volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

Marriage and Baptism in the Great Oasis. S77
among his people, and as a result of these I obtained
the wooden coffin which is mentioned elsewhere (p. 380).
The " Omdah " was a very strenuous administrator,
and he insisted on summoning his secretary (a Copt,
the only Christian in the Oasis), who told me a great
deal about Khargah and its people. This Copt was a
very interesting man, and knew a great deal of the ancient
history of the district. The laws of Khargah were, he
said, " the laws of the ancestors," and if a man could
quote as a precedent some act of the " grandfather of
his father," he always won his case. The ceremony of
marriage is very simple : the man says to the woman,
" I have taken thee," in the presence of a witness, and
the marriage is legal in every respect. Curiously enough,
the Muslims in the Oasis baptize their children—that
is to say, the child, on the second day after birth, is laid,
with much ceremony, in a large fiat vessel (tisht), and water
is poured over it by the parents in the presence of the
family. The burial ceremony is most simple, and wholly
different from the funerary customs which I have seen
Muslims observe in Egypt and the Sudan, Syria and
Mesopotamia generally. The greatest festival of the
year^ is celebrated on the day which corresponds to
our Easter Sunday, whenever that may happen to fall.
The population of Khargah and the smaller towns of
Bulak, Beris and Gennah was in 1909 about 8,356 souls.
When the Copt had exhausted the store of information
which he had to give me, the " Omdah " most kindly
offered to escort me through some of the gardens and
the town. As we passed through the very narrow streets
I saw the natives decorating the walls of their houses
and the tops of the walls of their gardens with branches
of small trees, palm leaves, etc., and I learned from my
guides that they always did this on the Sunday preceding
Easter Sunday. This custom is clearly of Christian
origin and has been observed in the Oasis from time
immemorial. When we reached the bazar I saw several
^ It is called in Arabic " Shamm an-Nasim," ^_.>^j\ ^, i.e., " Sniffing
the zephyr."