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Dark faces grinned over the steaming pot at the door of the cafes, idlers on the benches smoked hasheesh, female street-dancers bared their faces shamelessly to the men, and indolent musicians beat on their tiny drums, and sang the song of "O Seyyid," or of "Antar"; and the reciter gave his sing-song tale from a bench above his fellows.
From an inside pocket he drew a tightly folded newspaper with much- worn edges, and indicated a paragraph. "Read that," said the saddler to royalty. The paragraph ran thus: His Highness Seyyid Feysal bin Turkee, Imam of Muskat, is one of the most progressive and enlightened rulers of the Old World. His stables contain more than a thousand horses of the purest Persian breeds.
We had begun to suspect we were being deceived as to his illness, for when the wazir and Saleh, who seemed in league together, heard the seyyid son-in-law, who came straight from Al Koton soon after the letter, telling us that the sultan was much better, they looked disconcerted, whispered together, and the wazir said, 'You should not talk of what you know nothing about.
A group of picturesque domes marks the resting-place of some of the Seyyid and Lodi kings who in turn ruled or misruled the shrunken dominions which still owned allegiance to Delhi. The achievement of a centralised Mahomedan empire was delayed for nearly two centuries.
In spite of bitter opposition from a powerful party, rooted in the old fanatical orthodoxy of Islam, who resented his broad-mindedness which went to the length of trying to explain, and even to explain away much of, the Koran, Sir Seyyid Ahmed Khan succeeded in founding at Aligurh in 1880 a Mahomedan College which soon attracted students from the best Mahomedan families all over India.
I advanced across the room amid loud exclamations from the seated ladies, and was pointed out a position in front of the two principal ones, who were seated against the wall one was the chief wife of the sultan, and the other a daughter married to a seyyid, whose hand his father-in-law must always kiss.
It took us three hours to return to Raida, where an old seyyid took us into his house and led us to a little clean room, 10 feet by 6 feet, and there we settled down on the matting to rest and have our luncheon till one o'clock, when we started, leaving the baggage camels to follow.
It comes from the small Wadi Loban and is very considerable. Wadi Adim is quite the gem of the valleys that we explored. There is a ziaret or place of pilgrimage, which attracts many people, to the tomb of a seyyid Omr, called after Omar, one of the four successors to Mohammed. The Jabberi seem, in spite of possessing this rich valley, to be a poor tribe.
He was born at Shiraz in 1820, and growing up a promising boy and youth, fell at the age Of 21 under the influence of a certain Seyyid Kazim, leader of a heterodox sect, and a kind of fore-runner or John the Baptist to the Bab.
An attempt was then made to restore the old Mohammedan administration, and Jehangir was proclaimed by the style of the Seyyid Jehangir Sultan. One of his first acts was to dismiss the Khokandian contingent, and to inform his ally or patron, Mahomed Ali, that he no longer required his assistance.
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