It is not, however, true, as some European writers have maintained, that if an unbeliever is the slave of a Muslim his conversion to Islam procures for him his manumission, for, according to Muhammadan law, the conversion of a slave does not affect the prior state of bondage; [1365] and the condition of the Muslim slave has varied much according to the character of his master. But freedom is in many instances the reward of conversion, and devout minds have even recognised in enslavement God’s guidance to the true faith, as the negroes from the Upper Nile countries, whom Doughty met in Arabia. “In those Africans there is no resentment that they have been made slaves ... even though cruel men-stealers rent them from their parentage. The patrons who paid their price have adopted them into their households, the males are circumcised and—that which enfranchises their souls, even in the long passion of home-sickness—God has visited them in their mishap; they can say ‘it was His grace,’ since they be thereby entered into the saving religion. This, therefore, they think is the better country, where they are the Lord’s free men, a land of more civil life, the soil of the two Sanctuaries, the land of Mohammed:—for such they do give God thanks that their bodies were sometime sold into slavery!” [1366] Very effective also, both in winning and retaining, is the ordinance of the daily prayers five times a day. Montesquieu [1367] has well said, “Une religion chargée de beaucoup de pratiques attache plus à elle qu’une autre qui l’est moins; on tient beaucoup aux choses dont on est continuellement occupé.” The religion of the Muslim is continually present with him and in the daily prayer manifests itself in a solemn and impressive ritual, which cannot leave either the worshipper or the spectator unaffected. Saʻīd b. Ḥasan, an Alexandrian Jew, who embraced Islam in the year 1298, speaks of the sight of the Friday prayer in a mosque as a determining factor in his own conversion. During a severe illness he had had a vision in which a voice bade him declare himself a Muslim. “And when I entered the mosque” (he goes on) “and saw the Muslims standing in rows like angels, I heard a voice speaking within me, ‘This is the community whose coming was announced by the prophets (on whom be blessings and peace!)’; and when the preacher came forth clad in his black robe, a deep feeling of awe fell upon me ... and when he closed his sermon with the words, ‘Verily God enjoineth justice and kindness and the giving of gifts to kinsfolk, and He forbiddeth wickedness and wrong and oppression. He warneth you; haply ye will be mindful.’ [1368] And when the prayer began, I was mightily uplifted, for the rows of the Muslims appeared to me like rows of angels, to whose prostrations and genuflections God Almighty was revealing Himself, and I heard a voice within me saying, ‘If God spake twice unto the people of Israel throughout the ages, verily He speaketh unto this