The domestic life of the lower orders will be the subject of the present chapter. In most respects, it is so simple, that, in comparison with the life of the middle and higher classes, of which we have just been taking a view, it offers but little to our notice.

The lower orders in Egypt, with the exception of a very small proportion, chiefly residing in the large towns, consist of Felláheen (or Agriculturists). Most of those in the great towns, and a few in the smaller towns and some of the villages, are petty tradesmen or artificers, or obtain their livelihood as servants, or by various labours. In all cases, their earnings are very small; barely sufficient, in general, and sometimes insufficient, to supply them and their families with the cheapest necessaries of life.

Their food chiefly consists of bread (made of millet or of maize), milk, new cheese, eggs, small salted fish, cucumbers and melons and gourds of a great variety of kinds, onions and leeks,^[315] beans, chick-peas, lupins, the fruit of the black egg-plant, lentils, etc., dates (both fresh and dried), and pickles. Most of the vegetables they eat in a crude state. When the maize (or Indian corn) is nearly ripe, many ears of it are plucked, and toasted or baked, and eaten thus by the peasants. Rice is too dear to be an article of common food for the felláheen; and flesh-meat they very seldom taste. There is one luxury, however, which most of them enjoy; and that is, smoking the cheap tobacco of their country, merely dried, and broken up. It is of a pale, greenish colour, when dried, and of a mild flavour. Though all the articles of food mentioned above are extremely cheap, there are many poor persons who often have nothing with which to season their coarse bread but the mixture called “dukkah,” described in a former chapter.^[316] It is surprising to observe how simple and poor is the diet of the Egyptian peasantry, and yet how robust and healthy most of them are, and how severe is the labour which they can undergo.

The women of the lower orders seldom pass a life of inactivity. Some of them are even condemned to greater drudgery than the men. Their chief occupations are the preparing of the husband’s food, fetching water (which they carry in a large vessel on the head), spinning cotton, linen, or woollen yarn, and making the fuel called “gelleh,” which is composed of the dung of cattle, kneaded with chopped straw, and formed into round flat cakes: these they stick upon the walls or roofs of their houses, or upon the ground, to dry in the sun; and then use for heating their ovens, and for other purposes. They are in a state of much greater subjection to their husbands than is the case among the superior classes. Not always is a poor woman allowed to eat with her husband. When she goes out with him, she generally walks behind him; and if there be anything for either of them to carry, it is usually borne by the wife; unless it be merely a pipe or a stick. Some women, in the towns, keep shops; and sell bread, vegetables, etc.; and thus contribute as much as their husbands, or even more than the latter, to the support of their families. When a poor Egyptian is desirous of marrying, the chief object of his consideration is the dowry, which is usually from about twenty “riyáls” (or nine shillings) to four times that amount, if consisting only of money; and rather less, if, as is the case throughout a great part of Egypt, it comprise certain articles of clothing: if he can afford to give the dowry, he seldom hesitates to marry; for a little additional exertion will enable him to support a wife and two or three children. At the age of five or six years, the children become of use to tend the flocks and herds; and at a more advanced age, until they marry, they assist their fathers in the operations of agriculture. The poor in Egypt have often to depend entirely upon their sons for support in their old age; but many persons are deprived of these aids, and consequently reduced to beggary, or almost to starvation. A few months ago, the Básha, during his voyage from Alexandria to this city (Cairo), happening to land at a village on the bank of the Nile, a poor man of the place ran up to him, and grasped his sleeve so tightly, that the surrounding attendants could not make him quit his hold: he complained that, although he had been once in very comfortable circumstances, he had been reduced to utter destitution by having his sons taken from him in his old age as recruits for the army. The Básha (who generally pays attention to personal applications) relieved him; but it was by ordering that the richest man in the village should give him a cow.

A young family, however, is sometimes an insupportable burden to poor parents. Hence, it is not a very rare occurrence, in Egypt, for children to be publicly carried about for sale, by their mothers or by women employed by the fathers: but this very seldom happens, except in cases of great distress. When a mother dies, leaving one or more children unweaned, and the father and other surviving relations are so poor as not to be able to procure a nurse, this singular mode of disposing of the child or children is often resorted to; or sometimes an infant is laid at the door of a mosque, generally when the congregation is assembled to perform the noon-prayers of Friday; and in this case it usually happens that some member of the congregation, on coming out of the mosque, and seeing the poor foundling, is moved with pity, and takes it home to rear in his family, not as a slave, but as an adopted child; or, if not, it is taken under the care of some person until an adoptive father or mother be found for it. A short time ago, a woman offered for sale, to the mistress of a family with whom a friend of mine is acquainted in this city, a child a few days old, which she professed to have found at the door of a mosque. The lady said that she would take the child, to rear it for the sake of God, and in the hope that her own child, an only one, might be spared to her as a reward for her charity; and handed, to the woman who brought the infant, ten piasters (then equivalent to a little more than two shillings): but the offered remuneration was rejected. This shows that infants are sometimes made mere objects of traffic; and some persons who purchase them may make them their slaves, and sell them again. I have been informed, by a slave-dealer (and his assertion has been confirmed to me by other persons), that young Egyptian girls are sometimes sold as slaves from other countries, either by a parent or by some other relation. The slave-dealer here alluded to said, that several such girls had been committed to him for sale; and by their own consent: they were taught to expect rich dresses and great luxuries; and were instructed to say, that they had been brought from their own country when only three or four years of age, and that they consequently were ignorant of their native language, and could speak only Arabic.

It often happens, too, that a felláh, in a state of great poverty, is induced, by the offer of a sum of money, to place his son in a situation far worse than that of ordinary slavery. When a certain number of recruits are required from a village, the sheykh of the village often adopts the plan that gives him the least trouble to obtain them, which is, to take the sons of those persons who are possessed of most property. Under such circumstances, a father, rather than part with his son, generally offers, to one of his poorer fellow-villagers, a sum equivalent to one or two pounds sterling, to procure a son of the latter, as a substitute for his own; and usually succeeds; though the love of offspring prevails among the Egyptians as much as filial piety; and most parents have a great horror of parting with their children, particularly if taken for recruits, as is proved by the means to which they have recourse for the prevention of such an occurrence. There is now (in 1834) seldom to be found, in any of the villages, an able-bodied youth or young man who has not had one or more of his teeth broken out (that he may not be able to bite a cartridge), or a finger cut off, or an eye pulled out or blinded, to prevent his being taken for a recruit. Old women and others make a regular trade of going about from village to village, to perform these operations upon the boys; and the parents themselves are sometimes the operators. But, from what has been said before, it appears that it is not always affection alone that prompts the parents to have recourse to such expedients to prevent their being deprived of their children.

The Felláheen of Egypt cannot be justly represented in a very favourable light with regard to their domestic and social condition and manners. In the worst points of view, they resemble their Bedawee ancestors, without possessing many of the virtues of the inhabitants of the desert, unless in an inferior degree; and the customs which they have inherited from their forefathers often have a very baneful effect upon their domestic state. It has before been mentioned that they are descended from various Arab tribes who have settled in Egypt at different periods; and that the distinction of tribes is still preserved by the inhabitants of the villages throughout this country. In the course of years, the descendants of each tribe of settlers have become divided into numerous branches, and these minor tribes have distinct appellations, which have also often been given to the village or villages, or district, which they inhabit. Those who have been longest established in Egypt have retained less of Bedawee manners, and have more infringed the purity of their race by intermarriages with Copt proselytes to the Muslim faith, or with the descendants of such persons; hence, they are often despised by the tribes more lately settled in this country, who frequently, in contempt, term the former “Felláheen,” while they arrogate to themselves the appellation of “Arabs” or “Bedawees.” The latter, whenever they please, take the daughters of the former in marriage, but will not give their own daughters in return; and if one of them be killed by a person of the inferior tribe, they kill two, three, or even four, in blood-revenge. The prevalence of the barbarous Bedawee law of blood-revenge among the inhabitants of the villages of Egypt has been mentioned in a former chapter: the homicide, or any person descended from him, or from his great-grandfather’s father, is killed by any of such relations of the person whom he has slain; and when the homicide happens to be of one tribe, and the person killed of another, often a petty war breaks forth between these two tribes, and is sometimes continued, or occasionally renewed, during a period of several years. The same is also frequently the result of a trifling injury committed by a member of one tribe upon a person of another. In many instances, the blood-revenge is taken a century or more after the commission of the act which has occasioned it; when the feud, for that time, has lain dormant, and perhaps is remembered by scarcely more than one individual. Two tribes in Lower Egypt, which are called “Saad” and “Harám,” are most notorious for these petty wars and feuds;^[317] and hence their names are commonly applied to any two persons or parties at enmity with each other. It is astonishing that, in the present day, such acts (which, if committed in a town or city in Egypt, would be punished by the death of, perhaps, more than one of the persons concerned) should be allowed. Some other particulars respecting blood-revenge and its consequences have been stated in the chapter above alluded to. The avenging of blood is allowed by the Kur-án; but moderation and justice are enjoined in its execution; and the petty wars which it so often occasions in the present age are in opposition to a precept of the Prophet, who said, “If two Muslims contend with their swords, the slayer and the slain will be in the fire [of Hell].”

The Felláheen of Egypt resemble the Bedawees in other respects. When a Felláhah is found to have been unfaithful to her husband, in general, he, or her brother, throws her into the Nile, with a stone tied to her neck; or cuts her in pieces, and then throws her remains into the river. In most instances, also, a father or brother punishes in the same manner an unmarried daughter or sister who has been guilty of incontinence. These relations are considered as more disgraced than the husband by the crime of the woman; and are often despised if they do not thus punish her.