Their
Mothers Were Fit Progenitors For Such Progeny:
Long, gaunt, with
emaciated limbs, wall-sided, high-shouldered, and straight-backed, with
pendulous bosoms, spider-like arms, and splay feet.
Their long
elf-locks, wrinkled faces, and high cheek-bones, their lips darker than
the epidermis, hollow staring eyes, sparkling as if to light up the
extreme
[p.407]ugliness around, and voices screaming as though in a perennial
rage, invested them with all the "charms of Sycorax." These "Houris of
Jahannam" were habited in long night-gowns dyed blue to conceal want of
washing, and the squalid children had about a yard of the same material
wrapped round their waists for all toilette. This is not an overdrawn
portrait of the farmer race of Arabs, the most despised by their
fellow-countrymen, and the most hard-favoured, morally as well as
physically, of all the breed.
Before entering the Mosque of Al-Kuba[FN#16] it will be necessary to
call to mind some passages of its past history. When the Apostle's
she-camel, Al-Kaswa, as he was approaching Al-Madinah after the flight
from Meccah, knelt down here, he desired his companions to mount the
animal. Abu Bakr and Omar[FN#17] did so; still she sat upon the ground;
but when Ali obeyed the order, she arose. The Apostle bade him loose
her halter, for she was directed by Allah, and the Mosque walls were
built upon the line over which she trod. It was the first place of
public prayer in Al-Islam.
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