'"Listen to me, wife," said the Syaad, in gentle terms; "you profess to love, honour, and respect me, as your faithful, lawful husband; pray can the dirt from my body be more offensive to your palate than the scum of Nadir Shaah, whom you only know by name? You would have accepted the filthy offerings of a cruel man, who plundered and sacrificed his victims to obtain the treasures he possesses;—you would not have scrupled to obtain your future sustenance by the coins of Nadir Shaah, gained as they were by the spilling of human blood? Is this your love for Syaad Harshim?" The wife threw herself at her husband's feet, when his speech was finished: "Pardon me, my dear husband! pardon my ignorance and self-love; I see myself disgraced by harbouring one wish for more than is gained by honest industry. No longer have I any desire for the gold of Nadir Shaah. Contented as yourself, my dear, good husband! I will continue to labour for the honest bread that sustains, nor ever again desire my condition to be changed."'
The Woodman, Syaad Harshim, lived to a great age; many a tear hath fallen on his grave from the good pilgrims visiting the shrine of Ali, near which he was buried; and his resting place is reverenced to this day by the passing traveller of his own faith.
[1] Kafilah.
[2] The burqa': see drawing in Hughes, Dictionary of Islam, p. 95.
[3] Bokhara.
[4] The Origin of the Sikhs, by H. Colebrooke, Esq., gives a faithful picture of those warlike people. [The best account of their beliefs is by M. Macauliffe, The Sikh Religion, Oxford, 1909.]
[5] Yahya. On the capture of Damascus by the Muhammadans, the churches were equally divided between the Christians and their conquerors. The great Cathedral of St. John was similarly divided, and for eighty years the two religions worshipped under the same roof.—Arnold, The Preaching of Islam, p. 50.
[6] A vulgar corruption of Jame' Masjid, the Cathedral Mosque.
[7] On the taboos attached to the sanctuary, see Burton, Pilgrimage, i. 379 f.
[8] At-Ta'if, meaning 'circumambulation'. When Adam settled at Mecca,
finding the country barren, he prayed to Allah to supply him with a
piece of fertile land. Immediately a mountain appeared, which, having
circumambulated the Ka'aba, settled itself down eastward of Mecca.
Hence it was called Kita min Sham, 'a piece of Syria,' whence it
came. (Burton, ii. 336.) 'Its fertile lands produce the fruits of
Syria in the midst of the Arabian desert' ( Gibbon, Decline and Fall,
vi. 255).