CHAPTER XL--THE PASHA AND THE PRIESTS.--EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE--SCHOOLS AND RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES.

_Egypt and her relations with Turkey--The Army and Navy--Egyptian history boiled down--The reigning family--Wonderful Relics--Mohammed Ali as a ruler--The Pasha and the priests--Ordering a Wedding--Married on short notice--Gratifying the Empress Eugenie--An Arab school-room--A college with nine thousand students--A jaw-breaking language--How to indite an epistle in Arabic--The caravan to Mecca--Going on a pilgrimage--A horrible ceremony--Trampling on dervishes--The “Bride of the Nile”--Extraordinary customs._

EGYPT is sufficiently independent to have a government of her own, and to maintain a standing army. She pays an annual tribute to Turkey of half a million pounds sterling, but the amount varies somewhat, according to circumstances. In return for this tribute she is allowed to do pretty much as she pleases in the way of contracting loans and making internal improvements. The army is restricted to fifteen thousand men, but by means of an arrangement for short terms of service it is practically four or five times as large. The organization of the army is very much on the European model, and the troops are drilled according to the modern systems of tactics.

The artillery arm of the service has been made as effective as possible, and the batteries consist of breech-loading cannon, from Krupp’s manufactory in Germany. The navy is not large, but the ships that compose it are of the most approved construction and their armament is of steel breech-loaders, like the land batteries. {500}The infantry are equipped with improved rifles, and the cavalry has a revolving carbine, with a removable stock, so that the weapons may be changed at will into a pistol or a rifle. In the last few years, the government has availed itself of the services of many foreign officers, the most of them from America. These are scattered among all branches of the service, the most of them being in the corps of engineers. Under their management the country is being carefully surveyed, and an elaborate map is in preparation.

Egypt has had a great many rulers. The dynasties of Kings of ancient Egypt were no less than thirty-four in number, and then came the Romans about the beginning of the Christian Era. They reigned for a few hundred years, then the country was conquered by the Arabs, and later on, it fell into the hands of the Turks. Near the end of the last century, it was invaded by the French, they remained about three years only, when they were expelled by the English, and soon after their arrival the renowned Mohammed Ali was made the ruling pasha.

He reigned from 1806 to 1848, when he became imbecile, and was succeeded by his son Ibrahim Pasha, who died after a reign of two months. Ibrahim was followed by his nephew Abbas Pasha who reigned from 1848 to 1854, and was succeeded by the fourth son of Mohammed Ali, under the name of Said Pasha. In 1863 Said was succeeded by the present ruler Ismail Pasha, second son of Ibrahim Pasha, the eldest having been drowned in the Nile in 1856.

There you have Egyptian history boiled down into a small space. I have not thought any reader would care to know the names of all the kings of Egypt from Menes, five thousand years before Christ, to Ismail nearly two thousand years after Christ.

Some were jolly old fellows, who lived as luxuriously as they knew how, though I dare say, none of them ever tasted raw oysters on the shell, or prairie chicken broiled and on toast. They used to dress rather elaborately, and they built some magnificent temples and tombs, which still remain to be wondered at by modern mortals.

No construction of the present day can begin to compare with them in grandeur, but of this I shall have more to say by and by. {501}The kings were buried with great care, but their tombs have been plundered in modern times, so that very little of the royal relics can be found.

Occasionally they stumble on something and it is at once put into the museum at Cairo. Through the kindness of the director of this museum I was one day allowed to hold in my hand the heart of one of the most famous of the warrior kings of the XIXth Dynasty. It wasn’t much of a heart, a dried and bandaged affair of little consequence, but it was no common occurrence to grasp it, and remember that it once beat beneath the breast of a great warrior, who lived and loved, and ruled and died, three thousand years ago.

Nearly all the modern greatness of Egypt is due to her present ruler. Mohammed Ali, was a man of great ability, and under his rule the country received an impetus in the right direction. He founded schools, dug canals, and did many things for the prosperity of the country, and when he had determined to act in a certain direction, he didn’t allow himself to be thwarted. At one time he had decided to widen the Mooskee, now the principal street of the old part of Cairo, and was about to begin work when the Moslem priests interfered and declared they would bring anathemas upon him if the design was not relinquished.

He ordered the contumacious fellows arrested, and threatened to decapitate them unless they behaved themselves, They were in no hurry to be ushered into the presence of Mohammed the Prophet, and so they yielded to Mohammed the Ruler.

This recalls the story of Peter the Great, when he founded St. Petersburg and compelled the priests to bring the bones of one of the saints from their resting place at Vladimir. The priests did not like the new location, and one day they took the bones and started off for Vladimir, declaring that the ghost of the departed had told them to do so. Peter sent after them, with the threat of making ghosts of all of them, unless they returned, and they did return, bones and all. There is nothing like having a will of your own, and the power to use it.

The Khedive is like his grandfather in many things, and is not easily thwarted when he has made up his mind to anything. He is a liberal ruler, and believes in the enterprise and progress of {502}the Occident, rather than in the slow coach system of the Orient. Though a Mohammedan he is no bigot, as is shown by the perfect freedom accorded to all religions, and by his personal gift of land to any Christian society that wishes to build a church.

He has a difficult position to occupy, as he is a Mohammedan and ruler of Mohammedans; when he comes in contact with any of the prerogatives of the religion, he is obliged to devise a course that shall keep the religion inviolate. For example he wishes to abolish slavery and to destroy the slave trade, but here he comes in contact with the Koran, which permits the ownership of human property.

He sends an army into the regions of the Upper Nile, and destroys the business of kidnapping and the importation of slaves; he cannot liberate the slaves now held in Egypt, but he orders that when a slave runs away the machinery of the law shall not be used for his recapture. Any slave in Cairo may run away, and be safe from arrest; owners and slaves are aware of this state of things, and consequently the owners treat their slaves so well that they are not inclined to run away. I was told that slaves were generally better treated than free laborers. This state of affairs was not unknown in some parts of our own border states previous to our civil war.

As an illustration of the power of the Khedive over his subjects, I will mention an incident which was narrated to me.

When the Empress Eugenie was in Egypt she expressed a desire to witness an Egyptian wedding. The Khedive summoned an officer of his staff, and told him to be ready to be married the next day.

One of the ladies attached to the harem was designated as the bride, and the wedding came off in grand style, to the delight of the Empress and of all concerned. His Highness paid the bills and set up the couple in good style, including the present of a house, where the Empress paid them a congratulatory visit.

An Arab school is a curiosity. The pupils study their lessons aloud, and make the place about as noisy as a political meeting, and how they can learn, any thing is a surprise to a person from the Occident, where silence is considered desirable in a school-room.

I looked repeatedly into these schools, and generally

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{505}knew where they were, at least half a minute before I reached their doors. The master squats on the floor at one side of the room, or stands among some of his pupils who are seated in rows or promiscuously through the rest of the apartment. Their lessons are given to them upon slates or large cards, and they sit rocking back and forth and studying aloud.

When they have committed a lesson, they go to the teacher and recite it, and if found perfect they receive another. The instruction consists of reading and writing, the latter generally including passages from the Koran.

Down to the time of Mohammed Ali, the schools of Egypt were not based upon any system; anybody who wished to to open a school could do so, and children were sent there and received on payment of a small fee. Under that ruler a public school system was established; it declined somewhat under his immediate successor, but has been revived and improved, to some extent, by the Khedive.

The schools are divided into civil and military, and the civil schools are subdivided into primary, secondary, and special.

In the primary schools, the pupils receive instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and in most of them some foreign language, generally French, is taught. When a certain proficiency is reached, the pupils enter the secondary schools, where they are instructed in Arabic, and may also study Turkish, French, and English. The Arabic course includes history, pure mathematics, geography, and drawing, and sometimes algebra and _belles-lettres_.

From these schools a pupil may be passed by examination into one of the special schools, which are five in number, as follows:

Land Surveying and Commercial School; Law School; Polytechnic School; _Arts et Metiers_ School; and the Medical School.

The time required for study and graduation in these schools varies from two to four years each. The Medical School has a school of midwifery for women, and is the only institution for feminine education in Egypt. The military schools include every branch of military education; they are on the European model, and many of the professors are Europeans. {506}Every Christian community in Cairo has its own schools, and some of them are quite large. There is an American mission school, and also an English one, and there are French, Greek, Armenian, and Coptic schools, so that the Christians are not likely to grow up in ignorance. Many of the mosques have free schools, and _medresse_, or colleges, attached to them.

The _El Azhar_ mosque is the great college of Cairo, and also the principal university of the East. There are small porticoes, divided into apartments, for the use of natives from different parts of Egypt and the Orient, each province or country having a room to itself. The professors receive no salaries, but live upon presents from the pupils, and by copying books or performing other literary work. There are nine thousand students, and more than three hundred professors attached to this university! Nearly all the sciences taught in all the colleges of the globe have a place here.

Arabic is not an easy language to acquire to perfection, but I am told that one can learn to talk it fairly in about twice the time that it would take for learning a European language. In the short time that I was in Cairo I picked up a smattering, as I make it a rule to do in all countries where I expect to stay more than a month.

You will be astonished to find how far you can get along with a few words, if you only set about it in earnest. My Arabic was much like the English of some of the donkey drivers; there were no prepositions and conjunctions in it, and the construction of the verbs placed all the rules of grammar at defiance.

In fact, you can get along without many verbs when you are put to it. All you want is the name of the thing you are after, and the words for “how much.” Then you must have the numerals, and thus armed and equipped, you may set out on a shopping excursion with a brave heart, and a consciousness that every shop-keeper you deal with will cheat you if possible.

The Arabs begin to read a book where we would finish it, and they generally read from right to left, though not always. When they write they hold the paper in the left hand, and grasp a small stick in the right. This stick is sharpened to a point, like a pencil, and dipped in the ink, and with it the letters are formed with considerable rapidity. {507}As in some of the cities of Europe, there are men whose profession it is to write letters for those unable to write, and you see these men squatted on the sidewalk, with paper, pen, ink and sand before them, ready for a customer. They have a peculiar kind of ink-stand in Cairo; it is made of brass, and has a long handle running back nearly a foot. This handle is hollow, and holds the pens, and it serves the purpose of sustaining the ink-stand in the girdle. The ink is generally a little thicker than ours, but they can write with European ink without trouble. You see these ink-stands very often in the girdles of merchants and accountants in the bazaars, and it is not unusual to see a man standing or squatting on the sidewalk, and engaged in the production of a letter. And the oddest thing of the whole business is to see him holding the paper in his hand; if you ask an Arab to sit at your desk to write a letter, the chances are fifty to one that he will pick up the paper instead of placing it on the flat surface, as is our invariable custom. In the government offices they have learned to write with the paper flat on the desk, but they do not take to it kindly.

I have seen a high official sit at his desk and pick up a document in order to affix his signature, and he continued to hold the paper until he had signed it and appended his seal. The seal is a very necessary part of the business; it is not put on with wax, but is stamped with ink.

Every year a caravan leaves Cairo for Mecca, and is accompanied by pilgrims to the birth-place of Mohammed. The march is through the desert, and consumes from sixty to eighty days, sometimes exceeding the latter number. The annual pilgrimage from all parts of the Mohammedan world is about seventy thousand, the number going by land is steadily decreasing, for the reason that one can now go by steamer to Djeddah, on the Red Sea, and from thence two or three days on foot will bring him to the Holy City. Steamers run regularly from Suez to Djeddah, and in the season of pilgrimage there are extra boats that carry deck passengers at a very low fare.

The departure of the annual caravan from Cairo is a scene of great pomp. A camel is designated to carry the Mahmal, or sacred canopy; it was originally designed to contain such of the {508}wives of the Caliphs as wished to make the journey, but latterly it contains nothing, and has become simply a rich decoration, which ultimately finds a place in one of the mosques. Another camel carries the _Kiswe Ji en nebbe_, a quantity of rich silk, covered with sentences from the Koran, embroidered in letters of gold.

It is annually supplied from Cairo for lining the temple at Mecca; the old one is returned and cut into small bits for distribution among those of the faithful who are unable to make the pilgrimage.

The caravan starts from the Citadel, and there is generally a large crowd in attendance, to see it off. It has always been the custom for the reigning Viceroy or Caliph to witness the departure of the caravan, but for two years the Khedive has not been present in person. He has sent a deputy, in the shape of his son; the Viceroy or his deputy presents a purse of gold to the rider of the camel to pay the expenses of the journey, and, formerly, this purse was noted for its size and weight. It has grown small by degrees, and beautifully less, and the probability is that before many years, the presentation will cease altogether. The Khedive shows a most emphatic desire to put an end to the useless and expensive mummeries that have been handed down to him from the early days of Mohammedanism.

The return of the pilgrims is quite an event in Cairo, but not so great as the departure, for the reason that the caravan straggles a great deal, and the individual members are inclined to hurry to their homes with as little delay as possible. Formerly there was a suspension of labor and a grand festival, but at present there is little more than a procession of the returning pilgrims.

There is a much more disagreeable occurrence on the birthday of Mohammed, when the ceremony of the _doseh_ is performed.

The word in Arabic means “treading,” and is descriptive enough as far as it goes. The return of the pilgrims from Mecca is arranged so that it falls near the anniversary of the _Moolid en-Nebbe_, or birthday of the Prophet. There are many festivities on this day which correspond to our Christmas; services are held in all the mosques, and those who can afford a good dinner and {509}suit of clothes are sure to have them. There are ceremonies not only in the mosques, but on the streets. Dervishes go about with pins sticking through their flesh, or bearing heavy burdens, and show no signs of pain or fatigue.

Formerly there were dervishes who went about with coils of live serpents around them, and occasionally they amused the crowd by eating one of the snakes. This pleasant practice has been discontinued, partly for the reason that many over-sensitive people objected to it, and partly because the dervish stomach could not easily digest this irregular food. A man may eat a live snake, but I doubt if he is likely to “hanker after it” any more than the countryman in the “crow” story.

The public squares are filled with booths, swings, and other means of amusement, and there is always a dense crowd around them. Reciters of romance are numerous, and any person familiar with the language of the country may hear the tales of the Arabian Nights, or similar works of fiction, chanted in slow, measured accents, by men who have carefully committed them to memory. Formerly there were many _Ghawasee_, or dancing girls; their employments were not entirely confined to dancing, and their appearance in public has been forbidden by the authorities. There are frequent processions of dervishes, and at night the streets are hung with lanterns and otherwise made more gay than usual.

The ceremony of the _Doseh_ takes place just after the noon prayers, and a great crowd is always gathered to witness it. The Sheik of the Saadeeyah dervishes passes the night and forepart of the day at the Mosque of Hassaneyn and devotes the time to the repetition of prayers and invocations which shall fit him for the ceremony. When all is ready he mounts a horse and sets out, accompanied by a numerous delegation of Moslems from various parts of the city. His horse is led by two men, and he proceeds at a walking pace.

At the spot selected for the performance some two or three hundred persons lie down in the street, closely wedged together so that they make a very fine imitation of a corduroy road. Their heads are all one way and resting upon their folded arms, and the crowd ranges close against them in a very compact hedge. Their {510}backs are upward, and they mutter “Allah!”

“Allah!” without intermission while waiting the conclusion of the ceremony.

When the Sheik approaches this novel causeway his horse becomes restive, and refuses to go on, but he is pulled by the two men who hold the bridle and urged by those behind so that he does not hesitate a great while. But evidently he does not like his employment.

He ambles rather hastily over the human pavement, and toward the end he gives a jump that would break into a gallop were he not restrained by the man at his bridle. The fellows forming the pavement rise up the instant the horse passes over them, and join the crowd which presses from behind, with an irregular shout of “Allah! Allah!” and this is the ceremony of the _dosch_.

The Moslems insist that no harm comes to any one from the tread of the horse, as the dervishes are protected by the direct interposition of Providence. Each person receives at least two treads from the horse’s feet, and in addition he has the gentle footsteps of the two men leading the horse. One of these {511}worthies walks on the heads and the other on the feet of the prostrate forms, and they endeavor to give everybody a show. They take short steps so that nobody shall be missed, and between them and the horse, the corduroy performers ought to be satisfied. Whether from motives of delicacy or out of regard for the animate soil on which they tread, these grooms walk barefooted, and carry their shoes in their hand. It is also worthy of remark that the horse ridden by the Sheik is of medium size, and wears no shoes, and the Sheik is always a small man. In having a miracle wrought before the eyes of the people, the Moslem priests are careful to make the conditions as easy as possible. They might select a horse of the largest size, have him freshly and sharply shod and ridden by a Sheik whose weight would entitle him to the Presidency of the Fat Men’s Association. But they know what they are about, and do nothing of the sort.

I have talked with Moslems and other residents of Cairo about the _dosch_. The former insist that the prostrate men are saved by a miracle, while the latter believe that more or less harm comes every year to the performers, and is concealed by the rush of the crowd from behind. Any cry of pain that may be uttered is completely drowned by the shouts of the crowd; the horse steps on that portion of the body which is very useful in occupying a chair, and can sometimes be kicked with impunity, and it is possible that his feet have no lasting impression.

At any rate not a shriek is heard, and no one is ever known by the public to have been injured. The dead and wounded, if any, are dragged away and kept out of sight, and so great is Eastern stoicism, that not one of those trampled on will venture to give utterance to his pain, as by so doing he would lose the protection of Allah; and be denied admission within the gates of Paradise!

When the Nile has reached a certain height during the period of the inundation, there is a ceremony of cutting the embankment and allowing the water to spread over the land. This was formerly an affair of great consequence; its origin is unknown, as the custom existed in the time of the Pharaohs, and among the earlier dynasties. The place selected is at the opening of the canal, a short distance from old Cairo, and formerly nearly half the population turned out to see the performance. {512}At the appointed hour the Governor of Cairo, or a deputy of the Pasha, makes his appearance, accompanied by a gorgeous retinue of officers, and preceded by a band of music. When all is ready half a dozen men rush forward and open the embankment with hoes and spades, and instantly the water rushes in and fills the bed of the canal. The governor then throws a handful of money into the canal, and this is scrambled for by a crowd of boys, who stand ready for it.

Tradition says that formerly a virgin was thrown into the water and sacrificed to the river god, but the custom no longer prevails, at least, in its original form. A pillar of earth is built up just below the opening, and dressed in white, and this is supposed to represent the Bride of the Nile. Sometimes a doll is thrown into the water, as a substitute for the living girl formerly sacrificed; whether the River God is satisfied with this offering, I am unable to say, but as the fertility of the Nile Valley is the same from year to year, it is fair to presume that the sacrifice by proxy does not displease him.

There are several other ceremonies at Cairo, but they are steadily declining in importance as year after year rolls on. The government is becoming more and more practical, with each succeeding change of seasons, and as the government goes the people follow. Cairo was once a stronghold of Islam; to-day it has ceased to be a reliance of the Moslem power, and probably the end of the century will see it far more Christian than Mohammedan in character. It has ceased to be a center of fanaticism, and a Christian may now walk through all its streets without fear of insult on account of his religion.

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