Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/323

Rh of riada, or mortification of the flesh, during which, suffering the pangs of hunger and thirst, he strays off into the desert, where he keeps a sleepless vigil of prayer, repeating continually all of the names of Allah, flogs himself, wanders about naked and finally, returning to the haunts of men, exhibits to the Faithful the talisman teksis, which is a powerful magic means of rendering its bearer invisible. With this talisman in hand the Marabout will have made his way into the presence of the person against whom the movement is being fomented and recounts to his hearers how he was invisibly present in the palace of the sultan or in the camp of the unbelievers and listened to their criminal plots against the welfare of the natives. Such revelations, of course, rouse the people to a fever-pitch of excitement, which is the exact purpose of the holy Marabout.

When Mahdis appear, or at the beginning of a holy War, the Marabouts profit very cleverly by the strong religious beliefs and fanaticism of the women. One of the most familiar ways of doing this is for a Marabout to announce after a riada that through mysterious sources of information he has obtained the knowledge of how to draw the dairat el-ihata, or the magic circle which is traced upon the ground on certain days and within strictly designated hours through the medium of a long form of incantation, involving the continued and monotonous shouting of incomprehensible words like "Karum, Firum, Humana," and the writing of mysterious signs on the garments of those around him.

After the magic circle has been limned on the ground, a Marabout announces that a woman may step within the