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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    ing to his own assertion, as recorded by his son-in-law » the Ima’m ’Alee): will, if placed in a house, and fre- quently read from beginning to end, keep away every misfortune, pestilence and all diseases, infirmity, the envious eye, enchantment, burning, ruin, anxiety, grief, and trouble. After repeating each of these names, the Moos’lim adds, “ God favour and preserve him !”— Similar virtues are ascribed to a charm composed of the names of the As-hha’b el-Kahf (or Companions of the Cave, also called the Seven Sleepers), together with the name of their dog*. These names are sometimes en- craved on the round tray of tinned copper which, placed on a stool, forms the table for dinner, supper, &c.— Another charm, supposed to have similar efficacy, is composed of the names of those paltry articles of pro- perty which the Prophet left at his decease. These relics | were two sel/hhahs (or rosaries), his moos’ hhaf (in unarranged fragments), his mook’-hhoolah (or the vessel in which he kept the black powder with which he painted the edges of his eyelids), two segga'dehs (or prayer-carpets), a hand-mill, a staff, a tooth-stick, a suit of clothes {, the ewer which he used in ablution, a pair of sandals, a boor’deh (or a kind of woollen covering §), * These, it is said, were Christian youths of Ephesus, who took refuge from the persecution of the emperor Decius in a cave, and slept there, guarded by their dog, for the space of 300 [solar] or 309 [lunar] years. (See the Ckoor-a’n, chap. xviii.) t Called mookhallafa't en-neb/ee. + A shirt which is said to have been worn by the Prophet { is peas in the mosque of El-Ghoo’ree, in Cairo, It is wrapped in a Kashmee’r shawl; and not shown to any but persons of very high rank. § The boor’dehk, which is worn by some of the peasants in Egypt, is an oblong piece of thick woollen stuff, resembling the