More than this of the Gipsies in Egypt the deponent sayeth not.  He has interrogated the oracles, and they were dumb.  That there are Roms in the land of Mizr his eyes have shown, but whether any of them can talk Rommany is to him as yet unknown.

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Since the foregoing was printed, I have found in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Vol.  XVI., Part 2, 1856, p. 285), an article on The Gipsies in Egypt, by the late Captain Newbold, F.R.S., which gives much information on this mysterious subject.  The Egyptian Gipsies, as Captain Newbold found, are extremely jealous and suspicious of any inquiry into their habits and mode of life, so that he had great difficulty in tracing them to their haunts, and inducing them to unreserved communication.

These Gipsies are divided into three kinds, the Helebis, Ghagars (Rhagarin), and Nuris or Nawer.  Of the Rhagars there are sixteen thousand.  The Helebi are most prosperous of all these, and their women, who are called Fehemis, are the only ones who practice fortune-telling and sorcery.  The male Helebis are chiefly ostensible dealers in horses and cattle, but have a bad character for honesty.  Some of them are to be found in every official department in Egypt, though not known to be Gipsies—­(a statement which casts much light on the circumstance that neither the chief of police himself nor the Shekh of the Rhagarin, with all their alleged efforts, could find a single Gipsy for me).  The Helebis look down on the Rhagarin, and do not suffer their daughters to intermarry with them, though they themselves marry Rhagarin girls.  The Fehemi, or Helebi women, are noted for their chastity; the Rhagarin are not.  The men of the Rhagarin are tinkers and blacksmiths, and sell cheap jewellery or instruments of iron and brass.  Many of them are athletes, mountebanks, and monkey-exhibitors; the women are rope-dancers and musicians.  They are divided into classes, bearing the names of Romani, Meddahin, Ghurradin, Barmeki (Barmecides), Waled Abu Tenna, Beit er Rafai, Hemmeli, &c.  The Helebis and Rhagarin are distinctly different in their personal appearance from the other inhabitants of Egypt, having the eyes and expression peculiar to all Gipsies.  Captain Newbold, in fact, assumes that any person “who remains in Egypt longer than the ordinary run of travellers, and roams about the streets and environs of the large towns, can hardly fail to notice the strange appearance of certain females, whose features at once distinguish them from the ordinary Fellah Arabs and Cophts of the country.”

“The Nuris or Nawers are hereditary thieves, but are now (1856) employed as police and watchmen in the Pacha’s country estates.  In Egypt they intermarry with the Fellahin or Arabs of the soil, from whom, in physical appearance and dress, they can hardly be distinguished.  Outwardly they profess Mohammedanism, and have little intercourse with the Helebis and Ghagars (or Rhagarin).”