So I had thought of this possible predicament, and had done my best to guard against it. I must, in order to explain how I was enabled the more securely to adopt my disguise of Persian, ask the reader to pardon me a momentary retrospect, which gives a view of Shiraz four years before. Here I had, after a preceding three years’ study of the religion of the Persians, became converted to Islam. I am not here to state to what extent I was convinced of the truth or otherwise of Muhammadanism, nor whether I was convinced at all. Unless I became outwardly Muhammadan I could never learn properly the language, which is so inseparable in its idiom from the religion. So after some interviews with a priest whose name to-day I remember with feelings only of the greatest admiration and respect, I was made a member of the congregation of Islam, and undertook a course of theological study. Under the tuition of my priest and his confrères I acquired considerable knowledge, and was able to hold my own in the theological discussions and arguments which are at once the profession and diversion of so great a part of the populace of Shiraz. By the merest stroke of chance I was prevented from going, as I had planned, to Kerbela and Mecca, and found myself rushing to England on a P. & O. steamer instead of creeping up to Jeddah as a deck passenger on a “ditcher.” Thus I had acquired a good knowledge of my subject, if I may so call it; and while away, received many letters from my priestly friends in Shiraz, addressed to Mirza Ghulam Husain, which not unnaturally I kept, and had preserved till now, when I found myself in Kurdistan. I had resolved if I were confronted by the Kurdish priest, the Shaikh ul Islam of Sina, to produce certain letters wherein it was mentioned that I had been “under the guise of an European, but, thank God, a walker in the paths of peace, and a chooser of Islam and no pagan, such as appears to be.” With these letters and my knowledge of Islam, I hoped to be able to prove that I was a Persian and a Musulman, and if he believed that, it was but an insignificant affair to point out what he already knew, that a Persian going, as I had been, to London, must adopt European dress to go there, which would explain my appearance to him as a European.