Volume 1

An account of the manners and customs of the modern Egyptians, written in Egypt during the years 1833, -34, and -35, partly from notes made during a former visit to that country in the years 1825, -26, -27, and -28 / By Edward William Lane.

  • Edward William Lane
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An account of the manners and customs of the modern Egyptians, written in Egypt during the years 1833, -34, and -35, partly from notes made during a former visit to that country in the years 1825, -26, -27, and -28 / By Edward William Lane. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of several works on various sciences, who died, at a very advanced age, during the period of my former visit to ’ this country, used to relate the following anecdote. He had, said he, a favourite black cat, which always slept at the foot of his musquito-curtain. Once, at midnight, he heard a knocking at the door of his house; and his cat went, and opened the hanging shutter of his window, and called, ‘Who is there?” A voice replied, “I am such a one” (mentioning a strange name) “ the gin’nee : open the door.’ ‘The lock,” said the sheykh’s cat, “has had the name [of God] pronounced upon it *.”’— *'Then throw me down,” said the other, “two cakes of bread.”—“ The bread-basket,’? answered the cat at the window, “has had the name pronounced upon it.” “Well,” said the stranger, “at least give me a drink of water.” But he was answered that the water-jar had been secured in the same manner; and asked what he was to do, seeing that he was likely to die of hunger and thirst: the sheykh’s cat told him to go to the door of the next house; and went there also himself, and opened the door, and soon after returned. Next morn- ing, the sheykh deviated from a habit which he had constantly observed: he gave, to the cat, half of the fatee’reh upon which he breakfasted, instead of a little morsel, which he was wont to give; and afterwards said, ‘**O my cat, thou knowest that I am a poor man: bring * It is a custom of many foock/aha (or learned and devout persons), and some others, to say the bismid//ah (In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful) on locking a door, cover- ing bread, laying down their clothes at night, and on other occa- sions; and this, they believe, protects their property from genii. The thing over which the bismil/lah has been pronounced is termed moosem'mee (for moosem'ma) ’aley'h.