DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49270#0268
186
R. H. Blanchard
about a month after the summer solstice, after the Nile is well risen, but before the dams
of the irrigation canals have been cut. Each of the three moleds lasts eight days, from
one Friday till the afternoon of the next. The three moleds of Seyyid Ibrahim are so
timed as in each case to follow a week after one of the three moleds of Seyyid Ahmad -
an arrangement of great convenience to the hucksters, small merchants, and general riff-
raff who spend a good part of their time in trading and trafficking at various fairs.
Seyyid Ahmad’s three moleds, and those of his illustrious neighbor at Dasuk, are
fixed not in accordance with the shifting lunar calendar, but by the solar dates of the agri-
cultural year. This is very generally the case with the festivals of Egyptian saints, and
points, if not to the non-Moslem origin of such celebrations, at least to their having been
seriously influenced by popular ideas quite foreign to those set forth in the Kuran. In
the case of Seyyid Ahmad it may be said that the solar dates of his moleds are among
the least conspicuous of the non-Moslem features they present. The character of the
festivals at Tanta is that presented by many communal celebrations for the promotion
of animal and vegetable fertility among ancient peoples, and among modern primitives.
Anyone who chanced to see the Tanta moleds in the old days before the Government
suppressed their most obnoxious features, or who is intimately acquainted with the details
of their celebration today, will, I am sure, agree with me in this view. Of the purpose
of these moleds there is no doubt — the consumption of enormous quantities of parched
peas ‘because they come many in a pod’; the parading of thousands of prostitutes and
dancing girls, equipped with gigantic emblems of reproduction; and the class of ailments
which to a preeminent degree influence natives even from the Sudan to attend the moleds
— these points alone out of many are sufficient to indicate the object of the festivals.
Perhaps the most characteristic feature to be found in the Tanta festivals is one
which is — or until recently was — to be seen on the last day of the great moled. On
that day the Shinnawiyah dervishes led to the door of the saint’s mosque an ass carefully
trained for the great occasion. The ass of its own accord entered the mosque, walked
to the tomb, and there halted. There it stood while each of the throng crowding around
it strove to get close enough to pluck off from it some of its hair to use as a charm. In
the end the skin of the wretched animal was “as bare as the palm of a man’s hand’'.1’
The moled of Seyyid Ahmad is purely Egyptian in its origin. Another annual
festival of no less importance is not indigenous, but Islamic: I refer to the moled en-Nebi,
or “birthday of the Prophet”. This festival, although often described by travelers,
presents so many curious features that no account of it may be called complete, despite
the fact that the acute and learned Lane himself has left us a long description of it. Into
6 Ibid., p. 242,
R. H. Blanchard
about a month after the summer solstice, after the Nile is well risen, but before the dams
of the irrigation canals have been cut. Each of the three moleds lasts eight days, from
one Friday till the afternoon of the next. The three moleds of Seyyid Ibrahim are so
timed as in each case to follow a week after one of the three moleds of Seyyid Ahmad -
an arrangement of great convenience to the hucksters, small merchants, and general riff-
raff who spend a good part of their time in trading and trafficking at various fairs.
Seyyid Ahmad’s three moleds, and those of his illustrious neighbor at Dasuk, are
fixed not in accordance with the shifting lunar calendar, but by the solar dates of the agri-
cultural year. This is very generally the case with the festivals of Egyptian saints, and
points, if not to the non-Moslem origin of such celebrations, at least to their having been
seriously influenced by popular ideas quite foreign to those set forth in the Kuran. In
the case of Seyyid Ahmad it may be said that the solar dates of his moleds are among
the least conspicuous of the non-Moslem features they present. The character of the
festivals at Tanta is that presented by many communal celebrations for the promotion
of animal and vegetable fertility among ancient peoples, and among modern primitives.
Anyone who chanced to see the Tanta moleds in the old days before the Government
suppressed their most obnoxious features, or who is intimately acquainted with the details
of their celebration today, will, I am sure, agree with me in this view. Of the purpose
of these moleds there is no doubt — the consumption of enormous quantities of parched
peas ‘because they come many in a pod’; the parading of thousands of prostitutes and
dancing girls, equipped with gigantic emblems of reproduction; and the class of ailments
which to a preeminent degree influence natives even from the Sudan to attend the moleds
— these points alone out of many are sufficient to indicate the object of the festivals.
Perhaps the most characteristic feature to be found in the Tanta festivals is one
which is — or until recently was — to be seen on the last day of the great moled. On
that day the Shinnawiyah dervishes led to the door of the saint’s mosque an ass carefully
trained for the great occasion. The ass of its own accord entered the mosque, walked
to the tomb, and there halted. There it stood while each of the throng crowding around
it strove to get close enough to pluck off from it some of its hair to use as a charm. In
the end the skin of the wretched animal was “as bare as the palm of a man’s hand’'.1’
The moled of Seyyid Ahmad is purely Egyptian in its origin. Another annual
festival of no less importance is not indigenous, but Islamic: I refer to the moled en-Nebi,
or “birthday of the Prophet”. This festival, although often described by travelers,
presents so many curious features that no account of it may be called complete, despite
the fact that the acute and learned Lane himself has left us a long description of it. Into
6 Ibid., p. 242,