bestowal of alms upon the poor and the resumption of normal bodily activities. Five times a day the believers, no matter how pleasantly occupied, must turn to prayer: at dawn, at midday, in the afternoon, at sunset, and at the coming of complete darkness. On six days these devotions could be performed anywhere, though preferably in congregation at the Mosque; but every Friday the Moslems, unless detained by extraordinary causes, were commanded to worship in a body at the Mosque. The ever efficient Gabriel informed Mohammed of Allah’s desire that the time for each prayer should be announced by a crier, who must shout: “Great is the Lord! Great is the Lord! I bear witness that there is no God but the Lord: I bear witness that Mohammed is the Prophet of God. Come unto prayer: come unto salvation. God is great! God is great! There is no God but the Lord!” So Mohammed instructed his negro servant, Bilal, to be the public crier; and early every morning Bilal would clamber upon a high house and rouse the slumbering Moslems with these words, adding this salutary invention of his own: “Prayer is better than sleep! Prayer is better than sleep!” Then, climbing down from his lofty perch, he would approach Mohammed’s door and shout: “To prayer, O Apostle of God! to salvation!” At the special Friday service, the Prophet ascended the pulpit, gave a stereotyped salutation of peace, and then seated himself while Bilal shouted the stentorian summons to prayer. Descending from the pulpit, Mohammed then led the prayers; reascending, he delivered one or two exhortations. The assembly, fixing their rapt glances on his earnest gesticulations, would swallow every word and at the end join in a loud “Amen!” or something like it. When all was over, his mantle of striped material from Yemen, and his girdle of splendid Oman cloth, were carefully folded up and laid away until the next service. The pulpit itself was soon endowed with an awful sanctity. Disputes were settled at its base; and should anyone take a false oath in its presence, “even if the subject were as insignificant as a toothpick”--and toothpicks were not wholly unknown in Islam--he thereby doomed himself to eternal damnation. Before it had been built, Mohammed had supported himself during his sermons by leaning on a post--an object of which he grew so fond that, after it was no longer needed, he commanded it should be interred beneath the pulpit. The post itself reciprocated his touching sentiment; for, when it was abandoned, it moaned loudly and would not stop until the Prophet placed his hand upon it, whereupon its grief was assuaged. [Illustration: VI] HOLY WARS I