Part 15 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: 77.--A LADY OF CAIRO.]
Almas, or Egyptian dancing-girls, are now-a-days scarcely more than a name in the country. It is difficult to find even one or two in Cairo.
The last specimens are restricted to the town of Esneh.
The travellers from whom we have taken the above details, visited the town of Esneh, and there saw the dancing-girls. They give the following sketch of them.
”We were conducted into a building of forbidding aspect. The dancing-girls were grouped together in the midst of the apartment. They were all plain enough in the face, but young and well made. The hope of large gains had induced them to take extra pains with their dress. I still see their low-necked vests, their wide silk pantaloons, fastened above the hips with dazzling waistbands; their inner tunic of gauze or flesh-coloured muslin; some with naked feet, others with long red or yellow Turkish slippers. Most of them wore necklaces and bracelets, and small coins hanging over their foreheads; whilst at the back of their heads hung a small silk handkerchief, carelessly thrown on. The dance began with a series of att.i.tudes, beseeching and graceful, then rapidly grew animated, till it expressed a pitch of deep pa.s.sion. Their bosoms remained immovable, while they moved the rest of their bodies as if in a frenzy. A distribution of olives, of liqueurs, and a shower of small coins, won us a thousand blessings, and brought our evening to a dignified close. The almas do not meet every day with such a windfall; and if they dance during the winter, they do not sing in the summer. The population amidst which they live cannot afford to remunerate their talents. Well versed in poses plastiques, but incapable of all work, they are reduced to all sorts of expedients, and to loans, which make them the slaves of the usurers. Their time is spent in smoking, in drinking aquavitae, and in consuming the omnipresent coffee. The miseries of such an existence daily decrease the number of almas, who, in the time of the Mamelukes, were to be found everywhere in Egypt. Esneh is their last refuge, and was, no doubt, their birthplace.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: 78.--ALMA OR DANCING-GIRL.]
THE SEMITIC FAMILY.
We have already said that the races who composed the Aramean branch kindled in Asia, at an early period in history, the torch of civilization. This observation is more particularly applicable to the nations of the Semitic family, of whom we are now going to speak. It is from this family, in fact, that sprang the nations so well known in ancient history, under the name of a.s.syrians, Hebrews, Phnicians and Carthaginians. Conquered by other races, the a.s.syrians, the Hebrews, the Phnicians, and the Carthaginians have successively disappeared and are now almost entirely replaced by the Arabs.
We unite to the Semitic family the Arabs, the Jews, and the Syrians.
_The Arabs._--The Arabs const.i.tute the princ.i.p.al population of modern Arabia; they also form a great part of the inhabitants of Egypt, Nubia, Barbary, and Sahara. They extend into Persia, and even into Hindostan.
Some of the Arabs are shepherds (Bedouins), others cultivate the soil; the former are nomadic, the latter sedentary. The Bedouins, children of the desert, perpetual wanderers, active and very temperate, are smaller and of a more slender appearance than the others, and support with ease the fatigues and privations of their mode of life. The agricultural Arabs, or _fehles_, are taller and more robust. The former have a wild and suspicious cast of countenance. The characteristics of the Arab race are, a long face, with a high-shaped head; an aquiline nose, nearly in a line with the forehead; a retreating and small mouth; even teeth; the eye not at all deep set, in spite of the want of prominence of the brow; graceful figures, formed by the small volume of fatty matter and cellular tissue, and by the presence of powerful but not largely developed muscle; a keen wit; a lively intelligence; and a deep and persevering mould of character. These characteristics show that they possess a remarkable superiority over other races, and Baron Larrey has found fresh evidence of this superiority in the shape of their head, in the convolutions of their brain, in the consistency of their nervous tissue, in the appearance of their muscular fibre and their bony structure, and in the regularity and perfect development of their heart and arterial system.
We see therefore that the Arab type is really an admirable one. This type, consistent and well defined as a whole, has, however, undergone considerable modifications under the influence of divers causes. The colour of their skin varies a good deal: their complexion is sometimes as white as that of Europeans of the most northern countries. In Yemen, Arab women have been noticed whose complexion was a deep yellow. In that portion of the valley of the Nile contiguous to Nubia, the Arabs are black. In this same valley of the Nile, above Dengola, the _Shegya_ Arabs are jet black, a bright clear black, a colour which the English traveller Waddington thought the most beautiful that could be chosen for a human creature.
”These men,” says Waddington, ”entirely differ from negroes in the brilliancy of their colour, in the quality of their hair, in the regularity of their features, in the gentle expression of their limpid eyes, and by the softness of their skin, which in this respect is not at all inferior to that of Europeans.”
Amongst the Arabs who dwell in more temperate climates, hair more or less fair, and blue or grey eyes have been observed. As a contrast, in the Libyan desert, tribes have been met with whose hair was woolly and nearly a.n.a.logous to that of negroes. Taken altogether, the nomadic Arabs, who have faithfully adhered for many centuries to the same mode of life, exhibit, in spite of varying climates, the original mould of an exceptional beauty.
Fig. 79 shows a tent of nomadic Arabs.
_The Jews._--Among the lesser nations with an affinity to the Semitic family, there is one remarkable by its historical importance, and by the manner in which it has managed to preserve its original type during the eighteen centuries in which it has been scattered all over the whole world: we mean the Jews or Israelites.[6]
[6] French politeness has made between these two words a distinction which is too odd to allow us to pa.s.s it over. In France, a rich Jew is called an _Israelite_, a poor Israelite is called a _Jew_.
The Messrs. Rothschild are _Israelitish_ bankers; but if by some impossibility they lost their millions and went to live at Frankfort, in the Jew's quarter, in the old family house, which is still there, and which we have seen, they would become, like their ancestors, _Jewish_ traders.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 79.--WANDERING ARABS.]
The Jews have preserved much of their own peculiar physiognomy. They are distinguished from the nations among whom they are dispersed, by peculiar features easily recognized in many paintings of the great masters. Still they have ended by adopting more or less the characteristics of the nations with whom they have long resided. Under the sole influence of external circ.u.mstances and mode of life, the medley of races amongst which they have existed has little by little altered their national type. In the northern parts of Europe the Jews have a white skin, blue eyes, and fair hair. In some portions of Germany many are to be seen with red beards; in Portugal they are tawny-coloured. In those districts of India where they have been long settled, in Cochin for instance, on the Malabar coast, they are black, and resemble the natives so exactly in complexion that it is often difficult to distinguish them from the Hindoos.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 80.--JEW OF BUCHAREST.]
Fig. 80 represents a Jew of Bucharest.
_Syrians._--The ancient Syrians have, as a rule, become absorbed in the races who have conquered them; their language, however, is still spoken by the Christian population of Mesopotamia and Chaldea, the Sourianis and the Yakoubis or Chaldeans.
Beyrout, at the foot of the mountains of Liba.n.u.s (fig. 81), is a town and port which is the commercial centre of all Syria. Thither Liba.n.u.s sends its wine and its silks; Yemen, its coffee; Haman, its corn; Djebal and Lattakiah, their pale-coloured tobaccos; Palmyra, its horses; Damascus, its arms; Bagdad, its costly stuffs; and all Europe, the countless productions of its industry.