These sectaries hold, that pilgrims exercise the profession of cheats, wearing a garment marked with stripes, which they call the vest of Kerbála; and that they practise but hypocrisy and deceit. When, according to their low disposition, they descend to the state of brutes, they become animals, which the Hindus call _Galharí_, “squirrel;” and when transformed into vegetables, they become striped pumpkins, or weak jujube-trees; when they undergo the transformation into minerals, they are onyxes. In this sense this sect interprets the _mahs_, or “mark.” Lawyers and governors, who wash hands and mouth, friends of white garments, become geese, which at every moment plunge their head into water; in the state of vegetables, they assume the form of sticks for rubbing teeth, of reading-sticks, and of mats to cover the place of prayer; and in the state of minerals, they figure as hard stones, stones of sepulchres, and magnets. The glow-worms are torch-bearers, who, descending by degrees, came to take this shape. A dog, having been in his former state a Turk of the tribe _Kazelbásh_,[17] and his crooked sword having become his tail, betrays his Turkish origin by coming forth at the call _khach_: which in Turkish means “forth.” These sectaries further say, that the iron by which a prophet or a saint has been killed, is that which acquires excellence. “Saints, when they desire the voyage to the eternal kingdom, Desire from the edge of thy blade the _takbír_,[18] ‘magnifying exclamation,’ of death.” They also hold, that the Imám Hossain from state to state descended from Moses, and that Yezíd (his murderer) descended from Pharaoh. Moses, in his time, drowned Pharaoh in the waters of the Nile, and obtained the victory over him; but in the latter state Moses, having become Hossain, and Pharaoh, Yezíd, the latter did not give to Hossain the water of the _Ferát_, “Euphrates,” but with the water of the sharp steel, deprived his body of life. These men further assert that, whatever sorts of minerals, vegetables, and animals are black, were formerly black-faced men, and whatever are white, were men with a white skin. These sectaries all venerate the sun, and profess that he is the Kíblah; and the door of the Kâbah facing the sun refers to this meaning, that the sun is the true Kíblah; they have a prayer which they chant with their face turned towards the sun. They maintain that, when the period of Ajem takes place, men will direct their road to God, and they venerate these men, and hold human nature to be divine. Their salutation is: _Alla, alla_. When the period of Ajem is completed, men will remain, and they think that the men whom we venerate were superior in rank to those who now exist; on which account the latter continue to form idols similar to men, and worship them. The worship of idols will prevail, until the period of Ajem returns, and this will be its mode of continuance.