El Islâm! So should I be now looking forward (for from such a
generous faith never, never would I have lapsed) unto a Paradise worthy
of the name; revelling in anticipations of four-score thousand servants,
uncloying courses of three hundred dishes, unlimited strong wine without
inebriation, six-dozen wives of the refulgent celestial virgins, aging
not themselves, aging not me; perpetual youth, unsating and unexhausting
raptures, for ever, and ever, and ever; and instead of having to sing my
own throat hoarse, I should have the angel Isrâfeel to sing for me. Ah,
dear God! Thou most Compassionate! Thou most Bountiful! Thou to whom all
things are possible! grant that I may even yet be converted from a
doleful Christian infidel into a blessed Muslim true believer! O God the
All-merciful, save me from the terrors and tortures of our Sankey and
Moody Christian heaven! O God the All-gracious, let me lie secure in the
arms of six-dozen hooreeyehs of Paradise of El Islam! Amen, and Amen.