The miswãk, an aspect of dental care in Islam

Abstract

the famous nineteenth-century traveller and explorer of the Sahara and Sudan, relates that the women of Wadai, a region in the Sudan, rarely go out without their toothbrushes in the corner of their mouths. These toothbrushes are, as he says, prepared from the wood of the siwak (Salvadora persica L.), which has been made fibrous at the end, and as soon as they sit down they use these brushes diligently. Reporting in an article in 1915 the information of Dr Meyerhof, an ophthalmologist who had practised for many years in Cairo, Wiedemann2 declares that the Nubians always carry with them a wooden stick of about 15 to 20 cm, called siwak, to which they probably owe their shiny white teeth. Von Luschan,3 a privy councillor from Berlin, informed him that this kind of wooden stick could be found not only among the Nubians, but throughout Africa, even among the most southern Bantu tribes. He also told him that there still were, or had been until recently, thousands of caravan-carriers who took nothing else with them but a gourd for water and a "msuaki" (= miswiik). Even nowadays pious Muslims belonging to the religious movement called Jamii'at al-tab7gh4 can often be seen wearing the siwak in their breast pockets, which they use on every suitable occasion.