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The call of the Muezzins thundering from the minarets, had invited the faithful to prayers, when a black servant, about fifteen years old, stood before Hartley, and pronounced these words, deliberately, and twice over, "Thus says Barak el Hadgi, the watcher in the Mosque: He that would see the sun rise, let him turn towards the east."
"It is written that when the Mohammedan meetings were first held in Arabia, there was difficulty in gathering the people together and propositions were made to 'Ring a bell as the Christians do, and to 'Blow the trumpets as do the Jews; but Omar cried, 'What! is there not a man among you who can call to prayer? The prophet then said, 'O Billal! stand and make the call to prayer. Since then the melodious voices of the trained Muezzins five times each day summon the Moslems to prayer, and the tall graceful minarets which rise above the surrounding buildings were erected so that the voices could ring out over the city."
There are Mohammedan mosques, with Chinese muezzins in blue turbans on feast days; Manchu palaces with vermillion-red pillars and archways and green and gold ceilings.
Precious little sleep is obtained, for fleas innumerable take liberties with my person. A flourishing colony of swallows inhabiting the roof keeps up an incessant twittering, and toward daylight two muezzins, one on the minaret of each of the two mosques near by, begin calling the faithful to prayer, and howling "Allah.
The way had been so long could it be that his footsteps were already echoing on the marble floor which led to that chamber? Yes, and the perfume of that jasmine-laden room was stealing over his senses, and the woman he loved was in his arms. How the golden sunset lay on the domes and minarets below! How sonorous sounded the voices of the muezzins as they called the people to prayer!
Cynics have sometimes denounced Christians as worse than the heathens, in requiring loud church-bells to summon them to worship. Such, it appears, are putting the case rather thoughtlessly. Mohammedans have their muezzins, while both Christians and idolaters have their chiming bells.
Then, when ceased to vibrate the holy bell, which in the Basque villages interrupts life as in the Orient the song of the muezzins, Ramuntcho decided to say: "It frightens me, Gatchutcha, to see you in their company always I cannot but ask myself what ideas are in your head "
Turbaned Turks, mosques and minarets, muftis and cadis, veiled eastern ladies, Mohammedains and muezzins, Arabian Nights and attar of roses, bazars, dogs, and donkeys these, I suppose, are what Constantinople suggests whenever its name is mentioned to any girl or boy of to-day, the capital of modern Turkey, the city of the Sublime Porte.
The only criticism that can be made on them is that they serve no architectural purpose, which ought, of course, always to be intimately associated with use. Instead of growing from the nature of the building, they are put on from outside. Now, in the mosque they were very important in their service. They were the minarets where the Muezzins used to stand in order to call the faithful to prayer.
Then the sun turned pale, the Muezzins chanted the call to the prayer of sunset and the night came; but I saw no sign nor heard aught of her. With this, I feared for myself, sitting there alone; so I rose and went home, staggering like a drunken man. When she had finished, she turned and seeing me, wiped away her tears and mine with her sleeve.
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