Much has been written by philatelists, as well as by Muhammedan scholars, upon the subject, and the continued philatelic fidelity to the Thoughra (the Sultan's sign manual) on the Turkish stamps has ingrained into collectors the belief that the Turks would never depart from their reading of the law as set forth by Muhammed in this particular. The verse which, in the Koran, sets forth the alleged prohibition is transcribed:—
O believers! surely wine and games of chance, and statues, and the divining arrows are an abomination of Satan's work! Avoid them that ye may prosper.
The wise men of the East, who have drunk deep of the streams of wisdom that flow from the Book of Warnings, have read many different meanings into the verse, and in Turkey it has been taken to imply the forbidding of all figures, and even the ruminative game of chess is barred by the strict Muslim. We, of Christian faith, would appear to have a more emphatic
prohibition of the making of pictures in the translation of the Mosaic law:—
And God spake all these words, saying, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
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