513 



of Chicago, was able to construct from the present religious customs 

 of the Bedawin in Syria, Palestine, and the Sinai Peninsula the 

 primitive rites of Semitic religion in a book * which fully met the 

 approbation of learned circles on both sides of the ocean. Further 

 researches following the way he took will, no doubt, add to his accu- 

 mulation of evidence. 



Some remains of ancient libation customs have, for instance, been 

 preserved in a communication drawn from the book of the late 

 Egyptian Minister 'AH Bdshd Mubdrak, which is most ample in this 

 respect. 2 In the neighborhood of Kastal, in the peninsula of Sinai, 

 is the tomb of a Shaikh Marzuk al-Kifafi, lying on the Egyptian pil- 

 grims' road. When passing this grave, pilgrims are wont to break 

 glasses filled with rosewater, prepared beforehand in Cairo for that 

 purpose, and to pour the odorous contents over the grave-hill of the 

 quite unknown shaikh. The ancient Semitic ceremony of libation is 

 here extended to an unknown personage transformed into an Islamic 

 saint. 



The festival-cycle of universal Islam, with its movable lunary cal- 

 endar, has no connection at all with the life of nature. The feasts 

 are not spring or autumn feasts; they are bound to days in the 

 calendar which are subject to migration through all seasons. This 

 want is supplied in the popular religious exercises by adopting old 

 pre-Islamic feasts and giving them an Islamic stamp. The Nile, 

 "God's gift," plays, of course, no role in the canonical books of 

 Islam. But in the popular religious customs of Egyptian Islam 

 nearly the same reverence is rendered to it as in the land of the pa- 

 gan Pharaohs, with the difference that everything is turned Islamic 

 and interpreted in that sense. And likewise in the practice of religious 

 customs in Islamic Egypt, as well as in many other countries, pre- 

 Islamic customs and pagan religious conceptions have been adapted 

 and blended with Islamic sense, apart from the official worship, in dif- 

 ferent circles. The pagan worship of trees, stones, wells, and demons, 

 has been preserved; so within the official religious worship numerous 

 superstitious customs of the national pre-Islamic traditions have 

 survived. There is no department in religious life where such tradi- 

 tions present themselves in a more original way than the rites of 

 rogation for rain (istiskd), which have shown themselves to be real 

 depositories of pagan witchcraft. 



You will not be astonished at the toleration of much pagan cus- 

 tom within official Islam, if you consider that in the holiest spot of 

 Islam, "God's House" in Mekka, the fetishism exercised at it 



1 Primitive Semitic Religion of To-day : a Record of Researches, Discoveries, and 

 Studies in Syria, Palestine, and the Sinaitic Peninsula. (New York, 1902.) German 

 translation: Ursemitische Religion im Volksleben des heutigen Orients, with a 

 Preface by Professor Graf W. Baudissin (Leipzig, 1903). 



2 Al-Khitat al-djadida. Cairo, 1304-06 (1886-88), 20 volumes. Cf. xm, p. 20. 



