During The Whole Morning, There Were Repeated Discharges Of The
Artillery Which Both Pashas Had Brought With Them.
A few pilgrims had
taken up their quarters on Djebel Arafat itself, where some small
cavern, or impending block of granite, afforded them shelter from the
sun.
It is a belief generally entertained in the East, and strengthened
by many boasting hadjys on their return home, that all the pilgrims, on
this day, encamp upon Mount Arafat; and that the mountain possesses the
miraculous property of expansion, so as to admit an indefinite number of
the faithful upon its summit. The law ordains that the wakfe, or
position of the Hadj, should be on Djebel Arafat; but it wisely provides
against any impossibility, by declaring that the plain in the immediate
neighbourhood of the mountain may be regarded as comprised under the
term "mountain," or Djebel Arafat.
I estimated the number of persons assembled here at about seventy
thousand. The camp was from three to four miles long, and between one
and two in breadth. There is, perhaps, no spot on earth where, in so
small a place, such a diversity of languages are heard; I reckoned about
forty, and have no doubt that there were many more. It appeared to me as
if I were here placed in a holy temple of travellers only; and never did
I at any time feel a more ardent wish to be able to penetrate once into
the inmost recesses of the countries of many of those persons whom I now
saw before me, fondly imagining that I might have no more difficulty in
reaching their homes, than what they had experienced in their journey to
this spot.
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