For This Purpose, They First Dye Their Hands Blue, With Indigo;
They Put On A Black Borko, Or Face-Veil, And Thus Follow The Funeral
Through The Streets; And If They Can Afford It, They Put On A Black
Gown, And.
Even a black shift.
They continue to wear their mourning for
seven, or fifteen, or sometimes for forty days.
As to the state of learning, I shall add that the Medinans are regarded
as more accomplished olemas than the Mekkans; though, as I have
mentioned above, there are few, if any, public schools. Several
individuals study the Muselman sciences at Damascus, and Cairo, in both
of which cities there are pious foundations for the purpose. As at Mekka
there is no public book-market, the only books I saw exposed
[p.390] for sale were in some retail clothes-shops near the Bab es'
Salam. There are said to be some fine private libraries; I saw one in
the house of a Sheikh, where at least three thousand volumes were heaped
up; but I could not examine them. As it often happens in the East, these
libraries are all wakf, that is, have been presented to some mosque by
its founder, or entailed upon some private family, so that the books
cannot be alienated. The Wahabys are said to have carried off many loads
of books.
Notwithstanding my repeated inquiries here, as well as at Mekka, I could
never hear of a single person who had composed, or even made short notes
of, the history of his own times, or of the Wahabys.
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