It was not long after my first visit from the police that Sayyid Nuri again called. This time he came without the knowledge of old Mustafa Beg, and was accompanied only by a kind of confidential companion-servant and a hideous old man whom he made the excuse for his visit, for he said he wanted to introduce him to me because he was a doctor, and I had considerable knowledge in the science. He was a horrible-looking old creature, with a beaked nose and but three yellow teeth, and had an intensely evil look in his small eyes. Like all of his class, and Sulaimanians in particular, he commenced asking a number of questions concerning myself; but his native suspicion did not allow him to believe most of the replies, and at last he asked if I had a passport, to which I answered in the affirmative. Sayyid Nuri here interrupted and objected to this inquisition, for though he himself had no scruples in asking the most intimate and offensive questions, he demurred when another would arrogate the privilege to himself. The old creature bent towards him and said, “If we could only see his passport, then we should know what he is”--but I interrupted him by telling him that had I a dozen passports in my pocket I should not display them to him, a remark which amused Sayyid Nuri and annoyed the old man. Then he put forward the proposition he said he had come to make. It appeared he possessed an old Arabic book setting forth the medical science as understood by the Arabs; the old Greek theory of heat and cold, the calorific and frigid temperament, with its diseases all classed under the two headings and cured by medicines antagonistic to such conditions of the body. He now proposed that he should produce this book, and with a stock of herbs purchased from the Jews, go into partnership with me, a proceeding which he asserted “would fill our pockets speedily enough, for a combination of European and Oriental skill will cover all the ailments of the people and provide an alternative to those cases which you cannot now touch, namely, the conservative part of the populace that objects to the “new Medicine”--the “Tibb-i-Jadid.” The more I protested the impossibility of such a combination, the component parts of which were too antagonistic to be possibly considered together, the more he pressed his point, affirming that I was a fool to let professional jealousy thus spoil my chances; to which I replied, that I was not even a doctor--an assertion they both laughed to scorn, and pointed to the bottles above their heads as incontrovertible proof. The “doctor” absolutely failed to understand why I should not join him, and exhibited very considerable chagrin at my consistent refusal, waving aside all my excuses--that I did not perform, even if I knew anything about medicine; that I had too small a stock; that I was very shortly leaving Sulaimania; and so on. [Sidenote: A QUACK DOCTOR]