This is the sweetest chapter in the book. The pictures are enough to make one's mouth water and give one an appetite for Arabian dates. I do not suppose there is a boy or girl in England or America that has not eaten the fruit of the Arabian palm tree; but how many of you know the taste of sugar-cane?
In many parts of Arabia, especially at Busrah and along the river Tigris, you can see the sugar-cane sellers sit by the wayside and dispose of this Arabian stick-candy to the boys and girls in exchange for coppers. The woman in the picture has chosen the shelter of a date tree and beside the tall bundles of cane she has oranges for sale as well. The sugar-cane is cut into pieces and sold "by the knot"; that is, by the length of the stick from one knot to the next. It is not expensive and I have seen even the very poorest children suck their cane on the way home as happy as sugar can make them. The sugar-cane is a kind of grass but it grows to twice the height of a boy and is over two inches in circumference. The stems are smooth, shining and hard on the outside, but inside they are porous and the pores are full of sugar sap. The sugar-cane first came from India, but the Arabs spread its cultivation as far as Morocco and Sicily; so that it is no wonder that the word "sugar" itself comes from the Arabic. Yet it shows how ignorant the Arabs are to-day because, although they have sugar-cane, their sugar nearly all comes from Europe. They do not know how to manufacture it and therefore eat the sugar-cane raw.
WOMAN SELLING SUGAR-CANE.
WOMAN SELLING SUGAR-CANE.
Sweeter than sugar-cane and much more plentiful is the date. There is no place in all Arabia where you do not see the date palm growing, and seldom can you eat a meal in any part of the country but dates are part of the bill-of-fare. In fact thousands of people in Arabia have nothing but dates to eat from January to December! So plentiful are they that even donkeys and camels are fed on dates in some districts.
Many of the dates you buy in your own country come from Arabia. On the best kind of dates which come in wooden boxes you will find Muscat or Busrah stamped to show from what place they were shipped. There are very many kinds of dates in Arabia, and only a very few sorts are sent abroad. Some of them are too delicate to stand the long voyage and others are found only in small quantities. I do not think any of the dates that reach America equal those we pick from the palm tree ourselves here in Arabia—no more than dried apple rings taste as good as ripe juicy sweet apples from the orchard. When the dates ripen in September they are picked, sorted, and then packed in layers by the Arab women and boys who get paid for this work. Large steamships are loaded down with these boxes and many of them leave Busrah every year with no other cargo than dates.
DATES GROWING ON A DATE PALM.
DATES GROWING ON A DATE PALM.
The date tree is very beautiful. I think it is the most beautiful of all the palms. It is no wonder that a palm branch is the symbol of victory in the Bible and that the psalmist compares the life of a righteous man to a palm-tree! How straight and beautifully proportioned is the tall trunk of the tree. It is an evergreen and is always flourishing winter and summer. It is a lovely sight to see the huge clusters of ripening fruit, golden-yellow or reddish-brown, amid the bright green branches. Along the rivers in the north of Arabia, at Hassa and in Oman, date orchards stretch for miles and miles as far as you can see. Some of the Arabs have such large date gardens that they do not know the number of their trees. How do you suppose they climb the tree? The Arabs have no ladders and indeed it would be hard to make a ladder long enough to reach to the top of a tall palm tree. So they use a rope band which goes around the trunk of the tree and around their waist; it is shoved up little by little and the Arab puts his bare feet on the rough bark of the tree and so climbs up as easily as a monkey. The palm tree is perhaps the most useful tree in the world. Every part of it is used for something or other, and I do not see how Arabia could get along without palm trees. The fruit is prepared in many different ways for food. The date stones are used by the Arab children in playing checkers and other games on the smooth sand. They are also ground up into a coarse kind of meal and this is good cattle-food. The branches of the date tree are long and strong and thin just like a piece of rattan. From them the carpenters make beds, tables, chairs, cradles, bird-cages, reading-stands, boats, crates, kites and a dozen other useful things. The leaves are woven into baskets, mats, fans and string. From the bark excellent fibre makes rope of all sizes. Not a bit of the tree is wasted. Even the blossoms are used to make a kind of drink and the old musty fruit that cannot be eaten is made into date syrup or date vinegar.
In one of the pictures you see the fire wood market at Busrah. The long branches you see are sold for kindling wood and they make a splendid fire. The heavier parts of the tree are also used for fuel and the donkeys are loaded with these date knots and date sticks in baskets. It is a busy scene and, what with braying of donkeys and shouting of the wood-merchants, there is enough noise too.
FIRE WOOD MARKET, BUSRAH.
FIRE WOOD MARKET, BUSRAH.
There is one more blessing that comes from the palm tree and which we have forgotten. That is shade. Arabia is a hot and dry country. The summer sun is much more piercing than in America and the summer is much longer. When you travel a long camel journey across the desert, oh how good it is to come to a grove of palm trees and rest! Such a place is called an oasis and underneath the palms there are always springs of water. I can well understand how happy the children of Israel were after their journey in the desert, when they came to Elim where "there were twelve wells of water and threescore and ten palm trees." In summer time many of the town Arabs leave their houses in the city and go to camp out in the date-gardens to enjoy the cool shades. The Arab poets have written many poems in praise of their favourite tree and fruit, but none of them are so funny as these lines which Campbell wrote from Algiers where the date tree also flourishes and with which we will end this chapter:
In the blue waters of the Persian Gulf there lies a coral island called Bahrein. At a few hundred yards to the northeast of it is a still smaller island shaped like a pack-saddle, where palm trees and white coral rock houses are reflected in the salt water at high tide. The little island town is called Moharrek, that is, the "Burning Place," because it is very hot there in summer. After sailing across in a boat one day, and wending our way through a dirty bazar full of flies and Arabs, we were directed to the house of the man called "The Shepherd of the Sewing Machine." His real name is Mohammed bin Sooltaan, but nobody knows him by any other name or title than Räee el karkhan, which literally means shepherd of the sewing machine. Let me tell you his story and how he got that queer name.
Years ago, as pilot on the native boats that sail from Bahrein to Bombay, Calcutta, Zanzibar and Jiddah, he had experience of a wider world than the little island where he was born. But the life was a hard one and his wages were small. Moreover, the coming of steamships up the Gulf took away the profit of the sailing craft, and so Mohammed fared from bad to worse. He loved an Arab lass with plaited, well-greased locks of hair and a pleasant face, but her father asked a larger dowry than he could ever pay.
An Arab young man must always pay a good price to the father of his sweetheart before he is allowed to marry her. But this Mohammed was too poor to pay the price asked. What a queer topsy-turvy custom it is for a man to buy his wife just as he buys a horse or a camel! The Arabs often ask how much a wife costs in America and wonder that we are not allowed by the Christian laws to send away our wives and marry others.
Mohammed could not stay at home so he once more went in a ship to Jiddah, the port to Mecca, where pilgrims from all the Moslem world exchange thought and money for bad bread and fanaticism. And yet even here the civilisation of the West tries to enter. Wandering through the bazars Mohammed for the first time saw a sewing machine, in the hands of an Indian tailor. A marvel to the sailor fisherman, indeed! Almost as great a miracle to him as the Koran. The more he looked the more he coveted, and he could not pass the place without reckoning up the possible profits of such an investment should he return with it to his native island. The result was that he forswore the sea and preferred another kind of wheel to that of the pilot. With many mutual wallahs the bargain was concluded and the machine reached Bahrein. It was the first on the islands, and all the sheikhs came to see its marvellous build and wonderful work. Mohammed has a Western head on Eastern shoulders, and there was not a screw or tension from treadle to shuttle, which he did not learn the use of. It is unnecessary to state at the cost of how many broken needles he became proficient. Amid cries of ajeeb, ajeeb, the first Arab shirt was stitched together, and even the youngsters on the street imitated the whirrr-clic-whirrr of the machine. As for Mohammed, he sewed on, and while his sandalled feet worked the treadle his mind worked out a problem something like this: Three long-shirts a day and an abba, at one kran per shirt and two for the abba, thirty-five krans per week, how long will it take to pay the dowry? An abba is a large over-garment worn by both men and women in Arabia. It is like a cape or overcoat but has no sleeves nor buttons. The Arabs in Bahrein put a great deal of pretty embroidery work on these garments and some of them are worth twenty or thirty dollars. But the sewing is done very cheaply. A kran is a Persian coin worth about ten cents; can you figure out how much Mohammed earned in a month?
The Shepherd of the Machine kept working away and when his hopes grew strong he sang at his work. In a few months he paid a visit to the Mullah (the Moslem priest or teacher), and that same night the Arab fiddles and drums rang out merry music around the palm-leaf hut of his beloved bride. But the music of the machine sounded still sweeter next morning. Daily bread, with rice, fish and dates, and on rare occasions even mutton, all came out of the machine. He loved the very iron of it and, as he told us, read a prayer over it every morning: Bismillahi er rahman er raheem. His was the only machine, and a small monopoly soon makes a capitalist. His palm branch hut was exchanged for a house of stone; and Allah blessed him greatly. No shepherd was ever more tender to his little lambs than Mohammed to the old machine.
When we entered the house on our first visit, there stood the machine! Not much the worse for wear, and with "Pfaff. C. Theodosius, Constantinople," still legible on the nickel-plate. But the old machine had found a rival. By its side stood another make of machine which looked strangely familiar to American eyes. It was while comparing the machines and drinking Arab coffee that we learned from Mohammed why he prized the old one as better. "Wallah," he said, "I would not sell it for many times its original price. There is blessing in it, and all I have comes from that machine, praise be to Allah." And so we sipped his cups and heard his story and ceased to wonder why he was called the Shepherd of the Sewing machine. The shepherd has a brother who wants to learn English and goes to Bombay every year—but that is another story.
There are many other sewing machines in Bahrein now, but Mohammed's was the first, and he introduced the others. Do you not think that he should be called the Christopher Columbus of Bahrein tailors?
About one-third of Topsy-turvy Land is desert and is the home of those Arabs that wander about from place to place and are called nomads or Bedouin. The word Bedouin means a desert-dweller. But you must not think that a desert is a flat country covered with a deep layer of sand without trees or shrubs. Oh no! There are such deserts in Arabia too, but the greater part of what is called desert is much more attractive and is only desert because it has no settled population and no villages. The soil is often very good and in springtime after the rains the whole of northern Arabia (where most of the nomads pitch their tents) is one vast prairie of wild flowers and green grass. The Arabs of the North are rich in flocks and herds. I am sure you can still find some who, like Job, have seven thousand sheep and three thousand camels and a very great household. They all live in tents and the tents of Arabia are not white and round like circus tents but jet black and square or oblong. You remember the Bible always speaks of the black tents of Kedar. They are black because they are woven from goat's hair which is used also for their garments and is almost as good a waterproof covering as india rubber. But when you have to spend a long hot day under such a roof as I have done you feel sorry for the Arabs that they have no better protection against the blazing sun. Everything is home-made and clumsy, but shall I tell you what I have found? There is no warmer hospitality in all the wide world than in these tents of Kedar. A few weeks ago I spent a Sabbath day resting by the way in one of these tents. The women brought water to cool my head; a great bowl of camel's milk was our drink even before they asked our errand; and at night they killed a fat kid and made a guest meal fit for an epicure.
The Arabs of the desert are more ignorant than those of the towns, but they are much kinder to strangers and treat their wives and children better. Their life is rather monotonous, but they enjoy it. Like the American Indians they prefer a tent to a house, and would rather change their home every day than settle down as farmers. When pasture fails for their flocks of sheep the chief gives notice and on the morrow the whole camp has moved away. Some tribes move every month and go for a long distance to find fresh pastures.
ARAB RIDERS WITH LANCES.
ARAB RIDERS WITH LANCES.
The Bedouin are divided into many tribes and clans. Some of them are friendly to each other but nearly all are at war with one another all the year round. Robbery and murder are very frequent. Every one goes armed with a long spear or with a gun, and many carry a war club and a sword as well. The largest Arab tribes and the wealthiest are the Anaeze and the Shommar. They have many fine horses. In the picture you see a group of them armed with their long spears. The spear of the leader is ornamented with a tuft of ostrich feathers; these spears are often over twelve feet long and have a sharp steel lance at the end. The Arabs are fond of games, especially galloping their horses and playing at war. They are very skillful riders and kind to their steeds; they do not spend much time in grooming them and they never use a whip and seldom a bit. Their bridle is like our halter strap, and the horse is so well trained that he needs no iron bit in his mouth.
One of the most interesting of all the Arab tribes is called the Suleibi. They are despised by all the other Arabs and seem to be of a different race. The women of this tribe are remarkable for their beauty and the men for their skill as blacksmiths and tinkers. They are always sought after to do the tinkering for the Arabs of all other tribes. They have no camels or horses but ride little donkeys and dress in gazelle skins. Some people think that this tribe is a remnant of the Christian population of Arabia; they have many curious beliefs and their name means, "Those-of-the-Cross." Perhaps some day a missionary will bring them back to a true knowledge of the Crucified One.
The nomads of Arabia are happy in springtime when there is enough grass for their flocks and the wells of the desert are full of water. But after the long summer drought there is often a great scarcity of food and even famine in many parts of Arabia. Then the nomads eat anything and drink the brackish water from the bottom of a mud pool with relish. In no country in the world is water so costly as in Arabia; nowhere is it so carefully used; an Arab never wastes a drop of water and looks surprised and pained when an European traveller rinses out a cup before drinking! The nomad Arabs eat locusts and wild honey as did John the Baptist. But I have also seen them eat the big lizards of the desert and the jerboas—a sort of desert rat. An Arab once stood amidst a circle of jewellers at Busrah and said: "On one occasion I had missed my way in the desert, and having no road-provision left, I had given myself up for lost, when all at once I found a bag of pearls. Never shall I forget that relish and delight so long as I mistook them for parched wheat; nor that bitterness and disappointment when I discovered that they were real pearls!" This story is told by a Persian poet and although it may not be true yet it teaches a lesson. To a hungry man a handful of wheat is better than all the pearls of the ocean.
PEARL MERCHANTS.
PEARL MERCHANTS.
In his tent the Arab is very lazy. His only occupation is feeding his horses or milking his camels. The Arab girls go out to take care of the flocks while the wife performs all the domestic duties. She grinds wheat in the hand-mill; kneads and bakes bread; makes butter by shaking the milk in a leather bag; fetches water in a skin; works at the loom and is busy all the time. The Arab smokes his pipe, drinks coffee and talks to his friends; unless he is on the march or on a robbery excursion his life seems very lazy.
ARABIAN WATER-BOTTLE.
ARABIAN WATER-BOTTLE.
Scarcely any of the Bedouin can read, and they have neither schools nor mosques. The Bedouin sometimes say, "Mohammed's religion cannot have been intended for us; it demands washings, but we have no water; alms, but we have no money; pilgrimage to Mecca, but we are always wandering and God is everywhere." Yet outwardly they observe the Moslem religion of which they know so little. In our next chapter you will read how earnestly even the nomad children pray in the desert. And I believe God loves these sons of Ishmael and will yet bring them back to Abraham's faith. Don't you think so too?
For many days the sailing craft from Bahrein had been unloading Indian wares at the port of Ojeir on the Hassa coast, and for many hours the busy throng of Bedouin drivers and merchants and onlookers were loading the caravan, emphasising their task or their impatience with great oaths, almost as guttural and angry as the noise of the camels. At length, with the pious cry of Tawakalna, "we have trusted in God," they are off.
A caravan is composed of companies, and while the whole host numbered seven hundred camels, with merchants and travellers and drivers, our company from Ojeir to Hofhoof counted only six. There was Salih and Nasir, a second son of the desert, both from Riad; a poor unfortunate lad with stumpy hands and feet, who limped about on rag shoes and seemed quite happy; there was Noorah and her sister, and lastly, the missionary.
But for the shuffling of the desert sand and the whack of a driving stick the caravan marched in silence. The sun shone full in our faces as it slowly sank in the west, its last rays coloured the clouds hanging over the lowlands of Hassa a bright red, and when it disappeared we heard the sheikhs of the companies, one after the other, call to prayer. Only a part of the caravan responded. The Turkish soldiers on horseback kept on their way; the most pious of the merchants had already urged their beasts ahead of the rest and had finished a duty that interfered with a speedy journey and the first choice of location at the night encampment; some excused themselves by quoting a Koran text, and others took no notice of the call. Not so the Bedouin child Noorah and her younger sister. They had trudged on foot four long hours, armed with sticks to urge on that lazy white camel, always loitering to snatch a bite of desert-thorn with his giant jaws. A short time before sunset I saw the two children mount the animal by climbing up its neck, as only Arabs can, but now, at call to prayer they devoutly slipped down. Hand in hand they ran ahead a short distance, shuffled aside some sand with their bare feet, rubbed some on their hands, (as do all pious Moslems in the absence of water), faced Mecca, and prayed.
As they did then, so at sunrise and at noon and at four o'clock and sunset and when the evening star disappeared—five times a day—they prayed. It is not true, as is generally supposed, that women in Moslem lands do not pray. Only at Mecca, as far as I know, of all Arabia, are they allowed a place in the public mosques, but at home a larger per cent. observe the times of prayer than do the men.
When Noorah had ended her prayer and resumed the task of belabouring the white camel, she turned to me with a question, "Laish ma tesully anta?" which with Bedouin bluntness means, "You, why don't you pray?" The question set me musing half the night; not, I confess, about my own prayers, but about hers. Why did Noorah pray? What did Noorah pray? Did she understand that
as well as the dead formalism of the mosque? How could I answer her question in a way that she might well understand? And if hers, too, was a sincere prayer, as I believe,—the prayer of an ignorant child of the desert,—did she pray words or thoughts? What do Noorah and her more than two million Bedouin sisters ask of God five times daily? Leaving out vain repetitions, this is what they say:
It is the first chapter of the Koran and is used by Moslems as we use the Lord's Prayer. The words are very beautiful I think, don't you?
Whether Noorah understood what she asked I know not; but to me who saw and heard in the desert twilight, (as under like conditions to you), the prayer was full of pathos. The desert! where God is, and where but for His mercy and compassion death and solitude would reign alone; the desert, a world of its own kind, a sea of sand, with no life in it except the Living One, and over it only His canopy of stars—God of the two worlds! And to that God, than whom there is no other, and whom they ignorantly worship, these sons and daughters of outcast Ishmael bow their faces in the dust and five times daily entreat and supplicate to be led aright in the way of truth.
They ask to be directed into the straight way, but oh how crooked is the way of God which Mohammed taught in his book! Sadder still, what a crooked way it is that the Moslems walk! Impure words, lying lips, hands that steal and feet that run after cruelty—these are what children in Arabia possess. But I dare say that some of them are really sorry for their sins and when they pray like Noorah in the desert they want to have peace and pardon. Are they looking unconsciously perhaps for the footprints in the desert of One who said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life"?
Alas, Noorah and her many sisters (your sisters, too) have never seen His beauty nor heard of His love! They do not know that the "way of those whom Thou dost compassionate" is the new and living way through Christ's cross and death. They are ignorant of the awful word, "He that believeth not on the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." Has God the Merciful then not heard Noorah's prayer? Will He not answer it? Is His mercy to these children of Abraham clean gone forever? How long they have waited and how many of the desert children are now sleeping in little desert graves! Do you not think God wants you to carry the gospel to them and send them teachers to learn the way of Jesus?
Think of Noorah's question, "You, why don't you pray?" Think of Christ's words, "Go tell quickly."
You already know many curious facts about the people of Topsy-turvy Land. Would you like to hear something about their language and their writing? The language of this land is very old, almost as old as its camels or its desert sands. The Moslems even go so far as to say that Adam and Eve spoke Arabic in Paradise and they say it is called the language of the angels. It is written from right to left just in the opposite way of this page of English writing. The Arabic alphabet has twenty-eight letters, all of which are considered consonants. There are marks put above and below the line to show the sounds of the vowels; just as we wrote the word potato in our first chapter.
Arabic grammar is much more difficult than English grammar, and even the boys who attend the big Arabic college of El Azhar in Cairo, Egypt, must find its study a bugbear. Just think of learning fifteen conjugations instead of the much smaller number in Latin or Greek! The books used in Moslem schools would look very crude and dull to you who learnt your A, B, C, from an illustrated primer perhaps with coloured pictures.
Strict Mohammedans do not allow their boys and girls to have pictures in their books, because they say all pictures are idols. And yet the love for beauty and the desire for ornament on the written or printed page was so strong with the Arabs that they began from the earliest times to use their alphabet to make arabesques. Arabesque is a big word and it really means an Arab picture. But these pictures of the Arabs (which you find on the arches of old mosques, in books and on tombstones) are ornaments or designs made out of the beautifully curved letters of the alphabet. The old Arab copyists and their sculptors wrote and carved the words of the Koran, or the names of God, etc., in all sorts of ways to make pictures out of words only, lest they break the law of their prophet. Here are two examples of how pictures can be made out of letters. You have all doubtless heard of a "wordless book"; and some of you have books without words and full of pictures. Here is a picture made out of the Arabic alphabet, and every curve and dot belongs to the words so curiously written. I copied them out of an Arabic treatise on penmanship, for you. The face is not at all pretty, and yet Moslem lads think it is very clever to bring this likeness of man out of the four names, Allah, Mohammed, Ali and Hassan. These words you notice are written twice, both to the left and to the right. What a disgrace to the holy name of God to put that of three Arabs with it in a monograph! It is very sad to hear some Moslems say that they trust in these people to intercede for them with God. If you have read what sinful lives these people led when they were the chief rulers in Arabia, you will almost agree with me in calling this first picture a Moslem idol.
DESIGNS MADE OUT OF ARABIC WRITING.
DESIGNS MADE OUT OF ARABIC WRITING.
There are many Moslems in Bahrein who have hanging up in their rooms these monograms or designs. One favourite I have often seen contains only five names: Allah, Mohammed, Ali, Hassan and Hussein. The people who make so much of these descendants of Mohammed are called Shiahs; the other Moslems who think they are more orthodox are called Sunnites.
What do you think of our second picture? Is not the design very pretty for an embroidery pattern? The motto is written twice; once from the right and once backward from the left, the same as in the other picture. The words are taken from the Koran and are as true as they are beautiful. Man yattawakil ala Allah fa hooa hasbahoo; which means, "Whoever trusts in God will find Him sufficient." That surely contradicts the other picture, does it not? And yet they are both from the same copy-book. There are many contradictions in the religion of Mohammed. I only hope that when Christ's gospel has conquered Arabia, the name of Jesus will be written on every mosque and in every heart; then contradiction will give way to the truth, and whoever trusts in Christ will find Him sufficient.
Would it not be nice to make something pretty for use in the home or in the Sunday-school, and embroider the Arabic words on it? It would be a constant reminder of Arabia and of the beautiful motto—only an Arabic version of Paul's words, Our sufficiency is of God.
Our last illustration to close this chapter is an example of Arabic every-day penmanship. It was written in the mountains of Oman, and is a letter from a poor cripple asking for a copy of the Psalms and other books. It was sent to our brother Peter J. Zwemer a year before he died, when he was on a missionary journey in Oman.
ARABIC LETTER FROM A POOR CRIPPLE.
ARABIC LETTER FROM A POOR CRIPPLE.
If Jesus Himself, on one occasion, said, "Show me a penny," and preached a sermon from it, surely we may follow his example and learn something from these strange coins which you see in the pictures at the beginning and end of this chapter. The coin on this page comes from Oman, the home of the Arabian camel and one of its most fertile provinces. Perhaps some of the boys and girls can tell where Oman is and give its boundaries without looking in the geography, but I am sure none of you can read the inscription on the penny, and tell what it all means. Who is Fessul bin Turkee? What is an Imam? How much is one-quarter of an Anna? And when did this queer coin come fresh from the mint?
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?
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.
DATE-STICK CRADLE.
DATE-STICK CRADLE.
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.
WOMEN GRINDING AT THE MILL.
WOMEN GRINDING AT THE MILL.
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.
BEDOUIN WOMEN EATING THEIR BREAKFAST.
BEDOUIN WOMEN EATING THEIR BREAKFAST.
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.
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.
CARGO BOATS, BAHREIN.
CARGO BOATS, 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.
RIVER BOAT, BUSRAH.
RIVER BOAT, BUSRAH.
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 toesome 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.
AN ARAB CARPENTER'S TOOLS.
AN ARAB CARPENTER'S TOOLS.
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.
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?
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.
PUZZLE OF THE THIRTY MEN.
PUZZLE OF THE THIRTY MEN.
You begin to count from the left, as the captain did, and if you mark out every ninth man you can keep on counting out the ninth men until only upright strokes are left.
From your knowledge of arithmetic, can you tell me the reason of this puzzle?
The Arabs remember the puzzle by some verses in which every dotted letter stands for an unbeliever and those that have no dots stand for Moslems.
You see that even the story of Jonah and the whale is topsy-turvy out in Arabia!
In olden times Arabia was a much more important country than it is to-day. Before there were large seagoing ships, all the trade between India, Persia, even China, on the east, and Egypt on the west, was carried on camels. The caravans at that time used to cross Arabia in all directions, and the men who drove these camel-trains grew wealthy, as railroad magnates do to-day. We read about this early traffic on these highways of the desert in the Old Testament as well as in the old Greek histories. The province of Yemen was celebrated for its wealth and civilisation as early as the time of Solomon. It was then called Sheba and the old capital was called Marib, a little northeast of the present city of Sanaa. There are still many extensive ruins and inscriptions which testify to the height of their civilisation. We read of one of the queens of Sheba (the Arabs say she was named Bilkis) who came to prove Solomon with hard questions. She came with a large caravan of camels bearing spices and gold in abundance; her present to Solomon consisted of "an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices great abundance, and precious stones." Gold is no longer found in Arabia but it was undoubtedly once very plentiful there. All the old writers speak of Arabia as a-gold country. One of the Greek geographers speaks of a stream in which large nuggets of gold were found. Some people think Ophir was in Arabia. However that may be, the traveller Burton explored the northwestern part of the peninsula and found old mines and even traces of gold dust. If Job lived in the land of Midian we can well understand how he could describe mining operations so well as he does in the twenty-eighth chapter of his book.
BRANCH OF INCENSE TREE.
BRANCH OF INCENSE TREE.
Frankincense and myrrh were also carried across Arabia by the caravans, and both of these precious gums came from Arabia itself and are still found there. One of the oldest articles of commerce was incense. The gum was used in sacrifices and in all the heathen temple worship as well as by the Jews in their worship. One thousand talents' weight of frankincense was brought every year to Darius, the Persian king, as tribute from Arabia. The present incense country is southern Arabia, especially Hadramaŭt. Here the incense tree (of which you see a small branch in the picture) grows. The young trees are cut with a knife, and from the incisions made in the bark a milk-like juice comes out. When it has had time to harden, the large clear globules are scraped off into baskets and the inferior kind that has run down the bark is collected separately. It is shipped from Arabia to Bombay or goes out from Aden and still commands a good price. In some Roman Catholic churches this incense is burnt every Sunday and if you will go to a large druggist he may be able to show you pieces of Arabian incense.
Myrrh and frankincense are frequently mentioned together. Both are sweet-smelling gums and both came originally from Arabia. According to a Greek legend, Myrrha was the daughter of one of the kings of Cyprus who angered her father and when he attempted to stab her, fled to Arabia. Here she was changed into a tree called myrrh! A few of these trees are still found in Yemen, but myrrh is not at all as plentiful as it once was in Arabia. It is a low, thorny, ragged-looking tree with bright green leaves. The gum exudes from cracks in the bark near the root of the plant. When dry it is of a rich brown colour and has a bitter taste. The word "myrrh" in Arabic means bitter, and I think that is the origin of the name given to the tree and not the foolish story of the Greek mythology. You must look up all the references in the Bible to myrrh. I wonder whether the myrrh which Nicodemus used to embalm the body of our Saviour for His burial came from Arabia? In Matthew's gospel we read of the wise men who came from the East to worship Jesus. "And when they had opened their treasures they presented unto Him gifts; gold and frankincense and myrrh." Do you not think that these wise men came from Arabia, even as the queen of Sheba did, to see the king of the Jews? Perhaps Isaiah prophesied of their coming when he wrote concerning Arabia: "The multitude of camels shall cover thee the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah; all they from Sheba shall come: they shall bring gold and incense; and they shall shew forth the praises of the Lord." At any rate we are quite sure that the frankincense they brought came from Arabia. There is a great deal in the Bible about this country and there are many beautiful promises for the redemption of its people. Arabs were present at Pentecost and the first missionary to Arabia was the Apostle Paul. God has not forgotten His promises and we must all pray that soon they may be fulfilled. No one has yet been to tell the children of Hadramaŭt, who gather the incense-gum, the story of Jesus' birth and of His death on the cross. There is not a single missionary in all that country; no one has been to tell the news that the Babe of Bethlehem is the King of Glory.