“Now, don’t talk blasphemy, my friend,” interrupted a priest called Mullá Ahmad. “Do you think there is no room left for the angels?”
“God forbid!” cried Seyyid ’Alí, raising his eyes aloft. “They can perch on the tent-poles, or on the camel-saddles.”
“Kofre-negueíd (don’t blaspheme)!” yelled the Mullá. “Don’t you know that the angels are transparent? But for that the sun would be eclipsed, so dense is the choir of angels in the circumambient air.”
“Is that so?” replied Seyyid ’Alí, with a smile that incensed his questioner beyond all measure. “Does not the Holy Tradition say that there must be six hundred thousand souls on this Blessed Plain, and that the deficiency, if any, will be made up with the necessary number of heavenly choristers? I had not thought that the deficiency was so great as to cause so vast a reinvasion of light from above.”
“The Tradition,” shouted the Mullá, “says that there must be fully six hundred thousand souls: there may be more, but there cannot be less——”
“How many pilgrims are there, do you think?” I asked, interrupting the Mullá.
“It is human to err,” he replied, sententiously; “but, however many there may be, and I believe there are 600,000 and more, Allah may increase them. And as for the angels, Seyyid ’Alí, they will confine themselves to the regions of the air, immediately above us, and will say ‘Amen’ to our prayers and supplications.”
“Multiply your estimate by 3 and divide it by 6, and you will not be so far out of your reckoning, I think,” and so saying, I appealed to Sheykh Eissa for his opinion.
The Sheykh scanned the encampment with critical eyes. “Let us say,” he murmured at last, “that this city of tents on the plain and the hills contains innumerable souls and moving beasts. Am I not right, Mullá Ahmad?”
“Well said, my friend!” cried the Mullá. “Nobody save Allah—may I be His sacrifice!—could count the number one by one. And who are we that we should set a limit to God’s omnipotence and clemency?”