DOMESTIC LIFE—_continued_.
The domestic life of the _lower orders_ will be the subject of the
present chapter. In most respects, it is so simple, that, in comparison
with the life of the middle and higher classes, of which we have just
been taking a view, it offers but little to our notice.
The lower orders in Egypt, with the exception of a very small
proportion, chiefly residing in the large towns, consist of Felláheen
(or Agriculturists). Most of those in the great towns, and a few in the
smaller towns and some of the villages, are petty tradesmen or
artificers, or obtain their livelihood as servants, or by various
labours. In all cases, their earnings are very small; barely sufficient,
in general, and sometimes insufficient, to supply them and their
families with the cheapest necessaries of life.
Their food chiefly consists of bread (made of millet or of maize), milk,
new cheese, eggs, small salted fish, cucumbers and melons and gourds of
a great variety of kinds, onions and leeks,[315] beans, chick-peas,
lupins, the fruit of the black egg-plant, lentils, etc., dates (both
fresh and dried), and pickles. Most of the vegetables they eat in a
crude state. When the maize (or Indian corn) is nearly ripe, many ears
of it are plucked, and toasted or baked, and eaten thus by the peasants.
Rice is too dear to be an article of common food for the felláheen; and
flesh-meat they very seldom taste. There is one luxury, however, which
most of them enjoy; and that is, smoking the cheap tobacco of their
country, merely dried, and broken up. It is of a pale, greenish colour,
when dried, and of a mild flavour. Though all the articles of food
mentioned above are extremely cheap, there are many poor persons who
often have nothing with which to season their coarse bread but the
mixture called “dukkah,” described in a former chapter.[316] It is
surprising to observe how simple and poor is the diet of the Egyptian
peasantry, and yet how robust and healthy most of them are, and how
severe is the labour which they can undergo.
The women of the lower orders seldom pass a life of inactivity. Some of
them are even condemned to greater drudgery than the men. Their chief
occupations are the preparing of the husband’s food, fetching water
(which they carry in a large vessel on the head), spinning cotton,
linen, or woollen yarn, and making the fuel called “gelleh,” which is
composed of the dung of cattle, kneaded with chopped straw, and formed
into round flat cakes: these they stick upon the walls or roofs of their
houses, or upon the ground, to dry in the sun; and then use for heating
their ovens, and for other purposes. They are in a state of much greater
subjection to their husbands than is the case among the superior
classes. Not always is a poor woman allowed to eat with her husband.
When she goes out with him, she generally walks behind him; and if there
be anything for either of them to carry, it is usually borne by the
wife; unless it be merely a pipe or a stick. Some women, in the towns,
keep shops; and sell bread, vegetables, etc.; and thus contribute as
much as their husbands, or even more than the latter, to the support of
their families. When a poor Egyptian is desirous of marrying, the chief
object of his consideration is the dowry, which is usually from about
twenty “riyáls” (or nine shillings) to four times that amount, if
consisting only of money; and rather less, if, as is the case throughout
a great part of Egypt, it comprise certain articles of clothing: if he
can afford to give the dowry, he seldom hesitates to marry; for a little
additional exertion will enable him to support a wife and two or three
children. At the age of five or six years, the children become of use to
tend the flocks and herds; and at a more advanced age, until they marry,
they assist their fathers in the operations of agriculture. The poor in
Egypt have often to depend entirely upon their sons for support in their
old age; but many persons are deprived of these aids, and consequently
reduced to beggary, or almost to starvation. A few months ago, the
Básha, during his voyage from Alexandria to this city (Cairo), happening
to land at a village on the bank of the Nile, a poor man of the place
ran up to him, and grasped his sleeve so tightly, that the surrounding
attendants could not make him quit his hold: he complained that,
although he had been once in very comfortable circumstances, he had been
reduced to utter destitution by having his sons taken from him in his
old age as recruits for the army. The Básha (who generally pays
attention to personal applications) relieved him; but it was by ordering
that the richest man in the village should give him a cow.
A young family, however, is sometimes an insupportable burden to poor
parents. Hence, it is not a very rare occurrence, in Egypt, for children
to be publicly carried about for sale, by their mothers or by women
employed by the fathers: but this very seldom happens, except in cases
of great distress. When a mother dies, leaving one or more children
unweaned, and the father and other surviving relations are so poor as
not to be able to procure a nurse, this singular mode of disposing of
the child or children is often resorted to; or sometimes an infant is
laid at the door of a mosque, generally when the congregation is
assembled to perform the noon-prayers of Friday; and in this case it
usually happens that some member of the congregation, on coming out of
the mosque, and seeing the poor foundling, is moved with pity, and takes
it home to rear in his family, not as a slave, but as an adopted child;
or, if not, it is taken under the care of some person until an adoptive
father or mother be found for it. A short time ago, a woman offered for
sale, to the mistress of a family with whom a friend of mine is
acquainted in this city, a child a few days old, which she professed to
have found at the door of a mosque. The lady said that she would take
the child, to rear it for the sake of God, and in the hope that her own
child, an only one, might be spared to her as a reward for her charity;
and handed, to the woman who brought the infant, ten piasters (then
equivalent to a little more than two shillings): but the offered
remuneration was rejected. This shows that infants are sometimes made
mere objects of traffic; and some persons who purchase them may make
them their slaves, and sell them again. I have been informed, by a
slave-dealer (and his assertion has been confirmed to me by other
persons), that young Egyptian girls are sometimes sold as slaves from
other countries, either by a parent or by some other relation. The
slave-dealer here alluded to said, that several such girls had been
committed to him for sale; and by their own consent: they were taught to
expect rich dresses and great luxuries; and were instructed to say, that
they had been brought from their own country when only three or four
years of age, and that they consequently were ignorant of their native
language, and could speak only Arabic.
It often happens, too, that a felláh, in a state of great poverty, is
induced, by the offer of a sum of money, to place his son in a situation
far worse than that of ordinary slavery. When a certain number of
recruits are required from a village, the sheykh of the village often
adopts the plan that gives him the least trouble to obtain them, which
is, to take the sons of those persons who are possessed of most
property. Under such circumstances, a father, rather than part with his
son, generally offers, to one of his poorer fellow-villagers, a sum
equivalent to one or two pounds sterling, to procure a son of the
latter, as a substitute for his own; and usually succeeds; though the
love of offspring prevails among the Egyptians as much as filial piety;
and most parents have a great horror of parting with their children,
particularly if taken for recruits, as is proved by the means to which
they have recourse for the prevention of such an occurrence. There is
now (in 1834) seldom to be found, in any of the villages, an able-bodied
youth or young man who has not had one or more of his teeth broken out
(that he may not be able to bite a cartridge), or a finger cut off, or
an eye pulled out or blinded, to prevent his being taken for a recruit.
Old women and others make a regular trade of going about from village to
village, to perform these operations upon the boys; and the parents
themselves are sometimes the operators. But, from what has been said
before, it appears that it is not always affection alone that prompts
the parents to have recourse to such expedients to prevent their being
deprived of their children.
The Felláheen of Egypt cannot be justly represented in a very favourable
light with regard to their domestic and social condition and manners. In
the worst points of view, they resemble their Bedawee ancestors, without
possessing many of the virtues of the inhabitants of the desert, unless
in an inferior degree; and the customs which they have inherited from
their forefathers often have a very baneful effect upon their domestic
state. It has before been mentioned that they are descended from various
Arab tribes who have settled in Egypt at different periods; and that the
distinction of tribes is still preserved by the inhabitants of the
villages throughout this country. In the course of years, the
descendants of each tribe of settlers have become divided into numerous
branches, and these minor tribes have distinct appellations, which have
also often been given to the village or villages, or district, which
they inhabit. Those who have been longest established in Egypt have
retained less of Bedawee manners, and have more infringed the purity of
their race by intermarriages with Copt proselytes to the Muslim faith,
or with the descendants of such persons; hence, they are often despised
by the tribes more lately settled in this country, who frequently, in
contempt, term the former “Felláheen,” while they arrogate to themselves
the appellation of “Arabs” or “Bedawees.” The latter, whenever they
please, take the daughters of the former in marriage, but will not give
their own daughters in return; and if one of them be killed by a person
of the inferior tribe, they kill two, three, or even four, in
blood-revenge. The prevalence of the barbarous Bedawee law of
blood-revenge among the inhabitants of the villages of Egypt has been
mentioned in a former chapter: the homicide, or any person descended
from him, or from his great-grandfather’s father, is killed by any of
such relations of the person whom he has slain; and when the homicide
happens to be of one tribe, and the person killed of another, often a
petty war breaks forth between these two tribes, and is sometimes
continued, or occasionally renewed, during a period of several years.
The same is also frequently the result of a trifling injury committed by
a member of one tribe upon a person of another. In many instances, the
blood-revenge is taken a century or more after the commission of the act
which has occasioned it; when the feud, for that time, has lain dormant,
and perhaps is remembered by scarcely more than one individual. Two
tribes in Lower Egypt, which are called “Saad” and “Harám,” are most
notorious for these petty wars and feuds;[317] and hence their names are
commonly applied to any two persons or parties at enmity with each
other. It is astonishing that, in the present day, such acts (which, if
committed in a town or city in Egypt, would be punished by the death of,
perhaps, more than one of the persons concerned) should be allowed. Some
other particulars respecting blood-revenge and its consequences have
been stated in the chapter above alluded to. The avenging of blood is
allowed by the Kur-án; but moderation and justice are enjoined in its
execution; and the petty wars which it so often occasions in the present
age are in opposition to a precept of the Prophet, who said, “If two
Muslims contend with their swords, the slayer and the slain will be in
the fire [of Hell].”
The Felláheen of Egypt resemble the Bedawees in other respects. When a
Felláhah is found to have been unfaithful to her husband, in general,
he, or her brother, throws her into the Nile, with a stone tied to her
neck; or cuts her in pieces, and then throws her remains into the river.
In most instances, also, a father or brother punishes in the same manner
an unmarried daughter or sister who has been guilty of incontinence.
These relations are considered as more disgraced than the husband by the
crime of the woman; and are often despised if they do not thus punish
her.
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Footnote 315:
See Numbers xi. 5.
Footnote 316:
Page 122.
Footnote 317:
Like the “Keys” and “Yemen” of Syria.
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