Not A Line Is Straight, The Tall Dead Walls Of The Mosques Slope Over Their Massy Buttresses, And The Thin Minarets Seem About To Fall Across Your Path. The Cornices Project Crookedly From The Houses, While The Great Gables Stand Merely By Force Of Cohesion.

And that the Line of Beauty may not be wanting, the graceful bending form of the palm, on whose topmost feathers, quivering in the cool night breeze, the moonbeam glistens, springs from a gloomy mound, or from the darkness of a mass of houses almost level with the ground.

Briefly, the whole view is so strange, so fantastic, so ghostly, that it seems preposterous to imagine that in such places human beings like ourselves can be born, and live through life, and carry out the command "increase and multiply," and die.

[FN#1] Of course all quarrelling, abuse, and evil words are strictly forbidden to the Moslem during Ramazan. If one believer insult another, the latter should repeat "I am fasting" three times before venturing himself to reply. Such is the wise law. But human nature in Egypt, as elsewhere, is always ready to sacrifice the spirit to the letter, rigidly to obey the physical part of an ordinance, and to cast away the moral, as if it were the husk and not the kernel. [FN#2] Allah opens (the door of daily bread) is a polite way of informing a man that you and he are not likely to do business; in other words, that you are not in want of his money. [FN#3] The Sufrah is a piece of leather well tanned, and generally of a yellow colour, bordered with black. It is circular, has a few small pouches for knives or spoons, and, by means of a thong run through rings in the periphery, can be readily converted into a bag for carrying provisions on a journey. Figuratively it is used for the meal itself. "Sufrah hazir" means that dinner is upon the table. [FN#4] The Salam at this hour of the morning is confined to the devotions of Ramazan. The curious reader may consult Lane's Modern Egyptians, chap. 25, for a long and accurate interpretation of these words. [FN#5] The summons to prayer. [FN#6] In the Mohammedan church every act of devotion must be preceded by what is called its Niyat, or purpose. This intention must be either mentally conceived, or, as the more general rule is, audibly expressed. For instance, the worshipper will begin with "I purpose to pray the four-bows of mid-day prayer to Allah the Almighty," and then he will proceed to the act of worship. Moslems of the Shafe'i faith must perform the Niyat of fasting every night for the ensuing day; the Malikis, on the other hand, "purpose" abstinence but once for the thirty days of Ramazan. Lane tells a pleasant tale of a thief in the Mosque saying, "I purpose (before prayer) to carry off this nice pair of new shoes!" [FN#7] Many go to sleep immediately after the Imsak, or about a quarter of an hour before the dawn prayer, and do not perform their morning devotions till they awake.

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