The Sultan has taken advantage
of the present crisis to put down Wakf in Turkey.
The Holy Land,
therefore, will gradually lose all its land and house property, and
will soon be compelled to depend entirely upon the presents of the
pilgrims, and the Sadakah, or alms, which are still sent to it by the
pious Moslems of distant regions. As might be supposed, both the
Meccans and the Madani loudly bewail their hard fates, and by no means
approve of the Ikram, the modern succedaneum for an extensive and
regularly paid revenue. At a future time, I shall recur to this subject.
[FN#34] The prayer-niche and the minaret both date their existence from
the days of Al-Walid, the builder of the third Mosque. At this age of
their empire, the Moslems had travelled far and had seen art in various
lands; it is therefore not without a shadow of reason that the Hindus
charge them with having borrowed their two favourite symbols, and
transformed them into an arch and a tower.
[FN#35] The Ustawanat al-Hannanah, or "Weeping-Post." See page 335,
chapter XVI., ante.
[FN#36] As usual, there are doubts about the invention of this article.
It was covered with cloth by the Caliph Osman, or, as others say, by
Al-Mu'awiyah, who, deterred by a solar eclipse from carrying out his
project of removing it to Damascus, placed it upon a new framework,
elevated six steps above the ground. Al-Mahdi wished to raise the
Mambar six steps higher, but was forbidden so to do by the Imam Malik.
The Abbasides changed the pulpit, and converted the Prophet's original
seat into combs, which were preserved as relics. Some historians
declare that the original Mambar was burnt with the Mosque in A.H. 654.
In Ibn Jubayr's time (A.H. 580), it was customary for visitors to place
their right hands upon a bit of old wood, inserted into one of the
pillars of the pulpit; this was supposed to be a remnant of the
"weeping-post." Every Sultan added some ornament to the Mambar, and at
one time it was made of white marble, covered over with a dome of the
"eight metals." It is now a handsome structure, apparently of wood,
painted and gilt of the usual elegant form, which has been compared by
some travellers with the suggesta of Roman Catholic churches. I have
been explicit about this pulpit, hoping that, next time the knotty
question of Apostolic seats comes upon the tapis, our popular authors
will not confound a Curule chair with a Moslem Mambar. Of the latter
article, Lane (Mod. Egyptians, chap. iii.) gave a sketch in the
"Interior of a Mosque."
[FN#37] The Prophet is said to have had a dwelling-house in the
Ambariyah, or the Western quarter of the Manakhah suburb, and here,
according to some, he lodged Mariyah, the Coptic girl. As pilgrims do
not usually visit the place, and nothing of the original building can
be now remaining, I did not trouble myself about it.
[FN#38] Meaning the Prophet's fifteen to twenty-five wives.
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