[175] This curious impress of Mahometanism on Bosnian Christianity may be illustrated by other facts. Pilgrimages to Jerusalem are undertaken by Christians almost as frequently as pilgrimages to Mecca by Mahometans. The performance of such is reckoned as honourable among the rayahs as among the Turks, and the Christian pilgrims assume the same title of Hadji. The Holy Sepulchre is often known by the name Tjaba, which is nothing but the Arabian Caaba!—See Ranke, ‘Die letzten Unruhen in Bosnien, 1820-1832,’ (in Bohn’s translation, p. 314.)
[176] For the story of Marko Kraljević or ‘Kings’ son Marko,’ and the Cycles of Serbian poetry, see ‘The Slavonic Provinces of Turkey in Europe,’ by G. Muir Mackenzie and A. P. Irby, p. 87, &c.
[177] Wessely, quoted in Introduction to ‘Servian Popular Poetry,’ translated by Sir John Bowring.
[178] Let any English reader who thinks these encomiums overdrawn procure the faithful and beautiful translations of Sir John Bowring, cited above, and judge for himself.
[179] Miller.
[180] ‘Servian Popular Poetry,’ translated by J. Bowring, p. 219.
[181] ‘A Voyage into the Levant. A Briefe Relation of a Iourney lately performed by Master Henry Blunt, Gentleman, from England by the way of Venice into Dalmatia, Sclavonia, Bosnah, Hungary, Macedonia, Thessaly, Thrace, Rhodes, and Egypt, unto Gran Cairo.’ The Third Edition. London: 1638; p. 8. The giant size of the Bosniacs also struck the Bolognese doctor J. Bapt. Montalbans who visited Bosnia in the 16th century. v. Rerum Turcarum Commentarius,—Bosnæ Regnum.
[182] An officer of the general staff who was employed by the Austrian Government to draw up a map of Bosnia, and followed this up by his ‘Studien über Bosnien und die Herzegovina,’ partly an itinerary, partly a statistical account, but meagre and disappointing. Franz Maurer, ‘Reise durch Bosnien,’ is equally loud in his denunciations of the Major’s map.
[183] Had Milton viewed a scene like this? or was his sublime simile for the fallen Angels a pure creation of his imagination?
‘Yet faithful how they stood