One must see, he carnot imagine, the havoc and destruction hereabout, the grotesque and gigantic fragments of rock, the islands of rock, the precipices of rock, made by the torrent when it broke through here. One of these islands is Biggeh—all rocks, not enough soft spot on it to set a hen. The rocks are piled up into the blue sky; from their summit we get the best view of Philæ—the jewel set in this rim of stone.
Above Philæ we pass the tomb of a holy man, high on the hill, and underneath it, clinging to the slope, the oldest mosque in Nubia, the Mosque of Belal, falling now into ruin, but the minaret shows in color no sign of great age. How should it in this climate, where you might leave a pair of white gloves upon the rocks for a year, and expect to find them unsoiled.
“How old do you suppose that mosque is Abd-el-Atti?”
“I tink about twelve hundred years old. Him been built by the Friends of our prophet when they come up here to make the people believe.”
I like this euphuism. “But,” we ask, “suppose they didn't believe, what then?”
“When thim believe, all right; when thim not believe, do away wid 'em.”
“But they might believe something else, if not what Mohammed believed.”
“Well, what our Prophet say? Mohammed, he say, find him anybody believe in God, not to touch him; find him anybody believe in the Christ, not to touch him; find him anybody believe in Moses, not to touch him; find him believe in the prophets, not to touch him; find him believe in bit wood, piece stone, do way wid him. Not so? Men worship something wood, stone, I can't tell—I tink dis is nothing.”
Abd-el-Atti always says the “Friends” of Mohammed, never followers or disciples. It is a pleasant word, and reminds us of our native land. Mohammed had the good sense that our politicians have. When he wanted anything, a city taken, a new strip of territory added, a “third term,” or any trifle, he “put himself in the hands of his friends.”
The Friends were successful in this region. While the remote Abyssinians retained Christianity, the Nubians all became Moslems, and so remain to this day.