المواسم والأعياد في حمص ١_a .. كتاب حمص

Chapter V

Seasons and holidays

Season, in language, is a gathering of people that takes place at a specific time and place. And the seasons that were in the city of Homs / the fifties. It seems to have an ancient origin, as people used to divide the winter season into two parts: the Arbaeen, which is the forty days that extend from the last ten days of December until the end of January of the new Gregorian year. It is followed by Pentecost, which is fifty days, starting from the beginning of February until the end of the second ten days of March. The aim of this division is to reduce the severity of winter and psychologically alleviate the feeling of its long duration if it is heavy with rain, frequent tornadoes and snow storms, and the cold and frost that it brings.

Pentecostalism applied to the five-fifths, which are seven fifths that begin on the Thursday following Monk Monday in February, which is the beginning of Great Lent for Christians according to the Eastern calendar. Those five or fives, as the common people pronounce them, are Khamis al-Tayeh / ḍ / Khamis al-Shanouna / and / Al-Majnouna / ḍ / Al-Qatāt / and these four five do not have seasons because they fall in the late winter between February and March. As for the next three, they are the Thursday of the Plants, the Dead, or the Sweetness, then the Thursday of the Sheikhs, which includes the seasons:

A - Khamis Al-Nabat: Its name is taken from a well that was present in the castle and it was deep. They used to raise their fortunes in the well by throwing a stone into it. If it left a loud, loud sound, it meant that this was the luck of the owner of the room or its companion, splitting the rock, and if no sound was made, this indicates that His luck, her luckiest, is that it is the Thursday of the castle, because it was the place for celebrating it, so it was lifeless and ruined. It is held after the sun has set and the day has set in the afternoon, and crowds of women, boys, and girls flock to the castle, and crowds of vendors, mercenaries, and beggars come to it, and these creatures gather at its western foot, which is next to its beginning. If the place became narrow, crowds of women would penetrate into the neighboring cemeteries, which were not walled, and a group of women and men would go up to the back of the castle, where the well was, as we mentioned.

Thursday of the month is characterized by the fact that some people would soak some flowers with water on Wednesday evening, and these flowers would remain soaked until Thursday morning, when they would wash their faces with the water. As for the boys, they would form groups in the neighborhoods, passing by the houses, asking for the flowers from their residents while chanting:

Give us some of your flowers, so that the Prophet will visit you with seven drums and seven flutes played by Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter.

Then someone shouted to the rooftops, “Will you give it to us or will we leave?” If the landlady grants them their request, they will go to the next house, otherwise they will attack her by saying:
Jaji Fawq Hajji Fawq Haji, the owner of the house, Ghanaji Ghanaji, and the spelling may reach the point of elegance, so they say:
Towel upon towel upon towel. The landlady is a slut, a slut
Then they run away.

The custom remained until the French occupied the country and took the castle as a military site, so there was a barrier between the citizens and the ability to ascend to the castle, and luck arose! !

2 - Thursday of the Dead: It is the Thursday of the Sweet. Various types of sweets are made from it: pashmina, sesame, bread, ghariba, harissa, walnut, shushi, and raha. As for pashmina: it is made from flour lightly toasted with Arabic ghee, then three-quarters of it is taken, and the dough is made from it to make large flakes, and a little of the remaining flour is sprinkled between each flake, then the flakes are divided into Cubes are for sale.

_ And sesame: made from natif and sesame.

_ And bread: dough sheets fried with /sarg/

_ Ghariba: It is made in Chinese and has two sides: floral and white. It is perfumed with some musk. The children used to call it “musky” or musky sweetness.

_ Harissa: bars made from starch and sugar.

_ Al-Jawziyya: It is made from natif with walnuts.

_ And shoushiya: sugar with tahini.

_ And comfort: a variety of pistachios, walnuts, almonds, or a variety of hearts.

The women would go out on Thursday afternoons to the cemeteries to visit the graves and distribute the sweets they had brought with them to the readers and the poor. The sellers of sweets used to call out to them, “May God have mercy on the dead.” They loved sweets, and their makers used to spread among ordinary people that if a person did not eat Thursday’s sweets, he would suffer from “scabies,” urging them to buy them.

People in those five days, including the Khamis Al-Sheikh, would go out for a walk on the outskirts of town and in the picnic areas if the weather was suitable. The women would sit around the plants, while the young men would hold some games, including the Dome of the Zaini Bath, which was completed by six, seven, or ten young men forming a circle. Each of them placed his outstretched arms on the shoulders of his neighbor, then other people climbed above them on their shoulders in the same formation, and walked while chanting.
Then the melody and rhythm change, and he chants the Hadith, and the accompanying participants repeat after him. The journey is nearing the end, and then one of the members of the row sings the Fawqan, and the participants repeat after him:

Oh dear, oh dear, but Nubia, but Nubia

Then: Give your bucket my burden to you from the world, see the water, hunt for something, hunt for something, hunt for something in the wilderness, in the wilderness.

The journey would be over, and the top row would start jumping to the ground, and the game would end and be repeated. They were playing with / Umm Al-Ashbar and Al-Zawda / and / Al-Zanko Khalaf /. Among the seasons in which people used to go out to the south of the citadel is Hatra Eid, which falls on the sixth of May, after the Thursday of the Sheikhs:

In the south of the city, towards the citadel, there was a shrine that people believed was the shrine of Al-Khidr, peace be upon him, and visiting it had a special significance for single girls. If one of them was thirsty and was afraid of missing the train, she would come to the shrine and repeat the following supplication:

O Green, I have become so jealous of you that if you sit on the chair for a year, I will bring you my wedding candle

The vows are made to him if he responds to them. One of the beautiful old women mentioned to us that it was not several months after she visited Al-Khidr, after repeating the supplication at his shrine, that she got engaged and married in the same year. .

3 - The Thursday of the Sheikhs: The Thursday of the Sheikhs is the last of the days. It is also called / Al-Bayd Thursday, which is the Thursday before Easter Sunday on the Eastern calendar, and the Sunday before Easter Sunday is Palm Sunday / Then it is followed by the Thursday of the Sheikhs, then Good Friday, then Holy Saturday, then Easter.