But this is not the time for Tafarruj or lionising.
[p.309] Shaykh Hamid warns me, with a nudge, that other things are
expected of a Zair (visitor). He leads me to the Bab al-Salam, fighting
his way through a troop of beggars, and inquires markedly if I am
religiously pure.[FN#12] Then, placing our hands a little below and on
the left of the waist, the palm of the right covering the back of the
left, in the position of prayer, and beginning with the dexter
feet,[FN#13] we pace slowly forwards down the line called the Muwajihat
al-Sharifah, or "the Illustrous Fronting," which, divided off like an
aisle, runs parallel with the Southern wall of the Mosque. On my right
hand walks the Shaykh, who recites aloud the following prayer, making
me repeat it after him.[FN#14] It is literally rendered, as, indeed,
are all the formulae, and the reader is requested to excuse the
barbarous fidelity of the translation.
"In the Name of Allah and in the faith of Allah's Apostle! O Lord,
cause me to enter the Entering of Truth, and cause me to issue forth
the Issuing of Truth, and permit me to draw near to Thee, and make me a
Sultan Victorious[FN#15]!" Then follow blessings upon the Apostle, and
afterwards: "O Allah! open to me the Doors of Thy Mercy, and grant me
Entrance into it, and protect me from the Stoned Devil!"
During this preliminary prayer we had passed down two-thirds of the
Muwajihat al-Sharifah. On the left hand is a dwarf wall, about the
height of a man, painted with arabesques, and pierced with four small
doors which
[p.310] open into the Muwajihat. In this barrier are sundry small
erections, the niche called the Mihrab Sulaymani,[FN#16] the Mambar, or
pulpit, and the Mihrab al-Nabawi.[FN#17]
The two niches are of beautiful mosaic, richly worked with various
coloured marbles, and the pulpit is a graceful collection of slender
columns, elegant tracery, and inscriptions admirably carved. Arrived at
the Western small door in the dwarf wall, we entered the celebrated
spot called Al-Rauzah, after a saying of the Apostle's, "Between my
Tomb and my Pulpit is a Garden of the Gardens of Paradise.[FN#18]" On
the North and West sides it is
[p.311] not divided from the rest of the portico; on the South runs the
dwarf wall, and on the East it is limited by the west end of the
lattice-work containing the tomb.
Accompanied by my Muzawwir I entered the Rauzah, and was placed by him
with the Mukabbariyah[FN#19] behind me, fronting Meccah, with my right
shoulder opposite to, and about twenty feet distant from, the dexter
pillar of the Apostle's Pulpit.[FN#20] There, after saying the
afternoon prayers,[FN#21] I performed the usual two bows in honour of
the temple,[FN#22] and at the end of them recited the hundred and ninth
and the hundred and twelfth chapters of the Koran-the "Kul, ya
ayyuha'l-Kafiruna," and the "Surat al-Ikhlas," called also the "Kul,
Huw' Allah," or the Declaration of Unity; and may be thus translated:
"Say, He is the one God!
"The eternal God!
"He begets not, nor is He begot!
[p.312] "And unto Him the like is not."
After which was performed a single Sujdah (Prostration) of
Thanks,[FN#23] in gratitude to Allah for making it my fate to visit so
holy a spot.
This being the recognised time to give alms, I was besieged by beggars,
who spread their napkins before us on the ground, sprinkled with a few
coppers to excite generosity. But not wishing to be distracted by them,
before leaving Hamid's house I had changed two dollars, and had given
the coin to the boy Mohammed, who accompanied me, strictly charging him
to make that sum last through the Mosque.
My answer to the beggars was a reference to my attendant, backed by the
simple action of turning my pockets inside out; and, whilst he was
battling with the beggars, I proceeded to cast my first coup-d'oeil
upon the Rauzah.
The "Garden" is the most elaborate part of the Mosque. Little can be
said in its praise by day, when it bears the same relation to a
second-rate church in Rome as an English chapel-of-ease to Westminster
Abbey. It is a space of about eighty feet in length, tawdrily decorated
so as to resemble a garden. The carpets are flowered, and the pediments
of the columns are cased with bright green tiles, and adorned to the
height of a man with gaudy and unnatural vegetation in arabesque. It is
disfigured by handsome branched candelabras of cut crystal, the work, I
believe, of a London house, and presented to the shrine by the late
Abbas Pasha of Egypt.[FN#24]
The only admirable feature of the view is the light
[p.313] cast by the windows of stained glass[FN#25] in the Southern
wall. Its peculiar background, the railing of the tomb, a splendid
filigree-work of green and polished brass, gilt or made to resemble
gold, looks more picturesque near than at a distance, when it suggests
the idea of a gigantic bird-cage. But at night the eye, dazzled by
oil-lamps[FN#26] suspended from the roof, by huge wax candles, and by
smaller illuminations falling upon crowds of visitors in handsome
attire, with the richest and the noblest of the city sitting in
congregation when service is performed,[FN#27] becomes less critical.
Still the scene must be viewed with Moslem bias, and until a man is
thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the East, the last place the
Rauzah will remind him of, is that which the architect primarily
intended it to resemble-a garden.
