The Pilgrim Had Paid Largely For
This Blessed Relic, And It Was Passed Round Our Circle From Hand
To Hand, After Having First Been Kissed By The Proprietor, Who
Raised It To The Crown Of His Head, Which He Touched With The
Cloth, And Then Wiped Both His Eyes.
Each person who received it
went through a similar performance, and as ophthalmia and other
diseases of the eyes
Were extremely prevalent, several of the
party had eyes that had not the brightness of the gazelle's;
nevertheless, these were supposed to become brighter after having
been wiped by the holy cloth. How many eyes this same piece of
cloth had wiped it would be impossible to say, but such facts are
sufficient to prove the danger of holy relics, that are
inoculators of all manner of contagious diseases.
I believe in holy shrines as the pest spots of the world. We
generally have experienced in Western Europe that all violent
epidemics arrive from the East. The great breadth of the Atlantic
boundary would naturally protect us from the West, but infectious
disorders, such as plague, cholera, small-pox, &c. may be
generally tracked throughout their gradations from their original
nests; those nests are in the East, where the heat of the climate
acting upon the filth of semi-savage communities engenders
pestilence.
The holy places of both Christians and Mahometans are the
receptacles for the masses of people of all nations and classes
who have arrived from all points of the compass; the greater
number of such people are of poor estate; many, who have toiled
on foot from immense distances, suffering from hunger and
fatigue, and bringing with them not only the diseases of their
own remote countries, but arriving in that weak state that courts
the attack of any epidemic. Thus crowded together, with a
scarcity of provisions, a want of water, and no possibility of
cleanliness, with clothes that have been unwashed for weeks or
months, in a camp of dirty pilgrims, without any attempt at
drainage, an accumulation of filth takes place that generates
either cholera or typhus; the latter, in its most malignant form,
appears as the dreaded "plague." Should such an epidemic attack
the mass of pilgrims debilitated by the want of nourishing food,
and exhausted by their fatiguing march, it runs riot like a fire
among combustibles, and the loss of life is terrific. The
survivors radiate from this common centre, upon their return to
their respective homes, to which they carry the seeds of the
pestilence to germinate upon new soils in different countries.
Doubtless the clothes of the dead furnish materials for
innumerable holy relics as vestiges of the wardrobe of the
Prophet; these are disseminated by the pilgrims throughout all
countries, pregnant with disease; and, being brought into
personal contact with hosts of true believers, Pandora's box
could not be more fatal.
Not only are relics upon a pocket scale conveyed by pilgrims, and
reverenced by the Arabs, but the body of any Faky, who in
lifetime was considered extra holy, is brought from a great
distance to be interred in some particular spot. In countries
where a tree is a rarity, a plank for a coffin is unknown; thus
the reverend Faky, who may have died of typhus, is wrapped in
cloths and packed in a mat. In this form he is transported,
perhaps, some hundred miles, slung upon a camel, with the
thermometer above 130 degrees Fahr. in the sun, and he is
conveyed to the village that is so fortunate as to be honoured
with his remains. It may be readily imagined that with a
favourable wind, the inhabitants are warned of his approach some
time before his arrival. Happily, long before we arrived at Sofi,
the village had been blessed by the death of a celebrated Faky,
a holy man who would have been described as a second Isaiah were
the annals of the country duly chronicled. This great "man of
God," as he was termed, had departed this life at a village on
the borders of the Nile, about eight days' hard camel-journey
from Sofi; but from some assumed right, mingled no doubt with
jobbery, the inhabitants of Sofi had laid claim to his body, and
he had arrived upon a camel horizontally, and had been buried
about fifty yards from our present camp. His grave was beneath a
clump of mimosas that shaded the spot, and formed the most
prominent object in the foreground of our landscape. Thither
every Friday the women of the village congregated, with offerings
of a few handfuls of dhurra in small gourd-shells, which they
laid upon the grave, while they ATE THE HOLY EARTH in small
pinches, which they scraped like rabbits, from a hole they had
burrowed towards the venerated corpse; this hole was about two
feet deep from continual scratching, and must have been very near
the Faky.
Although bamboos did not grow in Sofi, great numbers were brought
down by the river during the rains; these were eagerly collected
by the Arabs, and the grave of the Faky was ornamented with
selected specimens, upon which were hung small pieces of rag-like
banners. The people could not explain why they were thus
ornamented, but I imagine the custom had originated from the
necessity of scaring the wild animals that might have exhumed the
body.
Although the grave of this revered Faky was considered a sacred
spot, the women had a curious custom that we should not consider
an honour to the sanctity of the place: they met in parties
beneath the shade of the mimosas that covered the grave, for the
express purpose of freeing each other's heads from vermin; the
creatures thus caught, instead of being killed, were turned loose
upon the Faky.
Although the Arabs in places remote from the immediate action of
the Egyptian authorities are generally lawless, they are
extremely obedient to their own sheiks, and especially to the
fakeers: thus it is important to secure such heads of the people
as friends.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 44 of 149
Words from 43948 to 44959
of 151461
