Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
ReligionIslamic
Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Arabian Peninsula -- Description and travel
thou givest, that will go with thee!" chaunts the old vagrant, whose
wallet perhaps contains more provision than the basket of many a
respectable shopkeeper.
[p.83]"Na'al abuk[FN#17]-rucse thy father-O brother of a naughty
sister!" is the response of some petulant Greek to the touch of the old
man's staff. "The grave is darkness, and good deeds are its lamp!" sing
the blind women, rapping two sticks together: "upon Allah! upon Allah!
O daughter!" cry the bystanders, when the obstinate "bint"[FN#18]
(daughter) of sixty years seizes their hands, and will not let go
without extorting a farthing. "Bring the sweet" (i.e. fire), "and take
the full,"[FN#19] (i.e., empty cup), euphuistically cry the
long-moustached, fierce-browed Arnauts to the coffee-house keeper, who
stands by them charmed by the rhyming repartee that flows so readily
from their lips.
"Hanien," may it be pleasant to thee![FN#20] is the signal for
encounter.
[p.84]"Thou drinkest for ten," replies the other, instead of returning
the usual religious salutation.
"I am the cock and thou art the hen!" is the rejoinder,-a tart one.
"Nay, I am the thick one and thou art the thin!" resumes the first
speaker, and so on till they come to equivoques which will not bear a
literal English translation.
And sometimes, high above the hubbub, rises the melodious voice of the
blind mu'ezzin, who, from his balcony in the beetling tower rings
forth, "Hie ye to devotion! Hie ye to salvation." And (at
morning-prayer time) he adds: "Devotion is better than sleep! Devotion
is better than sleep!" Then good Moslems piously stand up, and mutter,
previous to prayer, "Here am I at Thy call, O Allah! here am I at Thy
call!"
Sometimes I walked with my friend to the citadel, and sat upon a high
wall, one of the outworks of Mohammed Ali's Mosque, enjoying a view
which, seen by night, when the summer moon is near the full, has a
charm no power of language can embody. Or escaping from "stifled
Cairo's filth,[FN#21]" we passed, through the Gate of Victory, into the
wilderness beyond the City of the Dead.[FN#22] Seated upon some mound
of ruins, we inhaled
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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