The custom of sacrificing a camel on the tenth day of Zú-’l-hijjah prevails among the Shiahs in most of the towns of Persia and of Central Asia. The ceremony varies with the locality; but the one we witnessed was so picturesque that we cannot refrain from describing it. For the first nine days the camel, richly caparisoned, is led through the streets of the city; half a dozen Dervishes, intoning passages of the Kurán, swing along at the head of the procession; at every house the camel is made to halt, and subscriptions are raised towards its purchase-money and its maintenance. The victim, goaded on from street to street and from square to square, ends at last by collecting alms for its tormentors. On the eve of the Day of Sacrifice the camel is stripped of its gaudy trappings, and its body is, as it were, mapped out into portions with red ink, one portion being allotted to every quarter of the city. The place of sacrifice is usually outside the city walls, and early in the morning each district arms its strongest men to go and claim its share of the carcase. Each group may contain as many as twenty men, bristling from head to foot with uncouth weapons, and a band of drummers adds to the barbaric display the sounds of discordant music. One man in each group rides on horseback and wears a cashmere shawl; it is he who receives into his hands the sacrificial share of the parish he represents. Prayers are said, and then, at a given signal, the butcher prepares his knife, and the cutters appointed by the respective quarters make ready to hack the victim in pieces. The camel, bare of covering, and marked all over with the red lines, turns its supercilious eyes on the eager cutters, and they, in their turn, watch the butcher. The wretched victim may or may not be conscious of its fate. I believe it to be conscious; but, whether it is or not, there is no sign of terror in its eyes, only the customary look of sly disdain. No sooner does the butcher plunge the knife into the camel’s windpipe than the cutters vie with one another as to who shall be the first to finish carving the still animate body, each allotted part of which is handed warm and well-nigh throbbing with life, to the horseman of the quarter to which it belongs. He takes it in procession to the house of the magistrate, who distributes it among the poor.