The Alabaster Mosque covers many acres. It has a paved marble court, as big as a good-sized field, around which are cloisters. This is roofed with the sky, and in the midst of it is a great marble fountain where the worshippers bathe their feet and hands before they go in to pray. The mosque is at the back of this court, facing Mecca. Its many domes rise to a great height and its minarets seem to pierce the sky. It is built of alabaster, but its exterior has become worn and pitted by the sands of the desert, which have been blown against its walls until it has nothing of the grandeur which it must have shown when its founder worshipped within it. The interior, however, was wonderfully beautiful that night, when its gorgeous decorations were shown off by the thousands of lights of this great service. Under the gaslight and lamplight the tinsel which during the day shocks the taste was softened and beautified. The alabaster of the walls became as pure as Mexican onyx, and the rare Persian rugs that lay upon the floor took on a more velvety tint. See it all again with me. In the eye of your mind cover an acre field with the richest of oriental rugs; erect about it walls of pure white alabaster with veins as delicate as those of the moss agate; let these walls run up for hundreds of feet; build galleries around them and roof the whole with great domes in which are windows of stained glass; hang lamps by the thousands from the ceiling, place here and there an alabaster column. Now you have some idea of this mosque as it looked on the night of Mohammed’s birthday. You must, however, add the worshippers to the picture. Thousands of oriental costumes; turbans of white, black, and green; rich gowns and sober, long-bearded, dark faces, shine out under the lights in every part of the building. Add likewise the mass of Egyptian soldiers in gold lace and modern uniforms, with red fezzes on their heads, and the hundreds of noble Egyptians in European clothes. There are no shoes in the assemblage, and the crowd moves about on the rugs in bare feet or stockings. What a babel of sounds goes up from the different parts of the building, and how strange are the sights! Here a dozen old men squat on their haunches, facing each other, and rock back and forth as they recite passages of the Koran. Here is a man worshipping all alone; there is a crowd of long-haired, wild-eyed ascetics with faces of all shades of black, yellow, and white. They are so dirty and emaciated they make one think of the hermits of fiction. They stand in a ring and go through the queerest of antics to the weird music of three great tambourines and two drums played by worshippers quite as wild looking as themselves. It is a religious gymnastic show, the horrible nature of which cannot be described upon paper.