The Indians Are Not So Numerous In Proportion Here As At
Meccah; Still Hindustani Is By No Means Uncommonly Heard In The
Streets.
They preserve their peculiar costume, the women persisting in
showing their faces, and in wearing tight, exceedingly tight,
pantaloons.
This, together with other reasons, secures for them the
contempt of the Arabs. At Al-Madinah they are generally small
shopkeepers, especially druggists and sellers of Kumash (cloth), and
they form a society of their own. The terrible cases of misery and
starvation which so commonly occur among the improvident Indians at
Jeddah and Meccah are here rare.
The Hanafi school holds the first rank at Al-Madinah, as in most parts
of Al-Islam, although many of the citizens, and almost all the Badawin,
are Shafe’is. The reader will have remarked with astonishment that at one
of the fountain-heads of the faith, there are several races of
schismatics, the Benu Hosayn, the Benu Ali, and the Nakhawilah. At the
town of Safra there are said to be a number of the Zuyud
schismatics,[FN#9] who visit Al-Madinah, and have settled in force at
Meccah, and some declare that the Bayazi sect[FN#10] also exists.
The citizens of Al-Madinah are a favoured race, although the city is
not, like Meccah, the grand mart of the Moslem world or the
meeting-place of nations. They pay no taxes, and reject the idea of a
“Miri,” or land-cess, with extreme disdain. “Are we, the children of the
Prophet,” they exclaim, “to support or to be supported?” The Wahhabis, not
understanding the argument, taxed them,
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