Oriental customs: or an illustration of the sacred Scriptures, by an explanatory application of the customs and manners of the Eastern nations, and especially the Jews. Therein alluded to, together with observations on many difficult and obscure texts, collected from the most celebrated travellers, and the most eminent critics / by Samuel Burder.
- Samuel Burder
- Date:
- 1802
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Oriental customs: or an illustration of the sacred Scriptures, by an explanatory application of the customs and manners of the Eastern nations, and especially the Jews. Therein alluded to, together with observations on many difficult and obscure texts, collected from the most celebrated travellers, and the most eminent critics / by Samuel Burder. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![]sj0 35,—]. 10. They mourned, with a great and veiy sore lament at ion.'] This is exactly the genius of the people of Asia, especially of the women. Their sentiments of joy or grief are properly transports, and their transports are ungoverned, excessive, and outrageous. When any one returns from a long journey, or dies, his family burst into cries that may be heard twenty doors off; and this is renewed at different times, and continues many days, according to the vigour of the passion. Especially are these cries long in the case of death, and frightful, for their mourning is right down despair, and an image of hell. I was lodged, in the year 1676, at Ispahan, near the royal square; the mistress of the next house to mine died at that time; the moment she ex- pired, all the family, to the number of twenty five or thirty people, set up such a furious cry, that I was quite startled, and was above two hours before I could recover myself. These cries continue a long time, then cease all at once; they begin again as suddenly, at day break, and in concert. It is this suddenness which is so ter- rifying, together with a greater shrillness and loudness than one would easily imagine. This enraged kind of mourning continued forty days, not equally violent, but with diminution from day to day. The longest and most violent acts were when they washed the body, when they perfumed it, when they carried it out to be inter- red, at making the inventory, and when they divided the effects. You are not to suppose that those, who were ready to split their throats with crying out, wept as much; the greatest part of them did not shed a single tear through the whole tragedy. Chardin inllarmer, vol. ii. p. 136. No. 36.—1. 26. So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old, and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin m Egypt.'] When Joseph died he was not only](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22040900_0055.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
