48o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



favorable, the report is sent out, and in the course of twenty-three 

 days thousands of Yezidees, with their wives and children, will 

 have collected at Sheik Adi, bringing with them provision of a 

 peculiar cake, for no kind of food must be prepared there during 

 the pilgrimage. On the twenty-third day, the great Sheik comes 

 out from the cave, takes his seat upon a stone, and salutes the 

 people. Every person, thirty years of age and over, must bring 

 an offering from his live-stock, according to his means. The 

 Meshaich now come out of the cave and join the Emir on a high 

 tribune, where, with the priests of the other orders, they form the 

 Council of the Forty. An ox is stewed in a big kettle from morn- 

 ing till sundown, when at the call of the Emir a number of young 

 men come up, and, plunging their bared arms into the hot mess, 

 accompanied by ceremonial music, pull out the pieces of meat and 

 distribute them among the Emir and the Council. The skin and 

 flesh of the young men's arms may peel off to the bone, but those of 

 them who die are at once enrolled among the saints ; and in their 

 honor the hunters of Sindiar and Chartie climb to the top of the 

 mountain and loudly clash their shields together, or, more re- 

 cently, fire volleys of musketry. This ceremony is called kabaah. 

 Every one of the attendant faithful receives a share of the broth, 

 making an offering equivalent to about a sixpence in return. 

 After three days of the festival, the faithful are all baptized in 

 the waters of the holy Semsen — a stream which issues from a 

 cave into a broad, stone-lined basin — and after them the women 

 and girls receive a dip. The water for drinking is taken from a 

 pond into which the water flows from out of this basin. None 

 can be drawn from the upper part of the source. Three of the holy 

 images are ceremonially dipped in the brook, carefully dressed, 

 and arranged around the Sanjak; each of the faithful takes a 

 little of the sacred earth and presents his offering, and the festival 

 is ended. 



The religious ceremony of marriage consists in the couple 

 going before the Sheik and eating a piece of bread which he has 

 broken in two. A feast is given afterward, at which the attend- 

 ants contribute toward a gift to the Myr, in commutation of his 

 sovereign rights. Weddings are not celebrated in April, or on 

 Wednesdays and Fridays. The relatives of a widow have a right 

 to give her in marriage, whether she be willing or not, to the 

 sixth time, after which she is at liberty ; but, if she will pay the 

 relatives as much as the new suitor offers, she discharges the 

 account, and they have no further control over her. The mar- 

 riage bond is dissoluble by death, by removal, by putting the wife 

 away on account of transgression, and, without cause, after eighty 

 years of it. 



The priests claim the power to heal diseases through the inter- 



