These Officers Form A Committee, And
After Reckoning The Total Of The Families Entitled To Pensions, Divide
The Money Amongst Them, According To The Number In Each Household, And
The Rank Of The Pensioners.
They are divided into five orders:-
The Olema, or learned, and the Mudarrisin, who profess, lecture, or
teach adults
In the Harim.
The Imams and Khatibs.
The descendants of the Prophet.
The Fukaha, poor divines, pedadogues, gerund-grinders, who teach boys
to read the Koran.
The Awam, or nobile vulgus of the Holy City, including the Ahali, or
burghers of the town, and the Mujawirin, or those settled in the place.
Omar Effendi belonged to the second order, and he informed me that his
share varied from three to fifteen Riyals per annum.
[FN#1] In Oriental geography the parasang still, as in the days of
Pliny, greatly varies, from 1500 to 6000 yards. Captain Francklin,
whose opinion is generally taken, makes it (in his Tour to Persia) a
measure of about four miles (Preface to Ibn Haukal, by Sir Gore
Ouseley).
[FN#2] M.C. de Perceval (Essai sur l'Histoire des Arabes avant
l'Islamisme), makes Amlak son of Laoud (Lud), son of Shem, or,
according to others, son of Ham. That learned writer identifies the
Amalik with the Phoenicians, the Amalekites, the Canaanites, and the
Hyksos. He alludes, also, to an ancient tradition which makes them to
have colonised Barbary in Africa.
[FN#3] The Dabistan al-Mazahib relates a tradition that the Almighty,
when addressing the angels in command, uses the Arabic tongue, but when
speaking in mercy or beneficence, the Deri dialect of Persian.
[FN#4] These were the giants who fought against Israel in Palestine.
[FN#5] In this wild tradition we find a confirmation of the sound
geographical opinion which makes Arabia "Une des pepinieres du genre
humain" (M. Jomard). It must be remembered that the theatre of all
earliest civilisation has been a fertile valley with a navigable
stream, like Sind, Egypt, and Mesopotamia.
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