women
light a fire in an oven, throw perfumes into it, and circumambulate a
tank, which they also incense after a fashion. In many places on the
coast, as in the province of Oran and particularly in the north of
Morocco, everybody goes and bathes in the sea at midsummer; and in many
towns of the interior, such as Fez, Mequinez, and especially Merrakech,
people throw water over each other on this day; and where water is
scarce, earth is used instead, according to the Mohammedan principle
which permits ablutions to be performed with earth or sand when water
cannot be spared for the purpose.[555] People of the Andjra district in
Morocco not only bathe themselves in the sea or in rivers at midsummer,
they also bathe their animals, their horses, mules, donkeys, cattle,
sheep, and goats; for they think that on that day water possesses a
blessed virtue (_baraka_), which removes sickness and misfortune. In
Aglu, again, men, women, and children bathe in the sea or springs or
rivers at midsummer, alleging that by so doing they protect themselves
against disease for the whole year. Among the Berbers of the Rif
district the custom of bathing on this day is commonly observed, and
animals share the ablutions.[556]

[Some Mohammedans of North Africa kindle fires and observe water
ceremonies at their movable New Year; water ceremonies at New Year in
Morocco; the rites of fire and water at Midsummer and New Year in
Morocco seem to be identical in character; the duplication of the
festival is probably due to a conflict between the solar calendar of the
Romans and the lunar calendar of the Arabs.]

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