In a small village in the district of Shibin al-Qanatir, called "Arab al-Hamamsha," lives the greatest long-lived man Egypt has ever seen — if not the greatest of all the long-lived men in the whole world!

He is Sheikh "Muhammad Samhan," who is 170 years of age. Seven of his children are living to this day: the eldest of them has passed one hundred and thirty, and the youngest is in his eighties... As for his grandchildren, and his children's grandchildren, they number more than ninety!

Sheikh Samhan imploring God to preserve his youth

Most of them are healthy long-livers, and his own father lived to pass one hundred and thirty!

He then affirmed that he has never tasted wine in all his life, having been raised in piety; nor has he ever used in his food any of the pungent, hot condiments. Rather, he eats vegetables in abundance, with a little bread, and inclines to plenty of sweets, which he may well prefer to all other foods. As for coffee, he drinks it plain, without sugar, and holds that taken thus it stimulates his nerves and strengthens him to a great degree.

Sheikh Samhan follows no special regimen in his daily life: he works as long as he feels himself able to work, then rests when he feels the need of rest. Sometimes he may sit up the whole night, and at other times he sleeps immediately after supper until morning.

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And if the Sheikh enjoys good health, which so far has never obliged him to resort to a doctor or to take any medicine, he likewise enjoys a powerful memory that keeps hold of the happenings and events he has lived through, which he recounts to his companions as though they had taken place only days ago. Foremost among them is the massacre of the Mamluks at the Citadel in the days of the Viceroy of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha the Great: he heard of it at the time, when he was a young man.

The wonder is that the Sheikh looks younger than some of his own children. He still enjoys his mental

Sheikh Samhan sucking sugarcane

and bodily powers in full, and there still remain in his mouth a number of sound teeth with which he chews everything, and sucks sugarcane without the least trouble! He does not like riding in trains or automobiles and the like, having witnessed their first appearance and regarded them, at the time, as a newfangled thing. He often goes to visit "al-Sayyid al-Badawi" in Tanta, covering the distance there on foot! And when he was asked the secret of his keeping the vigor of youth, he said that much of the credit for it goes to heredity, since his father and his forefathers were [...]