What in this mode of town life so pleases the Bokhariot--what makes him give so marked a preference to his own capital--is not difficult to divine. His mind has become familiarized with a simple mode of living, in which, as yet, little luxury is to be found, and which, in externals, admits not much perceptible distinction between ranks and conditions of men. A universal acquiescence in the same poverty, or to use a more appropriate expression, the absence of different degrees of visible property, makes Bokhara, in the eye of many Asiatics, a favourite residence. I once met a Persian in Teheran who had been a slave in Bokhara fifteen years. And there, in the middle of his fatherland, and surrounded by his relatives, he sighed and pined for the Tartar capital. At the outset he was delighted with the bazaars, filled with articles of European luxury; he contemplated them with childish delight; but later he saw how the wealthier alone made their purchases, and how all despised a man like him, clad in a cotton dress, the costume of the poor. No wonder his wish carried him again back to the spot where, at the time unconscious of his happiness, he was permitted to share great physical comfort, without a thorn in his eye or a pang in his heart. CHAPTER XII. BOKHARA, THE HEAD QUARTERS OF MOHAMMEDANISM. "Bokhara, mirevi divanei Laiki zen djiri zindankhanei." Thou wilt to Bokhara? O fool for thy pains, Thither thou goest, to be put into chains. MESNEVI. It has frequently been noticed by travellers in Central Asia, and we have likewise remarked upon it, that Bokhara considers itself the great pillar of Islamism, and the only pure fountain of the Mohammedan religion. Nor is it the Bokhariots alone who take this view, but all the rest of the Mohammedan world, in whatever region or country, unite in looking up to and extolling the Turkestan capital for possessing this exclusive privilege. The pilgrim from Central Asia, whether travelling in Asia Minor, Arabia, or Egypt, is received with marked veneration and respect, and is regarded as the very embodiment of every Islamitic virtue. The western Mohammedan, especially the Osmanli, deeply wounded by the innovations our civilization has introduced into his native country, turns to his kinsman and co-religionist from the far East, and gazing at him with a look of extreme piety, finds comfort at the aspect of him, who in his eyes still represents the religion of the Prophet, pure and undefiled. Heaving a sigh, he exclaims: "Ha Bokharai Sherif!" (yes, the noble Bokhara), which utterance is meant to express his whole mind.