Edward William Lane

Perhaps the reader may not be displeased if I here attempt to acquaint him more particularly with one of my Muslim friends, the first of those above alluded to; and to shew, at the same time, the light in which he, like others of his country, regards me in my present situation. The sheykh Ahmad (or seyyid Ahmad, for he is one of the numerous class of “shereefs,” or descendants of the Prophet,) is somewhat more than forty years of age, by his own confession; but appears more near to fifty.

For several years before he adopted the trade of a book-seller, which was that of his father, he pursued no other occupation than that of performing in the religious ceremonies called “zikrs;” which consist in the repetition of the name and attributes, &c. of God, by a number of persons, in chorus; and in such performances he is still often employed. He was then a member of the order of the Saạdeeyeh darweeshes, who are particularly famous for devouring live serpents; and he is said to have been one of the serpent-eaters: but he did not confine himself to food so easily digested. One night during a meeting of a party of darweeshes of his order, at which their Sheykh was present, my friend became affected with religious frenzy, seized a tall glass shade which surrounded a candle placed on the floor, and ate a large portion of it.

This son of mine,” she continued, “this my son Ahmad, is a worthless fellow; he has a wife here, a good creature, with whom he has lived happily, with God's blessing, for sixteen years; and now he has neglected her and me, and given himself up to a second wife, a young, impudent wench: he lavishes his money upon this monkey, and others like her, and upon her father and mother and uncles and brother and brother's children, and I know not whom besides, and abridges us, that is, myself and his first wife, of the comforts to which we were before accustomed.

My attentions to my visiters have been generally confined to the common usages of Eastern hospitality; supplying them with pipes and coffee, and welcoming them to a share of my dinner or supper. Many of their communications I have written in Arabic, at their dictation, and since translated, and inserted in the following pages. What I have principally aimed at, in this work, is correctness; and I do not scruple to assert that I am not conscious of having endeavoured to render interesting any matter that I have related by the slightest sacrifice of truth.

The Nile, in its course through the narrow and winding valley of Upper Egypt, which is confined on each side by mountainous and sandy deserts, as well as through the plain of Lower Egypt, is everywhere bordered, except in a very few places, by cultivated fields of its own formation. These cultivated tracts are

not perfectly level, being somewhat lower towards the deserts than in the neighbourhood of the river. They are interspersed with palm-groves and villages, and intersected by numerous canals. The copious summer rains that prevail in Abyssinia and the neighbouring countries begin to shew their effects in Egypt, by the rising of the Nile, about the period of the summer solstice.

The Egyptians depend entirely upon their river for the fertilization of the soil, rain being a very rare phenomenon in their country, except in the neighbourhood of the Mediterranean; and as the seasons are perfectly reg

regular, the peasant may make his arrangements with the utmost precision respecting the labour he will have to perform. Sometimes his labour is light; but when it consists in raising water for irrigation, it is excessively severe.

There is, however, one great source of discomfort arising from this dryness, namely, an excessive quantity of dust: and there are other plagues which very much detract from the comfort

which the natives of Egypt, and visiters to their country, otherwise derive from its genial climate. In spring, summer, and autumn, flies are so abundant as to be extremely annoying during the daytime, and musquitoes are troublesome at night (unless a curtain be made use of to keep them away), and often even in the day; and almost every house that contains much wood work (as most of the better houses do) swarms with bugs during the warm weather. Lice are not always to be avoided in any season, but they are easily got rid of; and in the cooler seasons fleas are excessively numerous.