Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/459

Rh prayers, but anybody who should openly disregard the rule of fasting would be subject to a very severe punishment. Even the privilege granted to travellers and sick persons is not readily taken advantage of. During their marches in the middle of summer nothing but the apprehension of death can induce the Aeneze to interrupt the fast; and when Burton, in the disguise of a Muhammedan doctor, was in Cairo making preparations for his pilgrimage to Mecca, he found among all those who suffered severely from such total abstinence only one patient who would eat even to save his life. There is no evidence that the fast of Ramaḍân was an ancient, pre-Muhammedan custom. On the other hand, its similarity with the Harranian and Manichaean fasts is so striking that we are almost compelled to regard them all as fundamentally the same institution; and if this assumption is correct, Muhammed must have borrowed his fast from the Harranians or Manichaeans or both. Indeed, Dr. Jacob has shown that in the year 623, when this fast seems to have been instituted, Ramaḍân exactly