United States or Uganda ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The History of Mekka, entitled Akhbar Mekka, a thick quarto volume, by Aby el Wolyd el Azraky, who flourished in the year of the Hedjra 223, and has traced the annals of his native city down to that period. This work is particularly interesting on account of its topographical notices, and the author's intimate acquaintance with the state of Arabia before Islam or Mohammedanism.
In the days of Akhbar or Shah Jehan, cholera, famine, and internal strife kept down the population. Only the fittest survived. Now internal strife is forbidden, and philanthropy steps in and says that no single life shall be sacrificed if science and Western energy or skill can save it.
In this phrase the word dad corresponds to the modern Musalman shariyat and the word ain to adat. It is possible that the book of Ibn al Mukaffa was not the first translation of the Persian book since this title is applied by not a few other Arabic writers of the time to some of their own works. These quotations are only to be found in the first part of the Uyunal Akhbar.
A second remark of mine was, perhaps, not more important, but it was, on the whole, better calculated to startle the prevailing preconceptions; for, as to the new system of morals introduced by Christ, generally speaking, it is too dimly apprehended in its great differential features to allow of its miraculous character being adequately appreciated; one flagrant illustration of which is furnished by our experience in Affghanistan, where some officers, wishing to impress Akhbar Khan with the beauty of Christianity, very judiciously repeated to him the Lord's Prayer and the Sermon on the Mount, by both of which the Khan was profoundly affected, and often recurred to them; but others, under the notion of conveying to him a more comprehensive view of the Scriptural ethics, repeated to him the Ten Commandments; although, with the sole exception of the two first, forbidding idolatry and Polytheism, there is no word in these which could have displeased or surprised a Pagan, and therefore nothing characteristic of Christianity.
He staggered, reeled, then made a short gallop; but the blood was spouting from the wound in a thick stream, and before he had gone 200 yards he came to a dead halt, with his ears drawn back, and allowed me to come within twenty yards of him, when, receiving a zinc bullet through the head, he fell dead. "Allah ho, akhbar!" cried Khamisi, my butcher, fervently. "This is meat, master!"
A few extracts of this nature we find in Ibn Kotaiba's Oyun-al Akhbar. Among these citations which I owe to the goodness of Rosen, there is one tolerably long on the death of Peroz. Now the same fragment, little curtailed, is in the chronicle of Said bin Batrik or Eutychius, the patriarch of Alexandria.
He then made the acquaintance of three natives, all of whom assisted him in his linguistic studies, Mirza Ali Akhbar , Mirza Daud, and Mirza Mohammed Musayn. Helped by the last he opened covertly at Karachi several shops with the object, however, not of making profit, but of obtaining intimate knowledge of the people and their secret customs.
His eyes flashed, he burst into a roaring laugh of the profoundest delight, and at once answered in the majestic gutturals of the Orient. "Allah akhbar!" he cried; "I have been waiting twenty years for some one to speak to me in Arabic, and you are the first!" He afterwards changed to Italian, which he spoke perfectly well, and preferred to any foreign language.
Word Of The Day