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Woman and Taboo in Iraq

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2016

E. S. Drower
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Extract

In many villages and certainly in all the big towns in Iraq there are Government schools, in most cases for girls as well as boys. Newspapers are read and discussed, and in Baghdad the voice of the broadcaster may be heard in the land from loud speakers in most of the open-air coffee-houses, booming out weekly advice upon hygiene, care of children, and so forth. And yet the bulk of the women of the people, when it comes to matters which concern their physical life, are scarcely affected by the new ideas. At vital crises such as death, marriage, and childbirth ancient taboos are still observed and old customs still reign. A son or daughter who has been to school may protest or ridicule, but the still small voice is drowned in a torrent of talk from the elder women. Even a midwife who has learnt her craft in the Government training centres, of which there are now a growing number, though she may manage approximately to control essentials, humours her patients and their mothers, if she is wise, by observing the old taboos as far as possible.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1938 , pp. 105 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1938

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References

page 106 note 1 This ‘striking’ by means of colour may refer to the planets. Yellow is the sun-colour, and gold a sun-metal, so that a disease caused by some influence connected with the sun would be cured by the gold. Blue, the colour of the sky, may have some ancient connexion with the sky-goddess or the planet Venus. Blue beads, blue buttons (two-holed, three-holed, five-holed, and seven-holed), and even pieces of blue pottery, are powerful against the Evil Eye and chebsa.

page 107 note 1 The bīr d ṭabla is a well, usually in the sirdāb (cellar) of a Jewish house. Several houses in the Jewish quarter possess such wells with steps going down into the wat;er, and the owners of the houses allow neighbours to use them. In winter a small fee is asked to cover the cost of heating. This is done by pouring a large tin of boiling water into the well just before the submersion, or by plunging in a large pan of red-hot charcoal. Before entering the well, the Jewess must have cut her nails, removed all hair from her body, and have been to the public bath.

page 107 note 2 I have described the complete isolation of the Mandaean woman and her ablutions and purifications during menstruation, childbirth, and other times of uncleanness in my book, The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran (Clarendon Press, 1937)Google Scholar. She never goes to a public bath. The ceremonial visit of the Christian to the public bath must be preceded by cutting the nails and removing all hair from the body, and must be supplemented by a visit to church.

page 109 note 1 There is a prejudice against lying on a bed or reed couch for delivery: the ground or floor is preferred; indeed, lying at all for birth is a new and imported custom. The normal attitude is to crouch or sit. The Jewish woman supports her heels on bricks, and clings to the jidda, or to a stool, when the jidda goes behind her to deliver the child. Moslem and Christian women crouch and cling to a woman, and marsh-dwellers and Mandaean women hold on by the reed bundle which supports the roof, while the jidda takes the child from behind. The Nestorian sits on the knees of the midwife, who straddles somewhat in sitting, and a woman crouches before them to receive the child when it comes into the world.

page 110 note 1 When it falls away from the child the dried cord is thrown into an auspicious place, e.g. if thrown into a school-yard, a boy will be studious, and if buried in the house, a girl will grow up fond of domestic duties. Sometimes it is placed under the child's pillow as a charm.

page 111 note 1 Arranged alternately.

page 111 note 2 Jews are careful to warn ‘the jinn under the ground’ before pouring hot water on the earth or floor. They chant:

Ḥaṭṭu ṭu'ūsakum ‘ala ru’ūsakum

Jā'akum al-mai Ḥarr!

Put your basins over your heads

Hot water is coming to you!

so that the jinn may protect their heads.

page 111 note 3 This is the favourite excerpt from the Qur'ān against spells and demons.

page 111 note 4 Now in the Arab Museum, It is an ancient cannon credited with magic power. It was formerly decorated with votive rags, and it was customary to pass newborn infants round it and to place their heads in the muzzle.

page 111 note 5 Sūq, the covered-in market.

page 113 note 1 Jews in Baghdad are polygamous in cases of a barren wife, or if a brother dies leaving a childless widow, whom they are bound to take in order ‘to raise up seed’ for the dead man.

page 113 note 2 Arriving early at a Nestorian church recently, I found mattresses spread on the ground, and women sleeping. The ziāra (visit) in this case was because one of the women was an imbecile.

page 114 note 1 See The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran, p. 72, note 8. Nestorians also drink a cup of wine and water mixed at the marriage service, the man and woman dividing it between them, and the fertility symbolism is heightened because a cross made from a freshly cut vine is placed in the liquid.

page 115 note 1 Westernized society in Baghdad is rapidly forsaking the customs here described.

page 115 note 2 Casting wine and water on the threshold. See my paper on ‘Ritual Meals’, Folklore, vol. xlviii, 09 1937 Google Scholar.

page 115 note 3 A noise to frighten off demons, like the sistrum ?

page 116 note 1 Literally ‘darkness’.

page 117 note 1 nifās—period of uncleanness after childbirth.

page 117 note 2 Literally ‘the angels seated, prostrated, and rising’, i.e. the three positions of prayer.

page 117 note 3 ḥarz, ‘protection’, is used here for ‘amulet’.

page 117 note 4 ḥijāb, literally ‘screen’.