Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/248

232 of the Veda cult in India is also very suggestive. In the Atharva-Veda, which is a book of magic formulas, the word "Brahman" is used to signify prayer and incantations. At the courts of the Indian princes a Brahman performed the functions of a fortune-teller, incantator and doctor. It is more than possible that the Moslems in their fight with Buddhism took from India the elements of their book, Rhama. The Moslem doctor, or hakim, knows magic formulas and the properties of herbs, possessing as well the mysterious traditions of Plato, Aristotle, Hermes Trismegistus and the Alexandrian school. The attainment of the title and position of a doctor comes about through the study, by a man learned in the reading of the Koran, of magic or medical books and the subsequent attestation of the ijaza of the medersa that he has familiarized himself with the Rhama, which is the equivalent of saying that he is a qualified hakim. Also, each sherif is by virtue of his exalted position through descent from the Prophet an ex-officio doctor.

It is said to be very difficult today to find a real hakim who possesses and preserves the knowledge of the renowned Arabian doctors of the past, whereas, on the other hand, barbers, smiths and charlatans of all descriptions are practising everywhere as doctors, though they are but arrant quacks in reality. Although the French authorities have begun a campaign against these irregular practitioners which is driving them away from inhabited centers, I was told in Berguent that certain quacks reputed to have great power still exist and that the sick make long and tiring pilgrimages to reach them.

This one of the brotherhood working openly in the