The Olema
Have Confounded Themselves In The Consideration Of The Prophetic State
After Death.
Many declare that prophets live and pray for forty days in
the tomb; at the expiration of which time, they are taken to the
presence of their Maker, where they remain till the blast of Israfil's
trumpet.
The common belief, however, leaves the bodies in the graves,
but no one would dare to assert that the holy ones are suffered to
undergo corruption. On the contrary, their faces are blooming, their
eyes bright, and blood would issue from their bodies if wounded.
Al-Islam, as will afterwards appear, abounds in traditions of the
ancient tombs of saints and martyrs, when accidentally opened, exposing
to view corpses apparently freshly buried. And it has come to pass that
this fact, the result of sanctity, has now become an unerring
indication of it. A remarkable case in point is that of the late Sharif
Ghalib, the father of the present Prince of Meccah. In his lifetime he
was reviled as a wicked tyrant. But some years after his death, his
body was found undecomposed; he then became a saint, and men now pray
at his tomb. Perhaps his tyranny was no drawback to his holy
reputation. La Brinvilliers was declared after execution, by her
confessor and the people generally, a saint;-simply, I presume, because
of the enormity of her crimes.
[FN#85] NOTE TO THIRD EDITION.-I have lately been assured by Mohammed
al-Halabi, Shaykh al-Olema of Damascus, that he was permitted by the
Aghawat to pass through the gold-plated door leading into the Hujrah,
and that he saw no trace of a sepulchre.
[FN#86] I was careful to make a ground-plan of the Prophet's Mosque, as
Burckhardt was prevented by severe illness from so doing.
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