About Thirty Years Ago, Mohammed Ali Pasha Bought Up
All The Wakf (Church Property), Agreeing To Pay For Its Produce, Which
He Rated At Five Piastres The Ardeb, When It Was Worth Three Times As
Much.
Even that was not regularly paid.
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.
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