These Four Riwaks,
Arched Externally, Are Supported Internally By Pillars Of Different
Shape And Material, Varying From Fine Porphyry To Dirty Plaster.
The
Southern, where the sepulchre or cenotaph stands, is paved with
handsome slabs of white marble and marquetry work, here and there
covered with coarse matting, and above this by unclean carpets, well
worn by faithful feet.[FN#11]
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:
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