They Are In The
Greatest Number During The Months Following The Pilgrimage To Arafat,
And Likewise During The Month Of Rabya El Thany, On The 12th Of Which,
The Birth-Day Of Mohammed, Or Mouled El Naby, Is Celebrated.
The Medinans make up for the paucity of beggars in their own town by
going elsewhere to beg.
It is a custom with those inhabitants of the
town who have received some education, and can read and write, to make a
mendicant journey in Turkey once or twice in their lives. They generally
repair to Constantinople, where, by means of Turkish hadjys, whom they
have known in their own town, they introduce themselves among the
grandees, plead poverty, and receive considerable presents in clothes
and money, being held in esteem as natives of Medina, and neighbours of
the Prophet's tomb. Some of these mendicants serve as Imams in the
houses of the great. After a residence of a couple of years, they invest
the alms they have collected in merchandize, and thus return with a
considerable capital. There are very few individuals of the above
description at Medina, who have not once made the grand tour of Turkey:
I have seen several of them at Cairo, where they quartered themselves
upon people with whom their acquaintance at Medina had been very slight,
and became extremely disagreeable by their incessant craving and
impudence. There are few large cities in Syria, Anatolia, and European
Turkey, where some of these people are not to be found.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 541 of 669
Words from 147398 to 147649
of 182297
