Although Christian martyrology is rich in such instances of unshakable fortitude under the most painful tortures, yet in Islam the ecstatic temper has attained a higher significance and been more constantly exhibited. A chief reason of this was the religious fanaticism, which was incomparably stronger and more widely diffused in Islam than in mediaeval Christendom. The minds of the Moslems were kept in perpetual tension by severe religious exercises, the effect of which was intensified by fasts and pilgrimages. The peculiar manner of life in the desert, the birthplace of Islam, also contributed to this; the scanty diet, the loneliness of the desert, and in the towns the want of civic life, the poverty of ideas among the Arabs, all helped to produce the same result. Finally, deception, hypocrisy, and superstition, as, alas, so often is the case in religious matters, played a great part. Whoever did not feel ecstatically moved at the recitation of the Koran pretended to be so, and often thereby, perhaps unconsciously, exercised a great effect on others. Men began by pretending to feel religious enthusiasm and ended by believing that they really felt it. Ghazzali mentions in the Ihya ul-ulum that the prophet commanded that whoever did not feel moved to tears at the recitation of the Koran should pretend to weep and to be deeply moved; for, adds Ghazzali sagely, in these matters one begins by forcing oneself to do what afterwards comes spontaneously. Moreover, the fact that religious excitement was looked upon as the mark of a fervent mind and devout intensity, vastly increased the number of those who claimed mystic illumination. When verses of the Koran through frequent repetition lost their power to awaken ecstasy, single lines of fragments of poems sufficed to produce it. Once the mystic Taury found himself in the midst of a company who were discussing some scientific question. All took part in it with the exception of Taury, who suddenly rose and recited:-- Many cooing doves mourn in the mid-day heat, Sadly under the roof of foliage overhead, Remembering old companions and days gone by; Their lament awakens my sorrow also, My mourning rouses them, and often theirs disturbs my sleep; I do not understand their cooing, and they do not understand my weeping: But through, my sorrow of heart I know them, and through their heart-sorrow they know me. Hardly had those present heard these verses than they all fell into a state of ecstatic contemplation. Ibrahim ben Adham, the celebrated Sufi, once heard the following verses:-- Everything is forgiven thee, except estrangement from Us: We pardon thee all the past, and only that remains which has escaped Our eyes (_i.e._, nothing).