In the middle of the desert and hundreds of kilometers away from urban areas, the Siwa Oasis rises like a flower in the midst of nowhere. When a traveler visits Siwa, he feels that time stopped passing by and that he has gone back ages and ages in history. Siwa is an oasis that is full of stories, myths, legends, habits, and customs.
When anybody speaks about Siwa it is hard for him to convince the listener that he is speaking about the present time and not about the past ancient times. It is even more difficult to identify a beginning point to start the story.
The language of Siwans
The people living in Siwa speak the Siwan Language and it is a language of Berber origin that is spread in the Northern Africa region. The Siwan Language is spoken and written as well and it has been influenced by the formal and informal Arabic language.
The people of Siwa
The original inhabitants of Siwa are a branch of the Zanata tribe that mingled with time passing by with other Bedouin tribes that live around the oasis in the Egyptian territories or the Libyan borders.
Some facial characteristics of the Siwans were affected by Negro influences. Historians interpret this aspect due to the fact that Siwa was a major transit point in the slave trading route between Africa and the Mediterranean Sea.
The old people in Siwa usually mention that in a previous period, Bedouins used to move around the desert surrounding the oasis looking for water and food for their sheep and they were directed to Siwa by coincidence. However, they never stayed in Siwa for a long time because of flies and mosquitoes that negatively affected their sheep and camels.
At that point in time, the secure place for those tribes and their animals was the area of Aghrumi so they stayed there and they cultivated the land as well.
Most of the Siwan people right now are Moslems belonging to the Senussi way of worshiping, a concept that is spread all over North Africa, in Libya and Algeria.
Siwa Oasis house life
The people living in Siwa are as simple as the houses they live in. The Siwans are lucky to stick to their habits and customs and they feel ashamed of other people who deserted their old habits for the facilities of the modern life.
The Siwans are conservative people as they don’t like to have intimate relations with strangers. Maybe this is the main reason that made Siwa as independent a world throughout history although it belongs to Egypt since prehistoric times.
Furthermore, some of the inhabitants belong to the Toucouleur, agricultural tribes who live mainly in West Africa which had a powerful impact on the culture of Siwa since ancient times.
The costumes of the Siwan Woman
The first thing that attracts the eyes of the traveler when visiting Siwa is the costumes and silver jewelry of the Siwan women as they usually wear long multicolored robes with long wide sleeves and put beautiful necklaces around their necks.
Some of the girls in Siwa still comb their hair in the braids style and sometimes they spend hours and hours fixing their hair.
When the Siwan woman goes out to visit a relative or a friend, she wears three or four dresses above each others and in all cases; she has to wear a black robe on top that is ornamented with colored silk. Inside the house of the relative, the Siwan woman can take off the black robe and keep the colored wide sleeved robe on.
The ornaments of the Siwan women
The Siwan ornaments consist of wide silver bracelets, different kinds and types of rings, and necklaces.
There is one special necklace for Siwan ladies which are called “Al Salehat” or the necklace of the good women and it consists of six pieces in the shape of a crescent with a lot of silver and different valuable materials.
The Siwan women wear earrings that are sometimes light and hang at the same level as the head, and in other cases the earrings can be very heavy and it can weigh up to 10 pounds each.
A Siwan Man
The main other two ornaments the rich Siwan women prefer to wear are the Agrou, which is made out of silver, and the “ta’leeq”, which hang from the two sides of the head consisting of a number of chains made of silver.
The nature of the Siwans
The people of Siwa are simple and kind as they have grown up on their instincts. The fact that they were isolated from the outer world for a very long time had a great impact on their principals and morals.
In Siwa, there are many magicians and primitive astrologers and they are specialists in creating amulets from different types and kinds. The Siwans claim that these amulets have amazing effects and confirmed results. Every single person living in Siwa owns one of these.
The Siwans on the other hand are religious and they pray in the exact time of prayer and the religious leaders have a valuable role in the society.
In ancient time, Siwa was the center of the worship of Amun, a version of Amman, the god of water springs. Afterwards, the oasis became a stronghold of Islam and an important center for the Senussi worship group.
Beliefs and superstitions
The Siwans believe so much in magic, astrology, and superstitions. These aspects truly affect their lives. They are always afraid of other people envying them and they also fear ghosts as you can see on almost every house there are amulets made of animal bones, deer horns, broken pottery and bones of the dead to protect them from evils and from envy.
They even hang these amulets around the necks of the animals, on palm trees, and near their water springs. The Siwans believe that evil and ghosts can arise from anywhere as they can come from under the ground or from the water springs.
Siwans also believe that these evil sprits live in isolated places where no humans enter. They think that these evil spirits incarnates in the form of animals like sheep, cows and donkeys and if they meet a human being they start growing up until they reach the sky.
As the Siwans believe in the evil spirits, they also believe in good sprits and angels. They believe that they live under the ground and in the sky. All the Siwans believe in this and no man ever walks alone as they have to walk in groups. Each member of the Siwan community would tell stories of the evil spirits he met and the ghosts he saw. There are certain places they never enter at night under any circumstances.
After a week from giving birth, they make Henna and put one drop of it between the eyebrows of the newly born baby and they say with their own language “may god accept you and protect you for the sake of your mother and father”.
The young girls take a container of water and drop the water on the roof of the house as they believe this would increase the life of the newly born baby.
Death of the husband and the ogress
When the husband dies, the wife walks in the funerary to the graveyard. When the body of the husband is buried, the wife has to hide from all the people as they believe that if the widow stares at any person, he will be harmed in some way. The Siwans call the widow Al Ghoola , or the ogress. Nobody walks in the lanes where the ogress walks.
The widow has to remain home for forty days wearing white robes and even her relatives who live with her are not allowed to see her.
At the last night of the forty days, the relatives of the widow come to her house and spend the night with her. At dawn, they accompany her to the water spring and anybody that she stares at, except her relatives who spent the night with her, will be exposed to some harm. When the widow finishes all the rituals at the water spring, she is not called an ogress anymore and she can go on with her life.
There is a famous story about the preacher of the oasis who was an educated man who studied at the Azhar University. He kept advising the people to give up these practices using the words mentioned in the Quran. He even agreed to meet the widow or the ogress to prove that all these habits are not true. However, on the next day, he received a telegraph saying that one of his close relatives has died. However, any intellectual would believe that this was only a coincidence.
If a Siwan man wants to travel, he has to depart in the afternoon. Almost all his relatives gather at his house and his mother, or the closet person to him, drop milk on his head. Moreover, any woman who shakes hands with him has to put an egg in his hands.
The men from his relatives go with him outside the oasis. They stand in a row and they start praying for him and then they leave.
Coming back home
When the man is coming back home, he has to stay outside the town and send a messenger to his family and relatives who will welcome him and accompany him back home.
These habits concerning travelling have nearly declined because they were practiced in the past when the Siwans used to travel using camels and they used to spend 30 days or more on their way to Cairo and 8 days on their way to Matruh. However, there days, the Siwans travel using cars and the period they spend on their way to any destination is much less in time.
Music and dancing
The Siwans are fond of dancing and music. One can hear their singing and chanting in the farms from miles away. Most of their songs contain words with a lot of meanings. Many of the songs of the Siwans are love songs as they are affected with the beauty of the surrounding environment and the wonderful natural sceneries. The Siwans have a great ability to transform words or poems into songs. The Siwans use the oboe and the drums with amazing abilities to create amazing tunes and songs.
Dancing and singing
When the Siwans dance and sing in different occasions, they stand in circles and start moving in rounds just like a car wheel without stopping. Sometimes they stand in rows and start singing along with the sounds and tunes of oboes and drums.
The Siwans mix singing with dancing using their hands together in an amazing harmony and they shake their whole bodies to the music.
Sometimes theses movements are very quick and sometimes they are slow. All the songs of the Siwans contain loving words to the woman they are fond of and it contains a lot of metaphors. They call their beloved woman as sweet as the sweetest dates and they refer to women as tall palm tree.
Usually a first group starts the song, afterwards another group repeats after the first group and they all start singing together. The Siwans often gather in an empty area and start singing, playing primitive music and dance.
One hears different songs coming from various locations in the Siwa Oasis, with the surrounding magical atmosphere, he feels entertained and relieved from all the loud noises of the modern life. He swims in a natural lake of imagination. He feels that the nomadic instinct and the natural instinct are still alive in this oasis as they used to thousands of years in the past.