Unhappily for the champions of Asia’s prior claim to the weed, those enchanted mirrors of Arabian social life, _The Thousand And One Nights_, reflect no sign, not the faintest shadow of aught resembling circling eddies from the tobacco-bowl. In the early days of the new indulgence its lawfulness was warmly disputed in Mahomedan countries. Both Sultan and Shah looked with suspicion at this new device of the Giaour, and inflicted the severest punishment upon all who ventured to console their sorrows with the pipe. In the warmth of conflicting opinion, the Koran was appealed to, and a Moslem ascetic was found who read to the faithful a passage (from a revised version, no doubt) wherein it was foretold that, ‘In the latter days there shall be men bearing the name of Moslem, but who are not really such, and they shall smoke a certain weed which shall be called tobacco.’ A device so simple, giving the American name of the plant, could deceive no one but those who were willing to be deceived. It helped, however, to smooth the way towards the desired reconciliation; and then the Turkish traveller, Eulia Effendi, contributed towards a peaceful solution of the much-vexed question the best fruits of what little ingenuity he possessed. He declared that he had found, deeply embedded in the wall of an old edifice, so old that it must have been reared long before the birth of the Prophet, a tobacco-pipe which even then smelt of tobacco! The pious frauds of Moslem ascetics could not go beyond this. Here was the sanction of antiquity, if not of the Prophet, for the indulgence they all loved, before which Sultan, and Shah, and Koran gradually gave way, yielding to St Nicotine the mild sway she holds over her votaries. And it must needs be admitted that the claim for a knowledge of tobacco in Western Asia before the days of Columbus has no stronger prop to rest upon than this pipe found in the crevice of an old wall, and which still smelt of tobacco,—dropped in by some poor Turk fearful of the torture in store for him if caught smoking. Russell, in his narrative of a visit to Aleppo in 1603, says that tobacco-smoking, then so commonly indulged in at home, was unknown there. And Sandys, writing of the Turks as he found them in 1610, speaks of tobacco as just introduced into Constantinople by the English. How rapidly the taste for the weed spread over the countries of the near East, and the hold it had taken upon all classes, is shown in many a homely saying among the people, such as, ‘A pipe of tobacco and a dish of coffee are a complete entertainment;’ or, in the Persian proverb that, ‘Coffee without tobacco is meat without salt.’