[264] This is an appellation not implying blame, but merit; the “lies” which it purports to affiliate are feints and cunning stratagems, rather than the baser kind of falsehoods. The expression, in short, has nearly the same meaning as the English word “Yorkshireman.”
[265a] The 29th of April.
[265b] [This was no doubt the case in this particular, but it must not be supposed that April 29 is the Mohammedan New Year’s Day. The Moslem religious year consists of twelve lunar months, and is eleven days shorter than the Christian year. Hence, if in one year Muharrem (the first month) falls on April 29, it would fall on April 18 the next. In consequence of the great inconveniences of this mode of reckoning, Turks adopt for secular matters another era called the Financial year, which starts from the Hijra, but has solar months. But feasts and fasts are fixed by the lunar year, so that the month of Ramazan rotates through all the seasons.]
[267] [The statements at the beginning of this chapter are altogether inaccurate. From the religious point of view a good Mohammedan is as much, and more, bound than a Christian to encourage any form of missionary enterprise, seeing that all non-Moslems are destined to inevitable damnation. From the legal and practical point of view, the exercise of all religions is nominally free in Turkey and it is therefore illegal to convert a Christian at the point of the sword, but it will be sufficient to remind the reader that during the massacres of 1895–96 many thousands of Armenians turned Mohammedans, and that those who wished to subsequently return to their old religion found great difficulty in doing so.
As a rule Turks despise the Christian races too much to take any trouble about converting them, but it is absurd to say that conversions are illegal. On the contrary, they are fairly frequent, and it is only necessary that the person converted should state publicly that his change of religion is due to his own free will. Cases of young girls embracing Islam are not rare. According to the law, minors wishing to become Moslems must be taken to the house of a respectable person, where a priest of their own religion can have access to them, and their change of faith is not legal until they are of age (which means in the case of a girl twelve or thirteen), but in practice every effort is made to isolate them in such cases from their friends and surround them with Mohammedans.]
[272] These are the names given by the Prophet to certain chapters of the Koran.
[280] It was after the interview which I am talking of, and not from the Jews themselves, that I learnt this fact.
[283] An enterprising American traveller, Mr. Everett, lately conceived the bold project of penetrating to the University of Oxford, and this notwithstanding that he had been in his infancy (they begin very young those Americans) a Unitarian preacher. Having a notion, it seems, that the ambassadorial character would protect him from insult, he adopted the stratagem of procuring credentials from his Government as Minister Plenipotentiary at the Court of her Britannic Majesty; he also wore the exact costume of a Trinitarian. But all his contrivances were vain; Oxford disdained, and rejected, and insulted him (not because he represented a swindling community, but) because that his infantine sermons were strictly remembered against him; the enterprise failed.
[292] The rose-trees which I saw were all of the kind we call “damask”; they grow to an immense height and size.
[296] A dragoman never interprets in terms the courteous language of the East.