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Among them were Kaplan Giraj, a kinsman of the Khan of the Crimea, Musli, old Vuodi, Mohammed the dervish, and Sulali. Sulali wrote down what Halil said. "Mussulmans. Yesterday, before the Abdestan, I was reading the book whose name is the 'Takimi Vekai." "Mashallah!" exclaimed all the Mohammedans mournfully. "In that book the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire is predicted.
And when the trump of the angel Israfil shall sound and the Marvel from the Mountain of Safa doth appear to write 'Mumen' or 'Giaour' on the foreheads of mankind; and when Al-Dallaja comes to root out the nation of the Osmanli, and the hosts of Gog and Magog appear to exterminate the Christians, and drink up the waters of the rivers, and at the last all things perish before the Mahdi; then when the mountains are rent asunder and the stars fall from Heaven, when the archangels Michael and Gabriel open the tombs and bring forth the trembling, death-pale shapes, one by one, before the face of Allah, and they all stand there as transparent as crystal so that every thought of their hearts is visible what then will you answer, you in whose power it once stood to uphold the dominion of Mahomet, you to whom it was given to have swords in your hands and ideas in your heads to be used in its defence what will you answer, I say, when you hear the brazen voice cry: 'Ye who saw destruction coming, did ye try to prevent it? What will it profit you then, old Vuodi and ye others, to say that ye never neglected the Abdestan, the Güzül, and the Thüharet ablutions, nor the five prayers of the Namazat, that ye have kept the fast of Ramazan and the feast of Bejram, that ye have richly distributed the Zakato and the Sadakato, that you have made the pilgrimage to the Kaaba at Mecca so many times, or so many times, that you have kissed the sin-remitting black stone, that you have drunk from the well of Zemzem and seven times made the circuit of the mountain of Arafat and flung stones at the Devil in the valley of Dsemre what will it profit you, I say, if you cannot answer that question?
"On the eighth-and-twentieth day of the month Rubi-Estani, in the year of the Hegira, 886, I, Said Achmed-ibn Mustafa, Governor of Scutari and scribe of the Palace, having accomplished the Abdestan and recited the Fateha with hands raised heavenwards, ascended to the tower of Ujuk Kule, from whence I could survey all Stambul, and there I began to meditate.