]
The celebration of a midsummer festival by Mohammedan peoples is
particularly remarkable, because the Mohammedan calendar, being purely
lunar and uncorrected by intercalation, necessarily takes no note of
festivals which occupy fixed points in the solar year; all strictly
Mohammedan feasts, being pinned to the moon, slide gradually with that
luminary through the whole period of the earth's revolution about the
sun. This fact of itself seems to prove that among the Mohammedan
peoples of Northern Africa, as among the Christian peoples of Europe,
the midsummer festival is quite independent of the religion which the
people publicly profess, and is a relic of a far older paganism. There
are, indeed, independent grounds for thinking that the Arabs enjoyed the
advantage of a comparatively well-regulated solar year before the
prophet of God saddled them with the absurdity and inconvenience of a
purely lunar calendar.[557] Be that as it may, it is notable that some
Mohammedan people of North Africa kindle fires and bathe in water at the
movable New Year of their lunar calendar instead of at the fixed
Midsummer of the solar year; while others again practise these
observances at both seasons. New Year's Day, on which the rites are
celebrated, is called _Ashur_; it is the tenth day of Moharram, the
first month of the Mohammedan calendar. On that day bonfires are kindled
in Tunis and also at Merrakech and among some tribes of the
neighbourhood.
Pages:
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361