Chapter XX: Letter XVIII (2)

I came on my way, first to a colony, by Kumr betá Dáhela, where the inhabitants of that village hold their _villeggiatura_; for they stay here during the dry months, and return to their village on the river bank, at the beginning of the rainy season. The last village whither I came is called Româli, a little above that given in the map as Sero, which lies under the 13° N. latitude. On the hot and tiring way back I attended a burial. Silently and solemnly, without sound or sob, two corpses, wrapt in white cloths, were borne along on _anqarêbs_ by several men, and laid in a grave of some feet deep in the forest near the road. Perhaps they had perished of the cholera-like complaint, which has now broken out with great violence in the southern regions.

We should have much liked to proceed to Fasoql, in the last province of Mohammed Ali, to see the change in the character of the country beginning at Rosêres, where so many novel forms of tropical vegetation and animal life present themselves; but our time was expended.

The Rais received the command to take down the masts and sails, by which the bark at once lost its stately appearance, and drove down the river with the current like a wreck. Soon the pleasant quiet of the vessel, that had seemed to fly along of itself, was interrupted by the yelling, ill-sounding songs of the rowers contending with the wind.

By the 4th, we were again at Sennâr, and on the 8th, at an early hour, we reached Wed Médineh. This place is almost as important as Sennâr. A regiment of soldiers lies in barracks here, with the only band in the Sudan, and two cannons. We were immediately visited by upper military scribe Seïd Hashim, one of the most important persons of the place, whom we had already known in Chartûm.

We determined to visit Sultana Nasr (Victoria) at Sorîba, an hour and a half inland, partly to learn the character of the country further from the river, and partly to get some idea of the court of an Ethiopian princess. Seïd Hashim offered us his dromedaries and donkeys for this trip, and also his own society; so we rode away that afternoon into the hot, black, but scantily treed plain, and soon accomplished the uninteresting way on the sturdy animals.

Nasr is the sister of the mightiest and richest king (_melek_) in the Sudan, Idris wed (_i.e._ _Welled_, son or successor of) Adlân, who is certainly under Mohammed Ali’s supremacy now, but yet commands several hundred villages in the province El Fungi; his title is Mak el Qulle, King of the Qulle mountains. Adlân was one of his ancestors, after whom the whole family now calls itself; his father was the same Mohammed (wed) Adlân, who, at the time of Ismael Pasha’s conquering campaign had taken most of the power of the legitimate but weak king of Sennâr, Bâdi, but who was then murdered at the instigation of Reg’eb, another pretender to the throne. When Ismael had arrived, and Reg’eb and his company had fled to the Abyssinian mountains, King Bâdi united himself with the children and party of Mohammed Adlân, and submitted to the conqueror, who made him Sheikh of the country, had the murderers of Mohammed Adlân impaled, and gave his children, Reg’eb and Idris Adlân, great power and wealth. Nasr, their sister, also gained much consideration, which was, however, much increased, as she was allied to the legitimate royal family by her mother’s side. Therefore is she called Sultâna, Queen. Her first husband was named Mohammed Sandalôba, brother of Hassan Sandalôba, whom we had visited at Sennâr. He has now been dead for a long time, but she has a daughter by him, named Dauer (Light), who married a great Sheikh, Abd-el Qader, but then parted from him, and now lives with her mother, in Sorîba. The second son of Nasr is Mohammed Defalla, the son of one of her father’s viziers. He was then with Ahmed Pasha Menekle on the war march (_ghazua_, of which the French have made _razzia_) in Saka. But even when he is at home, she remains the principal person in the house, by reason of her noble birth.

Since very ancient times, a great estimation of the female sex appears to be a very general custom. It must not be forgotten how often we find reigning queens of Ethiopia mentioned. From the campaign of Petronius, Kandake is well known, a name which, according to Pliny, was bestowed on all the Ethiopian queens; according to others, always on the mother of the king. In the sculptures of Meroë, too, we occasionally find very warlike, and doubtless reigning, queens represented. According to Makrizi, the genealogies of the Beg’a, whom I consider the direct descendants of the Meroetic Ethiopians, and for the ancestors of the Bishari of the present day, were not counted by the males, but by the females, and the inheritance did not devolve upon the son of the deceased, but upon the sister or the daughter. In the same way, according to Abu Selah, the sister’s son took precedence of the son among the Nubians, and Ibn Batuta reports the same custom to be existing among the Messofites, a western negro race. Even now, the court and upper minister of some southern princes are all women. Noble ladies allow their nails to grow an inch long, as a sign that they are there to command, and not to work, a custom which is found in the sculptures among the shapeless queens of Meroë.

When we arrived at Sorîba, we entered the square court-yard by a particular door, running round the principal building, and thence into an open, lofty hall, the roof of which rested on four pillars, and four half pillars. The narrow beams of the roof jut out several feet beyond the simple architrave, and form the foundation of the flat roofs; the whole entrance reminded one much of the open façades of the graves of Benihassan. In the hall there was fine ebony furniture, of Indian manufacture, broad _anqarêbs_, with frames for the mosquito nets. Fine cushions were immediately brought, sherbet, coffee, and pipes handed round. The vessels were made of gold and silver. Black female slaves, in light white garments, which, fastened at the hips, are drawn up over the bosom and shoulders,--handed round the refreshments, and looked very peculiar with their plaited hair. The Queen, however, did not come; perhaps she was ashamed of showing herself to Christians; only a half-opened door, which soon closed again, allowed us to perceive several women behind, to whom we ourselves might be objects of curiosity. I therefore let the sultana know, through Saïd Hashim, that we were there to pay our visits, and now hoped that we might have the pleasure of seeing her. Upon this, the doors of strong wood cased with metal, opened wide, and Nasr entered with a free, dignified step. She was wrapped in long fine-woven cloths, with coloured borders, under which she wore wide gay trowsers of a somewhat darker shade. Behind her came the court, eight or nine girls in white clothes with red borders, and elegant sandals. Nasr sat down before us, in a friendly and unconstrained manner; only now and then she drew her dress over her mouth and the lower part of the face, a custom of Oriental modesty, very general with women in Egypt, but much rarer in this country. She replied to the greetings I offered her through the Dragoman with a pleasant voice, but stayed only a short time, withdrawing through the same door.

We examined the inner parts of the house, with the exception of her private rooms, which were in a small building close, and mounted the roof to have a view of the village. Then we took a walk through the place, saw the well, in depth more than sixty feet, and lined throughout with brick, whence Nasr always has her water fetched, though it is warm, and less nice than that of the Nile. Then we returned, and were about to depart, when Nasr sent us an invitation to remain the night in Sorîba, as it was too late to get back to Wed Médineh by day. We accepted the offer, and a banquet of boiled dishes was immediately brought, only intended, however, as preparatory to supper. The sultana, however, did not show herself again the whole evening. We remained in the hall, and slept on the same cool pillows, which had served as a divan during the day. But the next morning we were invited by her to visit her in her own rooms. She was more communicative to-day than yesterday, had European chairs brought for us, while her servants and slaves squatted on the ground about us. We told her of her namesake, the Sultana Nasr of England, and showed her her portrait on an English sovereign, which she looked at with curiosity. But she manifested little desire to see that far-off world beyond the northern water with her own eyes.

About eight o’clock we rode back to Wed Médineh. Soon after our return, Saïd Hashim received a letter from Nasr, in which she asked him confidentially whether he thought I would receive a little female slave as a guest-present. I had expressed to her, in return, that this was against the custom of our country, but that the gift would be accepted if she would choose a male slave instead, and after some little hesitation, she really sent a young slave to me, who was brought to me in the ship.

He had been the playmate of the little grandson of Nasr, the son of her daughter Dauer, and was presented to me under the name of Rehân, the Arabic name for the sweet-smelling basil. It was added, that he was from the district of Makâdi, on the Abyssinian frontier, whence the most intelligent and faithful slaves generally came. This district is under Christian dominion, and is inhabited by Christians and Mahommedans, in separate villages. The former call themselves Nazâra (Nazarenes) or Amhâra (Amharic Christians), the latter Giberta. Of these Giberta children are often stolen from their own race and from among their neighbours, and sold to Arabic slave-dealers; for, in the interior of Abyssinia, the slave trade is strictly prohibited. This account of the lad, however, was soon found to be untrue, and was only invented to preclude the blame of offering me a Christian slave; while, on the contrary, it would seem much more wrong to deliver me a Mahommedan. The boy first told our Christian cook, and then me, that he was of Christian parentage, had received the name Rehân here, and that his real name was Gabre Mariam, _i. e._ in Abyssinian, “Slave of Maria.” His birth-place is near Gondar, the metropolis of Amhâra. He seems to belong to a distinguished family, for the place Bamba, which is denoted by Bruce in the vicinity of Lake Tzana, according to his story, belonged to his grandfather, and his father, who is now dead, had many flocks, which he himself had often driven to the pasturage. When he was somewhat far off his dwelling with them one day, about three or four years ago, he was stolen by mounted Bedouins, carried to the village of Waldakarel, and, afterwards sold to King Idris Adlân, who had given him to his sister Nasr. He is a handsome, but very dark-coloured boy, about eight or nine years of age, but much more advanced than a child of that age would be with us. The girls marry here at the age of eight. He wears his hair in innumerable little plaits, which must be redone and anointed at least once a month, by a woman understanding it; his body, too, is rubbed with fat from time to time. His whole clothing consists of a great white cloth that he fastens round the hips, and throws over his shoulders. I now call him by his Christian name, and shall bring him to Europe with me.

Saïd Hashim tried his utmost to induce us to remain a few more days in Wed Médineh. On the first evening he invited us to his house with a number of the most considerable Turks, and had a number of female dancers to show us the national dances of the country, which consist chiefly in movements of the upper part of the body and the arms, as they are found on the Egyptian monuments, yet differing from the present Egyptian dances, which are made up of very ungraceful and lascivious movements and motions of the hips and legs.

An old good humoured and very comic man led the dances, singing Arabic songs having reference to persons in the room or those known to them, such as Nasr, Idris Adlân, Mak (_i. e._ Melek) Bâdi, and others, with a piercing but not unpleasant voice, and at the same time struck a five-stringed lyre with his left hand, beating time with the plectrum in his right. His instrument only extended to six tones of the octave. The first string to the right had the highest tone C, struck with the thumb; the next had the deepest E, then came the third with F, the fourth with A, the fifth with B. The instrument is called rabâba, the player rebâbi. This man had been instructed by an old famous rebâbi at Shendi, had made his instrument just like that of his master, also learning all his art of versification, and thus had become the black favourite bard of Wed Médineh. All his songs were composed by himself, sometimes improvised, and whoever offended himself or his patron became the target of a pasquinading song.

I sent for him the next day, and had four of his songs written down by Jussuf, one on Mohammed, son of the Mak Mesâ’d, who lives at Metammeh, one on King Nimr, who burnt Ismael Pasha, and is now living in Egypt, a third on Nasr; and, lastly, a song in praise of pretty girls.[79] It is impossible to give these melodies in notes. A little only, approaching our kind of music in somewise, have I written down. They are generally half recited, half sung, with wavering tones from the highest notes to the deepest tone long sustained. These are the most peculiar, but are utterly incapable of being expressed. Every verse contains four rhymes, on each of which it is easy to keep the voice, on the second more than on the first and third; but the longest on the final line, and to this always comes one of the same deep tones, giving the song a kind of dignified progression. A certain recurrence of the melody is first observable, but is not retainable for an European ear. I bought the friendly old man’s instrument, which he gave unwillingly, although I allowed him to fix the price himself, and several times a shade of sorrow passed over his expressive countenance when he had taken the money and laid the instrument in its place. Next day I sent for him again. He was cast down, and told me that his wife had beaten him thoroughly for parting with the instrument. It is no shame for a man to be beaten by his wife, but _vice versá_. A beaten wife goes at once to the Kadi to complain, she generally obtains justice, and the husband is punished.

At Wed Médineh we witnessed a funeral, which seemed odd enough to us. A woman had died three days before; the first day after her decease, then the third, the seventh and later days have particular ceremonies. An hour before sunset above a hundred women and children had assembled before the house, and many more kept continually coming and cowering down beside them. Two daughters of the deceased were there, who had already strewn their highly-ornamented heads, powdered with fat in the Arab manner, with ashes, and rubbed the whole upper part of the body white with them,[80] so that only the eyes and mouth gleam freshly and as if inlaid from the white mask. The women wore long cloths round their hips, the young girls and children the _rahât_, a girdle of close hanging straps of leather, generally bound about the loins, with a string prettily adorned with shells and pearls, and falling halfway down the thigh. A great wooden bowl of ashes was placed there, and continually replenished. Close to the door, on both sides, crouched female musicians, who partly clapped their hands in time, with yelling, ear-piercing screams, partly beat the noisy _darabúka_ (a kind of hand-drum, called here in the Sudan _dalúka_), and partly struck hollow calabashes, swimming in tubs of water, with sticks. The two daughters, from eighteen to twenty years of age, and the nearest relations, began to move slowly towards the door in pairs, by a narrow lane formed in the midst of the ever-increasing mob. Then suddenly they all began to scream, to clap their hands, and to bellow forth unearthly cries, upon which the others turned round and began their horrible dance of violent jerks. With convulsively strained windings and turnings of the upper part of the body, they pushed their feet on, quite slowly and measuredly, threw their bosoms up with a sudden motion, and turned the head back over the shoulders, which they racked in every direction, and thus wound themselves forward with almost closed eyes. In this way they went down a little hill, for fifteen or sixteen paces, when they threw themselves on the ground, buried themselves in dust and ashes, and then returned to begin the same dance anew. The younger of the two daughters had a pretty slender figure, with an incredibly elastic body, and resembled an antique when standing quietly upright or lying on the ground with the head down, with her regular and soft, but immovable features and classical form, quite peaceably even during the dance. This dancing procession went on over and over again. Each of the mourners must at least have gone through it once, and the nearer the relationship the oftener it is repeated. Whoever cannot get up to the ash-tub takes ashes from the head of a neighbour to strew it on their own head. First, in this squatting assembly, some women crouch, who understand how to sob and to shed tears in quantities, which leave long black streaks on their whitened cheeks. The most prominent and disgusting feature of this scene is, however, that unrestrained passion has nothing to do with it, and that everything is done slowly, pathetically, and with evidently practised motions; children down to the ages of four or five years are put into the procession, and if they make the difficult and unnatural movements well, the mothers, cowering behind, call out _taib, taib_, to them. “Bravo, well done!” The second act of this deafening ceremony, by the continual clapping, cries, and screams, is that the whole company of dancers throw themselves upon the ground and roll down the hill; but even this is done slowly and premeditatedly, while they draw their knees up to keep hold of their dress, poke their arms in also, and then roll away on their backs and knees. This ceremony begins an hour before sunset and continues into the middle of the night.

The whole of it causes, by its unnaturality surpassing everything else, an indescribable impression, which is rendered the more disagreeable, as one perceives throughout the empty play, the inherited and spoilt custom, and can recognize no trace of individual truth and natural feeling in the persons taking part in it. And yet the comparison with certain descriptions and representations of similar ceremonies among the ancients, teaches us to understand many things, of which, in our own life, we shall never form a proper estimate, until we have seen with our own eyes such caricatures of uncivilisation, occasionally shown to us by the Orient.

Next day we visited the hospital, which we found very clean, and in good order; it contains one hundred patients, but there are only twenty-eight at the present time. Then we proceeded to the barracks, in the large court of which the exercises are gone through. The commanding officer assembled the band, and had several pieces of music played. The first was the _Parisienne_, which made a strange impression upon me amidst these scenes, as also the following pieces, which were mostly French, and known to me; they are tolerably performed. The musicians had scarcely any but European instruments, and have incorporated in their Arabic musical vocabulary our word trumpet, applying it, however, to the drum which they call _trumbêta_, while they have for the trumpet a native name, _nafir_; the great flute they call _sumára_, the little one _sufára_, and the great drum _tabli_. There were only 1,200 men of the regiment (which consists of 4,000) present, almost all negroes, who poked out their black faces, hands, and feet, from their white linen clothes, and red caps like dressed-up monkeys, only looking much more miserable and oppressed than those animals. Yet we did not suspect that in two days, these people would rebel, and go off to their mountains.

Emin Pasha was hourly expected. On the 13th, however, I received a letter from him at Messelemîeh, four or five hours hence, in which he stated that he should first come to Wed Médineh the next day, and hoped to find us still there. At the same time he informed me that the war in Taka was at an end, and that all had submitted. Some hundred natives were killed in the skirmishes; on the morning before the decisive battle, all the Sheikhs of the Taka tribes came to the Pasha to beg for mercy, which was granted them on the condition, that no fugitive should remain in the forest, which had been their chief resort. Next day he had the forest searched, and as there was nobody found, it was set on fire, and burnt down altogether. He is going on his way back through the eastern districts to Katârif, on the Abyssinian frontier, and thence to the Blue River. Scarcely had we read these news from Taka, ere the cannons at the barracks thundered forth the news of victory to the population.

In another letter, which Emin Pasha had received for me, Herr von Wagner gave me the pleasant news that our new comrade, the painter Georgi, had arrived from Italy, and had already left for Dongola, where he would await farther instructions. I shall write him to meet us at Barkal.

As we were certain by the letter to find the Pasha still in Messelemîeh, we departed thither at noon; we went by land, as the city is an hour and a half distant from the Nile.

The bark was meanwhile to follow us to the port of Messelemîeh, _i. e._ to the landing place nearest to this principal trading place of the whole Sudan. Besides Jussuf we took the _khawass_ and Gabre Máriam with us, who placed himself behind me on the dromedary, where there is always a little place left for an attendant, like the dickey of a coach; he rides on the narrow back part of the animal, and holds on with his hands. The day was very hot and the ground burnt. The few birds which I saw were different from those inhabiting the banks of the river.

At about half way we came to a village called Tâiba, which is only inhabited by _Fukara_, (pl. of _Fakir_). These are the literati, the holy men of the nation, a kind of priests, without exercising sacerdotal functions; they can read and write, allow no music, no dancing, no feasting, and therefore stand in great odour of sanctity. The Sheikh of this village is the supreme Fakir of the district. Everybody believes in him as a prophet; what he has prophesied, happens. The deceased Ahmed Pasha had him locked up a month before his death; “God will punish thee,” he returned in answer to the decree, and a month afterward the Pasha died. This is a very rich man, and owns several villages. We looked him up and found him in his house at dinner; about twenty persons were seated round a colossal wooden bowl, filled with boiled durra broth and milk. The bowl was pushed before us, but it was impossible for us to partake of this meal. We conversed with the old Fakir, who replied with free, friendly, and obliging dignity, and then asked our names, and our object in travelling. Every person who entered, even our servants, approached him reverently, and touched his hand with the lips and forehead. The office of Sheikh is hereditary in his family; his son, therefore, obtains almost as much honour as himself, and thus it is explicable how, when the Sheikh is a Fakir, the whole place may become a holy village. E’Damer, on the island of Meroe, was formerly such a Fakir place. The inhabitants of Tâiba, probably of Arabic race, call themselves Arakin. There are in this neighbourhood a number of such local names, the origin of which is difficult to be assigned.

When we had smoked out our pipes, we left this assembly of holy men, and rode off. Half an hour from Messelemîeh, we came to a second village called Hellet e’ Solimân. We dismounted at a house built by the deceased Mak or Melek Kambal of Halfâi, when he married the daughter of the Defalla, to whom the village belonged; now it is the property of his brother’s son Mahmûd Welled Shanîsh, who is also called Melek, but is only guardian of Kambal’s little son, Melek Beshîr. Thus we may see how it has fared here with the ancient honourable title of Melek (king). Mahmûd was not at home, as he had accompanied Ahmed Pasha in his campaign. However, we were entertained in his house according to the hospitable custom of the country. Carpets were spread, milk and durra bread (which does not taste ill) in thin cakes brought; besides another simple but refreshing drink, _abreq_, fermented sour durra water. Soon after Asser we arrived in Messelemîeh. Emin received us very kindly, and informed us Mohammed Ali’s prime minister, Boghos Bey, whom I had visited in Alexandria, was dead, and Artim Bey, a fine diplomatist of much culture, had been appointed to his place.

We refused the Pasha’s invitation to supper and night’s lodging, and soon rode off to the river, where we hoped to find our bark. As it had not arrived, we passed the night in the open air upon anqarebs. The next morning, the 15th of March, we pushed off for Kamlîn, and arrived there toward evening. The following day we passed with our countryman, Herr Bauer. After we had visited Nureddin Effendi at Wad Eraue, some hours from Kamlîn, we arrived the next day at Soba, where I immediately sent for a vessel found in the ruins of the ancient city, and preserved by the brother of the Sheikh. After waiting a long time it was brought. It proved to be an incense urn of bronze in open work; the sides of the rounded vessel, about three-quarters of a foot in height and breadth, were worked in arabesques; on the upper edge the chains had been attached to three little hooks, of which one is broken away, so that the most interesting part of the whole--an inscription in tolerably large letters running round the top, and worked _àjour_, like arabesques--is imperfect. This is of the more importance, as the writing is again Greek, or rather Koptic, as on the stone tablet, but the language neither, but without doubt the ancient language of Soba, the metropolis of the mighty kingdom of Aloa. Notwithstanding its shortness, it is of more importance than the tablet, that it also contains the Koptic letters (sh) and (ti), which are not to be found in the other. I bought the vessel for a few piasters. This is now the third monument of Soba that we bring with us, for I must add that we saw at Saïd Hashim’s, in Wed Médineh, a little Venus, of Greek workmanship, about a foot high, which had also been found in Soba, and was presented to me by the owner. On the 19th of March, we at length entered again the house of M. Hermanowitch at Chartûm, at a later date, however, than our former reckoning had settled, therefore I had already announced our being later in a letter to Erbkam from Wed Médineh.