the names of God and Mohammad, worked upon them: these are fixed at the top of the stairs, slanting forward. The Murakkee and Muballighs having finished the adán, the former repeats a tradition of the Prophet, saying, “The Prophet (upon whom be blessing and peace!) hath said, ‘If thou say unto thy companion while the Imám is preaching on Friday, Be thou silent, thou speakest rashly.’ Be ye silent: ye shall be rewarded: God shall recompense you.” He then sits down. The Khateeb now rises, and, holding the wooden sword[143] in the same manner as the Murakkee did, delivers an exhortation, called “khutbet el-waaz.” As the reader may be curious to see a translation of a Muslim sermon, I insert one. The following is a sermon preached on the first Friday of the Arab year.[144] The original, as usual, is in rhyming prose. “Praise be to God, the renewer of years, and the multiplier of favours, and the creator of months and days, according to the most perfect wisdom and most admirable regulation; who hath dignified the months of the Arabs above all other months, and pronounced that among the more excellent of them is El-Moharram the Sacred, and commenced with it the year, as He hath closed it with Zu-l-Heggeh. How propitious is the beginning, and how good is the end![145] [I extol] His perfection, exempting Him from the association of any other deity with Him. He hath well considered what He hath formed, and established what He hath contrived, and He alone hath the power to create and to annihilate. I praise Him, extolling His perfection, and exalting His name, for the knowledge and inspiration which He hath graciously vouchsafed; and I testify that there is no deity but God alone; He hath no companion; He is the most holy King; the [God of] peace: and I testify that our Lord and our Prophet and our friend Mohammad is His servant, and His apostle, and His elect, and His friend, the guide of the way, and the lamp of the dark. O God! favour and preserve and bless this noble Prophet, and chief and excellent apostle, the merciful-hearted, our lord Mohammad, and his family, and his companions, and his wives, and his posterity, and the people of his house, the noble persons, and preserve them amply! O servants of God! your lives have been gradually curtailed, and year after year hath passed away, and ye are sleeping on the bed of indolence and on the pillow of iniquity. Ye pass by the tombs of your predecessors, and fear not the assault of destiny and destruction, as if others departed from the world and ye must of necessity remain in it. Ye rejoice at the arrival of new years, as if they brought an increase to the term of life, and swim in the seas of desires, and enlarge your hopes, and in every way exceed other people [in presumption], and ye are sluggish in doing good. O how great a calamity is this! God teacheth by an allegory. Know ye not that in the curtailment of time by indolence and sleep there is very great trouble? Know ye not that in the cutting