The Walls Are
Covered With Gold And Superb Marbles, And There Are Many Quotations
From The Koran In Arab Lettering Heavy With Gold.
The great doors are
of chiseled bronze and of wood.
In the distance is a sultan's tomb,
surmounted by a high and beautiful cupola, and pierced with windows of
jeweled glass. But the attraction of this place of prayer comes less
from its magnificence, from the shining of its gold, and the gleaming
of its many-colored marbles, than from its spaciousness, its airiness,
its still seclusion, and its garden. Mohammedans love fountains and
shady places, as can surely love them only those who carry in their
minds a remembrance of the desert. They love to have flowers blowing
beside them while they pray. And with the immensely high and
crenelated walls of this mosque long ago they set a fountain of pure
white marble, covered it with a shelter of limestone, and planted
trees and flowers about it. There beneath palms and tall eucalyptus-
trees even on this misty day of the winter, roses were blooming, pinks
scented the air, and great red flowers, that looked like emblems of
passion, stared upward almost fiercely, as if searching for the sun.
As I stood there among the worshippers in the wide colonnade, near the
exquisitely carved pulpit in the shadow of which an old man who looked
like Abraham was swaying to and fro and whispering his prayers, I
thought of Omar Khayyam and how he would have loved this garden.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 125 of 135
Words from 33994 to 34247
of 36756
