To My Taste It Was A Salt-Bitter, Which Was Exceedingly Disagreeable. (R.F.B.) [FN#31] They Are Not So Modest.

600,000 is the mystical number; others declare it to be incalculable.

Oftentimes 70,000 have met at Arafat. [FN#32] The cupola has now disappeared; there is a tall pillar of masonry-work, whitewashed, rising from a plastered floor, for praying. [FN#33] On the 9th Zu’l Hijjah, or the Day of Arafat, the pilgrims, having taken their stations within the sacred limits, perform ablution about noon, and pray as directed at that hour. At three P.M., after again performing the usual devotions, or more frequently after neglecting them, they repair to the hill, and hear the sermon. [FN#34] At Muzdalifah. [FN#35] This, I need scarcely say, is speaking as a Christian. All Moslems believe that Ishmael, and not Isaac, was ordered to be sacrificed. The place to which Pitts alludes is still shown to pilgrims. [FN#36] (Pitts’ Note.) Monsieur de Thevenot saith, that they throw these stones at the Gibbel or Mount; but, indeed, it is otherwise; though I must needs say, he is very exact in almost every thing of Turkish matters; and I pay much deference to that great author. [FN#37] The Rami or Jaculator now usually says, as he casts each stone, “In the name of Allah, and Allah is omnipotent (Raghman li’sh’ Shaytani wa Khizyatih), in token of abhorrence to Satan, and for his ignominy (I do this).” [FN#38] The Arabic would mean stone the devil and slay him, unless “wazbehe” be an error for “wa ashabih,”—“and his companions.” [FN#39] Even in the present day, men who have led “wild” lives in their youth, often date their reformation from the first pilgrimage. [FN#40] Al-Yaman, Southern Arabia, whose “Akik,” or cornelians were celebrated. [FN#41] This is still practised in Moslem countries, being considered a decent way of begging during public prayers, without interrupting them. [FN#42] These people will contract to board the pilgrim, and to provide him with a tent, as well as to convey his luggage. [FN#43] The usual way now is in “Kitar,” or in Indian file, each camel’s halter being tied to the tail of the beast that precedes him. Pitts’ “cottor” must be a kitar, but he uses the word in another of its numerous senses. [FN#44] This vehicle is the “Takht-rawan” of Arabia. [FN#45] He describes the Mashals still in use. Lane has sketched them, Mod. Egypt. chap. vi. [FN#46] Pitts means by “imaginary Abdes,” the sand ablution,—lawful when water is wanted for sustaining life. [FN#47] As I shall explain at a future time, there are still some Hijazi Badawin whose young men, before entering life, risk everything in order to plunder a Haji. They care little for the value of the article stolen, the exploit consists in stealing it. [FN#48] The walls, therefore, were built between A.D. 1503 and A.D. 1680. [FN#49] These are not windows, but simply the inter-columnar spaces filled with grating. [FN#50] This account is perfectly correct. The Eunuchs, however, do not go into the tomb; they only light the lamps in, and sweep the passage round, the Sepulchre. [FN#51] These are the small apertures in the Southern grating. See Chap. xvi. [FN#52] The Caravan must have been near the harbour of Muwaylah, where supplies are abundant.

[p.390]APPENDIX VI.

GIOVANNI FINATI.

THE third pilgrim on our list is Giovanni Finati, who, under the Moslem name of “Haji Mohammed,” made the campaign against the Wahhabis for the recovery of Meccah and Al-Madinah. A native of Ferrara, the eldest of the four scions of a small landed proprietor, “tenderly attached to his mother,” and brought up most unwillingly for a holy vocation,—to use his own words, “instructed in all that course of frivolous and empty ceremonials and mysteries, which form a principal feature in the training of a priest for the Romish Church,” in A.D. 1805, Giovanni Finati’s name appeared in the list of Italian conscripts. After a few vain struggles with fate, he was marched to Milan, drilled and trained; the next year his division was ordered to the Tyrol, where the young man, “brought up for the church,” instantly deserted. Discovered in his native town, he was sent under circumstances of suitable indignity to join his regiment at Venice, where a general act of grace, promulgated on occasion of Napoleon’s short visit, preserved him from a platoon of infantry. His next move was to Spalato, in Dalmatia, where he marched under General Marmont to Cattaro, the last retreat of the hardy and warlike Montenegrins. At Budoa, a sea-port S.E. of Ragusa, having consulted an Albanian “captain-merchant,” Giovanni Finati, and fifteen other Italians—

[p.391] “including the sergeant’s wife,” swore fidelity to one another, and deserted with all their arms and accoutrements. They passed into the Albanese territory, and were hospitably treated as “soldiers, who had deserted from the infidel army in Dalmatia,” by the Pasha, posted at Antivari to keep check upon the French operations. At first they were lodged in the Mosque, and the sergeant’s wife had been set apart from the rest; but as they refused to apostatize they were made common slaves, and worked at the quarries till their “backs were sore.” Under these circumstances, the sergeant discovering and promulgating his discovery that “the Mahometans believe as we do in a god; and upon examination that we might find the differences from our mother church to be less than we had imagined,”—all at once came the determination of professing to be Mohammedans. Our Italian Candide took the name of Mahomet, and became pipe-bearer to a Turkish general officer in the garrison. This young man trusted the deserter to such an extent that the doors of the Harim were open to him[FN#1], and Giovanni Finati repaid his kindness by seducing Fatimah, a Georgian girl, his master’s favourite wife.

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