Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/203

Rh priestesses, flaminae, were oracle-givers and at times even made decisions in the most important lawsuits.

The Arabs and Berbers had always many such prophetesses, called kahinas, who had unlimited influence upon the life of their tribes and often extended their power over several neighboring clans. When the false prophet, Mosa Ilama, appeared after the death of Mahomet, one of the most famous among these kahinas, a certain Sidjah, gathered together the Arab tribes and fought him in battle but, after some years of strife, patched up an understanding with him and signed a final truce by marrying him. Another among them, Kahina Zeineb, after previous marriages, finally became the wife of the magnificent Yusuf ibn Teshufin, the founder of the Almoravide dynasty in Morocco, and has been immortalized in legend under the title of Sahira, meaning a woman wonder-worker. Later when I was in the town of Zerhun and asked a mullah about a certain Roman priestess, he answered that she was a kahina of great power and had foretold the destruction of the Roman fortresses in Africa and the years of plague. The gods of the Roman Olympus, with Jupiter at their head, here mingled with those of the cults of Isis and Mithra and with African demonology.

The ruins of this strange town lay there before us, bathed in the ever-present and all-penetrating rays of the African sun and covered with thick vegetation. Except for the whisper of romance and story that floated in upon our minds from these long-abandoned streets and portals, silence reigned here, the silence of the grave—and really