[P.358]APPENDIX V.

THE PILGRIMAGE OF JOSEPH PITTS TO MECCAH AND AL-MADINAH.—A.D. 1680

OUR second pilgrim was Jos. Pitts, of Exon,[FN#1] a youth fifteen or sixteen years old, when in A.D. 1678, his genius “leading him to be a sailor and to see foreign countries,” caused him to be captured by an Algerine pirate. After living in slavery for some years, he was taken by his “patroon” to Meccah and Al-Madinah via Alexandria, Rosetta, Cairo, and Suez. His description of these places is accurate in the main points, and though tainted with prejudice and bigotry, he is free from superstition and credulity. Conversant with Turkish and Arabic, he has acquired more knowledge of the tenets and practice of Al-Islam than his predecessor, and the term of his residence at Algier, fifteen years, sufficed, despite the defects of his education, to give fulness and finish to his observations. His chief patroon, captain of a troop of

[p.359] horse, was a profligate and debauched man in his time, and a murderer, “who determined to proselyte a Christian slave as an atonement for past impieties.” He began by large offers and failed; he succeeded by dint of a great cudgel repeatedly applied to Joseph Pitts’ bare feet. “I roared out,” says the relator, “to feel the pain of his cruel strokes, but the more I cried, the more furiously he laid on, and to stop the noise of my crying, would stamp with his feet on my mouth.” “At last,” through terror, he “turned and spake the words (la ilaha, &c.), as usual holding up the forefinger of the right hand”; he was then circumcised in due form.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 458 of 630
Words from 124949 to 125233 of 175520