Chapter 4

Let us begin at the beginning. Fessul bin Turkee, the present ruler of Oman, lives in a large, tumble-down old castle in Muscat, and his big red flag waves over the town every Friday, the Mohammedan Sabbath. He is not much better nor worse than his father, Turkee, or than other rulers in Arabia, but he certainly is far more enterprising, and is generally liked by the Arabs of Muscat. He is not however in all respects a merciful ruler. When I visited Muscat a few years ago this petty king had a real lion's den, like Nebuchadnezzar, and the story goes that he sometimes used it in the same way to get rid of his enemies. He once had a steam-launch, and even put up an electric light on the top of his castle, but both of these modern improvements came to grief. He also started a small ice factory to supply his household with cold water when the thermometer rises to over one hundred degrees; but the expense was too great and so the project melted away likewise. His last venture is more successful, and ever since the ice factory added a P to its sign-board and became a "pice factory," copper coins have been plentiful in Oman. A _pice_ is the Indian name for a small copper coin, and the Arabs borrowed the word, with many other words, from the Hindu traders. The Sultan has plenty of wives and horses and retainers; his castle is well-supplied with old cannon and modern rifles; huge coffee-pots pour out cheap hospitality every day; but withal I do not think he is very happy, for he is in debt and his power is not as extensive as it was once. Fessul's proper title is not Sultan, although he is often so called, but _Imam_, which signifies religious leader. It is the old title given to the political chiefs of Oman and Zanzibar.

The word means one "who stands before," and was first used as a title for the leader of prayer in the mosques. In Oman the religious chiefs soon took hold of politics, and so the title has a significance now in this part of Arabia that it never had elsewhere.

Let us get back to the penny. Its face (although being a Mohammedan coin it really has no human _face_ because their religion forbids pictures) bears an English as well as an Arabic inscription. The opposite side only has the Sultan's name in Arabic. On the side that has the English words is the legend: "Struck at Muscat in the year 1315." Yet the penny is only three years old, for the Moslems begin to date their years from the _Hegira_, or flight of their prophet from Mecca to Medina. This took place in the year 622 A.D. But we must also remember that their year is several days shorter than ours, because they have lunar months all of equal length and only 360 days in a year.

How strange it is to read such an old date for such a recent year as 1899, since we count time from the birth of Christ! But you must remember that the False Prophet has had it all his own way in Arabia for thirteen hundred years, and that the missionaries in this country are very few indeed. Only for a very few years and in a very few places has Christ been preached.

Now, however, even this queer little penny can bear witness to the fact that the gospel has come to Oman. It is worth one-quarter of an anna; there are sixteen annas in a rupee, and a rupee is worth about thirty-three cents. Not a big value, is it? But for four of these coins the poorest boy in Muscat can buy a complete gospel of Matthew. The shopkeeper must take in a great many of them, for last year one thousand four hundred and thirty-three such gospels and other portions of the Bible were sold in this part of Arabia and paid for by these coppers.

Another interesting fact to notice is that part of the inscription on the coin is English. Coming events cast their shadows before. England's power in checking the cruel slave trade and rooting out piracy on the coasts of Arabia has made its influence felt. An English primer is sure to follow a penny with an English motto, and some day our mission will have a school at Muscat for Arab boys and girls, as well as for rescued slaves. Your American pennies and your prayers will help to bring it about. Moreover, do you not think that if they keep on buying gospels and reading them, Jesus Christ will some time be the true _Imam of Muscat and Oman_?

The other coin is the only _old_ coin that is at present current in Arabia, and I leave you to decide whether it is not the oddest and queerest penny you have ever seen. The first time I saw these queer blacksmith-nail coins was in 1893, when I made a visit to Hofhoof, the capital of the province of Hassa, in Eastern Arabia. The people used them, as we do pennies, for all small purchases, but I fear such a _pointed_ coin must have been harder on their pockets than our round coins. It is called the _Taweelah_, or long-bit, and consists of a small copper-bar of about an inch in length, split at one end and with the fissure slightly opened. The coin has neither date nor motto, although one can yet occasionally find silver coins of like shape with the Arabic motto: _"Honour to the sober man, dishonour to the ambitious."_ The coin, although it has no date, was undoubtedly made by one of the Carmathian rulers about the year 920 A.D. This was more than five hundred years before Columbus discovered America! The Carmathians were a very fanatical sect of Moslems. You remember reading in chapter three how they took the black stone from Mecca?

Well, these people had this province as the centre of their power and here they struck these peculiar coins. I have heard it said that they were so opposed to images and faces on money that their leader devised this long bar-like shape for his coins to prevent any one from making images on them!

At any rate the Carmathians were very brave warriors. When Abu Tahir, their first leader, attacked Bagdad with only 500 horsemen he was met by a messenger from the city saying that 30,000 soldiers were guarding the gates. "Yes," said Abu Tahir, "but among them all there are not three such as these." At the same instant he turned to three of his companions commanding one to plunge a dagger into his own breast, another to leap into the rushing Tigris river and the third to cast himself down a precipice. They obeyed without a murmur. "Relate," continued the general, "what you have just seen; before evening your leader shall be chained among my dogs." No wonder that with such absolute obedience, the Carmathians terrified all Arabia with their army.

As I handle their old coins and think of the past, I sometimes wonder how much Our Great Captain, Christ Jesus would accomplish had He soldiers equally obedient and brave as did the Carmathian general, in redeeming Arabia from its long darkness and bloodshed. It is nineteen hundred years ago that He commanded us: "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel."

But even now there is no one preaching the gospel in Hassa nor in all the interior of Arabia. Why?

XIII

ARAB BABIES AND THEIR MOTHERS

An Arab baby is such a funny little creature! In Christian lands babies, as soon as possible, are given a warm bath and dressed with comfortable clothing. But in Arabia the babies are not washed for many days, only rubbed over with a brown powder and their tiny eyelids painted round with collyrium. They are wound up in a piece of calico and tied up with a string, just like a package of sugar. Their arms are fastened by the bandage so that they cannot possibly move them. The Arab mothers say that if the arms and legs of babies were left hanging loose the poor things would never sleep. A small, tight bonnet for the head completes the baby's wardrobe. A few blue beads or buttons are sewn on the front of this cap to keep off the evil-eye, for Moslem women all believe that if a stranger looks at a baby it may turn sick and die.

On the day when the baby is named a sacrifice is slain and eaten and silver offerings are given to the poor, equal to the weight of hair on the infant's head. The poor baby's hair is all shaved off to be weighed in the balance. Poor people who cannot afford this offering omit the custom. Charms are placed on the arms or around the neck of the child. A few verses from the Koran are written out and put in a leather or silver case and also tied around the arm or neck of the baby. If the child shows signs of illness the mother makes it swallow some of the Koran. That is, a portion is written out and the ink is washed off with water and this dirty water is taken by the patient. A prescription was sent to me once when I was ill by a Moslem _mullah_, or teacher, of this character and he was quite certain I would recover if I drank it. I am glad to say I got better without the ink medicine.

When the baby is forty days old and has received its name a new date-stick cradle is triumphantly brought home from the market and the new baby placed in it. And then Master or Miss Arab will get such a violent rocking that no Christian baby could stand. The ground is uneven, for there are no wooden floors in Arabia, and the rockers are nearly straight so that you can imagine it is not the pleasantest thing in the world to be rocked in an Arab cradle. In the picture you can see just what a date-stick cradle is like.

Arab babies cry a great deal; what with sand storms and flies and other insects they generally have sore eyes and apparently need strong treatment to make them quiet and give their mothers and sisters time to grind the wheat and churn the butter. Everything is made fresh each day in an Arab household. The rice must be cooked for the daily meal, the wheat ground for bread, and the milk put into the leather churn. These people have no ice chest, not even cupboards, many of them, so the coffee is freshly roasted and pounded in a mortar for breakfast. The flour is taken to the hand-mill and butter comes out of the churn every day fresh. Then the mother will have to draw the daily supply of water and wash the few clothes at the well. The better classes have their slaves to do the hard work but the Bedouin women and the poor have to do all the toil and never get a rest. Rich and poor are alike in not having any intellectual pleasures. Few can read and even those who can read, are able to read only the Koran and the Moslem traditions. The children have no primers or picture-books, and no Arab mother ever has a newspaper or a magazine. She has never heard of such things. Arab women do not know anything of the many interests and pleasures that occupy the time of women in Christian lands.

Would you like to know how they make bread in Arabia? First the wheat is sifted and cleaned and then it is put into one of the hand-mills. It consists of an upper and nether millstone with a hole in the upper one and a wooden handle. Two women usually sit and grind because the stone is heavy and they love to talk while they work. One swings it half way and the other pulls it around. Then the coarse flour is taken out and put into a bowl with water and salt and mixed to the right consistency. A piece of this dough is then taken between the hands and gradually beaten until it is about the thickness of a book cover and twelve inches in diameter--a round, flat cake of dough. The oven is usually under ground and is shaped like a large jar with the mouth above the ground a little. A fire is built _inside_ the oven and when the sides of the oven are quite hot the fire is allowed to die out. Then the large pan cakes of bread are deftly clapped on to the side of the oven until the space is covered and one by one the cakes are taken out when done. In some houses they have a shallow oval pan which is placed over an open fire and on this the cakes are baked. The pan is put on the fire upside down, so even here we are again in Topsy-turvy Land. Twenty or thirty of these flat loaves are baked at one time, for a hungry Arab can eat five or six at one meal.

Now the men come in to eat the food that the housewife has prepared. With a short prayer called _bismillah_ they begin and then shove the rice and meat or the bread and gravy into their mouths as fast as they can. Whatever is left when the men get through is for the women. You can see a group of Arab women in the picture eating their meal from one common dish in front of their tent. They use their hands instead of spoons or forks but get along very well and always wash before and after their simple meal.

Now the women always have to wait on their husbands and eat by themselves. When things get right side up in this dark land we hope to see the whole family sitting down together and taking their meal with joy and thanksgiving.

XIV

BOAT-BUILDERS AND CARPENTERS

Sinbad the sailor died long ago but the sea he sailed is still called the Persian Gulf and is just as full of curious islands as it was in his time. The boats are also just like Sinbad's and the sailors sing the same songs, I think, for there are very few changes in the almost changeless East. The Bahrein harbour-boat is built on the islands, out of timber from India and masts from Ceylon. But the sailcloth and the ropes are made on this our island home. All boats of this kind carry a good lot of passengers, draw very little water and are fast sailing craft; so that even the American boy whose father owns a yacht would not speak with contempt of one of these boats. In fact I have heard English sea captains who had drunk salt water for years say that they never saw better harbour boats in a storm than these of Bahrein.

In another kind of boat the pearl-divers of the Gulf go out to their hard toil and costly labour. One of them costs about four hundred _rupees_, that is about one hundred and thirty dollars. You do not think that is dear, do you, for a boat that holds a crew of twenty? But the cost of diving for pearls is not in the boat or the apparatus; it costs lives. Many of the divers are eaten by sharks before they return with the year's pearl harvest; others lose limbs and health. I wish you could see the odd shaped oars the Arabs use in these boats. They consist of a round pole with a sort of barrel-head or spoon shaped board tied to one end. The boat builders always use twine and rope rather than nails or screws to put their boats together. The boys of Bahrein can make beautiful sailing boats to play with out of bits of date-stick and strings.

Each fishing boat has a sort of figure-head and this is generally covered with the skin of a sheep or goat. This animal is sacrificed on the day when the boat is first launched, just as we give the boat a name and put flags on it. It is a very old custom to offer a blood sacrifice when a boat is first put into the water.

Not only in the villages on the coasts of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf are there boat builders and sailors; Arabia has two large rivers that help to make its northern boundary and they are highways of traffic.

Our picture shows a river boat on the canal at Busrah. It goes the long journey from Busrah to Bagdad over five hundred miles or even to Hillah and the other towns on the Euphrates river. This kind of boat has a cabin in the bow and can carry a large cargo of wheat or wool. It sails by all the interesting country which was once the home of Abraham and is still called Mesopotamia.

The largest boats used by the Arabs are called _dhows_ or _buggalows_. You will hear something more about these boats in the chapter on the slave trade.

The carpenters of Arabia, like the boat builders, work in a very old-fashioned way. But they are much less skillful in their work. You often see well-built boats but never a well-made door or a window that shuts properly. Perhaps the fault is with their tools and perhaps they are not as skillful as they once were in using them.

The Arab carpenter uses no bench or vise; he squats upon the ground in the shade of some old building or tree and carries all his tools in a small basket with him. He has four hands instead of the two hands of an American carpenter, for his feet are bare and he can work as well with his toes as you can with your fingers. It is wonderful to see how an Arab carpenter can hold a board with his toes while his hands are busy sawing or planing it!

I never see one of these carpenters using his toes so cleverly without thinking that we who wear shoes and stockings and only use our feet for walking have lost one of the powers that the Arabs still possess. A carpenter's handsome handiwork in Arabia should be called his _toe_some _toey_-work; don't you think so? In the picture at the end of this chapter you see an Arab carpenter's tools. His saw is exactly opposite to an ordinary saw as the teeth all point the wrong way! But you know he _pulls_ the tool so it is all right. The plane has four handles instead of one. The gimlet is like ours but instead of a brace and bit to make holes, the Arab uses a fiddle-string stretched on a bow which he twists once or twice around his borer, or auger-bit. Then he fiddles away until he has made a hole.

It is very strange to see two Arab carpenters sawing a beam as you find them in the picture.

Time is not valuable in the East because the days are long and life is easy and the people are never in a hurry. Never do anything to-day that can be done to-morrow is their motto. So they spend a half hour in fixing the beam on a tripod; then they pull and push and push and pull the great clumsy saw blade up and down and in an hour or so the beam is cut in two. What would such carpenters say if they were to visit an American sawmill and see the gang-saw cut six boards out of a log at once just as easy as your mother cuts a cheese? Arabia and its carpenters are very far behind us in civilisation. The whole country is in need of schools and industrial missions so that the Arab boys may learn to handle tools and make furniture and build houses.

In America there is hardly a boy living but he can drive a nail and saw off a board and put up a shelf. In Arabia only carpenters' sons can do these things; the ordinary boy does not even know how to use a jack-knife; he never had one. A short definition of Arabia would be "a land without tools." Ritter, the great geographer, calls Arabia "the anti-industrial centre of the world," which is only the same definition in other words.

XV

ARABIC PROVERBS AND ARABIC HUMOUR

The people of Topsy-turvy Land, like all orientals, are very fond of proverbs and short, bright sayings. You know that even to-day there are men who go about in the coffee shops of Arabia to tell stories, just as you have read in the Arabian Nights. Some of their stories are very interesting and some of their proverbs are wise. Others are not interesting and many of their stories are too bad to repeat. Even some of their proverbs bear the mark of their topsy-turvy religion and are only half true. Judge them for yourself. Here are fifty examples; which do you think is the best proverb among them? Are they all good?

First seek your neighbour, then build your house.

First get a companion, then go on the road.

Whoever dies in a strange land, dies a martyr.

When the judge is oppressive, the very air is, too. Don't cut your head off with your tongue.

Keep your dog hungry and he will follow you.

Leave off sin, then ask forgiveness.

Every horse knows its rider.

Talk is feminine, but a good answer is masculine.

With little food a bed tastes good.

A trotting dog is better than a sleeping lion.

Every girl is beautiful in her father's eyes.

His tongue is sweeter than dates but his hands are as hard as sticks.

There is no perfume after the wedding.

Clouds do not fear the barking of dogs.

A bird catches a bird.

Poverty is the mother of deceptions.

The fruit of haste is repentance.

That man is like the _Kaaba_; he goes nowhere but every one comes to him.

The tongue of a fool is the key to his destruction.

The needle clothes others but is itself naked.

If the owl were game to eat, the gunner would not have passed by the ruined castle.

Happy is the man whose enemy is wise.

Time is stingy of honour.

The best generosity is quick.

If your neighbour is honey, don't lick him all up.

If you don't know a man's parents look at his appearance.

What a strange world if all wool were red!

Fall but don't bawl.

Your enemy will love you when the ass becomes a doctor.

Wait, donkey, till the grass grows.

A loaned garment is not warm.

He is a hard man; his name is Rock, son of a Cliff.

The oppression of a cat is better than the justice of a rat.

While I was fishing, I was caught.

A blacksmith came to shoe the Pasha's horse and a frog in the pond stuck out her foot too.

One nettle seed will ruin a garden.

Who speaks the whole truth will get a broken head.

What's the good of a house without food?

Ask experience but don't neglect the doctor.

She wears seven veils but has no modesty.

He fasted a year and breakfasted on an onion.

A false friend is an open enemy.

They gave me no food, but the smoke from their kitchen blinded me.

When the lion is away, the hyenas play.

They said to the blind man, throw away your stick; he replied, why desert an old friend?

Haste is of the devil; deliberation, of God.

They put the dog's tail in the press forty years, and when it came out it still had a curl.

Lucky days do not come in a bunch.

Look for a thing where you lost it.

Some of these resemble our own proverbs and others may perplex you at first. Of course they are all better in Arabic than in the translation. The people of Arabia seldom or never engage in practical jokes, but they are often very witty in their remarks. The Caliph Mansur once met an Arab on the desert and said to him: "Give thanks to God who has caused the plague to cease that ravaged thy country."

"God is too good," the Arab answered, "to punish us with two such scourges at the same time as the plague and thy government."

An Arab poet sent his book to a famous author. "Dost thou want fame?" said the latter, "then hang thy book up in the market-place where all can see it."

"But how will they know the author?"

"Why, just hang yourself close to the book!"

Here is another story that is told about a Moslem preacher. One Friday when the people were gathered in the mosque to pray and to hear the sermon, he got up in the pulpit and asked the audience if they knew what he intended to preach about.

"No," they replied.

"Well, then, I shall not tell you," and he stepped down. The next Friday he asked the same question, and now, taught by experience, they answered:

"Yes, we know."

"Well, then, I need not tell you," and again he stepped down.

The third Friday when the same question was put, the people said, "Some of us know and some don't know."

"In that case," said the preacher-wag, "let those of you who know tell those that don't know." And again there was no sermon.

And now to close this chapter here is a very topsy-turvy story with a puzzle in it:

The Arabs relate that when the prophet Jonah fled from Joppa to Tarshish, there were thirty passengers, all told, in the ship. The storm grew very fierce, and out of fear, the captain determined to throw half the crew overboard, that is, fifteen men. But he knew that fifteen of the thirty were true believers, and fifteen were infidels, and among them, Jonah also. To avoid suspicion and accomplish his purpose he put the thirty men all in a row in such a way that by counting out every ninth man, the believers alone remained and the unbelievers were all of them one by one cast into the sea.

This is the way he arranged them; every _dot_ stands for an _unbeliever_, and the strokes for believers--thirty altogether.