At Any Rate
I Had The Certainty Of Seeing The Strange Wild Country Of The Hijaz,
And Of Being Present At The Ceremonies Of The Holy City.
I must request
the reader to bear with a Visitation once more:
We shall conclude it
with a ride to Al-Bakia.[FN#6] This venerable spot is frequented by the
pious every day after the prayer at the Prophet’s Tomb, and especially on
Fridays.
Our party started one morning,—on donkeys, as usual, for my foot was not
yet strong,—along the Darb al-Janazah round the Southern wall of the
town. The locomotion was decidedly slow, principally in consequence of
the tent-ropes which the Hajis had pinned down literally all over the
plain, and falls were by no means unfrequent. At last we arrived at the
end of the Darb, where I committed myself by mistaking the decaying
place of those miserable schismatics the Nakhawilah[FN#7] for Al-Bakia,
the glorious cemetery of the Saints. Hamid corrected my blunder with
tartness, to which I replied as tartly, that in our country—Afghanistan—we
burned the body of every heretic upon whom we could lay our hands. This
truly Islamitic custom was heard with general applause, and as the
little dispute ended, we stood at the open gate of Al-Bakia. Then
having dismounted I sat down on a low Dakkah or stone bench within the
walls, to obtain a general view and to prepare for the most fatiguing
of the Visitations.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 39 of 630
Words from 10305 to 10557
of 175520
