Modern day burglary tools consist of not much more than a boot and a bag. The boot kicks in the door, and the bag carries the loot away. Things were different in days of old when a burglar's tools might include a candle and a turtle.
An article at Smithsonianmag.com titled Islam’s Medieval Underworld provides a glimpse at the Banu Sasan, the criminal gang which the author, Mike Dash, says, "comprised a hidden counterpoint to the surface glories of Islam’s golden age." Furthermore, Mr. Dash points to a British historian named Clifford Bosworth who provided a description of the tools of a burglar's trade. To wit:
The thieves who work by tunneling into houses and by murderous assaults are much tougher eggs, quite ready to kill or be killed in the course of their criminal activities. They necessarily use quite complex equipment… [The iron spike and an iron hand with claws] are used for the work of breaking through walls, and the crowbar for forcing open doors; then, once a breach is made, the burglar pokes a stick with a cloth on the end into the hole, because if he pokes his own head through the gap, [it] might well be the target for the staff, club or sword of the houseowner lurking on the other side.
The tortoise is employed thus. The burglar has with him a flint-stone and a candle about as big as a little finger. He lights the candle and sticks it on the tortoise’s back. The tortoise is then introduced through the breach into the house, and it crawls slowly around, thereby illuminating the house and its contents. The bag of sand is used by the burglar when he has made his breach in the wall. From this bag, he throws out handfuls of sand at intervals, and if no-one stirs within the house, he then enters it and steals from it; apparently the object of the sand is either to waken anyone within the house when it is thrown down, or else to make a tell-tale crushing noise should any of the occupants stir within it.
Also, the burglar may have with him some crusts of dry bread and beans. If he wishes to conceal his presence, or hide any noise he is making, he gnaws and munches at these crusts and beans, so that the occupants of the house think that it is merely the cat devouring a rat or mouse.
Pretty amazing stuff. And domesticated cats that devoured rats? What a time.
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