Besides, the official Turk is already too civilized to put up readily with the real hardships of the Haj. In spite of the alleviations effected by the steam navigation of the Red Sea, pilgrimage is still no small matter, and once landed at Jeddah, all things are much as they were a hundred years ago, while the Turk has changed. With his modern notion of dress and comfort he may indeed be excused for shrinking from the quaint nakedness of the pilgrim garb and the bare-headed march to Arafat under a tropical sun. Besides, there is the land journey still of three hundred miles to make before he can reach Medina, and what to some would be worse hardship, a wearisome waiting afterwards in the unhealthy ports of Hejaz. The Turkish official, too, has learned to dispense with so many of the forms of his religion that he finds no difficulty in making himself excuses here. In fact, he seldom or never now performs the pilgrimage. The mass of the Ottoman Haj is made up of Kurds, Syrians, Albanians, Circassians, Lazis, and Tartars from Russia and the Khanates, of everything rather than real Turks. Nor are those that come distinguished greatly for their piety or learning. The school of St. Sophia at Constantinople has lost its old reputation as a seat of religious knowledge; and its Ulema are known to be more occupied with the pursuit of Court patronage than with any other science. So much indeed is this the case that serious students often prefer a residence at Bokhara, or even in the heretical schools of Persia, as a more real road to learning. Turkey proper boasts at the present day few theologians of note, and still fewer independent thinkers.