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Sophia, and the Turks consider it a more wonderful work, because the dome is seven feet higher. It has six minarets, exceeding in this respect all the mosques of Asia. The dome rests on four immense pillars, the bulk of which quite oppresses the light galleries running around the walls.
The lands conquered by the arms of the Turks were divided into large estates for the military leaders, or else assigned to the maintenance of mosques and schools, or converted into common and pasturage lands; the conquered Christians were reduced to the payment of tribute and a life of serfdom. For two centuries the Turks were to remain a source of grave apprehension to Europe.
"And so this is Omdurman, is it?" he said. "Then I suppose Khartoum will be just such a city of mosques and palaces. Why, there isn't a redeeming feature in the whole spot! It's just a squalid collection of mud-houses and hovels, built anyhow by people accustomed to live in a tent or nothing at all.
The Kardikiotes at once divined that this injunction was the precursor of a terrible vengeance: the whole town echoed with cries and groans, the mosques were filled with people praying for deliverance. The appointed time arrived, they embraced each other as if parting for ever, and then the men, unarmed, in number six hundred and seventy, started for Chenderia.
All sacred enclosures hold the gift of healing. Michael had felt it in the temples of Egypt, in the temples of the Greeks, in the mosques. The things of the spirit remain in them, the thoughts which have been born by communion with the soul. Impulsively Michael lifted the iron handle of the bell; it hung from a long chain which lay against a square column, one of the two posts at the outer gate.
His courtiers shone resplendent with gold; his palace, and several of the mosques, were handsome edifices of stone; but his subjects dwelt in oval huts, formed of stakes, clay, and reeds. From this period till the formation of the African Association in 1788, no certain information was obtained concerning Central Africa.
At one time the pyramids were covered with polished stone, but this has all been removed and has been used in building the mosques of Cairo, and to-day its exterior is a series of steps, each 4 to 6 feet in height, formed by the enormous blocks of limestone of which it is built.
Even religious architecture was practically tabooed, the Wahabis pulling down the Prophet's tomb at Medina and demolishing the minarets of mosques as godless innovations.
In the mosques very fine mats are used; in ordinary houses, cafés, and shops, yellow matting lines the walls. Above the old hangings the Duke had hung a line of immense and tawdry gilt-framed mirrors.
The golden country calls him; the mosques with their marble columns, their blue tiles, their stern-faced worshippers; the narrow streets with their tall houses, their latticed windows, their peeping eyes looking down on the life that flows beneath and can never be truly tasted; the Pyramids with their bases in the sand and their pointed summits somewhere near the stars; the Sphinx with its face that is like the enigma of human life; the great river that flows by the tombs and the temples; the great desert that girdles it with a golden girdle.
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