LITMIR.BIZ

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forehead and nose touching the ground, “I extol the Sanctity of my God, the Most High!”

      This practically finishes one rakôh, but there are usually added certain recitations from the first chapter of the Koran, with perhaps a repetition of the postures.

      VII. Before finally leaving the place of prayer the act of witness, Tashabhud, is given. He raises the forefinger of his right hand and repeats: “I affirm that there is no God but God and that Mohammed is the Apostle of God.”

      VIII. The last position is the Munjat, or supplication, when are repeated certain suitable verses of the Koran.

      Christ enters into the Mussulman religion as one of the Prophets of God. They believe that Christ was, before the coming of Mohammed, the greatest of all Prophets.

      All good Mussulmans recite the prayers of their beads, just as all good Catholics say their chaplets. The Mussulman has a string of ninety-nine beads, each standing for one of the ninety-nine perfections of Allah. This rosary is often elaborate and costly, interspersed here and there with jewels; but more often than not, even with wealthy Mussulmans, it is a string of crude wooden beads. The faith of Islam is a simple one, not a showy one.

      The Friday prayer at the mosques is one of the events to see in a Mussulman country. Public prayer is a social event with Mohammedans, as it is with many Christians. Soon after the sun has marked high noon, and while the siesta is still the chief blessing with many, the throng follows the first zoual or call of the muezzin.

      Everything is burning and brilliant under an ardent southern sun, and a scintillating, dazzling reflection comes from each whitewashed wall until one is almost blinded. After this the cool shadows of the mosque are most refreshing. Barefooted the Mussulman throng threads its way among the myriad pillars of the court and enters the sanctuary where daylight filters dimly through a sieve of iron-latticed windows.

      Praying men are everywhere, – men of the town, and nomad Arabs from the desert whose business has brought them thither. The women are all at the cemetery talking scandal, for except on special occasions, the Mussulman women are not admitted to the Holy Day (Friday) prayers in the mosques. This is in accordance to the law of the Prophet. Under a great dome a ruddier, more brilliant light showers down on the students and professors who psalm the verses of the Koran in a monotonous wail; while still farther to the rear is the infants’ school, whose pupils repeat their lessons in crackling singsong voices all day long to a pair of bearded, turbaned elders. Here and there, backed up against a pillar, a taleb recites his litany to the Prophet. All these voices blend in a murmur undistinguishable from any other conglomerate sound, except that it is manifestly human.

      Suddenly, from high above, on the gallery of the minaret, rings out the muezzin’s second call to prayer, and like the reverberant light, it seems to filter down from the unknown.

      With face towards Mecca the imam reads the Khotba, a long, dreary prayer of exhortation, but no more monotonous than the cut and dried sermon which one mostly gets in Christian churches. The imam is not a priest as is known of Christendom; the religion of Islam has no regular clergy; he is simply the wisest elder among the personnel of the mosque.

      All through the service, as indeed at all times, a great calm reigns throughout every Mohammedan mosque. At the end of the last exhorting couplet issuing from between the lips of the imam a naïve joy, as of a relief from a great oppression, spreads over the assembled faithful and all rush for the open, as do congregations of other faiths. One religion is not so very different from another after all. It is only a matter of belief, not of the mode of expressing one’s adherence to that belief.

      “May peace be thine, O Mohammed, Prophet of God. Ruler of Mecca and Medina and Lord of all Mussulmans now and always.”

      This finishes the service of the mosque.

      From the opaque obscurity of the maze of the mosque’s interior one comes suddenly again into the light of day. To a burning African landscape from the humidity of a cloister.

      Woman’s position in Islam is peculiar. It is not according to our notions of what is right and proper, and there is no looked-for or hoped-for emancipation to be thought of. The question is both a social and a religious one. Those few Europeans who have really studied the harem as an institution have found, however, that its establishment and continuance is a plan that works well, and that the majority of these supposedly unhappy wives really love their husbands, and their destiny. If this is so, what business is it of ours to criticize the conduct of the ménage of the Arab or the Turk. The Prophet himself said that woman was the jewel and the perfume of this world.

      Theoretically the Mussulman idea is that man is the superior creature physically, and that it is his business alone to mingle and rub shoulders with the world, leaving his wives, members of the fragile sex, to raise his family, embellish his life and console him in time of grief. All other things apart, surely these are good enough principles for anybody to found domestic bliss upon. And these are the principal tenets of the domestic creed of the Moslem. He is often not the villain he is painted. To continue the words of the Prophet – Mohammed said one day to his companions: “Would you know the most valuable possession of man? It is, then, an honest woman. She charms the eye, and is obedient, and guards his reputation intact during his absence from home.” Really the Islamic faith goes a bit farther, for it counsels man to “cloister his wife as a prevention of jealousy and doubt, the mortal poisons, the terrible unpitying destroyers of conjugal quietude.” This, too, seems good advice, like many other of the precepts of the Koran.

      Many of these Arab women were born within the harem’s walls, and know not any other modes of life as preferable to their own. They regard the daily round of liberty of the European woman as an unreal, undesirable state. The harem has been the theatre of their joys since infancy, and they have become so habituated to it that their life of seclusion becomes a second nature. They would not flee the sill of the great doorway into the outer world if they could, and their only change of locale is to pass from the harem of the husband of their mother to that of their spouse. In the harem the Arab woman is cared for with an unthought-of luxury. All the goods and chattels that their husband values most go to enrich the harem walls and floors. The harem is a sumptuous, glorious apartment compared to the simplicity with which the master of the house surrounds himself in his own quarters.

      It is the opinion of that indefatigable traveller and student of exotic things, Edmond de Amicis, that the Arab concedes nothing to the European in his chivalrous treatment of woman. “No Arab dares lift an offending hand against a woman in public.” “No Arab soldier, even in the tumult of attack, would think of maltreating even the most insolent of womenkind.” And yet Europeans of most nationalities have been known to do both these things.

      In her cloister, or to be more exact, in her boudoir, the Arab woman, and particularly the mother, receives the most respectful homage and solicitude from all the household. According to the Koran the children are admonished to respect the persons of those who bore them, and a verbal declaration of the Prophet is set down as: “A child may gain Paradise only by following in the footsteps of its mother.”

      The educated and advanced Arabs of the towns have done much to disabuse the public of any false preconceived ideas concerning Arab womenfolk. Contrary to common belief the Arab woman is often the intellectual and social equal of her spouse. It was only the absurd jealousy of the old-school Mussulmans that annihilated for ever the faculties of their wives.

      The portrait gallery of celebrated Mussulman women is not large, but one does not forget Zobeïdah, who inspired and aided the illustrious Haroun-Al-Rachid. Islam is not in its decadence, but its sponsors are awakening to the fact that they must keep abreast of the times.

      The Friday promenade of the Mussulman woman of the towns to the cemetery is her only outing, the only day off allowed her. She makes as much of it as possible, but it is a sad proceeding at best.

      The Arab tomb is, generally speaking, a thing of simplicity, a simple slab bearing the Arab words for the sentiment “Hic jacet.” The exception is in the marabout tombs or koubas, which are often monumental, though of comparatively small dimensions, well built, symmetrical, and surmounted by a dome or cupola.

      The

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