The Indian Moslems on the Island and the Coast were numbered in 1844 at

600 to 700. Besides a few Borahs and Mehmans, Zanzibar contains about

100 Khojahs, who are held to be a ‘generation of vipers, even of Satan’s

own brood.’ Here, as in Bombay, they are called Ismailiyyahs, heterodox

Shiahs, who take a name from their seventh Imam Ismail, son of Ja’afar

el Sádik, while orthodox Shiahs believe the seventh revealed Imam to

have been Musa el Kazim, another son of Ja’afar el Sádik; and the

founder of the Sophy (Safawi) dynasty, in the tenth century of the

Hijrah (A.D. 1501). They have derived from the Batinis and Karmatis

certain mystic and subversive tenets; and they are connected in history

with Hasan Sabah (or Sayyáh, the travelling Darwaysh), our Vetulus de

montanis, or Old Man (Shaykh, i.e. chief) of the Mountains, and with

modern Freemasonry, which begins to appear when the Crusaders had

settled in that home of heresies, Syria and Palestine. Hence the

tradition that the First Grand Lodge was transferred to Lake Tiberias,

after the destruction of Jerusalem. They practise the usual profound

Takiyyah (concealment of tenets), call themselves Sunnis, or Shiahs, as

the case may require, and assume Hindu as well as Moslem names. The Imam

to whom they now pay annual tribute is one Agha Khan Mahallati, a

Persian rebel, formerly Governor of Kirmán, and afterwards notorious

upon the Bombay turf. This incarnation of the Deity is not intrusted

with any of the secrets of his sect. The Khojahs have at Matrah, near

Maskat, an enclosed house, which the Arabs call Bayt el Lúti. They

declare that both sexes meet in it, and that when on a certain occasion

it was broken open, a large calf of gilt silver was found to be the

object of worship. Other incredible tales are also told about the sect:

they remind us of the legends of the Libanus, which make the Druzes,

apparently another offshoot of the Batini, worship El Ijl (the calf)

when the figure is placed in their Khilwahs, or lodges, in memory of the

detested Nishtakin Darazi, and in contra-distinction to El Akl, Hamzeh,

their greater ‘prophet.’[91] No Agapomenical establishments exist at

Zanzibar: the chief of the heretic sect is one Haymah, who has, however,

but little authority, and who commands even less respect. The Khojahs at

times repair to a tumbledown mosque on the sea-shore south of the city,

in the quarter called Mnazi Moyya.

By no means deficient in intelligence, though unscrupulous and one-

idea’d in pursuit of gain, the Khojahs are the principal shop-keepers in

Zanzibar. They are popularly accused of using false weights and

measures; they opposed the introduction of a metallic currency, and they

have ever advocated, with the Prince, a return to the bad old state of

barbarism. Many have applied themselves to slave-dealing, and lately one

was deported for selling poison to negroes; they are receivers of stolen

goods, and by the readiness with which they buy whatever is brought for

sale, they encourage the pilfering propensities of the slaves. They

travel far and wide; several of them have visited the Lake Regions, and

we afterwards met, at Kazeh of Unyanyembe,[92] one of their best men,

Musa Mzuri. At Zanzibar all not in trade are rude artisans, who can

patch a lantern and tin a pot; one of them, who had learned to mend a

watch, repaired the broken wheel of my pocket pedometer.

Of the free blacks who visit and who sometimes reside in Zanzibar, I

have mentioned the Malagash: these Madagascar Islanders occupy the

easternmost suburb of the town. In early ages the Arab and Wasawahili

settlers on the western coast of the Great Island traded with the

Mozambique, the Sawahil, and even Arabia, and since 1829 the

persecutions of the Queen Ranavola-Manjaka, and the heavy yoke of the

Hova conquerors, caused many to leave their homes. The rare Somal need

hardly be noticed. During the season a few run down from Makdishu and

Brava, to trade and barter hides and cattle. There are almost 2000 men

from Angazijeh (Great Comoro), Mayotta, Hinzuwan or Anjuan (Johanna),

and Muhayli. The word Comoro is evidently corrupted Arabic, meaning

Moon-Island. The natives of the Archipelago here preserve their own

language, which seems to be a superstruction of Javanese and Bali,

Arabic, and Sanskrit erected upon a primitive insular dialect, meagre

and un-Aryan. Others have detected in it a resemblance to that of the

Philippine Islands,[93] and hold the people to be of Malay origin. The

blood was Persianized and Arabized in the 12th century, and the Sultan

and chiefs have ever since retained the Semitic physiognomy; but the

extensive negro innervation has so tainted the blood that no difference

can be perceived in the characteristic effluvium between them and the

Wasawahili. It is curious to hear them, withal, boast of their Koraysh

descent, and pride themselves upon the glories of the ancient race that

produced the ‘Rasúl Ullah.’ In A.D. 1774 they hospitably entertained the

crew of an East Indiaman wrecked whilst en route to Bombay. The Sultan

of Johanna received in return a magnificent present from the H. E. I.

Company, and the Comoro Islanders gained for themselves a permanent good

name. A considerable emigration was caused in the early part of the

present century by intestine divisions and by piratical attacks from

Madagascar, whilst the slave emancipation by the French in 1847 set a

large class free to travel. Of late they have displayed a savage and

mutinous spirit, and two men were put to death for attempting with

peculiar audacity the life of the young chief, Abdullah.

Amongst Eastern impostors the Comoro, especially the Johanna men, are

facilè principes: the singular scoundrels have completely mastered the

knack of cajoling Europeans—no Syrian Dragoman can do it better. Once or

twice a year they tell-off begging-parties, who visit Mauritius and

Aden, Bombay and Calcutta, and who invariably represent themselves as

being on ‘Church-bijness,’ i.e. pilgrimage. Linguists, after the fashion

of Egyptian donkey-boys, they also have the habit, like the petty

Shaykhs and Emirs in the Libanus, of calling themselves ‘princes.’ More

than one scion of Comoro loyalty, after obtaining a passage on board our

cruisers, insisting upon the guard being turned out, and claiming from

our gullible countrymen all the honours of kinghood, has proved to be a

cook or a bumboat-man. Unscrupulous as bigoted, they have induced half-

starved Europeans to apostatize by promises of making them chiefs and of

marrying them to princesses; after circumcision, the wretches were left

to starve. The Comoro men settled at Zanzibar are mostly servants in

European houses, where they recommend themselves by exceeding impudence

and by being handy at any fraud. Others are rude artisans, and the rest

are Mercuries, beach-combers, and bumboat-men, who supply sailors with

Venus and Bacchus, both execrably bad. When expecting invasion, Sayyid

Majid equipped about 130 of these fellows as a garde de corps: they had

flint muskets, two spears apiece, and lozenge-shaped hats, whereas the

common troops wore woollen night-caps. Finally, they are cowardly as

they are dishonest: it was not without astonishment that I heard of Dr

Livingstone engaging a party of them for exploration in the African

interior, and the trick which they played him is now a matter of

history.

The Diwans or chiefs of the mainland ports and towns occasionally visit

the Island on public and private business. Twice a year, in our

midsummer and midwinter, a crowd of the Wanyam-wezi and other races of

the inner intertropical regions flock, viâ the Coast, into Zanzibar,

where they engage themselves as porters, and undertake carrying packs

for the native traders to the Lake Regions and other meeting-places of

commerce. They are so wild, that they cannot be induced to enter a

house; and the terror of one who was brought to the consular residence

was described as grotesquely comical: even the more civilized look upon

a stone abode as a cavern or a dungeon. These half-naked miserables may

be seen devouring, like birds of prey, carrion and putrid fish in the

outskirts of the city; they have also a ‘Devil’s tree,’ whose trunk

bristles with nails, and whose branches are robed in foul rags.

Some years ago one of the chiefs of the interior, I was told, was

brought to Zanzibar a prisoner of war. He is described as a man of

kingly presence, 6 feet 2 inches tall, handsome in face, and well-formed

in head; his skin was covered with scar and tattoo in patterns, amongst

which the crescent shape predominated.[94] When struck by his Arab owner

he spat upon him, and declared that if burnt alive he would not cry out.

Being carried before the late Sayyid, he boldly told him that ‘God

exalts men and brings them low, that both were kings, and that the same

misfortune which had made one a captive might also happen to the other.’

As he walked through the streets all the slaves, wild and domestic,

prostrated themselves, to be touched by the point of his staff; they

served him with food upon their knees; they remained in that position

while he ate, and all wailed when he was placed in the Fort. The same

story is told of an old ‘Congo king,’ who is still remembered at Rio de

Janeiro. The prisoner of Zanzibar invariably placed his foot upon

presents, and when the Sayyid restored him to liberty he departed empty-

handed. M. Broquin, the French Consul, and other Europeans made

inquiries about this black Jugurtha: all they could discover was that

his country lay somewhere about the great Central Lakes.

A few Wazegura, Wasegejo, and Wadigo, heathen from the mainland, visit

Zanzibar to buy and sell, or to fly from foes and famine. The greater

portion settle permanently upon the Island, the savage for the most part

unwillingly exchanges the comforts and pleasures of semi-civilization

for the wildness and freedom of ‘Nature,’ so dear to the man of

refinement. These Africans live by fishing and work in the plantations:

they easily obtain from the large landed proprietors bits of ground,

paying as a yearly quit-rent half a dollar and upwards according to

crop, manioc, bananas, and sweet potatoes.

-----

Footnote 84:

The extremes mentioned to me were 100,000 and 1,000,000. Captain Smee

(1811) gave 200,000. Dr Ruschenberger (1835) made the population of

the Island 150,000 souls, of whom 17,000 were free negroes. M.

Guillain (1846) places the extremes mentioned to him at 60,000 to

200,000: when he asked the Sayyid, the latter replied like a veritable

Arab, ‘How can I know when I cannot tell you how many there are in my

own house?’

Footnote 85:

The extremes of the guess-work census are 2600 and 5000.

Footnote 86:

In 1862-3 a Bombay firm established a branch on the Island, but I have

not heard of the results.

Footnote 87:

I have been much amused by the comments of the press upon the expenses

of minor officials living abroad, as elicited from Ministers and

Chargés d’Affaires by the Diplomatic Committee of 1870. There seems to

be a deeply-rooted idea in the British brain that, because heavily

taxed, our native island is the most expensive of residences. On the

contrary, I have even found England the cheapest country, and London

the cheapest capital in Europe. At Fernando Po my outlay was never

less than £1800; at Santos (Brazil) it was £1500; at Damascus, from

£1200 to £2000, and so forth.

Footnote 88:

For other details concerning the currency see the Appendix.

Footnote 89:

Pliny, however (vi. 35), calls Baricazu a ‘town of Æthiopia.’

Footnote 90:

In 1844 there were 500 Banyans on the Coast and Island,—the number has

now nearly trebled.

Footnote 91:

Such is the general view. There may, however, be a section of the

Druze creed that retains the calf-image in honour.

Footnote 92:

‘Handsome Moses’ is mentioned in ‘The Lake Regions of Central Africa’

(i. 323, et passim). He and his ‘brother,’ Sayyán, entered the country

about 1830.

Footnote 93:

I state this upon the authority of Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton. Capt.

Guillain (iii. 414) appears to think the language Zangian much mixed

with Arabic.

Footnote 94:

One of my informants suggested that from this peculiar tattoo,

‘Unyamwezi,’ the Land of the Moon, might have taken the name which the

Greeks after their fashion literally translated ‘Mountain-range of the

Moon.’

CHAPTER IX.

HORSEFLESH AT ZANZIBAR.—THE OUTSKIRTS OF THE CITY, AND THE CLOVE

PLANTATIONS.

‘Peregrination charms our senses with such unspeakable and sweet

variety, that some count him unhappy that never travelled, and pity his

case, that from his cradle to his old age beholds the same still; still,

still the same, the same.’—‘ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY,’ Part II. sect. ii.

mem. 3.

Most Europeans at Zanzibar keep horses which they seldom ride. The

Sayyid, however, had, after hospitable Arab custom, placed a large stud

at the disposal of Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton and his guests. I had heard

much of the Oman blood, so before excursioning to the outskirts of

Zanzibar City we proceeded to the Prince’s stables.

The late ruler had rarely less than 200 mares, whose value ranged

between $1500 and $2000: at present, however, the number is greatly

reduced. They require as much nursing as European dogs: in the morning

they must be picketed in the courtyard to ‘smell the air’; during the

day they must take shelter from the sun under a long cajan-roofed shed;

they must at all times he defended from rain and dew; and they must be

fed with dry fodder—here, as in Paraguay, the belief is that the

indigenous green meat becomes fatal to imported beasts. We found the

treatment very rough. The animals were ungroomed, and mostly they had

puffed legs, the result of being kept standing night and day upon a

slope of hard boarding. Amongst them I was shown a curious Nejdi, which

reminded me of Lady Hester Stanhope’s pampered beasts; the coat was

silver-white, the shoulders were pinkish, and the saddle-back amounted

almost to a deformity. The favourite charger of the late Sayyid is a

little bay with black points, standing about 14 hands 2 inches: its

straight fetlocks are well fitted for stony ground, it wears the mane

almost upon the withers, and the shoulder is well thrown back, barely

leaving room for the saddle. The hind-quarter, that weak point in the

Arab, is firmly and strongly made, and the tail is thin, switchlike,

carried nearly straight, as usual with the best blood, and remarkably

high. The beau-ideal of a Nejdi is an animal all shoulder and quarter,

connected by a bit of barrel; and to this pitch of excellence we are

gradually breeding up our English horses. The charger in question is of

the ancient Oman race, once celebrated for endurance: the late Sayyid,

however, injured his stud by crossing foal and dam, brother and sister,

till the animals fined down and dwindled to mere dwarfs. I remarked

that, here as elsewhere, the Arabs have learned from Europeans to trace

the genealogy of their horses through the sire, a practice unknown to

the sons of the desert.

All the best horses in Zanzibar come from Oman: an inferior strain is

exported by Brava (Barawa), and the Somali country. The latter sends

good little beasts somewhat like those of the Pernambucan Province; but

worn out by long marches and scant feeding, they usually die during the

first rains. Upon the mainland they will live for years. Here, however,

the new importations at first fatten; then they get foul; the sweat

becomes fetid; they lose breath and become unfit for work, till fatal

disease manifests itself by foam from the mouth. As in Malabar and

Mauritius, where the field-officers have often been dismounted, it is

next to impossible to keep horses in health and condition: they are also

costly, $150 to $200, German crowns, being asked for Kadishs or garrons.

The Government stables at Zanzibar also contain a few mules brought from

the Persian Gulf. They become liable to inveterate drowsiness; they

start when approached, refuse food and drink, and soon succumb to the

climate. The ass, on the contrary, here as in the East African interior,

thrives even upon hard food, and consequently it is prized by the Arabs.

There are many breeds. During the season fine animals are brought from

Oman; iron-grey mares with white legs being preferred; Bahrayn and the

Persian Gulf send a large light-coloured beast, resembling that of

Baghdad; it is not, however, considered lasting. Asses imported from

Brava and the Somali country are held fit only for carrying burdens, and

the Unyamwezi breed, known by its lopped ears, though strong and

serviceable, is always but half tamed, and is often vicious. The most

useful and lasting are the Mutawallid or Muwallid, the progeny of Maskat

beasts, Creoles born upon the Island—these we were advised to buy before

leaving for the interior. I subsequently purchased thirty, and the last

died within six months of landing: we then mounted Unyamwezi animals,

and had nothing to complain of. Asses are ridden, as they always should

he, upon the crupper; the ‘hulús’ are rather pads than saddles, covered

with thick cloths and black sheepskins; no one uses stirrups, and the

bridle is the rudest of contrivances. The price of donkeys ranges from

$15 to $100: I bought a tolerable riding animal for $60, and I heard of

one costing $350. Finally, the Sayyid keeps for the use of his

plantation-mills a few miserable mangy camels from Brava and Makdishu:

they may be worth $10 to $12 a-head.

Mounted on the Prince’s best we passed through the town, where the long

sharp poles projecting from the low house-eaves are not pleasant to

those riding spirited nags. This is the labour hour, and all are not

inactive. The weaver on his raised clay bench, and shaded by his dwarf

verandah, is engaged upon a turban, whilst his neighbour converts copal,

reddened by cinnabar, into ear-rings and other ornaments. The tinsmith

and the Comoro blacksmith, with the usual African bellows, are also at

work hammering at pots and pans, fashioning the normal weapons, arrow

and spear heads, and repairing old guns. The leather-worker is moulding

a targe of rhinoceros-hide, apparently all umbo, and the vendors of oil

and grain, spices and drugs, glass and ‘potions,’ are on the alert. By

the way we walked into the partially-walled compound or court

representing the slave-market, a bonâ fide affair, not like the

caravanserai which used to be fitted up and furnished by the Cairene

Dragoman for the inspection of curious tourists. In 1835 a wooden cage

some 20 feet square often contained some 150 men, women, and children,

who every day were ‘knocked down’ to the highest bidder in the public

‘place.’ In those times the yearly importation was 6000 to 7000. The

bazar was subsequently held in the Changani Quarter, near the Western

Point; the late Sayyid, however, having forbidden, by way of sop to the

British Cerberus, the sale of men in the streets of Zanzibar as of

Maskat, it was shifted to a plantation called Kirungani. As this was

found inconveniently distant, it migrated to its present site. Lines of

negroes stood like beasts, the broker calling out ‘bazar khush!’—the

least hideous of the black faces, some of which appeared hardly human,

were surmounted by scarlet night-caps. All were horridly thin, with ribs

protruding like the circles of a cask, and not a few squatted sick on

the ground. The most interesting were the small boys, who grinned as if

somewhat pleased by the degrading and hardly decent inspection to which

both sexes and all ages were subjected. The woman-show appeared poor and

miserable; there was only one decent-looking girl, with carefully

blacked eye-brows. She seemed modest, and had probably been exposed for

sale in consequence of some inexcusable offence against decorum. As a

rule, no one buys adult domestic slaves, male or female, for the

sufficient reason that the masters never part with them till they are

found incorrigible. These, however, are mostly Bozals, or wild serviles

newly driven from the interior, and they are not numerous, the

transactions of the year being now concluded. The dealers smiled at us,

and were in good humour.

It would be easy to adorn this subject with many a flower of

description; the atrocities of the capture, the brutalities of the

purchase, the terrors of the middle-passage, and the horrors to which

the wretches are exposed when entering half-civilized lands. It was

usual to throw the slaves overboard when the fatal symptom,

coprophagism, appeared amongst them. A single Dau (Dow) belonging to the

late Prince Khalid lost when running a course 500 slaves by sickness,

and by the falling of the pont-flottant or flying-deck—many a desperate

naval action could not show such a butcher’s bill. A certain Charles L——

—, a kiln-dried Mauritius man, crucified seven negroes in terrorem: two

were fastened outside the ship, the others were nailed by the feet to

the deck, and by the hands to capstan bars, lashed across the masts.

With a lighted tar-barrel in an empty boat he nearly caused the loss of

an English cruiser, and when she was well on the reef he let off rockets

and saluted her. Another man, a Spaniard, finding his ventures likely to

die of dysentery, sewed them up before he sent them to the bazar; this

slaver made an act of contrition before he died, and severely blamed his

bowie-knife. Sensational paragraphs, however, are not wanted by those to

whom the subject is familiar, and they are likely to mislead the many

who are not. I shall return to the subject of slavery in another

chapter.

Thence we entered the Malagash Quarter, where the land belongs chiefly

to Sayyid Sulayman bin Hamed, a former Governor of Zanzibar; he is said

to be so wealthy that he ignores the extent of his means. Here is the

Lal Bazar, the very centre of prostitution, an Agapemone of some twenty

Cyprians: all are Wasawahili—the Indian women, who appear almost

European in complexion and features, having now left. Their faces like

skinned apes, and lean legs encased in red silk tights, make their

appearance revolting as their society is dangerous. Some of them cool

the orbits of the eyes by a kind of loup of perfumed turmeric, whose

golden tint causes the outer darkness to gloom extra sooty; others apply

curry-coloured dabs to the woolly hair. Sundry of these patches are

frontlets or medicines applied to the temples. In former days we used,

for instance, ‘rose-water and vinegar, with a little woman’s milk, and

nutmegs grated upon a rose cake,’ and the Jews are said to have smeared

themselves with Christian blood.

The Malagash Quarter is at the far east of the city, leading to two

tumble-down bridges which span a lagoon more deadly than that of British

Accra. These ruins might easily be converted into dykes, and in process

of time the mouth would be sanded or silted up; they are however, fated

to make way for iron improvements. In my day the lagoon was connected by

fresh water with the sea, and became now a muddy pool at the ebb tides

of the Syzygies, then a sheet of festering mud which nearly encircled

the settlement, and which converted the site of Zanzibar city into a

quasi-island. Every evening a pestilent sepulchral miasma arose from it,

covering the skin with a clammy sweat, and exhaling a fetor which caused

candles to burn dim, and which changed the sound of the human voice.

Lazy skippers anchoring here for facility of watering, thus exposing

their men to the breath of the fetid lagoon, have lost in a few days

half the crew; and although the water appeared to be of the purest, it

became so offensive that often the casks had to be started.

We then passed over a sandy flat, thinly powdered with black vegetable

humus. To the left was a creek upon whose sandy beach vessels are hauled

up, and where ships of 300 to 400 tons can be safely careened: in a few

years there will here be a dock. A mile of neat footpath placed us at

the late Sayyid’s Summer Palace, Mto-ni, which is distant about three

direct miles from the Consulate. After escaping the unpleasant

attentions bestowed upon us by the tame ostriches, who are apt to use

beak and wing, we dismounted for inspection. The building is of coral

rag, pierced with square windows, and the wings are united by a

verandah-terrace, supported by wooden pillars, and facing Meccah, for

convenience of prayer. A few feet above the centre is the peaked roof of

the Kiosk, which makes the place remarkable to crews entering the

harbour. In front floats from sunrise to sunset the red flag of the

Sayyid: the rear is brought up by a small cemetery, sundry offices, and

lowly cajan-thatched hovels tenanted by slaves. The work of man is mean

enough, but it is surrounded by the noblest handiwork of Nature, cocoas

and mangoes, whilst the borders of the little stream could be

beautifully laid out.

Gum Copal, formerly called in the trade Gum Anime, now Gum Elemi, is

washed down by the rains, and is picked up by the slaves about the

debouchure of this fiumara. On the Mto-ni road also we passed sundry

places where pits, never exceeding five feet deep, had been sunk in the

sandy plain, thinly clothed with sedgy grass. Upon the higher grounds,

also, to judge by the eye, about 100 feet above sea-level, we found many

deserted diggings. The soil is a dark vegetable mould, varying in

thickness from a foot to 18 inches, and based upon the raised sea-beach

of blue clay. This becomes fat and adhesive, clogging the hoe as it

descends: the half-decayed blood-red fibre with which it is mixed

throughout was recognized by the negroes as cocoa-roots. Bits of

scarlet-coloured earth also variegated the faint blue marl, and at a

depth of 2-1/2 feet water began to exude from the greasy walls of the

pit. These places supply only the raw or unripe copal, locally called

Chakazi,[95] and by us corrupted to Jackass: the true vegetable fossil

must be brought from the coast. The tree was probably once common on the

Island, but it has been cut down for masts and similar uses. Copal does

not appear under that name in the list of exports from Zanzibar given by

Captain Smee in 1811: possibly that officer alludes to it when speaking

of ‘Dammer.’ In early days ‘gum-anime’ was held a precious medicine for

rheums and heaviness of the head. It was imported viâ the Levant ‘from

the place where incense is found, and that lande or soyle is called

_Animitim_, and therefore the thing is called, Anime,’ says Dr Monardes,

treating of the objects that are brought from the West Indies. He adds

that American Anime was whiter, brighter, and said to be a ‘spice of

_Charabe_ or _Succino_, which is called amber congealed.’ In 1769

Portugal forbade the importation of true copal, in order to protect the

Jataycica or gum of the Jatoba (hymenæa), of which 14 Arrobas had been

sent from Turiassu in the Brazil.

Leaving Mto-ni, after half a mile of beach, we turned towards the

interior, and ascended the gently rising ground, beautifully undulated,

which leads to the royal estates called Rauzah and Taif, formerly

Kizimba-ni or Sebbe. For two or three miles a narrow path, which

compelled us to ride in Indian file, wound through cocoa-groves and

patches of highly-cultivated ground, with here and there a hut buried

under fruit-laden mangos. The track, then 254 feet above sea-level,

widened into a broad avenue of dark conical clove-trees, varying in

height from 6 to 16 feet according to age; feathered almost to the

ground, and extending, like the well-berried coffee-shrub, its branches

at right angles to the trunk. All, however, bore the impress of neglect,

where Dr Ruschenberger found a ‘picture of industry and of admirable

neatness and beauty’ that employed from 500 to 700 slaves.

We saw little to admire in the ‘palace,’ a single-storied lodge of coral

rag, and ample porches looking upon sundry courts and yards, negro

quarters and drying-grounds. There is here a well said to be 100 fathoms

deep, which gives water only in the rainy seasons; most of the upland

plantations must draw the element from the little streams. The Arab

care-takers, after refreshing us with cocoa-nut milk, led us out to

inspect the grounds. These Semites, satiated with verdure, despise the

idea of assisting nature, and yet at Maskat they will gaze delighted

upon a dusty, ragged plot of sand-veiled rock, dotted with consumptive

trees, and dignified by the name of a garden. Some years ago Lieut.-

Colonel Hamerton taught the late Sayyid to plant rose-trees, which gave

a crop as abundant as those of ancient Syria: during their owners’

absence the slaves uprooted the young growth in very wantonness. The

nutmeg fared as badly. The Consul also succeeded in producing wall-

flowers, lavender, and the apple-scented as well as the common geranium:

imported from Europe with abundant trouble, they met the fate of all the

roses. The Ravenala, or Travellers’ tree, was brought from the

Seychelles by the Sayyid with the same unsuccess. Several kinds of

jasmines were transported from Cutch to Zanzibar: the Arabs objected to

them, that the scent depresses the male sex and unduly excites the

feminine. Many flowers—for instance, the Narcissus and certain Acacias—

labour under the same ill-fame.

Here, after admiring the delicious view of the tree-crowned uplands, the

low grounds buried in the richest forest, the cocoa-fringed shore of

purest white, and the sea blue as a slab of lapis lazuli, we had an

opportunity of inspecting the celebrated clove plantations of Zanzibar.

According to Castanheda, when Vasco da Gama first touched at Mombasah

and Melinde, their Reguli sent him, amongst other presents, cloves, and

declared that their countries grew the spice. Other travellers mention

the clove being found at various parts of East Africa, and Andrea

Corsali in Ramusio describes the produce as ‘not like those of India,

but shaped more like our acorns.’ The Dutch, however, since their

conquest of the Moluccas or Spice Islands in 1607, monopolized the clove

like the nutmeg; and by destroying the former and enslaving the

cultivators, they confined it, lest the price should fall, to the single

Island of Amboyna. The naturalist traveller, M. Poivre, when governor of

the Isle of France, brought from the least frequented of the Moluccas,

in June 27, 1770, some 450 nutmeg stalks and 10,000 nutmegs in blossom

or about to blossom, together with 70 clove trees and a box of plants,

many of them well above the earth. In 1772 a further supply was

procured; the greater part was kept in the Isle of France, the rest were

dispersed amongst the Seychelles, Bourbon, and Cayenne. All the

specimens given to private individuals died: skilful botanists, however,

succeeded in preserving 58 nutmegs and 38 clove trees. Of the latter two

bore blossoms in 1775, and the fruit was gathered in the following year;

the produce, however, was small, light, and dry, and all deemed that the

Dutch had been unnecessarily alarmed.[96] The project, however, proved

completely successful.

In 1818 the clove-tree (Caryophyllus aromaticus) was introduced from

Mauritius and Bourbon into Zanzibar; requiring little care, it speedily

became a favourite, and in 1835 the aristocratic foreigner almost

supplanted the vulgar valuable cocoa-nut, and the homely rice necessary

for local consumption. The Banyans, Americans, and Europeans shared

amongst them the principal profits of other commerce, and the cloves

enriched the squirearchy, the landed proprietors. Yet it was early

predicted that this prosperity would end in ruin; and presently the man

who first introduced the spice became a beggar. After a few years

extensive plantations, some containing 15,000 to 20,000 feet, were laid

out in the richest parts of the Island. The trees, however, set at

intervals of 14 to 40, and now 20 feet, occupied large tracts of ground,

and they were so rarely trimmed, that degeneracy soon ensued. Similarly

the Brazilian planter, though well aware of his loss, cannot prune his

coffee shrub: his hands are all negroes, and if allowed to use cutting

instruments, they would hack even the stem. Now the Zanzibar article

cannot compete with the produce of Bourbon; and the Dutch having thrown

into the market the valuable and long-withheld produce of the Moluccas,

it threatens to become a drug. The people would do well to follow the

example of Mauritius, whence the clove has long departed in favour of

sugar. For the latter Zanzibar is admirably adapted: when factories

shall everywhere be established, the Island will have then found her

proper profession, and will soon attain the height of her prosperity.

The clove (Karanful), planted in picturesque bands, streaking the red

argillaceous hills, is allowed to run to wood, and to die, withered at

the top, in the shape of a bushy thick-foliaged tree 35 feet tall, and

somewhat resembling a laurel. Grown from seed, it bears in the fifth

year, and the fruit, the unexpanded flower-bud, is usually ripe in

October. In rainy years the harvest beginning with early September is

continued uninterruptedly: when the season, however, is dry the picking

ceases in November and December, to be resumed in January. Hence the

tales of two yields per annum. The crop, which lasts even till March,

and which appears to be very uncertain, is hand-picked by Wasawahili and

slaves—gathered, in fact, like coffee, except that, requiring ladders

and more labour, it is a very slow process. Under favourable

circumstances the tree should produce a maximum of 6 lbs; here, however,

the ground is neither cleared nor manured, and the consequence is, that

30 trees rarely yield more than 35 lbs per annum. The fruit is sun-dried

upon matting for three days: the workmen forget to turn it, and allow it

to be broken and injured; moreover, they will not smoke it, and thus

prevent over-shrinking and wrinkling. Some years ago Mr Wilson, an

English engineer who died at Zanzibar, produced, by attending to the

tree, and by properly desiccating his cloves upon iron hurdles, a

superior article, with red shanks and large full heads. M. Sausse, a

Creole from Bourbon or Mauritius, also succeeded in extracting an

excellent oil, the clove oil of commerce being generally made by

distilling cinnamon leaves. This novelty became a universal favourite

with the Zanzibar public, who held it to be highly medicinal, and used

it especially for _inflammations_. Locally the spice is employed as a

condiment and infused as a medicine and a tonic: women of the poorer

classes make necklaces and ear-rings of the corns; they also pound them

to a paste, and mould them into different shapes.

The Asákif, or stalks pulled off when the fruit is dry, are exported to

Europe under the name of ‘clove stems,’ and are used as a mordant for

dyeing silks. An English house once provided tin canisters to preserve

its purchases, whereas they are mostly sent home in bulk. Certain other

merchants, ‘born with the pencil behind their ears,’ open the hatches,

and to make the cargo ‘weigh out’ heave in sea-water, which, they say,

does not much affect the flavour of pepper and cloves. The stems fetch

from one-eighth to half of a German crown per Farsilah, or frail of 35

lbs. The price of cloves, originally $5 to $6 per Farsilah, has now

fallen to $2 and even to $1. In 1856, the Island exported five millions

of lbs; the next year, however, was unfavourable—the trees had been

injured by drought; the over-supply had sunk the price 70 per cent., and

many Arab proprietors talked of returning to rice and cocoa-nuts. Yet,

in 1859, the crop rose to some 200,000 Farásilah = 7,000,000 lbs, valued

at about £85,000; whereas 10 years before the total produce of Zanzibar,

including Pemba, was 120,000 to 150,000 Farásilah, and in 1839-40 it

barely numbered 9000.

We returned viâ the bush to the south of the city, passing through a

luxuriant growth of the hardest woods. After a stiff ride over the worst

of paths, a mere ‘picada,’ as the Brazilians say, we skirted the fetid

lagoon which subtends the eastern city from north to south, and reached

Mnazi Moyya, ‘One Cocoa-nut Tree.’ This bit of open ground is the Bois

de Boulogne of Zanzibar, the single place for exercise, and we did not

wonder that so many prefer to stay at home.

During the ’Id Saghir or Kuchuk Bayram, here called Siku-khu za Ídí,

‘One Cocoa-nut Tree’ is a lively place. Whilst the boys sing and dance

about the streets, and the garrison blacks, armed with sabres, engage

near the fort in a Zumo or Pyrrhic, wildly waving their tremulous

blades, and the Wahiao or Bozals from about Kilwa execute their

saltations near the bridge, and the other slaves carouse and junket in

their own quarter of the town, each clan from the mainland keeping

itself distinct, the grandees, fingering their rosaries and supported by

long staves, proceed to Mnazi Moyya, where gallops, called races, form

the attraction. About half-a-dozen garrons, rushing wildly about,

represent the performers, and the performance is nothing new to the

Anglo-Indian. The groups are motley if not picturesque. Here and there,

surrounded by rings of sable admirers, are women boisterously singing

and clapping hands, dancing and acting lionnes with all their might.

Tremendous are the Vijelejele, the Kil, Zaghárit, or trilling of the

spectatresses. Men also stamp and wriggle in a rude ‘improper’ style to

the succedaneum for a drum, a hollow wooden cylinder one foot in

diameter, with the open end applied to the breast, and the dried and

stretched snake-skin patted upon with finger and palm. Most of these

people, regardless of fever or cholera, are primed with fermented cocoa

juice. The heavily-clad Shaykhs, bestriding their asses, are preceded by

outrunners, who mercilessly push aside and ‘bakur’ the crowd; and the

latter turn viciously as bull-terriers. There is not much striking, but

jostling and thrusting away are the rules. At Lamu and the wilder places

swords and daggers are often bared on these occasions, and the Shaykhs

have no little trouble to preserve the peace. Contrasting with the full-

dressed crowd are the naked children, who seem all afflicted with

umbilical hernia. This is the result of careless cutting, but the

unsightly protuberance will wear away in after life, and a pot-belly is

here, as elsewhere in Africa, looked upon as a good sign. The negro

faces and bodies are marked with the tattoo in almost every possible

fashion; some wear straight black lines, others curved; these have

perpendicular, those horizontal marks, and not a few wear painted

squares with central spots, like the wafers upon the garment of the old

country clown. At length the princes make their appearance, and are

received with a file-firing of guns and pistols, whilst shouts and drums

disturb the air; the races are formally run, and the crowd disperses

through the unclean streets of the city.

There is still some exploration to be done on the west or landward front

of Zanzibar Island. Colonel Hamerton, however, strongly advises us not

to risk fever, and to reserve every atom of strength and energy for the

Continent.

-----

Footnote 95:

Tchakazi, espèce de gomme-résine, dont j’ignore l’origine (M.

Guillain, Part II. p. 87).

Footnote 96:

Establicimientos Ultramarinos, vol. iii. Madrid, 1768.

CHAPTER X.

COMPARATIVE ANTHROPOLOGY (ETHNOLOGY) OF ZANZIBAR. THE ARABS.

‘Les Arabes ne sont maintenant, dans l’Afrique Orientale, que des

parasites, comme l’est tout peuple exclusivement commerçant.’—M.

GUILLAIN, vol. ii. part ii. chap. ii. p. 151.

The Arabs upon the Island may amount to a total of 5000,[97] all Omans;

and they are divided, as in their fatherland, into two great Kabilah or

tribes, the Hináwi and the Gháfiri.

When Malik bin Fakhm, of the Benu Hunayfah tribe, marched from his own

country, Nejd, to recover Oman from the Persians under Dara, son of

Bahman, son of Isfandiyar, an event popularly dated about the end of our

1st century, he was joined by some 100 Yemeni warriors who were called

Benu Yemin, sons of the right hand, because they dwelt to the south or

on the right hand of the Ka’abah. Their migration is attributed to the

bursting of the dyke of Arim, near Mareb, the Mariaba of Ptolemy, which

is the Babel-tower of Arabian history in the Days of Ignorance. The

learned Dr Wetzstein (p. 104, Reisebericht über Hauran, &c. Berlin,

1860) believes this event to have taken place about the beginning of our

era; most authors, however, place it at the end of the 1st or the

beginning of our 2nd century. It was probably the over-populating of the

land which sent forth the two great Sabæan tribes of Azud and Himyar to

Bahrayn and N. Eastern Arabia; they united, and were known as the Tanukh

or Confederates. The former, also called from a chief ‘Nasri,’ settled

upon the Euphrates, and founded the East Tanukh kingdom, whose capital

was afterwards Hira. The Himyar or Kudai originated, in the Hauran and

the Belka, the West Tanukh kingdom, also termed from a chief ‘Salih.’

These men, converted to Christianity, were probably the builders of the

‘Giant cities’ of Bashan, mere provincial towns of the Greco-Roman

Empire. Ta’alab (Thalaba), one of the sons of Malik bin Fakhm, is

mentioned as the first ruler of East Tanukh. The extinct family of the

Druze Tanukhs claimed descent from the western kingdom.

The Ya’rubah considered themselves to be of the Arab el Aribah

(Joctanites), through their ancestor Yarub el Azud (يعرب الازد) bin

Faligh (Peleg, the brother of Kahtán or Joctan), bin Abir (Eber), bin

Salih, bin Arfakhshad, bin Sham (Shem), and to the present day their

descendants boast of this ancient lineage. Malik bin Fakhm routed 40,000

horsemen supported by elephants, slew Mirzban (the Marz-ban or warden of

the Marches) the Satrap-lieutenant of the King of Kings, whose head-

quarters were at Sohar, and conquered the country from Sharjah to the

Ra’as el Hadd (Rasalgat), the eastern Land’s-end of the Arabian shore.

Reinforced by fresh drafts of the Benu Yemin, he showed his gratitude by

incorporating them with his own tribe. The word Hináwi, meaning a

patrician or ‘one having a founder,’ arose from Malik bin Fakhm,

proposing himself as the Hanu (هنو) or originator of the emigrants:

certain Arabs derive it from Hiná, a fanciful ancestor, and even call

themselves Benu Hiná. According to some authorities, Oman took its name

from a place in the neighbourhood of the dyke of Mareb; others derive it

from a valley which, like the Wady el Arab, gave its name to the whole

country; the Arab geographers make it the ancient term for Sohar, and

the classical geographer holds that the Ommanum Emporium of Ptolemy was

applied to Maskat.

When Malik bin Fakhm had been slain by his son Selima, and another son,

Zayd, ruled Oman in his stead, a thousand of the Benu Nezar came to him

from the town of Ubar, and were settled upon a tract of low open ground

(غفير), whence they took the name of Gháfiri. These immigrants were Arab

el Musta’arabah, which, in Omanic usage, denotes the insititious or

Ismailitic clans derived from Adnan, son of Ishmael; and the gift of

land had made them clients of Zayd and of his tribe, the Hináwi.

Intermarriage, however, soon amalgamated the races. When El Islam

brought the sword to mankind, and when the rival prophet Musaylimah,

generally known as the Liar, paved the way for the Karmati (Carmathians)

and for a copious crop of heresies, the Gháfiri, cleaving to the faith

of Meccah, were preferred by the Caliph Abubekr to their former patrons,

for the chieftainship of Oman. In his turn, the Caliph Ali restored

precedence to the Hináwi who had espoused his cause. Hence an inveterate

feud, a flame of wrath, which rivers of blood have not quenched.

Throughout Oman the rival tribes still occupy separate quarters; they

will not connect themselves by marriage, and they seldom meet without a

‘faction fight.’ Even at Zanzibar, where the climate has softened them,

they rarely preserve that decency of hate which is due by Arabs of noble

strain to hereditary and natural enemies.

Here the principal clan of the Hináwi tribe is the Hárisí (plural Hurs),

under Abdullah bin Salím and Husayn bin Mahommed: once flourishing in

Oman, it now barely numbers 15,000 sabres, and in the Island it may

amount to 300, mostly merchants and wealthy planters. The other

divisions are the Bú (or Ayyál) Sa’íd; the ruling race which forms one

large family—that of the Sayyid. There are also about a dozen of the

Benu Lamk, whose preponderance in Oman was broken down by the Yu’rabi

Imams. The minor sections of the Hináwi are the Benu Yas of Sur; the

Benu Menasir near Sharjah; the Benu Ali; the Benu Baktashi; the Benu

Uhaybi; the Benu el Hijri; the Benu Kalban; the Benu el Abri; and the

Benu bu Hasan, generally pronounced Bohsan. A few of the Benu Dafri or

Dafil at times visit the Island: they are professional carriers, and

therefore they have no blood feuds with other tribes. Besides, these are

Ammari, Adwani, Kuruni, Khuzuri, Saláhameh, and Nayyáyareh; most of them

frequent Zanzibar during the trading season.

The pure Gháfiri stock is still, they say, to be found in Nejd.

Throughout Oman they are a wild unruly race, hostile to strangers, and

inclined to Wahhabi-ism. They possess at several places little castles

armed with guns which are mere robbers’ dens; near Mina the Chief

Musalim refused allegiance to Sayyid Saíd, and south of the Jebel el

Akhzar, or ‘Green Mountain,’ they made themselves the terror of the

country-side about Buraymah. The worst of the Gháfiri are the Kawásim

pirates (the Anglo-Arabic ‘Jowasmees’) of Ras el Khaymah and our old

enemies the Benu bu Ali of Ra’as el Hadd. To them also belong the Shaksi

or Benu Ruwayhah, popularly called Ahl Rustak, from the settlement

founded by the Persian Anushirawán on the eastern slope of Jebel el

Akhzar, the mountainous district of Oman. It is about 70 miles west of

Maskat, which, now the capital, began life as its harbour. The present

representative of the Rustak chiefs, Sayyid Kays bin Azan, receives an

annual indemnification of $3000 from Sayyid Saíd, who had dispossessed

him of Sohar and its dependencies. Súr also belongs to the Gháfiri, of

whom, in these places, little good is spoken; they are said to be at

once cruel and cowardly, to fear no shame, and to respect no oath. We

shall soon be compelled to chastise these petty sea-thieves and

kidnappers.

At Zanzibar the Gháfiri is represented chiefly by the Masakirah or

Maskari clan, which under its chief, Sayf bin Khalfan, may number 2000

sabres. The Mazru’i of Mombasah, so well known in Sawahil history, were

also Gháfiri: they are now scattered about Gasi and other small Bandars,

retaining nothing of their political consequence. The Yu’rabi clan,

which gave to Oman its old patriotic Imams, is of scant account. The

other sections, who are for the most part visitors during the commercial

season, comprise the Jenabah, the Bímáni, the Benu Katúb, the Benu bu

Ali, and the Benu Riyám of Nezwah in the Jebel el Akhzar.

The Arab holds, and, according to old Moslem travellers, has long held

in these regions the position of an Osmanli in Arabia; he is a ‘superior

person.’ As the Omani chiefs, however, like the Sherifs of El Hejaz, did

not disdain servile concubines, many of their issue are negroids: of

these hybrids some are exceedingly fair, showing African pollution only

by tufty and wiry hair, whilst others, ‘falling upon their mothers,’ as

the native phrase is, have been refused inheritance at Maskat, and have

narrowly escaped the slave-market. The grandsons of purest Arabs who

have settled in Africa, though there has been no mixture of blood,

already show important physical modifications worked by the ‘mixture of

air,’ as the Portuguese phrase is. The skin is fair, but yellow-tinted

by over-development of gall; whilst the nose is high, the lips are

loose, everted, or otherwise ill-formed; and the beard, rarely of the

amplest, shrinks, under the hot-house air, to four straggling tufts upon

the rami of the jaws and the condyles of the chin. Whilst the

extremities preserve the fineness of Arab blood, the body is weak and

effeminate; and the degenerate aspect is accompanied by the no less

degraded mind, morals, and manners of the coast-people. The nervous or

nervoso-bilious temperament of the Sons of the Desert here runs into two

extremes: many Arabs are bilious-lymphatic, like Banyans; a few, lapsing

into the extreme of leanness, are fair specimens of the ‘Living

Skeleton.’ This has been remarked even of Omanis born and bred upon the

Island. Those who incline to the nervous diathesis have weakly drooping

occiputs and narrow skull-bases, arguing a deficiency of physical force,

and they exaggerate the flat-sided unconstructive Arab skull—here an

Indian may almost always be recognized by the comparative roundness of

his calvaria. And as the Zanzibar Arab is mostly of burgher race in his

own land, the forehead rarely displays that high development of the

perceptive organs which characterizes the Bedawin.

The Arab noble is still, like those of Meccah in Mohammed’s day, a

merchant, and here wealth has done much to degenerate the breed, climate

more, and slavery most. The ‘Californian fever’—indolence—becomes

endemic in the second generation, rendering the race hopeless, whilst

industry is supplied by the gross, transparent cunning of the Wasawahili

and of the African generally. Honesty is all but unknown; several

European merchants will not have an Arab’s name in their hooks. A

Nakhodá (Captain, Maskat R.N.) in the Prince’s service, commissioned to

bring a watch or other valuables from Bombay, will delay to deliver it

until threatened with the bakur, and the terrors of being blown from a

gun do not defend the ruler from the most shallow and impudent frauds.

Like their kinsmen of Oman, they despise truth, without versatility

enough to employ it when required, and few rise to the height of Bacon’s

model, ‘who hath openness in fame and opinion, secrecy in habit,

dissimulation in reasonable use, and a power to feign, if there he no

remedy.’ Haughty in the highest degree, and boasting descent from the

kings of Yemen, they hold themselves to be the salt of the earth. Man’s

nature everywhere objects to restraint, these people cannot endure it:

nothing afflicts them so much as the necessity of regular occupation, as

the recurrence of ‘duty,’ as the weight of any subject upon the mind.

Constant only in procrastination, as they are hebetous in body so they

are mentally torpid and apparently incapable of active exertion,

especially of immediate action. Like their congeners of Maskat and Sur,

they have distinguished themselves on all occasions when opposed to any

but Arabs, by excessive poltroonery. They seldom mix with strangers, for

whom they have generally an aversion, and they will refuse a dollar to a

wretch who has changed his faith to save his life. They are never worse

than in youth, when excessive polygamy and debauchery have enslaved

them: as with the Arabs of the Peninsula, a people of violent and unruly

passions, and seldom ripe for use till their beards are grey, these

Zanzabaris improve by age, and body and mind seem to grow better, to a

certain point, as they grow old.

To this sweeping evil account there are of course exceptions. I have

rarely met with a more honest, trustworthy man than Saíd bin Salim, the

half-caste Arab, who was sent with us as Ra’as Kafilah, or guide. Such

hitherto has been his character; but man varies in these regions: he may

grievously disappoint me in the end.[98]

The poorer Arabs who flock to Zanzibar during the season are Hazramis,

and they work and live hard as the Hammals of Stamboul. These men club

and mess together in gangs under an Akidah (head man), who supplies them

with rice, ghi, and scones, and who keeps the accounts so skilfully,

that the labourer receives annually about $35, though he may gain four

times that sum. Pauper Arabs settled upon the Island refuse ‘nigger

work,’ the West Indian synonym for manual labour, and, as a rule, the

Mashamba or plantations supply them, like Irish estates of old, with

everything but money. At first many were ruined by the abolition of

slave export: at present most of them confess that the measure has added

materially to the development and the prosperity of the Island. There

are now Arab merchants who own 80,000 clove-trees, $100,000 floating

capital, a ship or two, and from 1000 to 2000 slaves.

The results of wealth and general aisance have been luxury and unbridled

licentiousness. As usual in damp-hot climates, for instance, Sind,

Egypt, the lowlands of Syria, Mazenderan, Malabar, and California, the

sexual requirements of the passive exceed those of the active sex; and

the usual result is a dissolute social state, contrasting with mountain

countries, dry-cold or damp-cold, where the conditions are either

equally balanced or are reversed. Arab women have been described as

respectable in the Island, because, fearing scandal and its

consequences, they deny themselves to Europeans. Yet many of them prefer

Banyans to those of the True Faith, whilst the warmest passions abandon

themselves to African slaves:[99] these dark men are such pearls in

beauteous ladies’ eyes, and their fascinations at Zanzibar are so great,

that a respectable Hindostani Moslem will not trust his daughter to live

there, even in her husband’s house. A corresponding perversion and

brutality of taste make the men neglect their wives for negresses; the

same has been remarked of our countrymen in Guiana and the West Indies,

and it notably prevails in the Brazil, where the negress and the Mulatta

are preferred to the Creole. Considering the effect of the African skin

when excited by joy, rage, fear, or other mental emotion, of course a

cogent reason for the preference exists.

Public prostitutes are here few, and the profession ranks low where the

classes upon which it depends can always afford to gratify their

propensities in the slave-market. I have alluded to the Wasawahili women

of the Madagascar Quarter; a few also live scattered about the town, but

all are equally undesirable—there is not a pretty face amongst them. The

honorarium varies from $0.25 to $1, and the proceeds are expended upon

gaudy dresses and paltry ornaments. Retired Corinthians who have not

prospered, live by fishing upon the sands, or make rude pottery at

Changani Point: those who can afford it buy a slave or two, and give the

rest of their days to farming. Girls who work for hire are always

procurable, but such amours are likely to end badly: the same may be

said of the prostitutes; consequently most white residents keep

Abyssinian or Galla concubines. The ‘Liwát’ is here considered a mere

peccadillo: the late Sayyid, however, denied Moslem burial to a nephew

who built the British Consular residence. This ‘Maf’úl’ died in agony

after the bungling performance of an operation which his debaucheries

rendered necessary, and the body was cast naked into the sea.

Both sexes and all ages delight in drinking. The rich use bad but

expensive French and American liqueurs, gin, brandy, and rum, from

Marseille, India, and the Mauritius. Some eat opium, others prefer Bhang

in its several forms: the material is imported from Bombay and Cutch. We

found it near the continental seaboard, and therefore the Indian shrub

is also probably grown upon the Island. A distillation, I have said, is

made from the Cashew-nut and from palm-wine; this alcohol is called

Zerámbo, and a free-born Arab is disgraced by touching it; preserved in

foul old pots, it has the effect of poison; a drunken sailor will fall

down insensible, breathe with stertorous loudness, and gradually pass

from insensibility to death. Tembo or toddy is of two kinds—Támú, the

sweet and unintoxicating, and Khálí, sour or fermented. The liquor is

drawn from the trees by the Wasawahili and the slaves insular and

continental. The Pombe, like the Buzah of Egypt and Berberia, Adel, and

Abyssinia, is a simple hopless beer, made from maize or holcus.

Drunkenness amongst the poor is very properly punished only when it

leads to crime. It is singular that the late Sayyid, who never touched

an intoxicating drink, should have been so tender to an offence with

which Moslems usually deal so barbarously.

The Arab’s head-dress is a Kummeh or Kofiyyah (red fez), a Surat calotte

(Alfiyyah), or a white skull-cap worn under a turban (Kilemba) of Oman

silk and cotton religiously mixed. Usually it is of fine blue and white

cotton check, embroidered and fringed with a broad red border, with the

ends hanging in unequal lengths over one shoulder. The coiffure is

highly picturesque. The ruling family and grandees, however, have

modified its vulgar folds, wearing it peaked in front, and somewhat

resembling a tiara. The essential body-clothing and the succedaneum for

trowsers is an Izar (Nguo ya ku chini), or loin-cloth tucked in at the

waist, 6 to 7 feet long by 2 to 3 broad. The colours are brick-dust and

white or blue and white, with a silk border striped red, black, and

yellow. The very poor wear a dirty bit of cotton girdled by a Hakab or

Kundávi, a rope of plaited thongs; the rich prefer a fine embroidered

stuff from Oman, supported at the waist by a silver chain. None but the

western Arabs admit the innovation of drawers (Suruwali). The ‘Jama’,’

or upper garment, is a collarless coat of the best broadcloth, leek-

green or some tender colour being preferred. It is secured over the left

breast[100] by a silken loop, and the straight wide sleeves are gaily

lined. The Kizbáo is a kind of waistcoat, covering only the bust: some

wear it with sleeves, others without. The Dishdasheh (in Kisawahili

Khanzu), a narrow-sleeved shirt, buttoned at the throat and extending to

mid-shin, is made of calico (baftah), American drill, and other stuffs

called Doriyah, Tarabuzun, and Jamdani. Sailors are known by Khuzerangí,

a coarse cotton, stained dingy red-yellow with henna or pomegranate

rind, and rank with Wars (bastard saffron) and sharks’ oil. Respectable

men guard the stomach with a ‘Hizám,’ generally a Cashmere or Bombay

shawl; others wear sashes of the dust-coloured raw silk manufactured in

Oman. The outer garment for chillv weather is the long, tight-sleeved

Persian Jubbeh, Jokhah, or Caftan, of European broadcloth. The Na’alayn,

Viatu, or sandals of peculiar shape, made at Zanzibar, have already been

described. Most men shave their heads, and the Shafeis trim or entirely

remove the moustaches. The palms are reddened with henna, which is

either brought from El Hejaz or gathered in the plantations. The only

ring is a plain cornelian seal, and the sole other ornament is a

talisman (Hirz in Kisawahili Hirízi). The eyes are blackened with Kohl

or antimony of El Sham—here not Syria, but the region about Meccah—and

the mouth, crimsoned by betel, looks as if a tooth had just been knocked

out.

None but women and slaves leave the house unarmed. The lowest Arab

sticks an old dagger in his belt, handles a rusty spear, or shoulders a

cheap firelock. Gulf men are generally known by their round targes

(Tursi) made of carved and spangled rhinoceros or addax hide, toys with

high central umbo, and at the utmost a foot in diameter; others have

fish-skin shields, and the Baloch affect the Cutch ‘Dhal,’ or buckler.

The sword is of three forms, of which the Sayf Faranji (Frankish sword,

in Kisawahili Upanga) has long been the favourite. It is a straight,

broad, two-edged, guardless, double-handed weapon, about 4 ft 3 in.

long, sheathed in a scabbard of red morocco: the thin and well-worn

blade vibrates in the grip, and by the side of its razor-like keenness

our weapons resemble iron bars. The price varies from $10 to $100, and,

as at modern Damascus, cheap German imitations abound. The usual handle

is wood bound with thread like plaits of black leather and silver wire

forming patterns; the pommel is an iron knob, and the general aspect of

the article suggests that it is derived from the Crusading ages. The

‘Kittáreh’ is a curved European sabre: the young princes and those about

the coast carry in hand expensive specimens with ivory hilts and gold

mountings. Thirdly, the ‘Imani,’ as they call it, is a short straight

blade made in Europe, Oman, or Hazramaut. The Arab knows but two cuts,—

one the ‘Kalam,’ across the ankles, and the other our No. 7, directed at

the head or preferably at the shoulder: the former is evaded by leaping

or breaking ground, the latter is parried with the shield. Jamhiyahs,

Khanjars, or daggers, worn strapped and buckled round the waist, are

curved till the point forms almost a right angle with the hilt. It is a

silly construction; but anything will serve to stab the enemy’s back

above the shoulders. The dudgeon of black or white rhinoceros or buffalo

horn is adorned with a profusion of filagree-work, and silver or gold

knobs; the blade, sharp on both sides, is nearly three inches broad at

the base. The sheath (’Alá) is similarly ornamented upon a ground of

leather, cloth, or brocade, dark or scarlet, with the usual metal rings

and ‘fixings.’ The Khanjar often costs $200, and a handsome dagger is a

sign of rank.

Not having seen at home the higher classes of Arab women, who are said

to be sometimes remarkably handsome, I can describe them only from

hearsay. In the house they wear tight Mezár, Sarwál, or pantaloons of

Oman silk or cotton fastened at the waist with rich tasselled ties

brought from Maskat, the Hejaz, and Bandar Abbas: the body dress is a

long chemise of Bengal or Surat stuff, worn over a Mkájá or loin-cloth.

The hair is plaited into Masúká (pig-tails) or Nyule (curls), and here,

as elsewhere, the back of the head being the most sacred part of the

feminine person, adults bind round the forehead a kerchief (Ngúo ku

jitándá) or dastmal of bright-coloured silk, which depends behind to the

waist. Abroad they appear masqued with the hideous black ‘Burka’-veil of

Oman, whilst a Rida, Kitambi, or sheet of white calico or black silk,

conceals even the dress from prying eyes. A Mávuli or umbrella shows

dignity; some wear sandals (Vyatu), like the men, others Egyptian

Papushes.

The favourite feminine ornaments are Banajireh, or Khalkhál, bracelets

or bangles, gold, silver, or copper rings, solid or hollow, plain or

embossed, with or without hinges. A Yekdani (single gem, or ‘union’), a

cordiform or oval brooch and pendents of precious stones or stained

glass, massively set in gold, hangs round the neck by a string of

bullet-sized gold-foiled heads. The Matale (anklets) are of silver

worth, that is to say weighing, from $10 to $20. A Kirt, Kupini, P’hete

ya Pua, or flower-shaped ornament of gold, silver, or base metal, is

worn in the wing of the left nostril. Earrings are of many varieties:

the rim is pierced sometimes all round for silver Halkeh or rings, whose

place is supplied amongst the poor with leaden ‘Kipini’ (in the plural

‘Vipini’). The lobe is bored and trained to encircle a disk of silver or

ivory; the slaves use a bright-coloured roll of palm leaf, and when that

is not procurable, a betel-nut: the result is unnatural distension, and

in age the ear, as among the Moplahs of Malabar, hangs down, a mere

strip of skin, to the collar bone. They have also the Kengele, copper

balls for the neck; the Mpogo, or ivory ring; the Kikomo, a copper or

brass bracelet; the Mkhufu, or silver necklace chain; the Mchuhu, or

coarse Cassolette, and a variety of Talismans or Grigris (Hirizi) round

the wrists and ankles. These women, like most Easterns, prefer strong

and heady perfumes of musk, ambergris, ottar of roses, and the large

Indian jasmine; their cosmetics are oil, henna, Kohl, or Collyrium

(Wánjá), and saffron applied to the head and eyebrows; and they are

cunning in the matter of fumigation, which might with benefit be

introduced into Europe.

The Zanzibar Arab’s day is regular, varied only by a journey, a family

festival, a debauch, or the yearly Ramazan fast. He rises at dawn for

ablution and prayer, eats ‘Suwayk,’ a kind of vermicelli, wheaten bread,

or even a little meat, drinks a cup of coffee, and chewing betel,

repairs to the bazar for business or calls upon his friends. Men shake

hands when meeting, wish good-morning, and ask, ‘How is thy state?’ to

which the reply is, ‘And how art thou?’ They then sit down and renew

queries, interspersed with many Marhabas, Sáná-B’ánás and Na shikamaus,

‘Allah preserve thee!’ and ‘Thanks be to Allah, we are well!’ If one

sneeze, the others exclaim, ‘May Allah have mercy upon thee!’ which he

acknowledges, with ‘Allah guide you!’—this is an old Arab superstition.

Sneezing being an omen of impending evil to the patient, an ejaculation

was made to the gods: ‘Homer mentions the custom; Aristotle fruitlessly

attempts to explain its existence; Apuleius refers to it; and Pliny has

a problem on it: “Cur sternutantes salutantur;”’ Asia still practises

it, and the older Brazilians have not forgotten it. Here the convulsion

is considered unsonsy: many a deputation waiting upon the late Sayyid

has been prematurely dismissed because the ill-omened sternutation

happened. As in Turkey and the Moslem East generally, the visitor’s

place of honour is on the host’s left hand. Where coffee is offered on

ceremonious occasions, all rise and take the little Finjan or thimble-

cup from the house-master, who does not allow the servant to hand it;

they then sit down, and they drink, contrary to usual Arab custom, more

than one cupful. The hospitality concludes with a glass of sherbet.

Amongst the wealthier classes at Zanzibar and Mombasah, tea is becoming

a favourite beverage; not only ‘fashionable,’ but held to be hygienic

because less heating than coffee.

At 5 o’clock, our 11 A.M., the Arab, like the Syrian, eats the ‘Ghada’

of fish and meat, of wheaten bread and vegetables, and of rice boiled

with the cream of rasped cocoa-nut, ending with half-a-dozen Finjans of

coffee and with betel. Some then repair to the Mosque; most men pray the

noon-day at home, and sleep like the citizens of Andine Mendoza till the

Asr or after 3 P.M. They again, perform ablution and devotions, after

which they dress for out-of-door business and for home visits. The

evening prayers are generally recited in public. Some eat the Isha-

supper before sunset; usually it is deferred till after worship. The

climate effectively prevents those last pleasant rambles by moonlight

and open air séances—the Makamat so much enjoyed in the hot-dry sub-

tropical regions. Here the evening is spent sometimes in society,

oftener in the harem, and all apply to sleep between 10 P.M. and

midnight.

The yearly fast begins with the new moon of Ramazan; crowds assemble in

the open places and upon the terrace roofs till the popping of pistols

and matchlocks and salvos from the squadron warn the faithful that the

crescent has appeared. In the days of Sayyid Said the strict Arab salute

of three guns (our 21) was kept up; five denoted a victory, and seven

the decease of some eminent person. Arabs observe the dietetic law

strictly; their women are expected to fast, and boys of 13 and 14 take a

pride in imitating their parents. Many, especially those with weak

digestion, cannot eat the dawn meal general throughout Egypt, Syria, and

Persia. The Shafei ordeal ends when the sun has wholly sunk below the

horizon; the Bayázi waits till daylight has almost faded from the

_east_, and he prays before breaking bread. Most men begin hygienically

with something easily digested, as dates and sour milk,—a more

substantial meal follows after an hour. The rich pass much of the

fasting time in sleep, and the burden here, as elsewhere, falls far more

heavily upon the poor. At Zanzibar, however, the infliction is lightened

by the damp climate and by the equinoctial day, short compared with the

terrible 16 hours which must sometimes be endured in subtropical

latitudes. Yet the servants and slaves are useless during Ramazan: idle

at all times, they then assert a right to do nothing: as I before

observed, the fast is one-twelfth of the year thoroughly wasted. On the

other hand, it may be remarked that El Islam has wisely limited its

festivals to six days in the year, a great contrast to the profuse waste

of time which still characterizes the faith of Southern Europe.

As at the beginning of the month, crowds assemble to sight the new moon

which ends the fast, and every fellow who has a matchlock wastes powder

and ball, without much regarding where the latter flies. Here, as in the

Brazil, nothing can be done without wasting gunpowder: at Zanzibar the

matchlock is perforce preferred, in Rio de Janeiro the rocket and the

squib have taken its place. This year (1857) a storm of rain on the

evening of May 24th concealed the crescent, and it was not till half-

past five P.M. on the 25th, that a salute from the shipping announced,

despite the thick drifting scud which hid every inch of sky, that the

weary ‘blessed month’ was no more. Then the men gathered about the

palace, the women flocked to the house-tops, and the city, usually so

sadly silent, rang with shouting, singing, the braying of trumpets, and

irregular discharges of small arms. After sunset again all was still as

the grave.

The ’Id el Saghir, or lesser festival, that concludes the Ramazan, began

at dawn on May 26th; the usual public prayers were recited in the

mosques, and at 8.30 A.M. the squadron, dressed with flags, fired whilst

the townsmen followed suit. The servants and slaves gathered in their

new clothing to kiss the master’s hand and to wish him a happy festival.

The Princes rode out in state. In the bazars an endimanché mob assembled

despite the heavy rains, and before sunset they trooped through the miry

lanes to witness the races at Mnazi Moyya, which take place only when

the tide is out. These festivities—they have already been described—

continued to a late hour, and thus passed away the earliest and the

noisiest day of the ’Id.

The second and the third days are diluted copies of the first; visits

are exchanged between all acquaintances, and the Prince holds levées in

full Darbar. Here the sons of Sayyid Said and their blood relations

occupy one side of the long bare hall, opposite them are the high

officials and interpreters, whilst the honoured guests sit by the ruler

at the Sadr, or top of the room, and fronting them, near the door, stand

the eunuchs and the slaves. On leaving, as on entering, the stranger

shakes hands with the whole family according to seniority, and he is

accompanied by the Prince either a few paces or to the doorway, the

steps, in fact, being carefully proportioned to his rank.

There is little peculiarity in the religious ceremonies of the Zanzibar

Arab. An Azan (call to prayer) is repeated in the ear of the new-born

babe, and on the Arba’in (40th day) the mother and infant are bathed,

and become pure—until then the husband will not sit by his wife’s side.

On this occasion the head of the male child is shaved, as usual amongst

Moslems. Marriage is expensive, seldom costing the respectable man less

than $500; all the food provided for the occasion must be eaten, even if

guests be sought in the streets; this indeed is the rule of Arab feasts.

Half the Mahr, or settlement-money, should be paid before the Fatihah is

recited; the remainder is claimed upon separation or after the husband’s

death. A woman cannot demand divorce except for the usual legal reasons,

and the ‘Iddeh,’ or interval before re-marriage, is three months and ten

days. After a Khitmah or perlection of the Koran, the relict, who has

hitherto been confined to the house, is bathed by her feminine friends,

in token of readiness for engagement. Many widows refuse to change their

condition, and apply themselves to money-making by commerce,

plantations, or slave-dealing. I heard of one jovial ‘Armalah’ who

invited Europeans to _petit soupers_ and _parties fines_, in which

merriment takes precedence of modesty. The Arab women of Zanzibar appear

unusually spirited, especially when compared with their lords; in every

great house some energetic petticoat or rather trowsers takes or forces

her husband or her brother to take the lead—perhaps, as nearer home,

they are the more courageous and venturous in braving danger because the

risk and the brunt do not fall upon their heads. Men of pure family will

not give their daughters to any but fellow-clansmen. They themselves do

not object to Waswahili, and negro-girls, but the single Arab wife—there

is rarely more than one—rules the concubines with a rod of iron.

Men, women, and children weep at funerals, but it is not the custom to

hire ‘keeners.’ The feminine mourning dress is black, and the period, as

general among Moslems, lasts 40 days. Contrary to Arab custom, the

graves are lined with boarding. The exterior is a wall of coralline rag

and lime from a foot to a foot and a half high, with little raised steps

at the head and feet; here a porcelain saucer or an encaustic tile is

sometimes mortared in by way of ornament. Old cemeteries abound

throughout the city and the suburbs, sometimes showing offensive sights.

A simple slab sufficed for the late Sayyid’s ancestors; on the spot,

however, where he and his son Khalid lie, they are building a dwarf

truncated pyramid of stone and cement, an unusual memorial to a Bayazi

or a Wahhabi. Of late years the Arabs have begun to inter their slaves.

Formerly the corpses were thrown to the beasts or tossed into the sea,

and from the windows of H.M.’s Consulate I have seen more than one body

bleached snow-white by sea-water, and stranded upon the beach where no

one cared to bury it.

During the reign of the last ruler, El Islam at Zanzibar was tolerant by

compulsion; the Shiahs were allowed an Imambara at which they bewailed

the death of Hasan and Husayn—few Sunni countries would have tolerated

the abomination. But as these ‘sectarians’ almost worship whilst others

absolutely adore Ali and his descendants; and as the ‘Khariji’ schism

slew the former and well-nigh damns all the rest, they join issue and

agree to differ. This indeed is a recognized rule in religions, where

the most minute distinctions cause and perpetuate the deadliest feuds,

and the family quarrel will not be reconciled, because love perverted

becomes not indifference but hate.

The Arabs are here all Shafei or Bayazi. As the latter schism is now

rare under that name in the Moslem world, some notice of it may be

considered advisable. I have seen the Bayazi confounded with the

Mutazali (Motazilites who support Free-will _versus_ Predestination),

but there is an important difference: the latter hold Ali in high esteem

and object only to the Caliph Muawiyah.

The Bayázi, also called Abázi,[101] Ibáz and Ibáziyyeh derive their name

from Abdullah bin Yahya bin Abáz (in our dictionaries ‘Ibáz’). Some

authors have corrupted this name to Beydan, that of a Persian sectarian;

others translate it the ‘Whites,’ as opposed to the green of the

Fatimites, and the black of the Abbasides. This arch-heretic, according

to the Jehan-Numa, began to preach under the reign of El Merwan, the

last Ommiade Khalifeh, between A.H. 127-132 (A.D. 744 and 749), and was

shortly afterwards conquered and put to death. His tenets spread far and

wide amongst the Khawárij of Nezwah, extended to the littoral, and

filled the land with battle and murder.

The Bayazi, who through their Imams governed Oman for 163 years,

beginning from A.D. 751, are thus one of the many Khariji (in the plural

Khawárij) sects whose origin may be traced in the rival faiths of

Saheism and Kuraysh idolatry; in the contest of the ‘Prophets’ Mohammed

and Musaylimeh, and in the political interference of the first Caliphs

between the turbulent tribes of Oman. Under the names of Shurah (شراه),

Haruriyah (حرورّيه), and Muhakkimah (محکمّه), these ‘Seceders’ were once

numerous in northern Africa, Spain, and Arabia; in A.D. 1350 Ibn Batuta

found them at Timbucktu. They are now mostly confined to a few cities in

Morocco, and to the parts about Maskat. Some theological writers derive

these Kharijites from the malcontents who declared that both Ali and

Muawiyah had forfeited their right to the Caliphate by appealing from

Allah’s judgment to human decisions, and who carried out their objection

by murdering Ali and by attempting the murder of Muawiyah and Amru.

Their descendants are held to have formed 20 schools like the Shiahs (or

Rawáfiz) and the Mutazali; whilst the Marjiyyeh number six; the Mujbirah

or Sunnites four, and, together with the Batiniyah, the Hululiyah, and

the Zaydi, make up the 73 divisions into which the first Moslem declared

El Islam would split. The principal Kharijite schools (Usul el Firak)

have, however, been reduced to the following five. The first four are

now common only in books.

1. The Azarikah, or followers of Abu Rashid Nafi’ ibn el Azrak. They

permit, in religious warfare, the massacre of women and children; they

do not lapidate adulterers, Koranic command being absent, and they

severely punish the male, not the female, slanderer of the Faithful.

2. The Najdát, disciples of Najdat bin Amir, formerly abounded in

Mekran, Kerman, Mosul, Mesopotamia, Seistan, and Oman. They hold

persistency in the minor sins (Sughair) equivalent to polytheism

(Shirk); whereas mortal sins are not damnable unless accompanied by

persistency (Israr).

3. The Baghghasiyyeh, Banhasiyyeh, or Bayhasiyyeh, followers of Abu

Baghghas, Banhas, or Bayhas. I have found no account of their ‘doctrinal

quiddities.’

4. The Safar, so called from their founder Ziyad ibn el Asfar, believe

concealment of tenets (‘Takiyyeh’) permissible in word not in deed, and

they extend infidelity (Kufr) even to such offences as neglecting

prayer.

5. The Abazi or Bayazi, who form the mass of Arab population at

Zanzibar, and who are also numerous in Oman. They are Karmati and anti-

Moslem in the matter of Freewill, a vital distinction from the Sunnis;

like the Ismailiyyeh and sundry mystic schools, they believe the

Imamship to be a supreme pontificate, but not the succession, by grace,

of the prophethood and the caliphate. They are opposed to the Mutazali

by respecting the Shaykhayn (Ahubekr and Omar), their exoteric reason

being that El Islam then throve under a single head. Therefore they deem

it lawful and right to abuse Usman and Ali (damning the Shiahs for

venerating the latter), Muawiyah and Yezid, Talhah, Zubayr,[102] and

others, who brought calamities upon the Faithful, and who caused the

spilling of Moslem blood. In this age of decaying zeal they do not

‘Sabb’ or blaspheme any one publicly by name, and by order of the late

Sayyid they bless, during the Friday sermon (Khutbah), the two first

Caliphs, and then generally the Sahabah (Companions of the Prophet), the

Muhajirin (Meccans who accompanied the Flight), and the Ansar (Medinites

who received Mohammed). As are all Moslems they may not use the word

‘La’anat,’ or curse, except to Satan—so Christians are forbidden to call

others fools, and with equal success. Moravian-like they pride

themselves upon preserving pure and undefiled the tenets and the ritual

handed down to them from the Prophet’s day, and, with the rest of the

Moslem Ulema, who in this point are the most conservative and anti-

progressive of men, they would model all modern civilization upon that

of barbarous Arabia in the 7th century. One of their favourite sayings

is, ‘All innovation (Bida’ah, i.e. a practice unknown to Mohammed’s day)

is error, and all error is in hell-fire.’ Possibly, however, this may be

the effect of Wahhabi neighbourhood.

The faith of the Bayázi is narrow and exclusive, a monopoly of

righteousness, a moral study of the infinitely little. Amongst

Christians I can compare him only with the ‘hard-grit’ style of

Baptists, who aspire alone to people a Heaven in which the letter H is

of no account. All who do not profess his tenets are Kafirs, and, as it

is a standing belief that whoso calls a Moslem Kafir becomes a Kafir

himself, they are replied to in kind. Each of the 73 schools naturally

considers itself the ‘Nájiyah,’ or Saving Faith; but it is not justified

in consigning to Jehannum those that do not agree with it. The Bayázi

condemn all the Sunnis, and especially the Shafeis, who expect actually

to see the Deity (el Ru’uyah) during the next life. Quoting the debated

passage of the Koran ‘Sight shall not see Him’ (لاتدمرکه الابصار), the

Kharijis agree that if the Lord be visible, He must be material and

personal, consequently created and unessential. In these matters they go

beyond their depth; but who, it may be asked, attempts the subject and

does not? The idea of the Godhead varies with every race, of which it is

the highest mental and moral expression; the higher the conception the

higher will be the intellectual status, and vice versâ; even the same

race constantly modifies its hold for better or for worse. I do not

believe that the sages of Greece and Rome were polytheists or idolaters,

although they may have sacrificed cocks to Esculapius. Under almost all

mythologies, even the Hindu, there is an underlying faith in monotheism.

But the God of the Jews, of the Christians, and of the Moslems, differs

in kind as well as in degree, even as the God of Calvin would not be the

God of Channing. A late writer has published several pages of very good

writing and very bad reasoning, upon the contrast of the Deity, as

worshipped by Christianity and by El Islam. His error has been to assume

Wahhabiism for the typical form of the latter. I might as well work out

the theory that the Anabaptist Protestant is the Christian _par

excellence_. Like the article on the Talmud which lately created so much

attention, it is an able bit of special pleading and no more.

Amongst Moslems, Paradise is supposed to embrace the extent of the earth

and firmament, and the late Sayyid used quaintly to remark, that his

scanty orthodox subjects would people it but poorly. The Bayázi, unlike

others of the Saving Faith, which we may better translate ‘le Salut,’

hold hell-fire to be the eternal portion of even their own sinners; thus

literally interpreting the text, ‘ever, to all eternity (dwelling) in it

(hell),’—خالدين فيها ابدًا. They have no prayer-station round the

Ka’abah, and they relieve then chagrin by proving these oratories to be

‘novelties,’ unknown to the Prophet’s day.

The ritual differences between the Bayázi and other schools are small;

in prayer the arms and hands are extended down the thighs, instead of

being folded over the waist. Contrary to the practice of Sunnis and

Shiahs, they may wear gold or silver rings of indefinite weight, and

silks and satins, provided that the latter be removed during prayer.

These sectarians cannot marry women with whom they have cohabited;

divorce is imperative from wives whom they have visited at a forbidden

season, and they allow legitimacy to children horn within two years

after the father’s death. Amongst the Shafei the period extends to four

years: physiological ignorance of ovarian dropsy fixed the time; and

mistaken charity has refused to shorten it. In general the Bayázi, like

the Druze, appears unwilling to explain his tenets, a remarkable

contrast with the self-assertion and the controversial readiness of

other Moslems. When betrayed into argument they quarrel about their

belief—a sign of weakness; the calmly and thoroughly convinced, for

instance an honest Scotch country minister, only smiles with pity upon

the man who dares to differ from him. The studied simplicity and

literalness of the sect and its fierce intolerance, combined with its

crass semi-barbarism and isolation from the great family of nations,

have favoured the progress of Wahhabi puritanism, and accordingly many

Bayázi have ranged themselves under the uncompromising banner of

puritanical ‘Unitarianism’—literalism and Koranolatry.

Of old the Kharijis were the flowers of the Islamitic garden; and

history will ever dwell upon the literary glories of Seville and

Cordova. It was this heresy that produced the Allámat (doctissimus) El

Ghazali, and the celebrated Persian grammarian and poet, the Imam Abú’l

Kasim Mohammed bin Omar, El Zamakhshari. His wife attacked his vile

belief in man’s Free-will with an argumentum ad hominem more

demonstrative than purely logical. It caused him, however, to recant the

error and to express his penitence in that glorious ode beginning—

يا من يرا مدّ البعوض جناحه

فی ظلمة ليل البهيم اّليالى

‘O Thou who seest the midge extend her wing

Athwart the gathered glooms of gloomiest night,’

and to end life in the firm conviction of fate and predestination. His

commentary (the Kashsháf ’an Hikáik el Tanzíl) displayed a logical

reasoning, a profundity of learning, and purity of style which made it

popular throughout El Islam, and it cleared the way for a long

procession of similar productions.

In modern degenerate days the Bayázis of Zanzibar have little education

and no learning: they must even borrow from the Sunnis commentaries

(Tafsir) and other religious works, whence they can extract food for

their own cravings of belief. Of these the most popular are El Bokhári,

the Jelálayn, and El Baghawi; the abstruse Bayzáwi is seldom troubled.

Logic is neglected: history, philosophy, and the exact sciences are

unknown. Being Arabs, they do not require El Sarf (accidence or the

changes of the verb), and the Alfiyyeh of Ibn Malik is the only popular

treatise upon the subject of El Nahw (syntax, and the changes of non-

verbal parts of speech). The Kazis of the Bayázi and the Sunni schools

lecture in their own houses upon the religious sciences, and the

elementary establishments may number on the Island 15 or 16. Here boys

learn to read the Koran, and to write the crabbed angular hand which

distinguishes these Moslems. Nákhodás master a little arithmetic and

navigation at Bombay and Calcutta. Some few have been sent to England

and France, where they showed no want of attention or capacity: on their

return to semi-barbarism, however, almost all went to the bad; they

robbed and plotted, and most of them died of drunkenness and debauchery.

The best education to be had at Zanzibar can only exercise the memory;

it does little to cultivate the understanding or to improve the mind.

Yet the people, averse to literary labour and despising learning in the

presence of business, pleasure, or idleness, are shrewd and plodding

‘thinkers,’ and probably for the reason that their wits are not blunted

by books and lectures, they are a match for Europeans in the everyday

business of life. It is evident that where the profoundest ignorance of

our elementary knowledge co-exists with practical wisdom, there is a

large field for the labours of civilization, and that the western

school, if kept strictly secular and pure of proselytizing, would be a

blessing to the children of both sexes at Zanzibar.

-----

Footnote 97:

In 1846 M. Guillain proposed 3000, including a floating population of

300 to 400. Documents, &c., part ii. p. 78.

Footnote 98:

I have the words as they were written early in 1857.

Footnote 99:

It is easy to explain the preference of Arab women for slaves, and the

predilection of the husbands for negro women: the subject, however, is

somewhat too physiological for the general reader.

Footnote 100:

In Moslem countries Christians prefer the right breast.

Footnote 101:

Niebuhr terms them Beïasi and Abadhi (Travels in Arabia, chap. cxiv.).

Salíl ibn Razik makes Abdullah the son, not the grandson, of Abáz.

Footnote 102:

These two Ashab or ‘Companions of the Apostle’ are popularly supposed

to have been buried under a now ruined dome in a garden lying East of

the Dahdah cemetery, Damascus. It is, however, a mistake; they were

interred near Basreh where they fell in battle.

CHAPTER XI.

COMPARATIVE ANTHROPOLOGY (ETHNOLOGY) OF ZANZIBAR—THE WASAWAHILI AND THE

SLAVE RACES.

‘Venti anni sono, il commercio di Zanzibar era nullo; ora il commercio

li supera 50 milioni di franchi. Per alcuni articoli, per esempio, pel

garofano, per la gomma copale, e per l’avorio, il mercato di Zanzibar è

divenuto il principale del Mondo.’—P. 17, La grandezza Italiana, by the

learned geographer Cavagliere Cristoforo Negri. Torino, 1864.

The Wasawahili, bounded north by the Somal and the Gallas, south by the

so-called Kafir tribes, extend along the Indian Ocean from Makdishu to

Mozambique, a coastal distance of some 1050 miles; they also occupy the

Zangian Archipelago, and the islets that fringe the shore. They call

themselves Wazumba, ignoring the term Jabarti or Ghiberti (Gibberti),

still applied to them by the northern Moslems. It is given by El Makrizi

to Zayla in Somaliland, and by other writers to the Abyssinian ‘Moors;’

vocatur quoque Jabarta, i. e. Regio Ardens. This insititious race might

be called Hamito-Semitic if anywhere we could discern that the mythical

Ham, or his progeny, ever became negroes. They are, as they confess

themselves to be, mulattos, descended from Asiatic settlers and

colonists, Arabs, and Persians of the Days of Ignorance, who

intermarried with the Wakafiri or infidels. The author of the Natural

History of Man is correct in asserting their African origin, but he

under-estimates the amount of Asiatic innervation. The traveller still

witnesses the process of breeding half-castes: Maskatis and Baloch still

trade to the coast harbours, and settle as agriculturists in the

maritime regions, whilst the African element is maintained in the Island

by a steady importation of slave girls. The Wasawahili differ in one

essential point from their congeners of mixed blood, Egyptian, Nubian,

Abyssinian, Galla, Dankali, Somal, and the northern negroids; these have

not, those like the Comoro men distinctly have, the negro effluvium,

they are the ‘foumarts, not the civets,’ of the human race.

I am compelled by its high racial significance to offer a few words upon

this unpleasant topic. The odour of the Wasawahili, like that of the

negro, is a rank fœtor, _sui generis_, which faintly reminded me of the

ammoniacal smell exhaled by low-caste Hindus, popularly called Pariahs.

These, however, owe it to external applications, aided by the want of

cleanliness. All agree that it is most offensive in the yellow-skinned,

and the darkest negroids are therefore preferred for domestic slaves and

concubines. It does not depend upon diet. In the Anglo-American States,

where blacks live like whites, no diminution of it has been remarked;

nor upon want of washing,—those who bathe are not less nauseous than

those who do not. After hard bodily exercise, or during mental emotion,

the epiderm exudes a fœtid perspiration, oily as that of orange peel: a

negro’s feet will stain a mat, an oar must be scraped after he has

handled it, and a woman has left upon a polished oaken gun-case a

hemispherical mark that no scrubbing could remove. This ‘Catinga,’ as

the Brazilians call it, taints the room, infects every part of the body

with which it comes in contact, and exerts a curious effect on the white

races. A missionary’s wife in Zanzibar owned to me that it caused her

almost to faint. I have seen an Englishman turn pale when he felt that a

crowded slave-craft was passing under his windows, and the late Sayyid

could not eat or drink for hours after he had been exposed to the

infliction.

The Wasawahili may be roughly estimated at half a million of souls. In

1850 Dr Krapf (Vocabulary of six East African Languages) proposed

350,000 to 400,000. In Zanzibar Island they are divided into two great

families, a distinction hitherto disregarded by travellers. The Shirazi,

or nobles, derive themselves from the Shangaya settlement, also called

Shiraz, on the coast north of Lamu in about S. lat. 2°; thence they

extended to Tungi, four days’ sail south of the Rufuma river. Asserting

themselves to be Alawi Sayyids (descended from the Khalifah Ali) they

take the title of Muigni, ‘lord,’ equivalent to the Arab ‘Sherif,’

whereas the other chiefs are addressed as B’ana—master. The last

Msawahili Sultan in the days of the Arab conqueror, Ahmed bin Said, was

Ahmed bin Sultan bin Hasan el Alawi. The actual head of the family is

entitled Muigni Mku by his people; by the Europeans, ‘King of the

Sawahili.’ His name is mentioned in the Khutbah or Friday Sermon; he

collects the poll-tax, and receives a percentage, some say one half,

others only $2000, when paying it into the Sayyid’s treasury. He was

never, however, admitted to any equality by the Arab ruler. The Shirazi

clan does not now contain more than a hundred families.

The Wasawahili race appears, from the ‘Kilwa Chronicle’ (Huma Chronica

dos Reys de Quiloa) mentioned by De Barros (1st Decade of Asia, viii. 4,

5), to have been derived from the ‘Emozaydis’ (Amm Zayd) or followers of

their Imam, Zayd bin Ali Zayn el Abidín bin Husayn, the grandson of the

Prophet. He was proclaimed Khalifah at Kufa in A. H. 122 (A. D. 739),

under the Khalifat of El Hesham bin Abd el Melek, the Ommiade, by whom

he was conquered and slain. The pretender’s son, Yahya, fled to

Khorasan, where the Abbasides were already making head against the

Ommiades, and the tenets of his followers, the Zaydis, spread throughout

Yemen, where they formed, and they still form, a numerous and

influential class. Other ‘Shiah’ partisans took refuge from persecution

in East Africa, fortified themselves upon the littoral about Shangaya,

and, extending southwards, became lords of the land. Some generations

afterwards an emigration of Sunni Arabs from El Hasa, in three ships,

commanded by seven brothers flying from the tyranny of their chief,

visited the coast, founded Makdishu and Brava, and extended to Sofala.

The ‘Emozaydis,’ unwilling to accept orthodox rule, retired into the

interior, intermingled with the Kafir race, and became the Bedawin of

the country. The second Persian emigration took place early in our

eleventh century. A certain Ali, son of a ‘Moorish’ Sultan Hasan, who

governed Shiraz, by an Abyssinian slave, finding himself despised by his

six brethren, fled with wife and family in two ships from Hormuz to East

Africa. At Makdishu and Brava, finding Arabs of another faith (Sunnis),

he went to Kilwa Island, bought land with cloth, took the title of

Sultan, and fortified himself against the Kafirs and against the Moslems

of Songo-Songo and Changa, whose dominion extended to Mompana (Mafiyeh).

The latter, together with other islets, was conquered by his son, Sultan

‘Ali Bumale,’ and the dynasty lasted a grand total of 541 lunar years

before the arrival of Cabral at Kilwa in July, A. D. 1500. These

Shirazis originated the noble family of the Wasawahili, who do not claim

descent from the older ‘Emozaydis.’[103]

The Mahadimu, or serviles, a word derived from the Arabic Makhadim, the

‘Mohaydin’ of Europeans, compose the mass of the Wasawahili race. They

are popularly derived from the slaves left upon the Island by the

Portuguese. It must, however, be observed that most of the great

families in Eastern and Southern Africa have congener clients, or rather

outcastes, who are probably, like the Spartan Helots, remnants of

subjugated rivals. Thus, to quote but a few, there are the Midgans

amongst the Somal, the Walangúlo or Ariangulo and Dahalo amongst the

Southern Gallas,[104] and the Wandurobo amongst the Wakwafi. The

Wasumbara have their Washenzi; the Hottentots their Bushmen, and the

Kafirs their Fingos. In a former volume I have shown that even the Arabs

of Oman and Yemen are mixed with Khadims, a system of race within race,

as contrary to the spirit of El Islam as of Christianity. These servile

castes are distinguished by swarthier skins, weaker frames, and other

signs of inferior development. The Mahadímu of Zanzibar are evidently

the ancient lords of the Island, reduced to a manner of servitude by

northern conquerors. Though now free, and often slave-owners, these

Helots are subject, at the Prince’s order, to an occasional corvée, and

to a poll-tax. The amount of the latter affords a rude census; the adult

males range between 10,000 and 12,000, and the women, it is said, are

proportionally more numerous.

The Wasawahili of the Island appear physically inferior to those of the

seaboard: as in the days of Marco Polo, they are emphatically an ugly

race. If the girls in early youth show traces of prettiness, it is a

grotesque order of the beauté du diable. Some of the men have fine,

large, strong, and muscular figures, without being able to use their

strength, and as amongst uncivilized people generally, the reality falls

short of the promise. The national peculiarity is the division of the

face into two distinct types, and the contrast appears not a little

singular. The upper, or intellectual part, though capped by woolly hair,

is distinctly Semitic—with the suspicion of a caricature—as far as the

nose-bridge, and the more ancient the family the more evident is the

mixture. The lower, or animal half, especially the nostrils, lip, jaws,

and chin is unmistakably African. There are a few Albinos with silk-

cocoon-coloured hair, and tender-red eyes, their pinkish skins are

cobwebbed by darker reticulations and rough from pellagrous disease.

Leucosis, however, is rare; we saw only two cases, one on the Island,

the other a youth near Tángá.

The Wasawahili are by no means a jet-black people, as Pritchard, misled

by Dr Bird, has assumed; nor, indeed, is this the distinction of the

Zanzibarian races generally. The skin is a chocolate-brown, varying in

shades, as amongst ourselves, but usually not darker than the complexion

of Southern Arabia. About Lamu and Patta the colour is yellow-brown; at

Mombasah and Zanzibar dark-brown; and south of Kilwa, I am told, black-

brown. Mostly the hair is jetty, unless sunburnt; crisp, and curling

short; it splits after growing a few inches long, and often it is

planted like the body pile, in distinct ‘pepper-corns.’ The barbule is a

degeneracy from the Arab goatee, and the mustachios are short and

scanty. The oval skull, too dolichocephalous to be purely Caucasian, is

much flattened at the walls, and sometimes the upper, brow (the

reflective region of Gall) is too highly developed for the lower. The

eyes, with dark-brown pupils and cornea stained dirty bilious-yellow,

are straight and well-opened, but the nose is flat and patulous, the

mouth is coarse and ill-cut; the lips, often everted, project unduly;

the teeth are obliquely set, and the jaw is prognathous. The figure is

loose and pulpy, and even in early manhood the waist is seldom finely

formed; in many men I have seen the nipples placed unusually low down,

whilst the women have the flaccid pendulous breasts of negresses. Both

sexes fail in point of hips, which are lank and angular, whereas those

of the inner savages are finely rounded. The shanks are bowed forwards,

the calf is high raised and bunchy, the heel is long, and the

extremities are coarse and large. There is another proof of African

blood which can hardly be quoted here: many overland travellers have

remarked it amongst the boatmen of Egypt.[105]

Veritable half-castes, the Wasawahili have inherited the characters of

both parents. From the Arab they derive shrewd thinking and practice in

concealing thought: they will welcome a man with the determination to

murder him; they have unusual confidence, self-esteem, and complacency;

fondness for praise, honours, and distinctions; keenness together with

short-sightedness in matters of business, and a nameless horror of

responsibility and regular occupation. Africa has gifted them with

comparative freedom from bigotry—they are not admodum dediti

religionibus. Usually the Moslem combines commerce with proselytizing,

opposed to our system, which divides by a wide gulf the merchant’s

career from that of the Missionary, and which unites them only upon the

subscription sheet. These people care little to make converts: their

African languor upon doctrinal points prevents their becoming fanatics

or proselytizers. African also is their eternal, restless suspicion, the

wisdom of serf and slave compensating for their sluggish imagination and

small powers of concentration. They excel in negro duplicity; they are

infinitely great in the ‘Small wares and petty points of cunning,’ and

they will boast of this vile eminence, saying, ‘Are we not Wasawahili?’

men who obtain their ends by foxship? Natum mendacio genus, truth is

unknown to it; honesty and candour are ignored even by name. When they

assert they probably lie, when they swear they certainly lie. The

favourite oath is ‘Mi mi wad (or M’áná) harámí—I am a bastard if,’ &c.,

&c., and it is never respected. The language is very foul, and such

expressions as Komanyoko are never out of the mouth. The Msawahili will

not ask a thing openly: he waits, fidgeting withal, till the subject

edge itself in, and then he will rather hint than speak out. At the same

time he is an inveterate beggar, and the outstretching of hands seems to

relieve his brain. When his mind is set upon an acquisition, he becomes

a monomaniac, like that child-man the savage. His nonchalance,

carelessness, and improvidence pass all bounds. He will light his pipe

under a dozen leaky kegs of gunpowder; ‘he will set a house on fire, as

it were, to roast his eggs;’ he will wreck his ship because anchoring

her to the beach saves trouble in loading; he might make his coast a

mine of wealth, but he will not work till hunger compels him, and his

pure insouciance has allowed his valuable commerce to be wrested from

him by Europeans, Hindus, and Arabs. His dislike of direct action

exceeds that of the Bedawi, and yet he quotes a proverb touching

procrastination, ‘Leo kabli yá kesho,’—to-day is before to-morrow—better

than our ‘To-morrow never comes.’

In disposition the Msawahili is at once cowardly and destructive: his

quarrelsome temper leads him into trouble, but he fights only by being

brought to bay. Sensual and degraded, his self-indulgence is that of the

brutes. He drinks, and always drinks to excess. He would stake and lose

his mother at play. Chastity is unknown in this land of hot

temperaments—the man places paradise in the pleasures of the sixth

sense, and the woman yields herself to the first advances. Upon the

coast, when an adulterer is openly detected, he is fined according to

the ‘injured husband’s’ rank; mostly, however, such peccadillos are

little noticed. Unnatural crimes are held conducive to health. * * *

The manners of ‘the perverse race of Kush’ are rough and free,

especially compared with those of India, yet dashed with a queer African

ceremoniousness. Their conversation turns wholly upon the subjects of

women and money. With these optimists all that is is good, or, at least,

it is not worth the trouble of a change for the better. They ‘make a

stand upon the ancient way,’ and they hold that old custom, because it

is old, must be fit for all time. This savage conservatism, combined

with their traditional and now instinctive dread of the white face, and

perhaps with a not unreasonable fear of present and future loss, has

made them close the interior to Europeans. They have no especial dislike

to, at the same time no fondness for, foreigners, who in mind as well as

body are separated from them longo intervallo.

The characteristic good points of the coast race are careless merriment,

an abundance of animal spirits; strong attachments and devoted family

affection. There is amongst men an artificial fraternity which reminds

us of the ‘fostering’ of Ireland and the ‘Lambmas brother and sister’ of

the local Kermess, St Olla’s Fair: a similar brotherhood is found at

Madagascar. Amongst the negro races generally each sucks or exchanges

blood from an arm vein, and the two then swear relationship. The

operation is called Ku chanjana and the oath Sare or Sogu,—the Arabs, by

whose law it is forbidden, name it Mushátibeh. Girls, even though their

parents be living, adopt a Kungwí or stead-mother, who may or who may

not be of the family: the latter attends her ‘Mwari’ (adopted child)

when the first ablution for puberty is performed, and at the wedding

sits upon the couch till decency forbids. The connection reminds us of

the Persian proverb, ‘The nurse is kinder than the mother.’ Like

Orientals and certain peoples of Southern Europe, they make little

distinction between near and distant relationship: a man’s son may come

from the same city and his brother perhaps from the same province. So in

West Africa ‘brother’ has an extensive signification.

The Wasawahili from Makdishu to Mozambique (Mussumbeg) are all Moslems

and Shafei, as they were in the 14th century when Ibn Batuta reported

them chaste and honest, peaceful and religious. Possibly under the

orthodox denomination they may still preserve the heretical Zaydi tenets

of their ancestors; but of this point I was not familiar enough with

them to judge. If Persians, they must date from the days before the

universal prevalence of Tashayyu (Shiitism), or they have abandoned

their ancient faith. Feuds with the late Sayyid Said spread the school

along the coast, and his Bayázi subjects became Sunnis in spite, even as

Irishmen and Romans sometimes turn Protestants. El Islam, however, only

fringes the Continent. With their savage irreverence for holy things,

the Wasawahili calling themselves Moslems know little beyond the Kalmah,

or profession of faith, rarely pray, and fast only by compulsion. Like

Hindostanis, Persians, and Egyptians, nations professing El Islam at a

distance from the fountainhead, amongst whom local usage has been

largely incorporated with the pure practice of the Faith, they have

retained a mass of superstitions and idolatries belonging to their pagan

forefathers. They have a terror of the sorcerers, with whom Maskat is

said to swarm, and they tell frightful stories of men transformed into

hyænas, dogs, sheep, camels, and other animals. They defend themselves

and their huts against evil spirits (Jánn) and bad men by Koranic

versets, greegrees, and various talismans, mostly bought from the pagan

Mganga or Medicine-man. They believe in alchemy and in Rimbwata, or

love-philters, the latter, as usual in the East, containing various

abominations. The slave girls from about Mangáo, a small port near

Kilwa, are famous for concocting draughts which, after bringing on a

possibly fatal sickness, subjugate for ever the affections of the

patient. Similarly in India, Sind, Egypt, and Persia, no man will touch

sherbet under the roof of his betrothed and prepared by her mother,

unless his future father-in-law set him the example. Some of the

Rimbwata or philters are peculiar: a few grains of Jowari are ‘forced’

in an exceptional way till they sprout; they are then pounded and mixed

with the food. This harmless adhibition causes, say the people, either

death by violent disease or intense affection. It is a superstition

common to the Western East, and I have found it in India and Sind, in

Peru and Egypt. Ghosts and larvæ haunt the houses in which men have

died, a Fetish belief which does not properly belong to El Islam or to

Christianity: the British Consulate has a had name on account of the

terrible fate of its owner, the late Sayyid’s nephew. Descended from

‘devil-worshippers,’ the Wasawahili rather fear the ‘Shaytani’ than love

Allah, and to the malignant powers of preternatural beings they

attribute sickness and all the evils of human life. A Zanzibar negroid

will not even fetch a leech from the marsh, for fear of offending him to

whom the animal is ‘Ju-ju,’ or sacred.

Generally, the Msawahili Alim or literato, though capable of reading the

Koran, cannot write a common Arabic letter. Some, however, attain high

proficiency: I may quote as an instance the Kazi Muhiyy el Din. These

negroids begin arithmetic early, a practice which, perhaps, they have

learned from the Banyans. They excel in memory and in quickness of

apprehension from early childhood to the age of puberty: the same has

been remarked about the Arabs, and Anglo-Indians observe it in the

natives of Hindostan. Whether at the virile epoch there is an arrest of

development, or the brain suffers from exclusive, excessive obedience to

the natural law, ‘increase and multiply’ and its consequent affections,

is a question still to be settled. Boys are sent to school when aged

seven, and finish their Khitmah (perlection of the Koran) in one to

three years; after this they are usually removed to assist their fathers

in the business of life.

Upon the Island the Msawahili child receives some corrupted Moslem name,

as Taufiki (Taufik) Muamádi (Mohammed), Tani (Usman), Shibu (Nasib),

Muhina (Muhinna), Usy (Ali), or Hadi. Upon the coast the appellations

are mostly heathen: I may quote the following from the Benu Kendi tribe—

Bori, Chumi, Kambi, Kangaya, Kirwasha, Mareka, Mkame, Mkhokho, Mombe, or

Mwambe, Mwere, Nungu, Shangora, Shenkambi, Zingaji. The wilder

Wasawahili communities adopt very characteristic compounds: such are

Machuzi wa Shimha (fish-soup), Mrima-khonde (mountain plantation),[106]

Mkata-Moyyo (cutter-out of heart), Khiro-kota (treasure trove), Mchupio

wa Keti (leaper upon a chair), Mshindo-Mamba (conqueror of crocodile),

Khombe la Simba (lion’s claw), Mguru Mfupi (short-legs), Mui’ Mvua

(Mister rain), Mkia ya Nyani (monkey’s tail), Masimbi (cowries), and

Ugali (stirabout).

Girls take Arabic names, as Mamai Khamisi (Mother Thursday), Fatimah,

and Arusi, or they borrow from the pagans Magonera, Zawádi and Apewai (a

gift), Tímeh, Sítí, Baháti, Tínisí, and Machoyáo (their eyes). The

ceremonial address to men is Bwana (pronounced B’áná) master, possibly a

corruption of the Arabic ‘Abuna:’ it is prefixed to proper names,

especially Arabic, as B’áná Muamádi. The diminutive Kib’áná is the

Italian ‘Signorino.’ The feminine form Mwana (M’áná) has equal claims of

descent from the Arabic Ummaná, our mother. It means, however, ‘child’

generically in the proverb M’áná uwwá Mze, Mze hawwá M’áná—child slays

parent, parent slays not child—the equivalent of the Italian Amor

descende non ascende, and the Arab’s ‘My heart is on my son, my son’s is

on a stone.’ Amongst certain interior tribes it is still prefixed to the

names of chiefs; hence probably the ‘Emperor’ Monomotapa (M’áná Mtápa)

which J. de Barros writes Benomotapa: the latter may not be a misprint,

but represent ‘B’áná Mtápa.’ Muigni, contracted to Mui’, is applied to

Sayyids, Sherifs, and temporal rulers, and Shehe is the equivalent of

Shaykh. Mkambi belongs to the sultan or chief, and the Anglo-Arab

‘Seedy’ (Sídi = my lord) is unknown.