“We give praise to Thee, O Lord, we glorify Thee in the name of Muhammad--may peace be with him and with his people! O God, accept this Hájj from me, and allow it not to be the last one. I praise thee, O Lord, in all Thy attributes, I praise Thee for all Thy blessings; I praise Thee for all Thou willest, I praise Thee for all Thy power. O Lord, accept this worship from me, and cleanse my heart, and sharpen my sense of duty. Take compassion on me, O God, for my worship’s sake, and because I accept the words of Thy prophet--on whom be peace! O Lord, make me to detest those that do not worship Thee, and make me to love those who love Thee, and those who love Thy prophet and Thy angels and all Thy pious creatures.” Then, bowing our foreheads to the ground, we said aloud: “O Lord, I worship Thee on my face; there is no God but Thee; Thou art just and merciful; Thou art the beginning of everything, and the end of everything; for Thine is the management and Thine the power alone. O Thou that forgivest the sins of Thy people, pardon my offences, for in Thee do I now confess my sins. Verily, no one can pardon grave sinners except Thyself. I say, there is not any one to be compared with Thee.” The rewards of a correct performance of the Tewaff and of the necessary prayers--preferably at sundown, the best time for meditation--are of a sort to render the rite extremely popular among the pilgrims. At every step they take, in making the seven circuits, no fewer than seventy thousand sins will be blotted out of their bad books, and an equal number of virtues be added to the companion volumes containing their good actions. Nor is this all, for they will be made, at the same rate, the intercessors of seventy thousand sinners; they will build up to themselves the same number of palaces in heaven, and will earn the fulfilment of seven hundred thousand of their desires in this world, and of seventy thousand in the world to come. And that, no doubt, is why we took precious care that our steps, even when walking briskly, as we were obliged to do for the first three circuits, should be, if smart, extremely short ones. CHAPTER V THE COURSE OF PERSEVERANCE Having encompassed the Ka’bah seven times, we stood hard by the tomb of Abraham and watched the pilgrims fighting to kiss the Black Stone. The wonder was that we had emerged from the tight scrimmage with a skin more or less whole. The perspiration oozed out of the pores in streams: laying hold of the fag end of my sacred habit I wiped my forehead. “You must not touch yourself,” said Seyyid ’Alí; “it is a grievous sin.” “Let your conscience rest in peace,” I replied; “I will do penance by sacrificing a sheep.”