Fanatical he was to a degree I seldom have seen. He observed the letter of the law regarding Christians, and was most careful to have nothing to do with them, yet I found him a just, charitable man, very kind hearted, and willing to take the greatest pains to help or make me comfortable. If a Christian said Salam to him, he would not reply by the same salutation, displaying thereby the haughty fanaticism of the most bigoted Shi’a; yet, as every sincere Musulman must, he deplored the decadence of Islam and cursed more violently the backsliders of his own religion than the reprobates among Christians, “for,” said he, “these have the law and the book, and the light of the saints before them; while those have ever been in a mistaken path, and know no better.” [Sidenote: KURDISH HORSEPLAY] In all his dealings he was just, nor would he favour the Musulman more than the Christian in a matter of business. He had a habit of dropping into deep meditation. One night he asked me my name; hearing Ghulam Husain, he repeated several times: “Ghulam Husain, Ghulam Husain,” he murmured, “The Slave of Husain, may I be his sacrifice! Ah! Husain, Husain, shall we not rise up and smite the Sunnis, for that they slew him, him the pure, the sinless, betrayed, and murdered by the evildoer--ah, what a name, The Slave of Husain, and what a life to live up to, Husain! Husain!...” and he would drop into a reverie murmuring now and then “Husain”--reviewing doubtless the details of the tragedy of that holy man, whose character bears comparison with that of any Christian saint, and whose self-sacrifice and resignation was no less heroic. A Kurd himself, he deplored the levity of the Kurds, who are much given to dancing and singing. Each night the Kurdish muleteers would collect on the roof of some rooms in the courtyard, and chant their interminable “Guranis” or folk songs, dancing hornpipes of ever-increasing fury and joining in roaring choruses. Sometimes they would engage in wrestling matches, and cast one another about the yard, the exercise often terminating in a display of hot temper, when knives would be drawn, to be sheathed as an onlooker made a jest that called forth laughter from all. We were hopelessly detained in Kirkuk. Behind, on the road we had come, the Hamavands had closed in; towards Bagdad it was the same, and to the east where our course lay was their own particular country, across which not even companies of soldiers would dare to go.