John Lewis Burckhardt

“ I had the honour of seeing the king of Mahass, a mean looking black, attended by half a dozen naked slaves, armed with shields and lances. From hence, along the Nile to Sennaar, about thirty-five days journies, there are upwards of twenty kings and kingdoms, every independent chief being styled Melek. The power of each of these petty-sovereigns is very arbitrary, as far as relates to exactions upon the property of his own subjects, but he dares not put any of them to death, without entailing upon his own family the retaliation of blood by that of the deceased. ”

“ The merchants say: “Never trust a black slave; whip him well, and feed him well, and the work will be done” (لا تامن العبد اضربه و اطعمه فتشوف الحاجه مقضيه) . I know not whether the maxim is founded in truth or not, but it is certainly that by which the merchants are guided, when they are no longer afraid of their slaves escaping. The slaves, nevertheless, whether from strength of mind, or from a brutal apathy, manifest the same propensity to mirth and frolic. In intellect, I think they are much upon a level with the Negroe Arabs, and little lower than the inhabitants of Egypt and Syria ”

“ The dryness of the air had preserved the corpse in the most perfect state. Looking at it through the interstices of the stones which enveloped it, it appeared to me a more perfect mummy than any I had seen in Egypt. ”

“ Before I had arranged two smaller skins, had filled them with the water of the large one, had tied ropes to them, and had loaded them upon my ass, the caravan had gained a great distance ahead, so that following their footsteps in the sand, I could not rejoin them till late after sunset. It is in such cases that the want of a servant or companion is chiefly felt; for slave traders show no sort of compassion for the embarrassments of their fellow creatures. ”

“ These Bedouins, a remote branch of the Ababde, pasture their cattle on the uninhabited banks of the river, and on its islands, from Derr southward, as far as Mahass and Dongola, where they are said to be more numerous than in Nubia. They are poor; their tents are formed of mats made of the leaves of palm-trees, with a partition in the middle to separate the women’s apartment; but, notwithstanding their poverty, they refuse to give their daughters in marriage to the Nubians, and have thus preserved their race pure. They pride themselves, and justly, in the beauty of their girls. ”

“ The African, like the Arabian Bedouins, seem to display elegance of equipment in the decorations of their women only: leathern tassels of different sizes, small bells, and white shells, from the Red Sea, contributed to the ornament of the harness and saddles of the camels. None of the women passed me without uttering a loud shriek, and then laughing. After marching two hours and a half, we halted under a thick cover of acacia trees, in low ground, called Wady Shenkera. The slaves had to bring water from an hour’s distance in the mountain. ”

“ I have found, however, very few instances of slaves being sincerely attached to their masters, even when well treated by them. Their general vice is an incorrigible stubbornness and haughtiness of temper, and many of them betray a deadly rancour and spirit of revenge; but in general the treacherous disposition discernible in the children even of the free Arabs of the Nile and of Nubia, is certainly not to be found among them. They are lazy and slovenly, and will not work but when forced to do so. They seem to be almost entirely devoid of every feeling but that of gratifying their appetites ”

“ The survivor then continued his route, but such was the effect of thirst upon him, that his eyes grew dim and he lost the road, though he had often travelled over it before, and had been perfectly acquainted with it. Having wandered about for a long time, he alighted under the shade of a tree, and tied the camel to one of its branches; the beast however smelt the water, (as the Arabs express it,) and wearied as it was, broke its halter, and set off gallopping furiously in the direction of the spring, which as it afterwards appeared, was at half an hour’s distance. ”

“ What Abdallah had projected his successor executed; the Miri, instead of defraying the expenses of the Hadj, or being accounted for to the Porte, entered into the Pasha’s chests. In the present degenerate and tottering state of the empire, the Porte has forgot that the religious and fanatical spirit which is diffused over its subjects by the visitors of the Kaaba, is perhaps the last supporter of its political existence. She thinks no longer of the religious importance of the pilgrimage; her troubles and cares are all for money; as if money alone would uphold an empire. ”

“ It is a fact worthy of notice, that two foreign tongues should have subsisted so long, to the almost entire exclusion of the Arabic, in a country bordered on one side by Dongola and on the other by Egypt, in both of which Arabic is exclusively spoken. Those only of the Kenous who have been in Egypt speak Arabic; their women are, for the greater part, entirely ignorant of it. Nor is it less remarkable that the Aleykat Arabs [27] of Seboua, and Wady el Arab, have retained their pure Arabic, placed as they are on the boundaries both of the Kenous and Nouba. ”

“ The neighbourhood of Aleppo has been infested since spring, until about a month ago, by great numbers of Aenezy Arabs, who had declared war against the towns people as well as against the Manali Arabs, who are looked upon as the hereditary friends of the Aleppo government. The Aenezy have ruined about forty villages, have eaten up the whole harvest of the open country, and have rendered the roads so insecure that nobody dares travel but in the company of a large caravan. ”

“ Disappointed in all my endeavours to sell a bill upon Cairo, I have addressed myself to the Pasha, Mohammed Aly himself, who is now at Tayf, five days journey from hence. He knows me well, and when at Cairo had often expressed himself in my favour. If he does not comply with my wishes I shall be obliged to return forthwith to Egypt, without performing the Hadj: which will not take place for three months, for the Hedjaz is not the country where a man can hope to travel gratis. Every thing is enormously dear at all times, and in the time of the pilgrimage the prices are still higher. ”

“ Female slaves who are servants in families, are not so well off as males, because they generally suffer much from the jealousy of their mistresses. It is only by the Turkish soldiers that slaves are ill-treated. They purchase, in Upper Egypt, slave boys, whom they rear in their service, and who, after they have come to a certain age, and learned the Turkish language, are clothed and armed as soldiers, and enlisted into the company or corps of which their master is the chief. He then draws the monthly pay of his slave from the governor, as he does that of every other soldier ”

“ The harvest suffers greatly from the ravages of immense flocks of sparrows, which the united efforts of all the children in the villages cannot always keep at a distance; and whole fields of Dhourra and barley are often destroyed by a species of small worm, which ascends the stalks of the plant. Tobacco is every where cultivated; it retains, when dried, its green colour, and exactly resembles that of the mountains on the east side of the Dead Sea. ”

“ As the number of wives is limited by the Mussulman law to four, it sometimes happens that the rich people keep, besides their four wives, several of these emancipated female slaves, who live with them as mistresses.
Slavery, in the East, has little dreadful in it but the name; male slaves are every where treated much like the children of the family, and always better than the free servants. It is thought a mean action to sell a slave after he has been long resident in a family. If a slave behaves ill, he is generally sent into the country to work as a labourer in the fields of his master. ”

“ If a slave kills a free man his master is obliged to pay the price of blood, otherwise his own family becomes exposed to the retaliation of the relations of the slain; for the death of a slave who commits murder is not deemed a sufficient atonement for the blood of a free man.
In Arabia and Egypt the law gives to the slaves one great advantage; if they are discontented with their master, and decidedly determined not to remain with him, they have the right of insisting upon being sent to the public slave market, (Beaéni fi Souk el Sultaun, بيعني في سوق السلطان) , to be resold. ”

“ The Sheygya are a perfectly independent people, and possess great wealth, in corn and cattle; like the Bedouins of Arabia, they pay no kind of tribute to their chiefs, whose power is by no means so great as that of the chiefs of Dóngola. They are renowned for their hospitality; and the person of their guest, or companion, is sacred. If the traveller possesses a friend among them, and has been plundered on the road, his property will be recovered, even if it has been taken by the king. They all speak Arabic exclusively, and many of them write and read it. ”

“ The interior Bedja live in the desert between the country of Aloa and the salt sea, and extend to the limits of the country of Habesh. Their people rear cattle and are pastors; their way of living, their ships, and army, are like those of the Hadharebe, but the latter are a more courageous and more religious people, while those of the interior all remain infidels. They adore the devil, and follow the example of their priests: every clan has its priest, who pitches a tent made of feathers, in the shape of a dome, wherein he practises his adorations ”

“ The Souakin traders with whom I afterwards travelled, shewed as little humanity, after we had passed Taka. The health of the slave, however, is always attended to; he is regularly fed, and receives his share of water on the road at the same time that his master drinks; and the youngest and most delicate of the females are permitted to ride upon camels, while all the others perform the journey on foot, whether it be to Egypt or to Souakin, as they had done from Darfour to Shendy. The hardiness of the young slaves is very extraordinary ”

“ Several Turks from Asia Minor or from European Turkey had within the last ten years endeavoured to engage in the trade, but the Daraou people had always found means to disgust them so much, as to make them abandon any second enterprize. When in addition to other motives for ill treating me, the traders saw in me every appearance of a poor man, that I cut wood, and cooked for myself, and filled my own water-skins, they thought me hardly upon an equality with the servants who are hired by the merchants, at the rate of ten dollars for the journey from Daraou to Guz, or Shendy, and back again. ”

“ The most important articles of the Sennaar trade at Shendy are camels and Dhourra, without the continual importation of which Shendy would soon be in danger of famine. The Dhourra caravans usually perform the journey by themselves, the merchants seldom joining them, but forming caravans of their own. They are more wealthy people than the Egyptian traders; and it is not rare to see a man possessing ten camel loads of Dammour, and a whole party of slaves. I was told the name of a Sennaar merchant who bought at Shendy the entire loads of an Egyptian caravan, consisting of thirty camels. ”

“ The Mek of Berber is satisfied with common civility, and assumes no distinction of rank; the slaves of his family, shew much more haughtiness than himself.
The people of Berber, can be very polite when they think proper. In receiving strangers and in offering them hospitality, they assume an air of goodness of heart, and patriarchal simplicity, which might dupe the most practised traveller, but consummate hypocrites as they are, they seldom deceive those, who have been at Berber before. ”

“ I believe that the non-arrival of the Fezzan caravan is to be ascribed to the encreased demands of black slaves on the coast of Barbary, to replace the white slaves so gloriously delivered by the English fleet, for I have understood that the intercourse between Tripoly and Fezzan has been very brisk for the last twelvemonth. The demand for slaves, however, is no less great in Egypt, where the plague has made for the last four years, great ravages among the black species, which it appears to attack in preference even to the white ”