CHAPTER X.

COMPARATIVE ANTHROPOLOGY (ETHNOLOGY) OF ZANZIBAR. THE ARABS.

‘Les Arabes ne sont maintenant, dans l’Afrique Orientale, que des parasites, comme l’est tout peuple exclusivement commerçant.’—M. GUILLAIN, vol. ii. part ii. chap. ii. p. 151.

The Arabs upon the Island may amount to a total of 5000,[97] all Omans; and they are divided, as in their fatherland, into two great Kabilah or tribes, the Hináwi and the Gháfiri.

When Malik bin Fakhm, of the Benu Hunayfah tribe, marched from his own country, Nejd, to recover Oman from the Persians under Dara, son of Bahman, son of Isfandiyar, an event popularly dated about the end of our 1st century, he was joined by some 100 Yemeni warriors who were called Benu Yemin, sons of the right hand, because they dwelt to the south or on the right hand of the Ka’abah. Their migration is attributed to the bursting of the dyke of Arim, near Mareb, the Mariaba of Ptolemy, which is the Babel-tower of Arabian history in the Days of Ignorance. The learned Dr Wetzstein (p. 104, Reisebericht über Hauran, &c. Berlin, 1860) believes this event to have taken place about the beginning of our era; most authors, however, place it at the end of the 1st or the beginning of our 2nd century. It was probably the over-populating of the land which sent forth the two great Sabæan tribes of Azud and Himyar to Bahrayn and N. Eastern Arabia; they united, and were known as the Tanukh or Confederates. The former, also called from a chief ‘Nasri,’ settled upon the Euphrates, and founded the East Tanukh kingdom, whose capital was afterwards Hira. The Himyar or Kudai originated, in the Hauran and the Belka, the West Tanukh kingdom, also termed from a chief ‘Salih.’ These men, converted to Christianity, were probably the builders of the ‘Giant cities’ of Bashan, mere provincial towns of the Greco-Roman Empire. Ta’alab (Thalaba), one of the sons of Malik bin Fakhm, is mentioned as the first ruler of East Tanukh. The extinct family of the Druze Tanukhs claimed descent from the western kingdom.

The Ya’rubah considered themselves to be of the Arab el Aribah (Joctanites), through their ancestor Yarub el Azud (يعرب الازد) bin Faligh (Peleg, the brother of Kahtán or Joctan), bin Abir (Eber), bin Salih, bin Arfakhshad, bin Sham (Shem), and to the present day their descendants boast of this ancient lineage. Malik bin Fakhm routed 40,000 horsemen supported by elephants, slew Mirzban (the Marz-ban or warden of the Marches) the Satrap-lieutenant of the King of Kings, whose head- quarters were at Sohar, and conquered the country from Sharjah to the Ra’as el Hadd (Rasalgat), the eastern Land’s-end of the Arabian shore. Reinforced by fresh drafts of the Benu Yemin, he showed his gratitude by incorporating them with his own tribe. The word Hináwi, meaning a patrician or ‘one having a founder,’ arose from Malik bin Fakhm, proposing himself as the Hanu (هنو) or originator of the emigrants: certain Arabs derive it from Hiná, a fanciful ancestor, and even call themselves Benu Hiná. According to some authorities, Oman took its name from a place in the neighbourhood of the dyke of Mareb; others derive it from a valley which, like the Wady el Arab, gave its name to the whole country; the Arab geographers make it the ancient term for Sohar, and the classical geographer holds that the Ommanum Emporium of Ptolemy was applied to Maskat.

When Malik bin Fakhm had been slain by his son Selima, and another son, Zayd, ruled Oman in his stead, a thousand of the Benu Nezar came to him from the town of Ubar, and were settled upon a tract of low open ground (غفير), whence they took the name of Gháfiri. These immigrants were Arab el Musta’arabah, which, in Omanic usage, denotes the insititious or Ismailitic clans derived from Adnan, son of Ishmael; and the gift of land had made them clients of Zayd and of his tribe, the Hináwi. Intermarriage, however, soon amalgamated the races. When El Islam brought the sword to mankind, and when the rival prophet Musaylimah, generally known as the Liar, paved the way for the Karmati (Carmathians) and for a copious crop of heresies, the Gháfiri, cleaving to the faith of Meccah, were preferred by the Caliph Abubekr to their former patrons, for the chieftainship of Oman. In his turn, the Caliph Ali restored precedence to the Hináwi who had espoused his cause. Hence an inveterate feud, a flame of wrath, which rivers of blood have not quenched. Throughout Oman the rival tribes still occupy separate quarters; they will not connect themselves by marriage, and they seldom meet without a ‘faction fight.’ Even at Zanzibar, where the climate has softened them, they rarely preserve that decency of hate which is due by Arabs of noble strain to hereditary and natural enemies.

Here the principal clan of the Hináwi tribe is the Hárisí (plural Hurs), under Abdullah bin Salím and Husayn bin Mahommed: once flourishing in Oman, it now barely numbers 15,000 sabres, and in the Island it may amount to 300, mostly merchants and wealthy planters. The other divisions are the Bú (or Ayyál) Sa’íd; the ruling race which forms one large family—that of the Sayyid. There are also about a dozen of the Benu Lamk, whose preponderance in Oman was broken down by the Yu’rabi Imams. The minor sections of the Hináwi are the Benu Yas of Sur; the Benu Menasir near Sharjah; the Benu Ali; the Benu Baktashi; the Benu Uhaybi; the Benu el Hijri; the Benu Kalban; the Benu el Abri; and the Benu bu Hasan, generally pronounced Bohsan. A few of the Benu Dafri or Dafil at times visit the Island: they are professional carriers, and therefore they have no blood feuds with other tribes. Besides, these are Ammari, Adwani, Kuruni, Khuzuri, Saláhameh, and Nayyáyareh; most of them frequent Zanzibar during the trading season.

The pure Gháfiri stock is still, they say, to be found in Nejd. Throughout Oman they are a wild unruly race, hostile to strangers, and inclined to Wahhabi-ism. They possess at several places little castles armed with guns which are mere robbers’ dens; near Mina the Chief Musalim refused allegiance to Sayyid Saíd, and south of the Jebel el Akhzar, or ‘Green Mountain,’ they made themselves the terror of the country-side about Buraymah. The worst of the Gháfiri are the Kawásim pirates (the Anglo-Arabic ‘Jowasmees’) of Ras el Khaymah and our old enemies the Benu bu Ali of Ra’as el Hadd. To them also belong the Shaksi or Benu Ruwayhah, popularly called Ahl Rustak, from the settlement founded by the Persian Anushirawán on the eastern slope of Jebel el Akhzar, the mountainous district of Oman. It is about 70 miles west of Maskat, which, now the capital, began life as its harbour. The present representative of the Rustak chiefs, Sayyid Kays bin Azan, receives an annual indemnification of $3000 from Sayyid Saíd, who had dispossessed him of Sohar and its dependencies. Súr also belongs to the Gháfiri, of whom, in these places, little good is spoken; they are said to be at once cruel and cowardly, to fear no shame, and to respect no oath. We shall soon be compelled to chastise these petty sea-thieves and kidnappers.

At Zanzibar the Gháfiri is represented chiefly by the Masakirah or Maskari clan, which under its chief, Sayf bin Khalfan, may number 2000 sabres. The Mazru’i of Mombasah, so well known in Sawahil history, were also Gháfiri: they are now scattered about Gasi and other small Bandars, retaining nothing of their political consequence. The Yu’rabi clan, which gave to Oman its old patriotic Imams, is of scant account. The other sections, who are for the most part visitors during the commercial season, comprise the Jenabah, the Bímáni, the Benu Katúb, the Benu bu Ali, and the Benu Riyám of Nezwah in the Jebel el Akhzar.

The Arab holds, and, according to old Moslem travellers, has long held in these regions the position of an Osmanli in Arabia; he is a ‘superior person.’ As the Omani chiefs, however, like the Sherifs of El Hejaz, did not disdain servile concubines, many of their issue are negroids: of these hybrids some are exceedingly fair, showing African pollution only by tufty and wiry hair, whilst others, ‘falling upon their mothers,’ as the native phrase is, have been refused inheritance at Maskat, and have narrowly escaped the slave-market. The grandsons of purest Arabs who have settled in Africa, though there has been no mixture of blood, already show important physical modifications worked by the ‘mixture of air,’ as the Portuguese phrase is. The skin is fair, but yellow-tinted by over-development of gall; whilst the nose is high, the lips are loose, everted, or otherwise ill-formed; and the beard, rarely of the amplest, shrinks, under the hot-house air, to four straggling tufts upon the rami of the jaws and the condyles of the chin. Whilst the extremities preserve the fineness of Arab blood, the body is weak and effeminate; and the degenerate aspect is accompanied by the no less degraded mind, morals, and manners of the coast-people. The nervous or nervoso-bilious temperament of the Sons of the Desert here runs into two extremes: many Arabs are bilious-lymphatic, like Banyans; a few, lapsing into the extreme of leanness, are fair specimens of the ‘Living Skeleton.’ This has been remarked even of Omanis born and bred upon the Island. Those who incline to the nervous diathesis have weakly drooping occiputs and narrow skull-bases, arguing a deficiency of physical force, and they exaggerate the flat-sided unconstructive Arab skull—here an Indian may almost always be recognized by the comparative roundness of his calvaria. And as the Zanzibar Arab is mostly of burgher race in his own land, the forehead rarely displays that high development of the perceptive organs which characterizes the Bedawin.

The Arab noble is still, like those of Meccah in Mohammed’s day, a merchant, and here wealth has done much to degenerate the breed, climate more, and slavery most. The ‘Californian fever’—indolence—becomes endemic in the second generation, rendering the race hopeless, whilst industry is supplied by the gross, transparent cunning of the Wasawahili and of the African generally. Honesty is all but unknown; several European merchants will not have an Arab’s name in their hooks. A Nakhodá (Captain, Maskat R.N.) in the Prince’s service, commissioned to bring a watch or other valuables from Bombay, will delay to deliver it until threatened with the bakur, and the terrors of being blown from a gun do not defend the ruler from the most shallow and impudent frauds. Like their kinsmen of Oman, they despise truth, without versatility enough to employ it when required, and few rise to the height of Bacon’s model, ‘who hath openness in fame and opinion, secrecy in habit, dissimulation in reasonable use, and a power to feign, if there he no remedy.’ Haughty in the highest degree, and boasting descent from the kings of Yemen, they hold themselves to be the salt of the earth. Man’s nature everywhere objects to restraint, these people cannot endure it: nothing afflicts them so much as the necessity of regular occupation, as the recurrence of ‘duty,’ as the weight of any subject upon the mind. Constant only in procrastination, as they are hebetous in body so they are mentally torpid and apparently incapable of active exertion, especially of immediate action. Like their congeners of Maskat and Sur, they have distinguished themselves on all occasions when opposed to any but Arabs, by excessive poltroonery. They seldom mix with strangers, for whom they have generally an aversion, and they will refuse a dollar to a wretch who has changed his faith to save his life. They are never worse than in youth, when excessive polygamy and debauchery have enslaved them: as with the Arabs of the Peninsula, a people of violent and unruly passions, and seldom ripe for use till their beards are grey, these Zanzabaris improve by age, and body and mind seem to grow better, to a certain point, as they grow old.

To this sweeping evil account there are of course exceptions. I have rarely met with a more honest, trustworthy man than Saíd bin Salim, the half-caste Arab, who was sent with us as Ra’as Kafilah, or guide. Such hitherto has been his character; but man varies in these regions: he may grievously disappoint me in the end.[98]

The poorer Arabs who flock to Zanzibar during the season are Hazramis, and they work and live hard as the Hammals of Stamboul. These men club and mess together in gangs under an Akidah (head man), who supplies them with rice, ghi, and scones, and who keeps the accounts so skilfully, that the labourer receives annually about $35, though he may gain four times that sum. Pauper Arabs settled upon the Island refuse ‘nigger work,’ the West Indian synonym for manual labour, and, as a rule, the Mashamba or plantations supply them, like Irish estates of old, with everything but money. At first many were ruined by the abolition of slave export: at present most of them confess that the measure has added materially to the development and the prosperity of the Island. There are now Arab merchants who own 80,000 clove-trees, $100,000 floating capital, a ship or two, and from 1000 to 2000 slaves.

The results of wealth and general aisance have been luxury and unbridled licentiousness. As usual in damp-hot climates, for instance, Sind, Egypt, the lowlands of Syria, Mazenderan, Malabar, and California, the sexual requirements of the passive exceed those of the active sex; and the usual result is a dissolute social state, contrasting with mountain countries, dry-cold or damp-cold, where the conditions are either equally balanced or are reversed. Arab women have been described as respectable in the Island, because, fearing scandal and its consequences, they deny themselves to Europeans. Yet many of them prefer Banyans to those of the True Faith, whilst the warmest passions abandon themselves to African slaves:[99] these dark men are such pearls in beauteous ladies’ eyes, and their fascinations at Zanzibar are so great, that a respectable Hindostani Moslem will not trust his daughter to live there, even in her husband’s house. A corresponding perversion and brutality of taste make the men neglect their wives for negresses; the same has been remarked of our countrymen in Guiana and the West Indies, and it notably prevails in the Brazil, where the negress and the Mulatta are preferred to the Creole. Considering the effect of the African skin when excited by joy, rage, fear, or other mental emotion, of course a cogent reason for the preference exists.

Public prostitutes are here few, and the profession ranks low where the classes upon which it depends can always afford to gratify their propensities in the slave-market. I have alluded to the Wasawahili women of the Madagascar Quarter; a few also live scattered about the town, but all are equally undesirable—there is not a pretty face amongst them. The honorarium varies from $0.25 to $1, and the proceeds are expended upon gaudy dresses and paltry ornaments. Retired Corinthians who have not prospered, live by fishing upon the sands, or make rude pottery at Changani Point: those who can afford it buy a slave or two, and give the rest of their days to farming. Girls who work for hire are always procurable, but such amours are likely to end badly: the same may be said of the prostitutes; consequently most white residents keep Abyssinian or Galla concubines. The ‘Liwát’ is here considered a mere peccadillo: the late Sayyid, however, denied Moslem burial to a nephew who built the British Consular residence. This ‘Maf’úl’ died in agony after the bungling performance of an operation which his debaucheries rendered necessary, and the body was cast naked into the sea.

Both sexes and all ages delight in drinking. The rich use bad but expensive French and American liqueurs, gin, brandy, and rum, from Marseille, India, and the Mauritius. Some eat opium, others prefer Bhang in its several forms: the material is imported from Bombay and Cutch. We found it near the continental seaboard, and therefore the Indian shrub is also probably grown upon the Island. A distillation, I have said, is made from the Cashew-nut and from palm-wine; this alcohol is called Zerámbo, and a free-born Arab is disgraced by touching it; preserved in foul old pots, it has the effect of poison; a drunken sailor will fall down insensible, breathe with stertorous loudness, and gradually pass from insensibility to death. Tembo or toddy is of two kinds—Támú, the sweet and unintoxicating, and Khálí, sour or fermented. The liquor is drawn from the trees by the Wasawahili and the slaves insular and continental. The Pombe, like the Buzah of Egypt and Berberia, Adel, and Abyssinia, is a simple hopless beer, made from maize or holcus. Drunkenness amongst the poor is very properly punished only when it leads to crime. It is singular that the late Sayyid, who never touched an intoxicating drink, should have been so tender to an offence with which Moslems usually deal so barbarously.

The Arab’s head-dress is a Kummeh or Kofiyyah (red fez), a Surat calotte (Alfiyyah), or a white skull-cap worn under a turban (Kilemba) of Oman silk and cotton religiously mixed. Usually it is of fine blue and white cotton check, embroidered and fringed with a broad red border, with the ends hanging in unequal lengths over one shoulder. The coiffure is highly picturesque. The ruling family and grandees, however, have modified its vulgar folds, wearing it peaked in front, and somewhat resembling a tiara. The essential body-clothing and the succedaneum for trowsers is an Izar (Nguo ya ku chini), or loin-cloth tucked in at the waist, 6 to 7 feet long by 2 to 3 broad. The colours are brick-dust and white or blue and white, with a silk border striped red, black, and yellow. The very poor wear a dirty bit of cotton girdled by a Hakab or Kundávi, a rope of plaited thongs; the rich prefer a fine embroidered stuff from Oman, supported at the waist by a silver chain. None but the western Arabs admit the innovation of drawers (Suruwali). The ‘Jama’,’ or upper garment, is a collarless coat of the best broadcloth, leek- green or some tender colour being preferred. It is secured over the left breast[100] by a silken loop, and the straight wide sleeves are gaily lined. The Kizbáo is a kind of waistcoat, covering only the bust: some wear it with sleeves, others without. The Dishdasheh (in Kisawahili Khanzu), a narrow-sleeved shirt, buttoned at the throat and extending to mid-shin, is made of calico (baftah), American drill, and other stuffs called Doriyah, Tarabuzun, and Jamdani. Sailors are known by Khuzerangí, a coarse cotton, stained dingy red-yellow with henna or pomegranate rind, and rank with Wars (bastard saffron) and sharks’ oil. Respectable men guard the stomach with a ‘Hizám,’ generally a Cashmere or Bombay shawl; others wear sashes of the dust-coloured raw silk manufactured in Oman. The outer garment for chillv weather is the long, tight-sleeved Persian Jubbeh, Jokhah, or Caftan, of European broadcloth. The Na’alayn, Viatu, or sandals of peculiar shape, made at Zanzibar, have already been described. Most men shave their heads, and the Shafeis trim or entirely remove the moustaches. The palms are reddened with henna, which is either brought from El Hejaz or gathered in the plantations. The only ring is a plain cornelian seal, and the sole other ornament is a talisman (Hirz in Kisawahili Hirízi). The eyes are blackened with Kohl or antimony of El Sham—here not Syria, but the region about Meccah—and the mouth, crimsoned by betel, looks as if a tooth had just been knocked out.

None but women and slaves leave the house unarmed. The lowest Arab sticks an old dagger in his belt, handles a rusty spear, or shoulders a cheap firelock. Gulf men are generally known by their round targes (Tursi) made of carved and spangled rhinoceros or addax hide, toys with high central umbo, and at the utmost a foot in diameter; others have fish-skin shields, and the Baloch affect the Cutch ‘Dhal,’ or buckler. The sword is of three forms, of which the Sayf Faranji (Frankish sword, in Kisawahili Upanga) has long been the favourite. It is a straight, broad, two-edged, guardless, double-handed weapon, about 4 ft 3 in. long, sheathed in a scabbard of red morocco: the thin and well-worn blade vibrates in the grip, and by the side of its razor-like keenness our weapons resemble iron bars. The price varies from $10 to $100, and, as at modern Damascus, cheap German imitations abound. The usual handle is wood bound with thread like plaits of black leather and silver wire forming patterns; the pommel is an iron knob, and the general aspect of the article suggests that it is derived from the Crusading ages. The ‘Kittáreh’ is a curved European sabre: the young princes and those about the coast carry in hand expensive specimens with ivory hilts and gold mountings. Thirdly, the ‘Imani,’ as they call it, is a short straight blade made in Europe, Oman, or Hazramaut. The Arab knows but two cuts,— one the ‘Kalam,’ across the ankles, and the other our No. 7, directed at the head or preferably at the shoulder: the former is evaded by leaping or breaking ground, the latter is parried with the shield. Jamhiyahs, Khanjars, or daggers, worn strapped and buckled round the waist, are curved till the point forms almost a right angle with the hilt. It is a silly construction; but anything will serve to stab the enemy’s back above the shoulders. The dudgeon of black or white rhinoceros or buffalo horn is adorned with a profusion of filagree-work, and silver or gold knobs; the blade, sharp on both sides, is nearly three inches broad at the base. The sheath (’Alá) is similarly ornamented upon a ground of leather, cloth, or brocade, dark or scarlet, with the usual metal rings and ‘fixings.’ The Khanjar often costs $200, and a handsome dagger is a sign of rank.

Not having seen at home the higher classes of Arab women, who are said to be sometimes remarkably handsome, I can describe them only from hearsay. In the house they wear tight Mezár, Sarwál, or pantaloons of Oman silk or cotton fastened at the waist with ric