Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 2 (of 6)
General
Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 2 (of 6)
Fairy tales; Tales -- Arab countries
not!” When the ordeal is over, he exclaims “Allaho Akbar!” and
attempts to walk towards the tents soon falling for pain and nervous
exhaustion, but the more steps he takes the more applause he gains. He
is dieted with camel’s milk, the wound is treated with salt and
turmeric, and the chances in his favour are about ten to one. No
body-pile or pecten ever grows upon the excoriated part which
preserves through life a livid ashen hue. Whilst Mohammed Ali Pasha
occupied the province he forbade “scarification” under pain of
impalement, but it was resumed the moment he left Al-Asir. In Africa
not only is circumcision indigenous, the operation varies more or less
in the different tribes. In Dahome it is termed Addagwibi, and is
performed between the twelfth and twentieth year. The rough operation
is made peculiar by a double cut above and below; the prepuce being
treated in the Moslem, not the Jewish fashion (loc. cit.). Heated sand
is applied as a styptic and the patient is dieted with ginger-soup and
warm drinks of ginger-water, pork being especially forbidden. The
Fantis of the Gold Coast circumcise in sacred places, _e.g._, at Accra
on a Fetish rock rising from the sea. The peoples of Sennaar, Taka,
Masawwah and the adjacent regions follow the Abyssinian custom. The
barbarous Bissagos and Fellups of North Western Guinea make cuts on
the prepuce without amputating it; while the Baquens and Papels
circumcise like Moslems. The blacks of Loango are all “verpæ,”
otherwise they would be rejected by the women. The Bantu or Caffre
tribes are circumcised between the ages of fifteen and eighteen; the
“Fetish boys,” as we call them, are chalked white and wear only grass
belts; they live outside the villages in special houses under an old
“medicine-man,” who teaches them not only virile arts but also to rob
and fight. The “man-making” may last five months and ends in fêtes and
dances: the patients are washed in the river, they burn down their
quarters, take new names, and become adults, donning a kind of straw
thimble over the prepuce. In Madagascar three several cuts are made
causing much suffering to the children; and the nearest male relative
swallows the prepuce. The Polynesians circumcise when childhood ends
and thus consecrate the fecundating organ to the Deity. In Tahiti the
operation is performed by the priest, and in Tonga only the priest is
exempt. The Maories on the other hand fasten the prepuce over the
glans, and the women of the Marquesas Islands have shown great cruelty
to shipwrecked sailors who expose the glans. Almost all the known
Australian tribes circumcise after some fashion: Bennett supposes the
rite to have been borrowed from the Malays, while Gason enumerates the
“Kurrawellie wonkauna” among the five mutilations of puberty.
Leichhardt found circumcision about the Gulf of Carpentaria and in the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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