United States or Puerto Rico ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
That of the Christian, though coarse, was more genial. Dried hog's flesh, the abomination of the Moslemah, was the chief part of his repast; and his drink, derived from a leathern bottle, contained something better than pure element.
But, on the morrow, there came to the village two Moslem elders, clad in hair cloth, and with them two women in like garb, and said, 'O people of the village, with you is a woman Saint, a Waliyah of the friends of Allah, who died a Moslemah; and we will take charge of her in lieu of you. So the villagers sought her and found her dead on the Moslem's grave; and they said, 'This was one of us and she died in our faith; so we will take charge of her. Rejoined the two old men, 'Nay, she died a Moslemah and we claim her. And the dispute waxed to a quarrel between them, till one of the Shaykhs said, 'Be this the test of her faith: the forty monks of the monastery shall come and try to lift her from the grave.
"The anchorite whom I would now visit," said the warlike pilgrim, "is, I have heard, no priest; but were he of that anointed and sacred order, I would prove with my good lance, against paynim and infidel " "Let us not defy each other, brother," interrupted the Saracen; "we shall find, either of us, enough of Franks or of Moslemah on whom to exercise both sword and lance.
Now it so fortuned that there was with us an old woman well stricken in years, a Moslemah who, inwardly believing in Allah and His Apostle, conformed outwardly with the religion of my people; and my father placed thorough confidence in her for that he knew her to be trustworthy and virtuous; and he treated her with ever increasing kindness believing her to be of his own belief.
The voice of the crier had scarce ceased, when it was answered by one as loud, which sounded from the crowd of bystanders, "Cursed is he who maketh the robber Leik his treasurer, or trusteth the lives of Moslemah to the command of an apostate!" With unutterable satisfaction, yet with trembling doubt and anxiety, Hartley traced the speech to the elder Fakir, the companion of Barak.
If they succeed, then she died a Nazarene; if not, one of us shall come and lift her up and if she be lifted by him, she died a Moslemah. The villagers agreed to this and fetched the forty monks, who heartened one another, and came to her to lift her, but could not. Then the two elders bore her to her Moslem lover's grave and prayed over her and buried her by his side and went their ways.
From thence, wheeling round the Thracian cities of the Propontis, Moslemah invested Constantinople on the land side, surrounded his camp with a ditch and rampart, prepared and planted his engines of assault, and declared, by words and actions, a patient resolution of expecting the return of seed-time and harvest, should the obstinacy of the besieged prove equal to his own.
Now the ruler of this city was a Queen called Marjanah, and the captain said to Bahram, "O my lord, we have strayed from our course and come to the island of Queen Marjanah, who is a devout Moslemah; and, if she know that we are Magians, she will take our ship and slay us to the last man. Yet needs must we put in here to rest and refit."
The rapid expression of feeling corrected by the dictates of duty did not escape the Moslem, who, if he did not entirely understand all which it conveyed, saw enough to convince him with the assurance that Christians, as well as Moslemah, had private feelings of personal pique, and national quarrels, which were not entirely reconcilable.
She answered "If I be indeed thy daughter, become a Moslem, even as I became a Moslemah, for the truth was shown to me and I attested it; and the false, and I deserted it. I have submitted myself unto Allah, The Lord of the Three Worlds, and am pure of all faiths contrary to that of Al-Islam in this world and in the next world.
Word Of The Day