The Arabs delight in poetry, and during the night generally collected in parties, and seated on the sand sang the Mahdi's praises, the two principal singers keeping time by beating the ground with their sticks, while the rest joined in the chorus at the end of each verse. Inspired sometimes by their theme, they would stand up and flourish their swords in the air as if combating the Turks, shouting "Fi Shan Allah" (for God's cause). Thus the adulation of the Mahdi extended from the highest emir to the lowest slave, and woe to him who was ever heard to utter one word in deprecation or blame of the new Prophet, he would at once be pounced upon and beaten to death with sticks. Sometimes the Mahdi was called "Khalifat er Rasul" (the successor of the Prophet), and sometimes even they dignified him with the sacred title of Nebbi (Prophet). In truth the Prophet Mohammed occupied in the people's minds quite a secondary position, and the celebration of his birthday was forbidden by the Mahdi. On one occasion a dispute occurred between two men; one argued that the Mahdi would have a higher seat in heaven than the Prophet, while the other maintained that "God was higher than the Mahdi." The dispute waxed hot, and the case was referred to the judge, who settled the matter by saying that "the living was better than the dead," but at the same time the man who advocated the Prophet's claims was relegated to prison, not so much for asserting what was perfectly true, that "God was higher than the Mahdi," but that the tone in which he had said it was tantamount to an insult to the Mahdi. Naturally those Moslems who still had some sense of the orthodox creed were much annoyed at this decision.