Turks Trifle With So
Many Of The Prescribed Duties Of Their Religion, That It Might Not,
Perhaps, Be Difficult, In This Instance, To Make Them Adopt Rational
Opinions; And The More So, As The Koran Is Silent Upon This Head:
But no
private measures can be adopted, and rigidly observed, as long as every
individual, almost, is convinced in his own mind of their folly and
inefficacy.
If this were not universally the case, the Turks themselves
would, long ago, have found means of resorting to prophylactics, in
spite of their religious doctrines; as the Arabs now did in the Hedjaz;
and their olemas would have furnished them with fetwas, and quotations
from the law, in favour of what their good sense might have led them to
adopt. In the Hadyth, or sacred traditions, a saying of Mohammed is
recorded: "Fly from the leprous, as thou flyest from the lion."
The case is different, respecting the means of preventing the plague
from being imported, or to establish regular quarantines. This is a
measure depending entirely upon the government. The most fanatic and
orthodox Muselmans, those of the Barbary states, have adopted this
system; and the laws of quarantine are as strictly enforced in their
[p.416] harbours, as they are in the European ports on the northern
shores of the Mediterranean. That a similar system has not been
introduced into Turkey is matter of deep concern, and may be attributed
rather to motives of interest, than to bigotry. Constantinople, and the
ports of the Archipelago, I have not visited myself; but I know that it
would be easy for the governors of Syria, and still more for the
governor of Egypt, to use their authority in introducing a system of
quarantine on the coast, without any dread of opposition from their
subjects.
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