Travels Of Richard And John Lander Into The Interior Of Africa For The Discovery Of The Course And Termination Of The Niger By Robert Huish
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From The Large
Room Was A Passage Leading To A Yard, Having Also Small Houses
Attached To It In The Same Manner, And A Well Of Comparatively Good
Water.
The floors were of sand, and the walls of mud roughly
plastered, and showing every where the marks of the only trowel used
in the country - the fingers of the right hand.
There are no windows
to any of the houses, but some rooms have a small hole in the
ceiling, or high up the wall.
Near the house was the principal mosque, to which the sultan and the
Christian party went every Friday, as a matter of course, and every
other day they found it necessary to appear there once or twice. It
is a low building, having a shed projecting over the door, which,
being raised on a platform, is entered by a few steps. A small
turret, intended to be square and perpendicular, is erected for the
Mouadden to call to prayers. One of the great lounges is on the seat
in front of the mosque, and every morning and evening they are full
of idle people, who converse on the state of the markets, and on
their own private affairs, or in a fearful whisper canvass the
sultan's conduct.
In Mourzouk there are sixteen mosques, which are covered in, but some
of them are very small. Each has an imaum, but the kadi is their
head, of which dignity he seems not a little proud. This man had
never, been beyond the boundaries of Fezzan, and could form no idea
of any thing superior to mud houses and palms; he always fancied the
Europeans to be great romancers, when they told him of their country,
and described it as being in the midst of the sea.
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