Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/284

Rh 262 A F K I C A [ETHNOLOGY. Arabia, and even in Egypt. They arc an intellectual people, and not altogether unlettered ; but they are cruel, revengeful, and blood-thirsty, exhibiting but very few traces of that nobility of mind and delicacy of feeling and taste which graced their ancestors in Spain. The history of the throne of Marocco, of the dynastic revolutions at Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, is written with blood ; and among the pirates who infested the Mediterranean they were the worst. Their religion is the Mohammedan. They are temperate in their diet and simple in their dress, except the richer classes in the principal towns, where the ladies literally cover themselves with silk, gold, and jewels, while the men indulge to excess their love of fine horses -and splendid arms. They generally lead a settled life as mer chants, mechanics, or agriculturists, but there are also many wandering tribes. They exhibit considerable skill and taste in dyeing, and in the manufacture of swords, saddlery, leathernware, gold and silver ornaments. At the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, the Moorish department contained several articles which were greatly admired. The Moors. along the coast of Marocco still carry on piracy by means of armed boats. At two different periods, separated from each other by perhaps a thousand years, Africa was invaded by Arabic tribes, which took a lasting possession of the districts they conquered, and whose descendants form no inconsiderable portion of the population of North and Central Africa, while their language has superseded all others as that of civilisation and religion. Of the first invasion more has been said under the head &quot;Abyssinians.&quot; The second was that effected by the first successors of Mahomet, who con quered Egypt, and subsequently the whole north of Africa as far as the shores of the Atlantic, in the course of the first century of the Hegira, or the seventh of the Christian era. As regards language, Egypt is now an entirely Arabic country, although in many other respects the P ellahs are totally different from the peasants in Arabia. But there are also several tribes of true Arabic descent scattered about from the high lands of Abyssinia down over Nubia and Egypt, and westward over the central provinces of Kordofan, Darfur, &quot;VVaday, and Bornu. Others wander in the Libyan deserts and the Great Sahara, as well as in the states of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers, leading a similar life with the Kabyles, but constituting a totally distinct race. Others, again, dwell in the empire of Marocco, among whom those along the shores of the Atlantic are notorious for their predatory habits and ferocious character. In many places Arabic adventurers have succeeded in subduing native tribes of every nationality, over which they rule as sovereign lords ; and on the coast of Zanzibar resides an Arabic royal dynasty. Many of the smaller islands to the north of Madagascar are inhabited by Arabs, and traces of them have been discovered in Madagascar itself. The African Arabs are not all alike in features and colour of skin, the differences being attributable to some of them having intermarried with natives, while others preserved the purity of their blood. Jews. The early settlements of the Jews in Egypt are facts universally known. Under the Ptolemies, large numbers of them settled at Alexandria and in Cyrenaica, and after the destruction of Jerusalem they rapidly spread over the whole of the Roman possessions in Africa; many also took refuge in Abyssinia. King Philip II. having driven them out of Spain, many thousands of families took refuge on the opposite coast of Africa. They are now numerous in all the larger towns in the north, where they carry on the occupation of merchants, brokers, &c., the trade with Europe being mostly in their hands. They live in a state of great degradation, except in Algiers, where the French restored them to freedom and independence. They have acquired much wealth, and although compelled to hide their riches from the cupidity of their rulers, they lose no opportunity of showing them whenever they can do so without risk of being plundered, fear and vanity being characteristic features of their character. The Jewesses in Marocco and Algiers are of remarkable beauty. Ever since the conquest of Egypt by Sultan Selim, and Turks, the establishment of Turkish pashalics in Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers, Turks have settled in the north of Africa; and as they were the rulers of the country, whose numbers were always on the increase on account of the incessant arrivals of Turkish soldiers and officials, the Turkish became, and still is, the language of the different governments. Properly speak ing, however, they are not settled, but only encamped in Africa, and hardly deservea place among the African nations. Not all the inhabitants of the country called Abyssinia Abys- are Abyssinians; nor are the real Abyssinians all of the same origin, being a mixed race, to the formation of which several distinct nations have contributed. The primitive stock is of Ethiopian origin, but, as their language clearly shows, was at an early period mixed with a tribe of the Himyarites from the opposite coast of Arabia, who, in their turn, were ethnologically much more closely con nected with the Hebrews than with the Joctanides, or the Arabs properly speaking. In the age of the Egyptian Ptolemies, and after the destruction of Jerusalem, Jews settled in Abyssinia in such numbers, that not only their religion spread among the inhabitants, but the Hebrew language became mixed with the Abyssinian as it then was. Hence the surprising analogy between the principal Abyssinian languages, viz., the Gheez in Tigre, and the Amharic in Amhara, with the Hebrew. The uninterrupted intercourse with Arabia, and the immigration of several Arabic tribes, also contributed towards the apparently Semitic aspect of the present Abyssinian language. A large portion of Abyssinia having been occupied by Galla and other tribes, we shall here only dwell on the original Abyssinians. They inhabit a large tract, extending from the upper course of the Blue River, north as far as the Red Sea, and some isolated districts in the south and south-east. To the west of them are the Agau Abyssinians, a different tribe, whose idiom, however, is the common language of the lower classes in Tigre and Amhara also. Abyssinia was once a large and powerful kingdom, but the Galla having conquered the whole south of it, it gradually declined until the king or emperor became a mere shadow, in whose name several vassal princes exercise an unlimited power each in his own territory. Owing to their jealousy and mutual fears, war seldom ceases among the inhabitants. The Christian religion was introduced into Abyssinia in the first centuries after Christ ; but whatever its condition might have been in former times, it now presents a de graded mixture of Christian dogmas and rites, Jewish observances, and heathenish superstition. Yet of Judaism, which was once so powerful, but feeble traces are extant, while the Mohammedan religion is visibly on the increase. European missionaries have been, and still are very active among them, but their efforts have been crowned only with partial success. The Abyssinians, the Gallas being excluded from that denomination, are a fine strong race, of a copper hue, more or less dark, and altogether dif ferent from the Negroes, with whom, however, they have frequently been confounded, because they were called a black people. Their noses are nearly straight, their eyes beautifully clear, yet languishing, and their hair is black and crisp, but not woolly. They are on the whole a bar barous people, addicted to the grossest sensual pleasures ; and their priests, among whom marriage is customary, are little better than the common herd of the people. They live in huts, a large assemblage of which forms a so-called